El Rancho

I am heading off to the ranch next week for 10 days. It is Peter's 80th on the 4th so I am really looking forward to seeing everyone. I'm staying on longer as K&B are away and won't be back for the first week and I'd like to see them - it's not like I have a job here! I'll write while I'm there (maybe do some chores too) and start to finalise stuff to send to the publishers.........now that will be a big turning point. I'm going to stay in the yellow house so it's all very familiar. Given it's now summer there won't be any snow but it is hot. It will be lovely to walk the dogs again - sadly Khanie died a few weeks ago - she'd had a really long life given her breed but it made me a little sad, she had such a lovely temperament.
Having spent a good day writing on Thursday I went down to the beach on Friday. It's very close to where I live and the weather has been fantastic. I am sporting a very healthy tan. I wasn't at all tempted to go swimming though - the water is freezing. Generally I'm feeling pretty laid back, although starting to have twinges of nervousness about the publishers! I guess this just proves I haven't gone completely off the rails..........given it's almost a year since I worked.
I've also been thinking about what happens after the book. I'm 100% committed to staying in the US so that part is easy. I've got some ideas and expect life will roll out as it's meant too - with a little shove or two from me of course.
My flatmates finished University for the year so we have spent a bit more time together. It's been nice getting to know her and, because she is an artist and writer (poetry I think), she is very supportive of the writing process. Oh she also proved to be very useful when, despite my best efforts, I simply couldn't get an automated voice machine to understand my accent! I was trying to change flights and had to call. Everything was voice activated and I couldn't even get the machine to understand my name and there's no way to by-pass (I've had that problem before and last time K helped!) so I got Margaretha to talk me through until I could actually speak to a person. I need to work on my American accent.
I've started to meet a few more people, including a Bosnian woman........we have been talking about the war - I had even driven through the small town she lived in, although she wasn't actually in Bosnia when the war started. It's been interesting to hear about how she felt about the war and peacekeepers. Funny coincidence to have met her at this stage.