Free Time

I can't remember the last time I had any 'free time' -- that lovely unstructured resource that I love so much. But I have some now.

At least until tomorrow morning. Or whenever my editor comes back to me with revisions, suggestions, comments or, God forbid, "this sucks."

So I'm relishing being free to clean my office if I want (and whether I want to or not, the office needs it), paint our bedroom (ditto), bake Christmas cookies and freeze them, go shopping (once or twice, but mostly online), have a friend or two over for tea, take the dogs for longer than usual walks, and read books.

The TBR pile (that's to-be-read for those who don't have one) is sky high. But I just got to read the Regency Christmas anthology from Signet and enjoyed the stories there. That's a yearly ritual. I'm looking forward to a re-read of Loretta Chase's Lord of Scoundrels when it comes out next week. I, among others, adore that story. But my copy went to someone else to read and hasn't ever come back. So I'm getting a new one. I have several more I'll talk about as I finish them, provided I have time to.

It's good to be home. Thanksgiving in Texas was terrific. We never ran into crowds at the airport (once we stopped being fogged in). We had great connections, great games of monopoly, a great gingerbread house, some relatively painless Black Friday shopping (always interesting as long as you're not in a hurry), lots of good football (Go, Packers!), and a fabulous dinner, not to mention plenty of quality time with daughter and son-in-law and Glowkid.

We even decorated the Christmas tree before we left because they did it early this year so we could be part of it -- and they are going to swim with dolphins the week before Christmas and then to Missouri for Christmas with the other side of the family, so getting the tree at home early seemed like a good idea so they'd have time to enjoy it. And we got to enjoy it, too.

I think we should have carved a pumpkin and dyed a few Easter eggs, too. But in general a good time was had by all.

Couldn't have been better (even the fog didn't cause problems really because we then went to a different airport, got a non-stop and had no hassles at all).