“My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.”

.Anais Nin

 

Sorry for all the cross-posting lately if you are someone reading all the blogs, but this is the way things are right now.

Last week I hosted a girls game night with my little group of friends.  We never did actually get to the games, but we had a good time eating snacks, drinking wine, and catching up on things.  🙂  It’s a nice group of gals, most of us are some kind of writer or artist.  🙂  We’ll try an actual Gaming game night another time (soon, I hope).

The next night we had a Robert Burns Night with my parents where we read the poetry of Robert Burns (well, Nick did, but that’s because he had the best Scottish accent) and had some traditional Scottish foods (but not haggis).

Saturday I got the bad news about my friend and had a complete meltdown and stayed at home and cried and drank wine and watched movies all day.  So cathartic.

Sunday the kids practiced basketball while I  fixed up my desk area where the by-hand writing goes on.

It is tidier and makes the writing go better since I’m not scrambling for pens or notebooks.  I’ve tidied up my computer so I know where the files I’m currently using are and I’ve set up a profile for everyone else so I can have mine be whatever I want and don’t have to worry about boy eyes on my things and them getting confused by the voice control setup that I’ve been using.

I have been writing this week.  Lots of writing and writing related stuff going on.  Working on two novels and a few sad poems.  I’m enjoying flipping through old notebooks and files of writing from a couple years ago to see what I would’ve written had I not fallen off the writing track.  It’s fun putting stories together again and for that I am very  very happy with the universe.

Monday I got a call to work, but had stuff to do at home that desperately needed doing, so I said no and got all my stuff done.  Tuesday I also got a call, but had to say no because I was taking David to Dallas to have his X-rays done again and to see if he needed another shoe lift or what.  He doesn’t need a new shoe lift, he needs surgery.  Oh yay.  Probably next summer, but we’ll do another set of scans between now and then because it’s more data for the computer to look at and more data means more accuracy and more accuracy means a better outlook and that could mean putting the surgery off another year and another year could mean a stabilizing of the irregular growth, which could lead to no surgery.  So we’re waiting.

Wednesday I was all ready for the call to work.  I got up, made myself lunch, dressed in subbing clothes….and no call.  Of course.  So I did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and let myself have 2 hours of lovely writing time.  It was glorious.

Yesterday was my friends funeral.  It was a good one, I think.  I sat with my friend Dana.  They had to add extra chairs on the sides to accomodate all the people.  The first person who spoke was a bit conflicted, but Shannon’s sister and dad and regular pastor got up and said some wonderful, understanding things about the nature of depression and the challenges of living with this disease.  It was all very heartening and uplifting.  I couldn’t stay to go to the graveside service, as I had a PTA meeting.  The meeting was very short, which was unusual for us this year. I spent the next couple hours doing work for the next months worth of activities and went to get the kids.

We’re trying out Choremonster.com for our chore rewards website right now.  It looked fun and came highly recommended and the kids are excited about it, but I’m finding it very trying.  I had to set up each kid separately with separate logins and separate jobs and separate rewards and I have to log back in every single time they finish something to approve it and it is constantly sending me emails telling me to “Hurry quickly!” like I don’t have anything better to do than use this clunky interface to approve each child’s chore.  AIE.  Plus there’s no calendar to look at or afix things to.  You have to just know when things are going to fall on (plus there’s only a few options for days and I need a “every third day” option since I have three people).

Today is finally a regular day.  Kids to school, library volunteering, lunch with Nick, an afternoon of chores and errands.  *sigh*  But I have two kids asleep on the couch and one asleep in my bed.  So where am I typing from?  Ben’s bed.  It’s comfy.  I have a dolphin pillow and my old comforter from college and extra blankies, too.  Mmm.  I might fall asleep here.  🙂

 A less dramatical cross-post