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I’ve been battling a nasty stomach virus all week. So today’s a short picture post on things that make me smile. Hopefully, they’ll make you smile too.
Emerson in bed
Kata Beach
Sunset
Valentine’s Day Roses from Dad
Ginormous Butterflies
Emerson, my shih-tzu lhasa apso dog, is probably the most vocal dog I’ve ever known. At night, he prefers cuddle time with grammie on the couch while we watch tv. If I try to pick him up, the video above shows what happens. He has this dove-like growl and sometimes I’d swear he’s saying Noooooo.
It completely cracks me up, so I tried, and I emphasize tried, to video him on my cell. This is beyond amateur work. But I thought it was cute enough to share.
Happy Friday!
I always feel a tug at my heart when I leave home. And it doesn’t matter if it’s for a few days or weeks. Though seven weeks feels like a long time. Haven’t had a trip like this since college.
Which was a few years back. 
The hard part is leaving my dog. I love Emerson more than cheese and bacon. And I won’t be able to snuggle with him for 7 weeks.
Then separation anxiety starts. Not just his, but mine.
I get all teary-eyed and walk down the hallway, thinking I won’t walk this hallway until September.
I’ll miss my chats with Mom. Making porkchops for Dad. Wednesday outing with Grandma. Girl time with Linds. Cookouts at the Aunt’s.
Little things.
I hate goodbyes. So I’ll see you soon and think of you often.
- Time with loved ones is important, even if you doze in their lap while they write a manuscript.
- Always stretch before and after you get out of bed. Downward Dog is a favorite.
- Make time for play. Half an hour of rough housing and fetch brings a smile to both our faces.
- Schedules are important. Bark if your feeding is being delayed by an obsessed writer revising her book.
- Always greet someone with a smile and show you’re happy to see them. It brightens up their day.
- It’s okay to lay in the sun and nap while mom writes. We can do our own thing and hang out later.
- Cuddling is nice. Especially after a rough day.
- Look cute and you get stuff.
Is there anything worse than being stuck at home sick in the springtime?
Missing Edgar week sucks. Chronic nausea and feeling 90 just make it worse. Thn there’s the gurgly moans issuing from my stomach. And the burning inside my belly is so not fun.
The one bright spot?
My dog, Emerson. He seems to have some sort of innate sense of when I’m sick. Because he always cuddles with me and stays by my side. Reaching over to stroke his soft fur makes me feel better.
Did I mention that my brain feels like mush? Or that I have aches and pains in every joint of my body? Or that no matter how much I sleep, I’m exhausted?
What really irks me is when I wake up I think I have energy, but it dissipates within 30 minutes. Now I’m just cranky and achy. And I feel like I’m on the verge of tears. I really really really hate being sick.
Stomach bugs are the worst. But I’m really grateful that I have my puppy (my seven-year-old puppy) to keep me company. Now I’m going to go back to watching Vampire Diaries on iTunes.
So Monday morning, I sat down and faced a blank page. I wanted to write 1000 words, but *gasp!* faced a new scene. What to do?
I played the what if game. What if x came over? And 500 words flew onto the page. It was crappy dialogue but it was dialogue. And then I thought but what if y came over first? And 1ooo words filled the page. I am now going over it and tweaking it. But I’m amazed that in 2-3 hours I could get that much wordage down. Of course, it’s rough and needs oodles of editing. But word count is growing.
That was my biggest worry–that I’d get sidetracked my other stuff and not get back to my work in progress. So I think I will set my goal to 5K a week, with a minimum of 1000 words a day. And if I happen to write more so be it. Then I can take a day to edit it instead of only writing forward.
So yesterday’s wordcount went from 42,400 to 44,360.
I’ve also decided to get the dog a 1/2 hour walk everyday. And happy news I’ve been on my low carb diet for a week and am starting to look like my old self. Or the beginnings of it!
I’m also delighted to meet up with a friend from CTRWA (M.) this evening and swap pages. I think my YA needs more feedback on the later chapters so this is a godsend.
This weekend I had a staycation. I wanted to take a mini vacation and go visit the parents in CT, but my neck decided otherwise. I figured the best way to relax the muscle spasms was a staycation. So I camped out in my apartment all weekend. I watched season 2&3 of Dallas on dvd. I ordered food in. I slept 13-14 hours each day. I cuddled with the dog. It was amazing to do pretty much nothing.
Of course, I slipped in 15 minutes of vacuuming and 7 hours of paper edits for my novel. Hey the conference feedback had to be worked on or it would just keep rolling around in my head. Anyway, overall it was a do nothing weekend. Very little got accomplished from my mile long to do list. But guess what? The sky didn’t fall in. No one died. It was okay to let myself slack off a bit. I’m going to try to be a little easier on myself for a couple weeks. I was pushing way too hard for the past couple months. Now I need a breather.
I’m still drafting one novel and editing the other one, but my online class wraps up this week. And I promise to not take another one. I’m going to try to give me more down time. I think that is what the neck and hand pain are demanding. And I’m going to order that dragon speak software so my hands aren’t forced to type in pain.
What do you do/not do on your staycations?
So I was watching Avenue Q a while back and Princeton is fresh out of undergrad and trying to find his purpose. He stops living, determined to find his purpose before he does anything else. This got me thinking. What’s my purpose? What do I live to do? Why am I here?
Deep thoughts, right. I love to write. So I write. I edit. I revise. I re-edit. An endless cycle of writing. And it fills me with a sense of purpose and gives my existence meaning. So when I have problems with my hand and I can’t write as much, I lose some of my purpose. I don’t like how that feels.
It reminds me of when I herniated a disc in my back and couldn’t sit. Back then I was a consultant. My purpose (or job) required traveling and sitting at different client sites to do my work. So when my back acted up, I couldn’t do my job and I lost my purpose. That was one of the worst times in my life. I felt useless. I felt like nobody capable of doing nothing. Just talking about it conjures up bad feelings.
Anyway, what is my point? I think we all need a purpose. Scratch that. We all need a few purposes. Reasons to exist. Things that make life meaningful and worth living. My writing is still number 1, but I need a number 2 and 3. I guess Number 2 is my dog and my family. (Yes, in that order. One lives with me the other only visits.) Number 3 would be my friends.
But having those 3 purposes makes my life better and richer.
What is your purpose? What do you live to do or be?
Saturday night, Emerson demanded a walk. He does this by sitting beside my desk, shuffling his feet and sighing with an occasional moan thrown in. It’s like living with a cranky old man sometimes. But he’s so damn cute, I give in and stop work on the last chapter of the book. He races to the end of the hall rearing to go. I double back to the desk to check the weather, and he yells at me (well barks, but that’s his version of yelling). I shout that I’m on my way and head down the hall. I put his shoes and collar on him and I slip on my sandals. It’s 62 degrees out at 9:30 at night. Crazy March weather. One week snow, then rain, then bam spring’s here.
So we take our walk to Battery Park Esplanade. He loves being near the water. Alright, I love the water, he likes the benches and the bushes he can pee on. The water was remarkably calm. And the moon. Goodness, it was a Cheshire cat moon. I couldn’t remember seeing that before. And the horizontal sliver had a glow around it. Gorgeous. The breeze was nice and not cold or harsh.
It felt like the entire world was waking up. With Spring Equinox on Sunday, I guess it was. So we strolled for two hours. Emerson loved being outside. Enjoying lying on the bench and people watching. We called mom and chatted with her. It was a perfect spring night. We got home around 11:30 and I went to cleaning the bedroom. Now all that is left is under the bed and the closets. Gulp. A couple more weekends and all the hardcore cleaning will be done.
The trouble is maintaining. It’s work to not slip back into clutter. To not let things multiple and divide all over the place. To constantly throw away. But if I’m on top of it, things won’t get so bad again.
Anyway, I must go finish the edits. I am seven pages from finishing edits on The Curse of The Radcliffe Rubies. Then one more round of edits on chapters 1-3 and I can move on to redrafting the query and synopsis. Then I get to query again. And hopefully work more on the other novel. Even with good time management skills, it’s a constant battle to stay on top of everything.
How do you prioritize? What do you find yourself letting slip most often? For me, it’s vacuuming and dusting. I hate doing them and even more wasting my time doing them. Hence, the need for massive spring cleaning.
