Back among the living though I don’t feel like it just yet

I’ve never shared the opinion of some of my friends that travel, in the last analysis, is an annoying obstacle keeping you from getting home. I like travel. Nevertheless, I feel incredibly happy to be home from my weekend trip and incredibly wiped out, despite the easy drive home today (straight up I-85 from Greenville to Durham. It’s a cakewalk).
The trip itself was great. Courtney and Neil are old friends of mine whom I haven’t seen since my wedding last year, and I’ve never met their charming nine-month-old Baer (happily it turns out he has zero stranger anxiety so we got along great). We played the Culture Quest quiz (sample questions from last year here)—I don’t think my performance was anything to boast of, though—hung out, and visited an excellent local used-book store (picked up a Theodore Sturgeon collection I already have, a vegetarian history and a DVD of Black Orpheus). But fun though it was, I think my lingering over-socialization from last week‘s trip to help out Mum still has me drained (even so I enjoyed myself—no regrets about the visit). Which probably has something to do with why I couldn’t focus my mind on blogging at all this weekend.
But now I’m back, so a couple of items:
•My latest And column is out, dealing with the long-running conservative theme of how mothers who work outside the home are horrible, selfish creatures—after all, it’s not like they need the money, they could be there for their kids if they just pinch a few pennies. My favorite example of this theme (though it didn’t make the article) was the blogger “War Chick” who asserted that if saving money requires selling your house and moving into a trailer, Moms will still discover that being there 24/7 for the kids is worth it (said blogger was about to start her MA degree—the post didn’t explain how she’ll work this into the kids-first lifestyle she claims to revere).
•As I said last month, I decided to try rewarding myself if I made most of my writing goals for this month and see if that improved my performance.
Unsurprisingly, given all the away-time, it didn’t. But I’ll try again for May and see if I do better.
What I did get done: The first draft of Yellow Face and Honor and Glory; five chapters of the rewrite of Impossible Takes a Little Longer; I reviewed and made some changes to Tale Spinners and Leave the World to Darkness based on editor feedback; and finished the ghost-writing job I’ve been working on. I did work on the other goals but not to completion.
On to May and better success!