What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Hi, friends. Step into Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine and remember your early years in school when one of the first assignments in September would be to write a page on what you did for your summer vacation. I haven’t posted since July 3rd because I have been focused on my new book. Not a summer vacation, but certainly my pleasure. I’ve been writing this blog for five years, and this is the longest break I’ve taken. But I miss the interaction with all of you. Thank you so much for your comments, and emails, and book reviews. 

I’m two-thirds of the way through writing “Esmeralda” a novel about four women who share a prison cell for years and become friends. Then on the day three of them are released, the fourth with ten more years to serve disappears, implicating all of them in her escape and jeopardizing their new freedom. Without breaking the law or the bonds of friendship, the three ex-cons must find their former cellmate and convince her to return to Esmeralda.

I’m having fun writing this story. I don’t have an ax to grind as I did with my first novel, “Clitapalooza.” This new story is just for the fun of it. But feminism is in my blood, and I remain engaged by the evolution of technology and how it’s changing every aspect of our lives. When I began writing “Clitapalooza” in 2022, the words artificial intelligence and chatbot were not in the mainstream vocabulary. Now there are dozens of books, fiction and non-fiction, about the role of smart machines in our lived experience. Next on our event horizon, humanoid robots for social services and security. Like smart phones, they’ll become common, we’ll accept the invasion and wrap ourselves around their features.

On the low-tech home front, things are good. This was my first fire season living here with my partner without the threat of evacuation hanging over our household. Summer went by hot and dry, but here in our new home in suburbia, the town and the river run between us and the forest fires in the east, and we were just lucky that the wind did not smother us with smoke. Also, the state is better at preparing and preventing. Thank you, Oregon.

This month my cohabitant and I are celebrating four years together and looking forward to continuing our partnership for a fifth. It’s a testament to our compatibility that we managed the migration of our household from rural to suburban, the downsizing of the man cave, and the allocation of resources in our tiny house. We miss the mountain views, the stars and the butterflies of our former home on the hill. But we’re enjoying the convenience of living in town. 

To keep ourselves in alignment, we walk the dog together in the morning and before bed at night. Of course, we get our steps in, but we also share the experience of living in this new neighborhood. We are more connected to our community and greet more people on the street than in our past lives. And we witness how at a time when people may be divided by current events, we feel more common ground.

We are some of the oldest people in our neighborhood. I’m six months into being 70. When I started blogging in 2018, my age was a revelation to me, and I had a lot to say about it. Now there are hundreds of women with blogs about aging from their 40s onward, and I feel like I’ve been there and done that. Being 70 feels normal, like this is how life goes. And yet, people continue to be blindsided by the changes elderhood brings to their lives, as though they didn’t have parents or grandparents. Age inhabits us one day at a time, but we don’t begin to resent it until it hurts. So, stay healthy motherfuckers. It’s on you to age well.

Life has a circadian rhythm, and I have an inner sundial that guides me through a daily routine that allows me to write at my desk six hours a day. I feel like I waited my whole life to have the financial stability, the skills, and the stories. Finally, it’s all fallen together. If you’re interested in the writer’s journey that got me to this place in life, CanvasRebel invited me to be interviewed on my background as an artist. Here’s the link: https://canvasrebel.com/meet-billie-best

Thanks for joining me here. I hope your summer was as good as mine. I’ll be back to more regular posts in October. Be well.