general news

[chelidon]

Beltaine weekend was pretty much Bliss Central around here. The daffodils are just finishing their blooming, and the carpets of sunny coltsfoot flowers are springing up everywhere, the streams are high, and the mosquitos have yet to make a serious appearance (we may still have a freeze this coming weekend...) The weather last weekend both days was picture-perfect, low 70s, cloudless blue skies, all the trees in various stages of enrobing themselves in their once-a-year cloak of vibrantly luscious newness. Everyone was feeling homey, none of us felt like either hosting or attending any kind of big Beltaine shindig, so we spent Saturday working on the house, my partner and lylythe_strega helped me stain and paint in the house addition (moving date for my office now looks like this coming weekend). Sunday morning, some of the assembled Casa denizens had a delicious and decadent brunch, and in the afternoon, some of the close extended "family," nine in all, got together and did a little fun ritualizin, some dancing around the Maypole (Forest, of course, won), and the first BBQ of the season out on the back deck. No Big Deep Work, no puking in the cauldron, just a lot of laughter, fun and good times with household and close family. The night of Beltaine itself, Monday, we all spent with beloved partners, celebrating the season in appropriate style :> The last several months, especially, lead me to intensely celebrate where I am, and who I am with.

Claudia's doing well, aside from some migranes, looking forward to seeing many of you in May at Wildflower Gathering. The hospital where she works, though, is under strict precautionary measures due to a local outbreak of pertussis (whooping cough). It's specificallly dangerous for babies, so the NICU and pediatrics units have a gauntlet of nurses and guards at the entrances to screen everyone coming through, and any staff with so much as a sniffle get an immediate blood test and are sent home until they're cleared. All the ICU staff are getting antibiotics, whether they show signs or not. It's not an epidemic by any means, but it's serious enough that CDC showed up, and they're taking moderate steps to stop the spread. Seeing how well the system actually works (here, at least -- many hospitals are quite a mess), makes me grateful yet again for the rather unique combination here of "out in the woods" and "world-class medical facility 20 min away," especially now, when we're making heavy use of those facilities in various ways.

I've been doing a combination of working my ass off, and focusing intensely inwards on home and immediate family. June will be a heavy month, with serious medical procedures for both my son and my partner, so there's a lot of things that have to be lined up, just in case I need to take some time off for a while. I'm still looking into the solar hot water system (after the new roof goes on), but it may have to wait, my plate is so very full at the moment. Not like there aren't enough projects going on around here already to keep me as busy as I could ever want to be. And workwise, some new things have presented themselves, doors closing, and unexpected doors opening. The news website I was running and editing is closing down and being folded into another site, which I expected -- the parent company has gone through huge upheavals over the last couple of months -- about half of the people I knew there have either quit or been laid off, one of the publications there for which I'm a contributing editor is being put up for sale, and my strong instinct was to lay low, so much so that I held off sending in my invoices for a few months...sometimes, temporary invisibility is good ;> I'd had a growing sense that the site I was running was on a dead-end path, not because it wasn't good, but because it didn't fit the new corporate model., and nobody seemed to have a clear sense of what to do with it. It meant I had complete editorial control, and virtually no oversight, but also meant that I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. But what I didn't expect was that after the dust settled, the newly-appointed Editor-in-chief asked me to be the news editor for the portal site for the entire merged group of 16 sites, and to start up a new regular blog for him, and possibly enagage in some other, very interesting consulting work as well. And he's making sure all of my back invoices get paid, which is a Very Good Thing indeed. There's something to be said for being the One Left Standing, and for knowing when to keep yer head down ;> Timing is everything. Right now, as often is the case, there doesn't seem to be nearly enough to contain all that must happen in it, but, as always, it's not about fighting for more time, it's about adjusting how much I try to cram into the abundance of time that I have. Speaking of which, I've run past the end of my journaling time -- it's time to go check the mail, followup on my passport renewal, pay some bills, catch up on some email, and get back to work ;> Blessings of an abundance of laughter, and an abundance of time in which to enjoy it, to you all!