Time, in fact, does NOT dull grief.

All it does is make the attacks sharper, when you turn around and... 

Yesterday would have been my mother's eightieth birthday.  

Would have been.  

She's missed two birthdays, now. I have missed two of her birthdays, now.   

Last year, I woke up having a panic attack around the end of July that I hadn't started looking for her birthday present, yet, before I remembered.  This year, I remembered.  There wasn't a panic attack.  Just...grief.  

I miss my mom.   

I did it again...

I forgot to let y'all know I put another book out.  

Jeez, this is embarrassing...Soul Inheritance has been out almost a month. I know this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but...if you're interested, click on the link.  

Fresh out of college, Evelyn Alexander’s first order of business was finding a place to live. One she could afford on her small inheritance before her job started. None of the local rental agencies had anything in her price range, but...she found a small Victorian house for sale, the only one mostly untouched in a decaying neighborhood of subdivided rental houses.

Complete with a ghost. A very attractive ghost. A very attractive ghost with a strong dislike of the idea of anyone changing his house. So, of course, she bought it. A cranky ghost for a roommate was still a better option than the tiny studio with criminal neighbors.

Between working to restore her new house, embezzlement at work and a murder next door, Evelyn has her hands full. As she works to get on her feet as a productive adult (and not fall in love with a ghost she can’t have), the problems start to snowball. And it’s only compounded by learning that her house has far more secrets than just a single, cranky (attractive) ghost...

Hmm...

 I don't know what they're doing between us and the kids' school building, but this...well.  There's construction starting, three properties down from ours, and there's four dump-trucks of gravel piled up in the flat part next to the road across the road from us.  There's a small front-loader (a bobcat) trundling back and forth every ten minutes.  

School starts back up next Wednesday.  

Now, normally, I have plenty of time to get to the school to pick the kids up, but...this is...yeah.  Couple days ago, they had the street down to one lane.  And a guy standing in the middle of the road with a slow/stop sign dealing with through traffic.  

That's on the direct route--the single mile between us and school.  It also blocked Travis Acres (the side street that connects our east-west street with the one a mile or so south of us).  That's turning west from the driveway.  

If I turn east...I can go out to the next north-south road, then up a mile, over to the other north-south road, then up and around.  That would be about four or five miles, going thataway.  

In other words, I can make it, and make it on time, but I may need to figure in a few more minutes in the afternoons.  

Why did they pick August to start this bullshit?