Give Me The Grateful Life - Monday

 

I am quickly losing track of time.  I cannot remember what day it is with no school or camp schedule to keep me in line.  The days are seamless, bleeding into one another.

But you know what?  I'll take that over getting up early, packing lunches, and carpools, any day.

Which leads me to this week's gratitude...

• I am grateful for the lovely breakfast I had with Heather and Meghan (and two new friends, Hannah and (another) Heather), yesterday morning.  It's always nice to see my girls.
• I am grateful for the selfish Sunday I had - swimming, sunning, and working out -  after a totally chaotic week.
• I am grateful that the huge zit which lived and breathed on my chin for over a week is finally taking it's last breaths. 
• I am grateful that I will have a new design for this blog soon.
  
• I am grateful that my trip to Chicago is in little over a week.  Are you ready to PARTAY ladies!

What are you grateful for?

Can You Spell L-O-S-E-R?

I would love to tell you all that I am 3/4 of the way through my novel for FraMoWrihoweverlongittakesMo.
But I'd be lying.
I am not even close.

I did get off to a strong start but truly...what the hell was I thinking???

I committed myself during a time when:

• school was finishing
  
• we took our family vacation (which was great btw)
• we are undergoing construction and other home improvements 
• the kids are home EVERY DAY, ALL DAY  

I set myself up to fail...which is a whole other Pandora's box of therapy-worthy introspection  (but not now, I don't have time!)

It literally is a joke.

All day workers call my name, hammers pound my walls, shovels dig into my dirt, drills screech into my stone.  My kids whine, my dogs bark, and the phone, please, will someone please quiet the damn phone.

And then it's 9am.

I'm exhausted.
I'm frustrated.
I'm hungry.
I want to write!

Last week, I told myself this week.
This week, I've promised myself next week.
Wonder what I'll tell myself after that.

I feel like a failure.

Now This Is What I Call A Vacation

This is Mirror Lake

Not hard to figure how it got it's name.

As our family drove the scenic byway 10,000 feet up through the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, we marveled at the majestic evergreens and watched in amazement as our car's outside temperature gauge dropped from 80 degrees to 76 to 74 and down to a final 62 degrees upon reaching our destination. 

We saw remnants of winter clinging to life

As summer pushed it's way in

 

 We watched as city boy met country boy

  

and learned about trout fishing

Watching the life go out of these innocents was a little hard for this city girl to take but since I'm not a vegetarian, I was not one to judge.  (The family who caught these were planning on eating them for dinner, fyi.)

When we got home, I spent two hours working on my novel.

It was a good day.

Mountains and Lakes and Word Counts...Oh My

To those of you who may be wondering,
NO, I haven't stuck to the NaNoWriMo schedule.
NOT EXACTLY.
But don't be disappointed IN me or FOR me because I have been writing away.
I've been outlining, and thinking, and dreaming, and, on top of that, I've written over 3500 words.

I quickly discovered that writing a novel without an outline, no matter how spontaneous and freeing and full of possibilities, is not my style.  So I'm keeping my outlines to the bare minimum to allow for surprises and making up the rest as I go along.  I'm pretty much a trailblazer like that.  I guess I could call it FraNoWrihoweverlongitfreakingtakes.

Hopefully, I'll have a rough draft sometime before the plans for my daughter's Bat Mitzvah kick into high gear at the end of summer.  But, truly,  I'm just happy to be writing.  I still need you guys to kick my ass encourage me because my husband is too scared to try I'm not sure how long this productivity is going to last.

But for now, I'm on family vaca in Utah and it is bea-u-ti-ful.  The rain stopped for our arrival and the temps rose.  In only a few days we have biked, hiked, visited large lakes and small towns, and sunbathed by a pool.

This is the view on our morning walk with the dogs.

I need the new iPhone.  I hear it has a better camera.  This one STINKS.

 

And this is the Jordanelle Reservoir just outside of Park City.  

Tomorrow is predicted to be another beautiful day.  A hike in the Wasatch mountains and some WRITING is in the plan.

I like it here in Park City.  It's even more beautiful in summer.  The only thing not to love is the Utah "5 oz" pour.  Can you spell g-i-p? 

And, well, from their t-shirts, I can tell they just get me here...

 

  

 

Who told them I was coming?

Give Me The Grateful Life - Monday

Summer is here.  What's not to be grateful for, right?

• I am grateful for successfully motivating myself to write. It has been empowering (so far).
• I am grateful for gorgeous green mountains against blue, non-polluted skies.
• I am grateful that my kids are relaxed and stress-free.
• I am grateful for watching them play and laugh in the pouring rain.
• I am grateful for Jamie Lee Curtis.

That last one is curious, I know.  But hear me out.
I've always loved Jamie Lee Curtis.
Not for her role in the Activia commercials, not for her movie roles, but for her contributions as a writer.

She has published some amazing children's books, written for Salon.com and is currently a contributor at HuffPost. For someone who grew up in Hollywood, with celebrity parents, Jamie Lee Curtis has a strong sense of right and wrong. Her feet are firmly planted into the ground. She is sensitive, attentive, and eager to share her parenting mistakes and insights with the rest of us.  I always enjoy, and learn, from her pieces.

I came across her most recent essay today and thought it was a "must share".   For those of us who didn't have the benefit of seeing what she did first hand, we can take her experience and find a way to make it our own.

Here is the link to her essay, Pay Attention,  in today's Huffington Post (for which I am grateful).

What are you grateful for this week?

My Latest Wacky Attempt At Calling Myself A Writer: NaNoWriMo

This is a short post. 
It has to be.
Wanna know why?

'Cause I've up and started my novel.
Yes, I said novel.
Not a great American.
Just a novel.

Oh, and I'm writing it in 30 days.
Yes, I said 30 days.

'Cause I'm an idiot that way.
'Cause otherwise I'll spend another 15 years writing nothing.

It's called NaNoWriMo.  NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth.
For everyone else it's in November.
Crazy people, like me, get together online and spend the month of November killing themselves. 
They lose touch with their families, forget to shower, drink too much coffee, eat too much junk, chew their nails to the quick, pull out their hair. 
But they do it together.
And at the end of the nightmare they are rewarded with a first draft, albeit, most likely an awful one, of their novel.

The timing makes sense.
The weather is miserable in November. 
The kids are in school.
It's before all the holidays.
But I rarely do things that make sense.
And I can't wait that long.

So.

I'm doing it this summer.
Starting today in fact.
While living in sunny California.
Within walking distance of the beach.
During the time we take our family vacation.
And while my kids are going to be home ALL THE TIME.

Make sense?
Not to me either
But... WTF

So wish me luck.
Don't mind my absences.
And please feel free to check up on me to make sure I'm not rocking back and forth and babbling incoherently and my ludicrous endeavor.

Really, I'm going to need someone to kick my ass encouragement.

So, here goes.
You heard it here first.
Now I have to do it.

Wait.  Is that a dust bunny under the bed?

Cleaning House In The Digital Age

Every morning I wake up and one of the first things I do, sometimes even before hitting the bathroom, is turn on the computer.  It's the modern-day equivalent of running to the mailbox.

I love to watch the screen fill up with emails.  The quiet morning air abuzz with possibilities: friends or colleagues answering a question I posed, sharing a joke, making a date, or re-discovering me, after many years, on Facebook.

Lately, though, the emails that fill my inbox are from strangers.   Nigerian bankers, people with funny sounding names wanting "to be my friend", Harry and David, West Elm, Pottery Barn, anyone and everyone I've ever had the brief pleasure of sharing my credit card with, no matter how casual and brief the interlude.  I don't know these people, I don't want to know these people, and yet they are here, knocking on my internet door before I've brushed my teeth or drank my morning tea.

Junk email is nothing new but since the recession I've noticed a huge increase in volume.  Stores introduce new sales, and even newer sales, HOURLY.  Scam artists demand my attention and my money DAILY.  On-line media promoters and marketers solicit me WEEKLY.    It's so desperate, so distracting, it's the internet equivalent of drunk-dialing.

I have squandered so much of my valuable energy and time deleting this vast wasteland of correspondence from my computer and then doing it all over again on my iPhone that today, I decided to put an end to the nonsense.  I decided to take control.

I unsubscribed to ALL the merchants.
I marked as junk ALL the people who claim I'm about to become a millionaire.
I wrote to ALL the promoters and said thanks but no thanks.

I took my life back.
And I will keep taking my life back until all the unwanted strangers are gone and I can open up my email in the morning and SMILE once again.

Take that internet.
Don't mess with a busy mom.

*photo courtesy of google images