Who likes change? Raise your hands.

I see some of you are waving wildly to get my attention. I see some of you cringing in the corner. I’m afraid I cringe with you. Change is a good thing. Too much of it can send me into a tailspin.

So, in the last month I’ve done the following:

• Debuted a brand new website. While we always expect mistakes and problems any time we try something new, no one involved in the debut expected the recipes to go crazy. They did, though. The instructions were fine. The ingredients went wild. For instance, did you know that Chicken Okra Gumbo contains 3 cups of paprika, 1 1/2 cups of instant vanilla or chocolate pudding and 2 1/4 cups of olive oil (chopped fine.) Apparently once it’s cooked we add bananas and cherries. Who knew? After everyone on my Facebook pages and I had a great laugh, I asked my webmaster to remove them until we find out what went wrong. I suspect General Foods to be the culprit, since instant pudding came up in many of the “revised” recipes.
• Tried valiantly to get my new, faster and smaller computer up and running. This is never easy, and this time the computer has a mind of its own. Right now my “Envy” is loading 69,000 emails I don’t need or want and there’s no way to stop it. Hal, from 2001, would be more accommodating.
• Moved too much of everything I own to our cottage in New York for the summer and fall. And while this sounds perfectly delightful, truth is we walked into a horrifying mess. Last year a plumbing disaster meant we had to replace floors and woodwork. So that’s what our contractor did over the winter, along with remodeling a bathroom. Only he left us the dust and dirt and miscellaneous junk to dealt with. (The photo is a teensy example.) Every surface was covered. In his defense he swears he hired someone to clean. I explained he’d been rooked. He wasn’t happy to hear it. I wasn’t happy to pick up the pieces, but between Proman, me and our loyal cleaning lady, the process continues.
• Did I mention my Brainstorming Buddies are arriving on Sunday? And between now and then, Proman and I drive back to Cleveland to see our granddaughter’s dance recital.
• On the cottage front, we went without hot water or heat (night temps down in the 40s) for three days until the very sweet guy from National Fuel arrived awhile ago to turn on the gas. Luckily we stayed sort of warm cleaning. I had my first shower in four days an hour ago. Nothing like a little deprivation to ramp up appreciation.

So that’s my befuddling, bewildering life for the past few weeks. I really just wanted you to know why I haven’t been around much. And you know what? Through all of it I’ve been aware that:

• I have the good fortune to have readers who check out my website and need the best I can give them.
• I am so lucky to be able to afford a new computer.
• I am even luckier to have a summer cottage I love, even when it’s coated with dust.
• Some of my best writer friends will arrive on Sunday and won’t care about the chaos here.
• And while I didn’t have hot water or heat for three days, I had water, blankets and shelter, something too many people in this world of ours are not lucky enough to have ever.

Life’s like that, isn’t it? Everything on my list is a first world problem.  And they’re all being solved a bit at a time.

I hope your summer is not bewildering or befuddling, and that you spend it with friends and family celebrating your own good fortune.

Next week, some tidbits about A Family of Strangers. Another new thing in my life. If you follow that link right now you’ll find the first chapter, info about how the book came into being, and a short book trailer to pique your interest.