Weekend dilemmas

So we went to Houston for the weekend. Michael had an EQ get-together in Katy, and I stayed with my mom, two aunts, and a cousin. (The cousin and the aunt who is not her mother both live in an apartment complex near the Compaq Center. Have I lost you yet?) The cousin is mostly homebound due to recent foot surgery, although she did hobble out to dinner with us. The rest of the time the four of us did house-like things, as the Houston aunt has also just bought a new house. (Hers is much bigger.) I looked around and took mental notes while she took us to various remodeling places. We went to several antique stores, where I looked in vain for iron bed frames and affordable dining tables while my mother and the aunts examined ridiculously expensive oak furniture. On Sunday they took me to a home store near the Galleria, where I found a fabulous dining table and the mosaic patio table I’ve been wanting forever. Of course they’d turn up as soon as I’m out of house money for the month. And then I got home and found the bed frame in one catalog and the bar stools I’ve been looking for in another. Gah. So now we have the choice between mortgaging ourselves to the eyeballs for our furniture or waiting and hoping that the stuff is still on sale when we can afford it.

The time in the car turned out to be good for book brainstorming. I wrote the first few paragraphs of Adam’s book (for those playing along at home), which had been eluding me. I’m thinking that I can fix a few problems with this series by writing it in first person instead of third, but that would mean throwing out some of my favorite pieces of the first book. Or—oh, new thought—I could shift them into the other books so they stay with their POV characters….

Of course, I’m not supposed to be working on this series at all, not with the shorter, simpler book that needs to get finished.

Gah.