It’s a hot, lazy, don’t-ever-leave-the-house sort of summer day down here, today. Tomorrow is supposed to be worse. I think the ubiquitous They even have a Heat Warning out for these Stifling Southern Climes.

That being said, I’ve whiled away the afternoon today on my steamy porch, sipping pink wine, listening to Squirrel Nut Zippers (because they’re steamy too) and going through my blog, post by post, starting WAAAAAY back at Day 1 in January of 2012, copying and pasting the ones that are cohesive and/or appropriate into a word doc.

The reason I’m doing this (shhhh) is that I am kind of sort of maybe kind of Working on a Book.  Or the beginnings of one.  It exists now, in my head, and we’ll see what sort of shape she takes once I get everything in hand and start working on it.

I’m pretty durn excited about this project.  A new road, maybe.  Or, this project on top of all the damn short stories whirling around in my head…maybe new roads, plural, and I can’t wait to see where they go.

All this done, of course, in my spare time around the day job.

Anyway, I’ve been sitting here on Steamy Porch for almost 4 hours, and I’ve only made it up to March, 2012.  4 hours, to go through 2 months of blogging.  I used to write almost every day, back then.  I had the ease of a desk job which, while busy sometimes, was often slow, thus giving me the grace of Sooz Writing Time during the course of the day.  I already know, without reading ahead but with the foresight of memory, that I started writing less and less as things began to happen and life began to take its toll.

While it will be easier, for book purposes, to breeze through and capture those prurient moments during the days of writing drought, there will be more work involved as I will have to end up diving in to that Word doc to Flesh Things Out, and write from memory.

Memory.  Memory Lane.  That’s what this is, right now.  It’s funny and entertaining and sometimes its depressing and sometimes it gives me goosebumps, looking back at those early days.  I JUST got to the point, at the end of February 2012, where we’d made our decision to move down here with no prospects, and the hope and joy emanating from those pages are stunning, in light of how things panned out along the way.

My writing style has changed, over the years, I’ve noticed.  My voice is still the same, but I “journal” less now – there were a ton of “so this happened this week” and so on and nowadays my focus is more on specifics.  It will be interesting to spot exactly when that change happened, but I think I know.

I bitched about snow a lot back then, too.  I’m entertained, today, by the contrast as I sit on Steamy Porch, sweating my arse off in a soaking wet sundress.

Life is incredible, and I would never go back and change any damned thing.

Meanwhile, I just got a facebook message from someone asking me if we were “Going to the Parade Tonight.”  I was stymied because I know Decadence is NEXT weekend and I couldn’t think of what on earth she was talking about.

She was talking about Midsummer Mardi Gras, up on Oak St.

Am I officially a NOLA native, now, being so wrapped up in my daily stress and then my writing projects, that I FORGOT about a parade?!

Oh, my.

Anyway, I just had to express all that, like I did once upon a time in the old days of FYC.  Now, I have to figure out if I’m going to a parade or not.

Never a dull moment.  Even in Steamy August.