More respect than I deserve

How about this for a news flash: Someone wants to advertise on my blog.

Granted, they don't want to pay me much. Then again, given how often I post and how widely I'm followed, I don't even deserve what they're offering.

But I have my pride. Think I'll make them sweat this out over the weekend.

What's new? Almost everything.

Blogspot says my previous post came on April 5, 2008 -- that's more than 16 months ago -- and certainly Blogspot should know. Me, I've been too busy to count.

In that time, I've switched jobs. Since last September, I've been serving as publisher of the Valley News, based in West Lebanon, N.H. It's a sister paper to the Concord Monitor, where I had worked for nearly 23 years.

My family has moved to a new home -- shown above -- in Grantham, N.H. Actually, saying the family 'has moved' is a bit optimistic. From where I'm writing, I can see two boxes waiting to be unpacked; many more lurk elsewhere. And don't get me started on the garage.

Since last I wrote, the family has changed -- as families with children do, especially. Ben is now halfway through college, and is spending the summer as a government intern, experimenting with radar. Leanna finished eighth grade, but not before joining an AAU basketball team that won the state championship and traveled to Florida to compete in the nationals. (She's No. 50 in blue, and as you can see, they had their hands full.)

Thankfully, Brenda continues to hold us all together. The move is one example, and here's another: For the better part of a year now I have commuted an hour each way to my new job, and we've spent a couple nights per week apart. Alone, I'm pathetic. Since reuniting with her full-time a month ago, I've dropped four of the pounds I gained while faithfully following the Chocolate Chip Cookie Diet during my nights of solitary confinement.

With all the upheaval, I have pretty much set both the Mustang and the Mustang book aside for a year now. No work at all on the car, really -- aside from rolling it onto a trailer for the ride from Canterbury to Grantham earlier this month. (A big shout-out here to Jerome, without whose truck, muscle and know-how, I'd have been in trouble.) As we shoved the car toward the trailer, the right rear wheel skidded for a good three feet before breaking free from its rust and rolling again. That got me thinking: This car isn't going to wait indefinitely for me to fix it. The longer I leave it sitting, the more it's going to decay.

The book was originally due this fall, and that's certainly not going to happen. Getting an extension from the publisher was easy. The hard part is going to be gathering up the many strings of the story I've left dangling and organizing myself as I move forward. Here again, time is not my ally. Last fall, I did fly to Chicago to interview an aging Don Frey, a key mover behind the Mustang. Sadly, though, another central Ford figure passed away this summer at about the time when our move was absorbing every spare moment.


But here we are now, in Grantham, settling in. The Mustang sits out back on a concrete pad, cloaked in black. The book lies in boxes stacked in the basement and at the office. It's time to begin again, and that feels good.