A flash flood warning sounded on my phone an hour ago, on my way back up to my parents’ house after a friend’s birthday party. When I got here the street was flooded – I’m talking water up-to-the-headlights, floating garbage cans, flooded. A proper inundation.
The water level’s up to the sidewalk right now, but has a good way to go before it reaches the garage (where all of Julia and my belongings are currently stored). The basement’s still dry and I hope it stays that way. I’m here standing (or sitting) watch, in the living room, until the rain lets up.
Speaking of inundations: I’ve been making steady progress on both the manuscript and the new house. For the latter, we’re done painting most of the ground floor, and I’ve figured out a good process for staining the trim upstairs. There’s still plenty of work after all that – small touch-ups here and there, plus refinishing the floors (which we will thankfully not be doing ourselves). All in all, I’d be pleasantly surprised if we were in before September.
In re: the book, I sent the first forty or so pages of the latest draft to my editor this afternoon. It’s not as much as I would’ve hoped by this point, but we both agreed that sharing sooner and more often was better than later and all at once. And I’m very close to (if not already in) that phase of the novel that Zadie Smith would call the magical-thinking middle (thanks Courtney):
