Hello, Spring?

I think spring is almost here.

Even though it snowed yesterday.

Even though I still crank the heater in my van up to 90.

Even though I'm still wearing my big coat and furry boots.

Even though the trees are still bare and the dirt is still brown.

I know spring is almost here because MY ALLERGIES ARE BACK.

I've got the sniffles and my arms have broken out in a rash. My eyes are itching and I wish there was a way to scratch the back of my throat. My body is telling me something my eyes can't see. And for once, I don't mind the allergies because winter is almost over! And I bet I'm more reliable than that darn groundhog.

How about you? Are you close to spring where you are, or does it still feel decades away? Or do you live in perpetual spring weather? (If you do, boy, am I jealous of you!)

By the way, on Thursday I'm planning to review the SNOWBOUND HEARTS anthology. Bloggy buddy Jen Daiker's romantic short story is in it!

Real Time Writer-Mom

Kim Smith has a wealth of ideas for me for my blog (and I am grateful because sometimes my brain feels a little depleted over here). Her exact words to me this morning were:  Give us details, stay-at-home-writing-mama!  So, here are all the gritty details, because I'm anxious to stomp out this rumor that I'm Superwoman (Kristin, I'm looking at you, Birthday Girl). 

I'll be updating this post throughout today as life (and writing) unravels.

6:30a.m. - Wake up late because Baby was up half the night yodeling. I couldn't leave her in the crib because she shares a room with two siblings and would wake them up. So we had deep conversations at 3a.m. She also worked on her kick boxing skills. I finally stripped off her pajamas and let her lie there in her onesie. She finally fell asleep around 5. Was she hot in her pajamas? I DON'T KNOW.

7a.m. - Sluggishly make breakfast and help children get ready for school.

8a.m. - Leave to drop off kids; pick up niece; drop off 2 children; pick up Daycare Boy; drop off 1 more child and niece; head home with 3yo + Crabby Baby who spent the night yodeling + Daycare Boy.

8:30a.m. - 3yo & Daycare Boy want to paint. I make phone calls to rearrange appointments that won't work with schedule. Crabby Baby wanders around the house crying.

9a.m. - Sit down to start blog post. Crabby baby demands to be fed. Stop blog post. Feed baby. Back to blog post.

9:30a.m. - Take 10yo Locks of Love donation to post office to mail.

9:50a.m. - Attempt to right wooden playground equipment in backyard that was blown over in yesterday's wind storm. Too heavy. Must wait for Dashingly Handsome Sidekick (DHS).

10a.m. - Snack time for 3yo & Daycare Boy. Attempt to clean kitchen. Put away paints.

10:15a.m. - Throw in load of laundry. Snack time for Crabby Baby.

10:45a.m. - Put Daycare Boy on bus to preschool. Sing to Crabby Baby. Crabby Baby falls asleep.

11:00a.m. - Read to 3yo:

• The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper
• Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman
• Please Louise by Frieda Wishinsky & Marie-Louise Gay
• Mouse Tales by Arnold Lobel

11:30a.m. - Tell "I'm not tired" 3yo we must both shut our eyes for a few minutes.

12 noon - Wake up. Rush out to start writing. Oh wait, did not do Bible study this morning because I slept in, so must do that first. Lunch? Maybe later.

12:15 - Sit down to study the book of James: MERCY TRIUMPHS by Beth Moore.

12:35 - Write, write, write like a mad woman. THE BABIES ARE ASLEEP! Today I have two goals: Finish the edit on my Seagull book & work on the synopsis for my Butterfly book.

1:20 - 3yo wakes up. Make lunch for her and set her up on the computer to play games.

1:30 - Warm up lunch for myself -- leftover Chinese pot roast, rice and veggies. Delish. Read, read, read, edit, edit, edit while I'm eating.

2:00 - Baby wakes up. Feed Happy Baby lunch.

2:20 - Leave to pick up kids. Stop by the public library to pick up Gary D. Schmidt's OKAY FOR NOW, which I have on hold.

3:30 - Get home, read the first page and jacket copy of OKAY FOR NOW and decide I'll never be as good a writer as Gary D. Schmidt. Pace the kitchen with a worried feeling in my gut.

3:33 - Tell that worried feeling to SHUT UP.

3:35 - Squeeze out more reading/editing time while the kids do their homework.

5:00 - Drop off 5yo at ballet. Pick up the DHS from school. Ask DHS on the way home in most pitiful voice if we can have something else for dinner besides the chilli I have planned because chilli does not sound even mildly appetizing.** The DHS is kind and agrees we can use our gift certificate to the local Mexican restaurant tonight. Yahoo!

6:00 - 5yo returns from ballet and announces that she got the solo part for her age group in the upcoming production of Sleeping Beauty. She'll be Baby Aurora. So proud of her! 

6:30 - Off to Mexican restaurant where we eat too many chips and barely have room for anything once the meal arrives.

7:45 - Return from Mexican restaurant. Get children in pajamas. Read to them. Make sure they all brush their teeth. House smells because 8yo ate too many beans.

9:15 - All is quiet. Back at the laptop with plans to finish the last skim-through of my edits. (Isn't it amazing how many little mistakes there still can be after an edit? All these little loose threads to snip off. Here or there where I mentioned something and after the edit it doesn't make sense any more. That's what this skim-through is for. Today I've corrected at least twenty tiny mistakes.)

1a.m. - I don't usually stay up this late, but I accomplished all my writing goals. Edit finished. Synopsis typed. Goodnight all! Sweet dreams!


**The DHS is leaving for a conference tomorrow and will be gone all weekend. This is why the pitiful voice worked so well. I know he already feels bad about leaving me with the five kids by myself for three days, especially the potential yodeler, who, Mimi is right, might be teething. Yay for Mexican food and no cooking or dishes!

Making Time to Write

Our beautiful amaryllis bloomed just in time for Valentine's Day. Isn't it stunning? Thanks to our dear friend, Dr. Burr Field, who grows these in this home and gives them away as gifts.

A dear friend and encourager, Kim Smith, asked me the other day how I juggle writing with the rest of my life.

I'm sure a lot of my readers are in the same boat. We're busy with day jobs and families and housekeeping responsibilities. Sometimes it feels like we're pulled in ten different directions at once.

But we still make time to write.

I'll tell you how I do it ... but keep in mind, I'm not perfect. There are many days I don't open my laptop to type. I often fail, allowing my time to be eaten away by social networking traps like Facebook or Twitter. And forget weekends and holidays; what I'm about to say doesn't apply to those days! (Unless the dashingly handsome sidekick is feeling especially generous and takes the kids out of the house.)

My secret?

SCHEDULE.

How hilarious is it that I just typed that word? If you know me at all, you know I'm annoyingly free spirited. I'm the type of extreme weirdo who never scheduled my children's feedings; they fed on-demand all through their first and second years of life. It's only recently that I've tried to get on a sort of blog schedule. Until now I blogged when the mood hit me.

And writing was the same. I wrote when I felt the compulsion.

Until I had kids ... and more kids ... and more kids. When compulsion came in the middle of cooking dinner or changing a diaper, I couldn't just drop everything, grab my laptop and disappear.

So, yes, now I'm a scheduled writer. I write at a certain time every day-- after I put my two youngest daughters down for their naps late morning.

I write for as long as I can until they wake up.

And then, some evenings I also write if I have time and energy.

Keeping my writing schedule means a certain amount of sacrifice. I might have a filthy house, but if I'm going to get any writing done I have to turn my back on those household chores and write while the kids are sleeping. I tell myself I can do those chores when the kids are awake. After all, it's more fun when they "help me" fold clothes and vacuum and load the dishwasher.

Their sleeping time is my writing time. And that's that. As much as I love being with my kids, I admit, I look forward to that quiet hour or two every weekday.

How do you make time for writing (or your favorite pastime)?

Go for Big

Photo courtesy of Morguefile

"If your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough." 

~Unknown

This quote tells me:

It's okay to be terrified of success

There's nothing wrong with going for BIG

In fact, maybe going for BIG is what we're all meant to do

We all have different ways of going for BIG. A lot of you reading this blog are writers and there are certain scary aspects of writing success (at least for me!)--

1) Launch parties

2) School visits

3) Busyness

4) Balancing acts

5) Expectations

6) Reviews

Just to name a few....

But that's how it is with every BIG endeavor. We wonder if once we "make it" we'll be able to rise to the challenge. 

It takes faith. And guts. 

Just like anything worthwhile.

Think of people who run marathons, foster children, start foundations, get married, go on crusades for good causes, go back to school, fight legal battles in the name of justice, pursue ridiculous dreams, make other people's dreams come true, start new jobs, move to foreign countries....

We all have our own ways of living BIG, and we were meant to live BIG, to hatch dreams more brilliant than we could ever imagine.

What's your dream?

And does it terrify you? 

**

Congratulations to DAWN SIMON who is the winner* of Gae Polisner's THE PULL OF GRAVITY.

Yay, Dawn! I'll track you down to get your mailing address. 

Thanks to everyone who entered and thanks again to Gae for being my honored guest. 

*Random.org

**

Just in Case....

We've been under a plague of stomach flu since last Thursday, so this will be short.

Blogger failed me again and never posted Gae Polisner's Letter to My Future Self to Google Reader. Just in case you didn't see it, I'm giving away a copy of her book, THE PULL OF GRAVITY, back on >>that post<<. You won't want to miss it!

Because of the technical difficulties, I'll leave the giveaway open until Wednesday night, so you still have time to enter (over there).

Also, on a side note, have you seen all of Sarah Fine's amazing news lately? So happy for her!

And, Valentine's Day is almost here. The DHS and I are hoping to steal away for a couple hours tonight if everyone's feeling well enough here at home. We're thinking maybe Greek food. Do you have any big plans?

Stay well, everyone! There's some nasty stuff going around (especially in Mexico, I hear). And after watching Downton Abbey last night, it's better to stay away from all these weird, mutating flus. Right, Lavinia?

Gae Polisner: Letter to My Future Self

Please welcome the awesome author of THE PULL OF GRAVITY, Gae Polisner.

 Barnes & Noble

Amazon

Christa Desir and I are doing a joint-blog hosting today. Gae wrote a letter to her Past Self over on Christa's blog and a letter to her Future Self here on my blog, so you absolutely MUST read them both. 

So excited to have Gae here. *fans self* There was some rumor going around that she had agreed to do a vlog for my blog in her swimming costume -- or without pants -- or something like that -- in an attempt to join the Hacky Sack Club (see side bar), but these rumors were groundless, people. GROUNDLESS. She is here, completely clothed. And without a vlog (dang it!).

So without further ado, I give you the unique, absurdly-talented, uber-adorable Gae Polisner....

Dear (ugh, older) Future Gae,

Sh*t. Here we are. Man that went fast.

(gazes back). Hmmm. Not bad. Not terrible. But, I see you’re still hard on yourself. It’s okay. It’s the thing that drove you to keep going, to do your best to seize every day. To keep making something of yourself. And keep remaking yourself.

Some days you did better; others, not so much (see, for example, endless hours spent on facebook. . . speaking of which, remember facebook? How we thought it would never wane...). Anyway, I don’t care what anyone says, I still think idle days are overrated.

So, let me look at you.

*breathes*

Yep, old. Hah! You knew it would happen, but, still, you didn’t believe it.

Well, so what. You’re what? 60? 61? That’s the same age Susan Sarandon was when she dumped Tim Robbins and ran off with that ping pong guy! Fine, allegedly, allegedly. Whatever.

Still, see? Not terrible.

So, let’s see what’s still intact. First and foremost, it’s nice to see you found those things that were important in your life and held on to them, despite sometimes-shinier looking new distractions. The best piece of life advice you managed to cling to was that -- that the novelty always wears off. Even in ping pong palaces.

I remember how hard you worked to see beyond the shiny distractions, to what lay grounded beneath the surface. And, you know what, Gae? You did good.

Also, it’s nice to see you pushed yourself to be brave, and try new things. To write new and different stories, to put your words out there, at the risk of inevitable rejection and criticism (which always came). 

And, it’s also nice to see that, the older you got, the farther you swam, and only partly because you learned fast that neoprene, though tight, actually hides a whole lot of flaws. 

Yes, there was that (some habits die hard), but there also wasn’t a day you weren’t grateful for the water, a day you didn’t marvel at the skies.

There really wasn’t a day where you didn’t try to breathe them in and try to memorize them, and internalize your good fortune.

And remember the winter you got those Psycho gloves? Oh dear. It was like, once you discovered them, there was no stopping you, even on the coldest of days. You impressed even me then. You surprised me. That’s a good quality as you age.

Remember to keep surprising even yourself.

But also remember that, eventually, even the neoprene and Psycho gloves won’t save you. When you reach that point, you can still look to the same things that mattered as a kid: good family and friends, a loving heart, and, maybe above all, a constant sense of humor.

Keep working to be graceful, Gae. Surprise me. And make me proud.

Love, 

Present Gae

Now tell me -- what would you say to YOUR Future Self? I'll send a copy of THE PULL OF GRAVITY to one lucky commenter. 

And don't forget to check out Gae's other letter here.