Hello Friends

Hello friends!

I'm still breathing. I'm still writing.

Just not here.

I haven't abandoned this blog altogether. I'm just neglecting it. I figured it will help it build character.

I have whole posts written in my head - but the truth is that I got a little bit tired of making myself out of clay, over and over again. I needed a bit of a break.

I'm not closing this blog. I'll be back someday. But I won't give you an exact date - we all know how well that hasn't worked for me in the past.

Also - and this is top secret, so shhhh - the truth is that I'm nowhere near as neurotic as I portray myself on this blog. So to all of my lovely readers who've emailed me expressing their concern over my prolonged absence, I'm perfectly ok. Promise. I just got...distracted.

Distracted by what? Why, I'm so glad you asked!

I've been preparing for a long journey in March 2014. My dad and I will be walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain together. The 800 km trek will take us about six weeks. So to get ready for that, I've been:

• obsessively creating packing lists. I bought a digital scale to see how much my liner socks weighed. 31 grams, in case you're interested.
• working on losing 30 pounds. Yes, those are the same 30 pounds that I've been working on losing for the past six years. What?
• saving money. Well, not really. Right now I'm keeping busy being unemployed. I'm pretty sure I'll have to find a better way to make money. If there's one thing that I've learned during my stints of unemployment, it's that you generally can make more money when you have an actual job. Who knew, right?
• learning Spanish.

That last one has become a near-obsession. In fact - I actually started a blog to follow my progress. It's absolutely nothing like Clay Baboons, and you probably don't care about what I have to say about learning Spanish, but in case you do:

My new blog - which I don't love more than Clay Baboons. I love them equally, but differently. Like how I love my dog and my husband equally but differently - mainly in that I don't let the dog sleep in the bed and I don't pick up my husband's crap. Equal. But different.

I'm enjoying the process of blogging about language learning. It's so radically different from the silly, creative stuff that I do here. I have many more readers there than I ever had here, but almost no interaction with them. Blogging is a very strange thing!

Anyway, thanks for caring and for coming back even when I neglect you. And by "neglect", I actually mean "help you build some character".

I'll be back*. Eventually. I promise.

*Do I even have to mention that this should be read in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice? No, of course I don't.