Just a quick post to say hey, I'm still here. It's been a week. Nobody's sick or anything, just I've been extra busy so I could help surprise the Junior Mad Scientist. She is celebrating her 18th birthday tomorrow, but Friday the whole family conspired to have the house decorated, her favorite meal, presents... and she had no idea what we were up to until she came home from the Ginja Ninja's house and discovered the porch bedecked in lavendar and black tulle. It was priceless.
So my spare moments were spent on writing fiction, and party prep. Not on blogging. I'm not sorry. I only get to do this one more time before my fledglings have flown. I'm still in shock that all my daughters are technically adults (JMS is planning to live with us for another year, then as the GN moves on, she'll have the Little House to herself for a time. It's nice we have that option). I both feel too young still for that, and have days where I feel like the next four years are going to be impossible with the Little Man. Poor kid has had a rough time adjusting to homeschool, despite saying he wanted to come home for school. Turns out the concept of managing your own work and motivating yourself to grind through the boring stuff is a whole lot harder when you don't have a teacher standing over you. The First Reader is home with him, but the two of them mostly acknowledge that they are alive and then retreat to their separate caves. Sigh. Male bonding. I'll never grok it.
I'm tired, most of the time. I have been writing, and I have been having fun writing fiction again. I'm to the point of having 'formed a habit' through repetition of an action for more than 27 days. And as much as the blog is important, the fiction is more so. If you've been reading here for long, you know this is a perpetual balancing act for me. I've been working mostly on a funny chicken story, which I submitted last week. I've been continuing with Molly and Nettles. I've been doing Hatrack, slowly. You see my production when that happens. I've also made myself, with a firm scolding of my muse, get back to work on Tanager's Flight. Which has been productive, in weird directions. I'm now writing that book out from three points, hoping they all meet up and make some sort of coherent plotline. I'm going to have to breakdown and make an actual outline for this book. Which is very, very strange.
I have figured something out. Dictation is... hard. If I do dictation on my commute, I then need to sit down and transcribe it. I could send it off, I suppose, but until I've gotten the kinks worked out I'm hesitant. That, and I'm a lot more used to being self-reliant. So I try to do everything myself. Yes, it does bite me in the butt sometimes. Ok, a lot of the time. It's like my garden. I want one. I don't have the time for one. The Little Man offered to help. Anyone got ideas for how to teach a teen how to follow-through with his good intentions? I certainly don't know.
We're here. We're all healthy. We're going a little stir-crazy. Even me, who leaves the house for work. I miss my quiet times when people were headed to school or work. I have no alone time any longer. It's... an adjustment.
It's all an adjustment. Beats the alternative, as my dad would say.