I bring my mom breakfast from Panera Bread for her birthday. She is on the phone with my grandmother. Let’s see what happens next…

Mom: Hillary brought me breakfast from Pandora.
Me: The planet from Avatar?
Dad: Isn’t there also, like, a box called Pandora? Pandora’s box, something like that?
Mom: *into the phone* Oh, nothing. They are just making fun of me because I said Pandora instead of Pantera.

(Pantera is, of course, a heavy metal rock band.)

Boy, were the last few days rough. It was a good two plus weeks of ailing relatives, family drama, violent insanity, a funeral and just plain stress beyond compare. There some good stories to be had from all of that (good as in interesting, not good as in anything good happened in them) but none of them can be shared on this blog so you’ll just have to accept my word that its been a hell of a time. (On the plus side, there was one nice, normal day in the middle of all the chaos where we saw a some very good friends and that was lovely.)

But as we emerge from the drama overload (hopefully!!), I realize that May is now just about half-way over and I haven’t even gotten to start anything I set out to do in the beginning of the month, I’m behind on lots of things and my brain is just plain not in the mindset of my routine. I’ve been keeping up on my day to day work, that’s for sure, but there’s been no new writing and definitely no progress on the ridiculous challenge I set up for myself to do this month. I was discouraged at first by that but I’m trying to remind myself that, sometimes, life happens. You have to roll with the punches and come back up swinging!

It’s finally getting back into awesome nice weather and since I run on photosynthesis, a few days of working outside in the sun should recharge my batteries nicely. The rain wasn’t helping the situation at all.

But in addition to getting back to my routine I have a rather exciting announcement coming up in the near future. I hate to tease you like that but until it is finalized, I don’t want to say anything definite but it is something at once different and cool. I am, at once, excited and terrified.

So here’s to a brighter and better tomorrow, no matter where you are or what you have planned!