I’m feeling good today. I think the initial shock of what was going on last week has settled in and become less of an emergency and more of an ‘okay, let’s deal with this thing’. Someone close to me was diagnosed with an illness that while serious, is also very treatable and curable, and now that the treatment is underway I think it feels a little more like there is forward motion. It’s a long road ahead, but at least we’re on the road now and not pulled off to the side. So I feel good about that and very positive about the eventual outcome. While I’m not so naïve I don’t expect there will be some bumps along the road, we’ll navigate those as they come.
To further brighten my mood today, as I was sitting on the couch writing birds landed right outside my window and began chirping and for those few brief moments, despite the snow dumped on us Monday, I felt spring in the air and the promise of brighter days on the horizon.
The puppy is doing well with my boss, though he says his dog may be crossing me off his Christmas Card list. He keeps looking at the puppy trying to figure out what she is, why she is and when she’s leaving. She has been renamed Bailey, which was actually the name of the dog I grew up with.
The writing is back on track after getting sidelined for a week and I’m nearing the end of the first round of revisions and pleased with how things turned out.
I’m thinking of changing the look of the blog too. I’m in the mood for something a bit lighter, more spring-like.
And I can’t get that song ‘grey skies are going to clear up’ out of my head. The only problem with that is that the second part I can’t remember, all I can remember is the commercial. So I have ‘grey skies are going to clear up, put on a Windex shine’ stuck on repeat in my cranium. Oiy.
I picked up a flash drive to back up my manuscripts with the other day. I already have things saved on CD, but thought an extra back up wouldn’t hurt. But I kept putting it off because, hey, I had the CDs. But then something happened to change my mind. Something strange. And when I say strange, I mean my family was involved.
So pull up a chair and let me tell you a little story as it was relayed to me by my Dad...
It all started one bright, sunny morning last week. My Mom provides daycare for my brother’s two kids. My nephew, Owen, just turned 5 and my niece Natalie is about to turn 2. So Mom is down at my brother’s house early in the morning when Nat decides she simply must have a boiled egg. So Mom pulls out the pot and sets to boiling the egg. Meanwhile, Nat has taken off to parts unknown and before the egg can boil, Mom hears, “Poopy, Nanny! Poopy!” Shouted out with all the glee of a two-year old who has whipped off their diaper and is now running amuck displaying her...uh...prize. So Mom takes off to catch her and head off any potential splatter.
Meanwhile there is a knock at the door, to which my nephew yells, “I’ll get it, Nano!” (Owen likes to add an ‘o’ to the end of people’s names). Mom yells down that he will not get the door because she doesn’t know who it is and has her hands too full with my niece at the moment to check it out. She quickly finishes with Nat, goes to the door and finds my sister standing on the other side, her two kids (Malcolm aged 1 and a bit, and Maggie, just a bit) in tow. So in they come and they all trot out to the backyard to enjoy the sunshine.
Time passes. Everyone is having a grand ole time. Until a smoke alarm goes off.
At this point, you’d think maybe Mom might have remembered she had put an egg on the stove to boil before the poopy diaper and door knocking occurred, but no. No, instead my sister and my mother sit out in the backyard debating about just where the smoke alarm sound was coming from. “I think it’s next door.”; “No, I think it’s down the street.”;
No. No, you’re both wrong.
Now I’m not sure which one of the motley crew realized that the smoke alarm was coming from directly behind them, or that the house had filled with smoke but suffice to say once this fact registered my Mom went tearing into the house. The pot at this point was red hot. I guess that’s what happens when you boil metal for hours on end... But instead of filling the sink up with cold water and putting it in there, my Mom grabs the pot and runs outside. And sets it down on the deck.
The wooden deck. The dry wooden deck...
Then she runs back inside and starts opening every window in the house to excise it of the smoke.
While the pot sits on the dry wooden deck. Smoldering.
By the time she gets back to retrieving the pot there’s – you guessed it – a nice big black burn mark on my brother’s deck.
How does this relate to me finally getting a flash drive, you may ask? Well, as my father is relaying this story to me, he stops at the end and goes, “So...your mother's house-sitting at your place next weekend, huh?”
I laugh nervously. “Well just so long as she gets my dog and my writing CDs out of the house before it burns to the ground it’s all good.”
“Uh huh,” my Dad says, his tone indicating that maybe I shouldn’t count on that happening.
I hung up the phone and ran next door to Staples.
Now she just has to save my dog.And that's the story of how I got my flash drive.
Well for starters, I'm an aunt again for the fourth time. Baby Magdalynn Faith was born at 8:21 yesterday morning at 6 lb and 13 oz. Not sure on the spelling of the first name. It's a combo of Magda, which is an old family name, and Lynn after my middle name, but not sure how she's putting it together yet. I'm going over to see my sister and the baby tonight. They'll be in there for a few days where it was a c-section. So now I have two nephews and two nieces.
In other good news, I finished the paperwork on my mortgage renewal and refinance and now I am debt free. Big, huge, honking sigh of relief. I kept waiting for something to go wrong, for the bank to reject me or the money gods to laugh uproariously and screw things up, but no, everything went fine. Whew. I can't believe what an incredible relief that is not to have to worry about that anymore. I just added ten years to my life.
Writing-wise things are going well. I'm thinking I might do a two week stint of just writing flat out and getting as much of a rough first draft done as I can. I need a first draft to really get a feel for the characters and I want to finish this first draft by March 31st, so I need to put a push on. So if you don't hear from me on a regular basis for the next two weeks, you'll know I'm sitting on my couch with Alphie racking up the word count and trying to get to the first version of "the end".
I was going to enter Finding Home in the Merritt contest but I opted out. I didn't want to spend the money until I had the refinance done and now I've sort of run out of time to get it there before the deadline. However, there are a couple other contests coming up that I'm interested in for all three of my manuscripts, and I have to get 3 more agent queries out which I wanted to have done by end of this month. Missed the deadline on that one a bit, but if I can do it by mid-February I'll be happy.
I’m feeling good today. I think the initial shock of what was going on last week has settled in and become less of an emergency and more of an ‘okay, let’s deal with this thing’. Someone close to me was diagnosed with an illness that while serious, is also very treatable and curable, and now that the treatment is underway I think it feels a little more like there is forward motion. It’s a long road ahead, but at least we’re on the road now and not pulled off to the side. So I feel good about that and very positive about the eventual outcome. While I’m not so naïve I don’t expect there will be some bumps along the road, we’ll navigate those as they come.
