Where in the World has Jenny Been?

Hello, hello Blog Buddies -- I do apologize for disappearing for a while. It's been a kind of crazy summer. I did not disappear for any real good reason other than I had nothing much to say.

Well, it has been busy-ish, sort of. Early in the summer my son and his wife bought a dear little house. This took what felt like forever to close and then another big chunk of forever for them to paint, pack and move. It's a very dear house... with a darling yard... in which reside the most vicious chiggers! I offered up a spreader and the meanest chigger killer I know -- you haven't lived till all your public and private parts have been bitten up by chiggers. Eek! You will thank me for not documenting that bit of news on my wee blog.

At some time over the summer we started the Great Porch Project. If you recall I took the porch down last spring -- not this past spring but rather spring of 2008! It's been a tragedy of architects. The project is frankly too small to be bothered with, although a flurry of architects and plan drawers promised to squeeze it in on the side. They never did. One after another promised, though none delivered till finally I tracked down a woman architect who kept her word. Her drawings passed the building permit process. Hooray. So now I have a building permit. We have dug and poured the footers, which passed inspection. The framing for the floor is now complete and is awaiting inspection. This has been such a slow laborious, frustrating process that I'd just as soon not blog about it.

Other little odd things have included finding a cousin who has been missing for most of 40 years. We were very very close as children and then... life happened. I saw him once for a few minutes, at a family funeral some 15 years ago. And then poof, gone again. It was wonderful finding him again, finding him safe and sound and living very nearby. This would have been an eventful blog post... if not for the tangle of emotions that come with it. People don't make themselves scarce for no reason...

Here's another not so fun tidbit -- I've been sidling up to a diet, unsuccessfully for several months. Do you know how Oprah announces that we should not spend another summer fat. Well I did and I am not real happy about it. In fact today I feel very fat. Harrumph.

There are projects going on, but nothing ready to show. The beginning stages, fiddling with designs and colors, even deciding which projects are going to stay and which will never see the light of day... hardly worth a blog post.

So, I have been sort of busy, I have been at wit's end and largely witless. I didn't mean to slip away... I just didn't have anything much to say. I'm hoping all of you have had a much more fascinating and productive summer than I have... this can not have been hard.

I am here now, waving happily and cheerfully to all of you. Now that autumn is upon us... I'm hoping that a change of season will bring about a change of attitude and momentum. A girl can dream.

There we are, Dear Blog Buddies -- I am back.