You know you no longer live in the city when:

(a) you’ve named the two baby geckos around your office, one of which fell on you when you opened the door last week, you had to chase out a frog your first week here, and you close the door at night to keep the nocturnal creatures out.

(b) the power goes out for ten-hour stretches, reminding you of your childhood. (My kids are going to grow up hearing stories about how their mother did homework in candle-light. No one could afford generators and invertors back then.)

(c) your neighbor owns two cows. Seriously. (No, Sam, you are not allowed to eat them.)

I had the perfect work life last week– a topic I’m very interested in (and will continue to research further), a challenging assignment, 3,000 assigned words, a writer-friendly contract, lots of human interaction, hundreds of pages of interesting reading, good pay, no worries about expenses, and a photographer who is a dream to work with. Oh, if only every assignment were like this.

To balance it out, I finished up a quick 300-word piece, interviewed four people over the phone, wrote several blog entries, and even sent out a pitch or two. Can’t say I’m lacking any kind of variety in my work.

Sure enough, this week I’m looking at putting together two radio pieces, following up on missing payments, getting my accounts in order, and oh yes, pitching some more.

In late September/early October, I’m taking two weeks off, which I’m really excited about. For now though, all kinds of interesting stories beckon.