What an amazing trip. We got home yesterday afternoon (20+ hours of travel) and started doing the laundry. (I’m proud of us — we came home with one pair of unused socks and that’s it. :-))

I’m sorting through the 100s of photos, I’ll either upload them or burn CDs.

Highlights:
Watching the “PM’s questions” in the House of Commons, the British Musuem, Van Gogh’s work (in the National Gallery), having an authentic moment with a drunk Irishman in a pub (did you know Hoover was the who ordered Kennedy’s assassination?), and seeing Sir Ian McKellan as King Lear, with the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) _at_ Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Things I’d rather forget: the incredible NOISE of London, the phenomenal amount of DIRT in the air in London, and discovering that bacon is nothing like what we think of here in the US.

Things we missed: Blake’s works (they were not on display because the Tate was prepping them for a new enxhibition), the RSC doing Macbeth, the -interior- of Westminster Abbey, most of the ‘famous houses’ and such landmarks, and the rooks of the Tower of London.

We’ll just have to go back. (But not until we’ve done a few more of the Continent’s cities.)

I get a ton of catalogs. I cancel the ones I have absolutely no use for, but the quality (or the targeting algorhythms) are getting better. The one that came today (Uncommon Goods) was lovely (handmade goods, recycled products, VERY clever stuff).

But this just made the covet list:

It’s hard to believe its been nearly a month since i last posted, but when I look back, I can see why. J. and I are preparing for our glorious trip to London next week; I am preparing for Ecumenicon just before then; and we’re renovating our ‘workshop’ (inheirited from the former owners) into a workout/guest room.

We’ve learned a lot from this project: Demolition is easy, but thinking through the basic physics of how a piece is constructed is necessary — especially when it is ‘hand built.’ A really good list will save you repeated trips to the big box DIY store. ‘Mudding’ your newly installed wall takes twice as much drying time as you thought (and threes times as long as you hoped). Carpeting the floor before you install said new wall and paint makes cleaning (and keeping clean) really hard.

We put up some pictures, here.

I’ve been contemplating my stance in and towards the world. Quite a while ago (in my 20s) I realized that I seem to follow a 7 year cycle of alternating between being introverted and extroverted. As near as I can tell, from birth to about 7 years of age, I was a fierce little tomboy of a girl who ran with the boys (and dominated them, mostly) reached out to make friends all over the place and was quite the little social being. Then I radically turned inward and just stopped doing anything like that until I was about 14. (Yes, life events bracketed both ends of that time period. No, I’m not going to talk about them here.) Then I got interested in being with others, especially boys, once again. I went out. I made friends (some of whom I kept for a more than a decade), I reached out to others and was available in a more visible way.

My 20s were introspective. At the time I was also preparing to manifest one version of the American Dream: picket fence surrounded house, kids, the secruity of being taken care of by a man. (It’s really weird to put that into print, you know? I mean, that person is SO not me now, but then it was very serious business.)

That first Saturn Return did its work. I was picked up, shaken like a rat in a terrier’s mouth and dropped once again into life with a lot more perspetive on what *I* wanted, as opposed to what I’d been told I wanted. Yay Saturn. Moving cross-country propelled me into a strange state of *needing* to reach out to others. I couldn’t do it in my environment very easily, so I found the ‘net and writing, and that led to my first book, and public speaking, and . . .

If you’ve been counting along, you’ll realize that I am in a weird place. I’m craving introversion, solitude, and privacy. But the demands of my vocation require me to create a certain level of public contact. For book promotion, yes. But that is not the prime motivator: reaching out to my community, learning from them and offering my knowledge in return is what I am manifesting. Now that I am in the 2nd half of this part of the cycle, I can see the tension this creates in me.

Last weekend I went out into the public and the result has been a desperate need for privacy since my return. Blessed J. for understanding and making space without even needing to be told. (A good thing, since its taken this week for me to understand the subtle depths of what’s been going through my back brain.) I’m supposed to be lining up speaking engagements and book signings and all that stuff. Instead, I’m reading books I’ve read a dozen times before (fantasy — the ultimate escape) and noodling about how to remodel the garage.

I’m not sure how to balance the tension, or harness it. I’m not sure I have to.