It Strikes Again.

My husband has the flu.  Again.  It's like the third time this winter.

It just hit me that this is his way of getting a day to lie around in bed.  Thirteen years, and it's finally sunk in.  Sure, he'll argue that he would much rather not get sick, but I know the truth.  He's a baby.

When I had the flu nastiness a couple weeks ago, he left me for 10 hours to work.  Working is good, don't get me wrong.  But working on the weekend while four kids are home from school and wreaking havoc while the little lady--me!--is burrowed under layers of blankets trying to ward off the chills... Not so good.  The shining moment of that particular day was having to fight the nausea and dizziness to walk down to the barn to take care of the animals because he forgot to on his way out...  Not my favorite.  And you better believe I am keeping score!  ;-)  

We have a long history of dramatic flu here.  The most vivid was the flu bug of July 2009.  Some guy (who will remain nameless) was up and down all night, illin', and then proceeded to nap in bed the entire next day.  Meanwhile, it was actually THE due date of our fourth Ohboy.  In the middle of early labor contractions, I ran to the grocery store to buy someone else Gatorade, popsicles, and chicken noodle soup, then spent the rest of the day taking care of the kids.  As contractions picked up in the afternoon, I took the boys to the pool to distract all of us.  At 6 p.m., with the clammy husband still lying in state in our bed, I marched in our room and demand he get up and pull himself together.  Our baby was coming, and soon.

It was childbirth.  By default, I won.  His arguments were irrelevant.  There was no way on God's green earth that I was having a baby--in the birth tub in our room or on our bed--with him lying useless under the covers.  If nothing else, by forcing him to sit upright with a cramping, nauseated stomach, I was teaching him empathy.  I'm not above feeling almost happy that he had to go through that with me.  That's right, I'm kind of cruel like that.

Or the flu we all had when Ohboy #3 was a newborn.  My husband left the room in favor of sleeping on the couch.  He thought he was being considerate, but what that really amounted to was my having to get up to change and feed the baby by myself smooshed in between mad dashes to the the restroom.  Yep, still keeping score.

So tonight, as my husband is curled up next to me sleeping it off and I gather up  some extra oomph to get dressed to take care of the animals, I am notching one more point on my side.  We'll never, ever be even, but at least now I know without a doubt that this man--strong as he is--is still a marshmallow..... or a really good actor.

Rest well, Mr. Ohboy, for you will pay tomorrow.  Muahahaha!

I'm Still Here and You're Still Here. You Know What That Means....

Dance-Off!

Okay, not really.  It just sounded exciting.  I'm still in my pajamas weighing the pros and cons of doing anything else besides nursing my current mug o' joe.  So far, nothing has been so important that I've moved.

The ringing in of 2013 was anti-climactic.  Some tummy issue sidelined me from my family's annual karaoke/card game party, so I curled up in bed with my laptop, a tall glass of water (I'm a lush), and a couple of Twilight movies I haven't seen in ages but try to avoid watching when Mr. Ohboy is around.  My husband is my biggest fan and would sit through a Twilight marathon if I begged him to--and secretly, he would like it just a little bit.  That's the kind of thing he holds over my head, though.  Eventually I pay a price for such injustices to his manhood.

But, getting back to New Year's Eve...  The house was mine.  Empty.  Friends, I have never lived alone.  Never.  Maybe someday my own voice will echo back to me and I will miss the sheer chaos.  For now, the solitude is as close as I will come to straight-up magic.  My family's party could have gone for a week solid, and it would have been the next best thing to laying on a beach somewhere with a fruity drink in my hand.  Sadly, the boys returned at about 11:30p.m., and we flipped on the t.v. ten minutes before midnight only to see Carson Daly and his female co-host holding a conversation they wouldn't shut up about until 10 seconds before midnight.  Horrible--I want Dick Clark back.

Anyway...

Uninterrupted, I managed to plunk out a little over 1900 words, reaching my re-re-revised goal of 38k by the end of 2012.  Shortly after the ball dropped, bringing in 2012, I was snuggled up with my laptop.  A year later, I am in the same place, same characters, different story.  My eyes opened this morning, and my first thoughts were, "Now what happens with my characters?"

Well, no.  My first thoughts were, "Coffee.  Where's my coffee?"  But, the two kind of go hand-in-hand, so it's almost the same thing.  The point is, clearly I am where I am supposed to be.

The end of the world didn't happen, not yet, unless we're already smack dab in the middle of the zombie apocalypse and we just haven't noticed.  So what are you going to do to bring yourself to the place you want to be?  I'm not talking resolutions, because there is something about a resolution that screams "You know I'm too hard.  Quit already."  It has to be something else--something you go for with fire, because failing isn't an option if you ever want things to change for the better.      

Maybe you're stuck on a big picture, when focusing on a single baby step is enough to begin.  Every journey starts with a single footstep... or keystroke... or glass of water.  Take that single footstep every day and by this time next year, you're at least 365 paces closer.  But I bet you're closer than that because momentum in one area of our lives tends to push us to take a step or two (maybe more!) along the way.

So tell me what your journey is, and one baby step you'd like to take to get there.  Can I help you, even if it's just cheering from the sidelines as you baby-step your way through a year?

She Should Be Ashamed.

Since deciding to pursue writing last year, I have been anxious to learn more about the practice of writing--the habits, struggles, and other odd things that make up this calling.  I enjoy reading other books now to see how authors describe characters and paint their worlds.  Lately I've been reading nearly as much as I've been writing, which I consider refueling and instruction.  As I was riding home from a family Christmas meal this evening, I began re-reading Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" on my Christmas present, my awesomely awesome Kindle Fire HD.

Tonight I found myself thinking specifically about Stephenie Meyer's writing process, so I did what anyone curious about any topic would do--I Googled it.  Turns out, she literally dreamed up the story for "Twilight" and wrote it down once she took care of her errands for the day.  The fact that it was a dream is probably the best explanation for the storyline:  Sparkly hot vampires and buff werewolves?  Nah....  Totally not a dream.

What I loved most was reading about her background.  Stephenie was a novice writer, with "Twilight", the first book of the series, being her first completed work.  She is a mother, and completed much of her writing at night when her kids were supposed to be in bed sleeping so there would be less interruptions.  That sounds vaguely familiar.

While reading about her process, I stumbled across a blog where the blogger was exploring how many writers completely dismiss or downright loathe Meyer's writing.  The one and only time I read the series (four years ago), I was merely a reader, totally unaware that I would be writing a young adult novel of my own not that far off in the future.  Reading back through the book again now that I've studied more on the art of writing, I find that I do still like her and the story--though I now find her a bit more wordy and repetitive.  Lots of words, that's the best way to make a 200-page novel 500 pages, I guess.

And, yes, I've already embraced the fact that the Twilight franchise is my guilty pleasure.  For sure, I know it's not the basis of good writing, but I always enjoy finding a book I can't put down... no matter what the reason.

Anyway, someone on the blog said, "McDonald's has sold tens of billions of hamburgers, but all those sales don't make them a gourmet meal or even a gourmet hamburger. It's the same with Meyer's writing. It's not art. Sure, art has a subjective component, but it also has objective components and Meyer didn't meet those....  I would NOT have wanted to be in Meyer's shoes. Oh, the money is nice, but one has to be able to hold one's head up about how he or she made that money, not that Meyer did anything illegal. Had I written the "Twilight" books, I'd be ashamed, not proud."

Ouch.

Critics are everywhere, and with any measure of success there will be haters.  I have been guilty of mentally picking apart others' novels (even though I still generally support the writers in question), but I try not to.  Writing is difficult and intensely intimate work.  Hearing that you should be ashamed of something that has consumed you for years, characters who have become close as family, locations that feel like home.... well, that has to hurt deep down to your core.

Do I have thick enough skin required for putting myself out there?  I fully intend to find out, but right now I am a swirl of self-doubt.

Love Languages

Tonight I came to a conclusion.

The Love Language my husband speaks to me is Cookies.  This explains why I've been on a perpetual diet for the past 13 years.  All of my woes can be solved with the sweet union of sugar, butter, and flour.  Nevermind the immediate guilt, ever-expanding muffin top, and four-pound weight gain the next day...

Somehow I trained him to do this, to answer my frustrations with food.  Maybe it should be a good thing, but for an addictive personality such as mine, notsomuch.  If I'd put any thought into his training at all, I should have taught him the way to my heart was to buy me horse tack or books or something.  ;-)

If you have a significant other, what do they do to make you feel loved or comforted?  Even if you don't, have you figured out those things that make you feel cared for?  Please share!

Release

It was time.  

And, no, the photo above is not really from the Ohboy home.  Google "hoarders" and take your pick....  I guess people will put ANYTHING on the Interweb.  Gasp!  I know!  I was shocked, too, when I found out.

I couldn't honestly tell you the last time I'd reached all of the nooks and crannies of my kitchen counter.  We had run out of space to make lunches and prepare meals because there was a teensy little glitch in the feng shui of my Leaning Towers of Paper.

In the living room, I moved the Christmas tree (yes, the Christmas tree.  In my defense, it's small and white, but, obviously not a Halloween tree) and thought I'd spotted Bigfoot, there was so much pet hair under there.  The not-so-fine layer of dust coating everything made me feel all nostalgic like we were still passing through the deserts of Nevada and Arizona--if the deserts were wall-to-wall with bins of Legos and Angry Birds.  

Okay, so I'm being a skoch dramatic.  

Over the past couple of years, we've decided that Mr. Ohboy probably has some form of Asperger's.  He's a fixer of things, but not at all neat.  I think he used to be neat.  He also used to be a tree-hugging Democrat, but then he married me and I flip-turned all of that upside down.  Must've been my cheery disposition, huh?  Anyhow, he's messy.  And, lucky me, I have a few more boys up in this hizzy who are varying shades of the same incredibly sharp and yet very fragmented mind.  Whether I nag for something to be tidied or he takes the initiative himself (which only happens in the garage), the results are always puzzling....  Usually a twisty-turny path lined with piles of things, leading to an eventual bottleneck.  Straight lines and angles?  No way!  Navigation through even the most mundane room should be an adventure, and even a little bit dangerous!  Where is the excitement in placing things against walls or--gasp!--throwing it away?  Nowhere, that's where.

If you've ever seen one of those t.v. shows dedicated to hoarding, you'd understand that my family was just one major life event away from never washing another dish or throwing away a food wrapper.  Again, I'm being dramatic, but, at the same time, I'm sure that lots of those people on those shows probably didn't see it coming, then BAM!  They wake up six feet deep in used adult diapers and fossilized cats.

Last Saturday four of the six of us came down with some stomach thing, so we decided, come Sunday, to hang out at home close to facilities and far from other persons who probably didn't want what we had.  That's when we (I) began Operation Declutter.  Spurred on by some organization my mom had done in the boys rooms while we were on our trip, we began by dusting our room.  To dust our room, we had to fold roughly 15 loads of laundry that had been dumped in the corner, file papers, throw away boxes.... you get the idea.  From there we moved to bathrooms, crusty floors, my walk-in closet nightmare, the living room toy explosion, and, finally, the kitchen (a.k.a. filing cabinet with a stove).

Five days, I've been at this nearly from morning till night, taking the odd break to sit down, go to a prenatal appointment, or ride a horse.  I estimate I clothed a plus-sized army with all of the clothes I lugged (literally) from the house--a mini-van full.  In one load of garbage/recycling, the weight of all of those broken, boring toys lifted from my shoulders.  I love the way my house looks, and the ease at which it takes to clean things now that I don't have to shift so much junk to unearth the surface below.

I've not completed my mission.  I still have three toy boxes to sort through, and a few baskets of boy clothes to move into bins, which will be exiled forevermore in the plastic bin catacombs.  The catacombs are next; and, while my soul is itching to tackle (and annihilate) the Rubbermaid abyss, I know I am tired and anxious to make some forward progress on the novel.  The clutter was a snare to my creativity, the words finding themselves buried in unimportant things.  

Releasing means receiving peace.  I'll take all the peace I can get.

More On the Subject Of: Weird Writers

So, as it pertains to writing, I guess my penchant for coffee and stuff to chew on isn't so weird, after all.

Wearing green make-up to greet my visitors is genius--I'm going to have to try that.