First off, Broad Knowledge: 35 Women Up to No Good is up for pre-order at Amazon.
I’m in this! And it comes out November 20th!
In other parts of life …
We’re planning to sell our house, now that my mother-in-law is living with us, and to that end we are fixing some stuff up, per our realtor’s advice.
First, all 23957349687967 of our books went into storage. Yeah, okay, I have an iPad, whatever. This really opened up the living room–it’s huge, now, without the book cases taking up an entire wall.
Next came paint.
Way back when we built our house, we chose a paint color that was, in theory, a reddish brown. In fact, it was pink. Not bubblegum pink or anything, but certainly not any shade of brown. We weren’t exactly thrilled, but whatever. We dubbed the place The Little Pink House and went on.
Now we’ve had it painted a light gray. I actually like it, but the first day I came home from work after it was done, I had to sit in the driveway and stare at it for a few minutes due to cognitive dissonance. I live in The Little Pink House. But it’s gray. But it’s supposed to be Pink? But look! Gray!
Yeah, I’m a weirdo.
Shortly after we built our house, we painted the inside of it. I wasn’t working at the time, so I painted all the bedrooms (chalkboard green, medium gray, PURPLE). My Dad helped us paint the living room (maroon and cream), and the husband and I painted the kitchen (bright yellow). We loved it. When the kid came along, he loved it. But, you know, not everyone is us, and potential buyers want a blank slate, and so we hired some painters to paint the house interior antique white. They spent two days and did a really good job.
The rooms look much bigger. They’re brighter. Turn on a light and whammo, it’s showtime!
I hate it.
When I come home, I want a den. A cave. A hobbit-hole, if you will. I want a refuge from the world and the demon fireball in the sky; I want to curl up with my books in my bed and feel cozy to just this side of claustrophobia. I don’t want “light” or “airy.” I want “dark” and “protective.” Blankets, books, and a dark colored bedroom.
(I also don’t want to paint a goddamned house again, so when we buy something else and the entire place is antique beige, I am going to have a civil war of laziness vs. my desire for a chalkboard green bedroom.)
(That said, the child has requested we paint his new room purple, so I’m screwed anyway and might as well buy some green paint, too.)
Oh, and Google is discontinuing Inbox, which I use all the time, and I am Not Pleased because I like bundling. I like being able to create my own bundles for email. The thing ain’t perfect (no matter how many times I tell it Joe Hill’s newsletter is a Newsletter, it still sorts them into Promos), but it worked really well for my purposes, and now I’m going to spend 6 months finding an alternative app and learning to use it.
Ugh.
So far Airmail looks relatively promising, but I’m going to try Spark once they sort out the bug that’s keeping me from adding my gmail account.
If you are reading this from the Carolinas, I hope you’re safe and unscathed.
Laura E. Price 