Gone fishin'

Image courtesy of Cisco PA, rgbstock.com

Happy Sunday, friends. ☺

As you're reading this (if you're reading on Sunday, August 4 or Monday, August 5, that is), my family and I are making the two-day, 1,000-mile drive to see my family in Michigan, where we'll stay for about two weeks. I only get to visit my mom and dad once a year, so this trip is pretty special. I'm excited!

I probably won't be posting or commenting during my vacation, as there's no Internet access where we're staying. I'm looking forward to catching up with all of you when I get back!

Wishing you all a wonderful Sunday and a great two weeks. ☺

Six-word Saturday

Click to join the fun!

Packing or unpacking: which is worse?

 

I used to say the answer is unpacking, but today I'm going to do a 180 and claim that packing is a much more horrible task. We're leaving for our two-week vacation tomorrow, and my mind is spinning as I try to remember everything I need to do. My job is to pack my stuff, the kids' stuff, and the dog's stuff. That's a lot of stuff, so it's a good thing I'm a fan of lists! My husband, on the other hand, will be packing only his own stuff. (I like to joke about that, but I'm not sure my husband appreciates my humor. ☺.)

 

Remind me about this post when I'm back from my trip and complaining about having to unpack...

 

Wishing you all a fun and relaxing weekend. ☺

 

Laugh!

Happy Thursday.

How has your week been so far? It's been quite a busy one for me—and the busyness isn't over yet. We plan on leaving for vacation on Sunday morning, and from now until then, I have a to-do list a mile long: errands to run, laundry to wash, packing to do... I'm tired just thinking about it.

What I really need is a laugh break. Luckily, I saw this hilarious video on YouTube. I hope you enjoy it, too. (My favorite part starts at around 1:30.☺)



Wishing you all a Thursday filled with smiles. ☺

Six-word Saturday

Click to join the fun!

Like a chicken with no head...

 

 Yes, that pretty much describes me right now. ☺

A week from tomorrow, my family and I will be leaving for our annual, two-week vacation to my home state of Michigan, and I have so much left to do to get ready! No matter how well I plan, it seems that the days leading up to the trip always find me running around like a crazy woman as I attempt to get everything done, and the craziness doesn't end until we pull out of the driveway. Then I relax and feel grateful that I'm in the passenger seat: I can take a nap!

Wishing you all a calm and relaxing Saturday. ☺

 

Gone fishin'



On the road again...
Photo by Kim Newberg, courtesy of Public Domain Pictures

By some miracle, I managed to finish packing, and hubby, the kids, the dog, and I are now on our way to see my parents.

Okay, that's not entirely true. I'm actually writing this post at 1:46 a.m. as I wait for my ninth of eleven loads of laundry to dry. I'm surrounded by half-packed suitcases and a long list of things I still need to do. But no matter. I'm optimistic that my first sentence will be true by the time you read this post. ☺

I'm also writing to let you know that I probably won't be posting during my vacation. I'll be staying with my parents, who have neither a working computer nor Internet access, and I don't own a laptop (yet. Every time my husband asks me what I want for Mother's Day, Christmas, my birthday, whatever, I always mention a laptop. Someday...)

Anyway, I'm going to try to get in a trip or two to the library, and if I do, I'll definitely post here and visit your blogs. I'm not sure how likely it is that I'll get to a computer, but I will try. (I can't stay unplugged for long!) So I hope you can forgive my two-week absence here and at your blogs. I'm looking forward to catching up when I get back!

Happy Sunday! See you soon. ☺

And the craziness continues...

Well, I'm down to the wire now. My family and I leave for our two-week vacation tomorrow morning. So far I've gotten a grand total of—wait for it—zero bags packed. My mind is swimming with all the things I still have to do: errands to run; stuff to buy; laundry to wash, dry, and fold; suitcases to pack...

I need a packing miracle...or maybe just the hilarious Mr. Bean:



In other news, remember when I peeled my finger a few weeks ago? Well, guess what I did again yesterday afternoon. You got it. Clearly, apples, potato peelers, and I should not mix. However, my kids were kind enough to give me one of their cool
Band-Aids, so it's all good. ☺

Cool,  huh?

Have a beautiful Saturday!

We're leaving in a cramped van...

Image courtesy of Sanja Gjenero, rgbstock.com

This week I have to do something I really, really don't like to do. Unfortunately, I can't avoid it any longer.

I have to pack.

On Sunday we're going on our annual journey back home to visit my parents. I look forward to this trip all year. Growing up, I was the kid who never really wanted to venture far from family, but as it turned out, I'm the one who ended up living the farthest away. So my husband, my kids, our dog, and I have a thousand-mile trip to look forward to, if I can get over one hurdle:

Packing.

I don't like packing. Actually, that's a bit of an understatement. I loathe packing, especially since around here it seems to go hand in hand with cleaning.

Confession: I am not Monica Geller.



During the time we're gone, our next-door neighbor will be going into our house every day to check on our cat, and, since I don't want her to think I'm a complete slob, I need to make sure the house is clean before we go. My husband thinks I'm being ridiculous, but I think most women can probably understand where I'm coming from. Also, it's nice to come home to a clean house, isn't it? It's just too bad I have to clean it first in order to get it that way.

So this week will be filled with laundry and folding and packing and finding toys and buying last-minute items and explaining to the kids why they can't take their gigantic dollhouse and big yellow dump truck with us and late nights and exhaustion and looking through the suitcases for things I packed too soon and last-minute laundry and take-out pizza and arguments about what counts as a necessity and trips to the grocery store for snacks and cleaning and more cleaning and moments where I pull my hair out and...

You get the picture. I'm sure you've all been here before.

And since you have, do you have any tips for me? Any stories? Any ways to help me procrastinate?

Because have I mentioned? I really, really don't like to pack.


Happy Monday, friends!

Snippets

My husband went back to work today after having had ten days off for the holidays. I'm sad. Even though I as a mom never get a vacation, it was nice to have some extra help around here.

This morning I picked up a copy of Charles Bukowski's The Pleasures of the Damned. It's a volume of poems written between 1951 and 1993. At nearly 550 pages, it will take me a while to read, and I'm looking forward to starting it when I get a spare moment.

Right now my priority needs to be sleep. My two-year-old daughter has croup, and last night she woke me up three times. I think I might have gotten three or four hours of sleep in total, which is just not enough. The kids are eating lunch right now, and I think I might try to sneak a rest when they finish--one ear open and listening to them play, of course. I'm crossing my fingers that they'll let me.

So that's life at our house today. How are things going at yours?

A progress report

I've been home for about a week now, and I'm still not back into the swing of things as far as my writing goes. Vacation always alters my life's "schedule," and even after it's over, I find myself feeling sort of off-kilter. Before we left for our trip, I had been working on my novel during the hours before the kids woke up, but since we got back, I've been using that time to catch up on laundry and all the other household tasks I had neglected to do before we left, and work on my WIP has been put on a back burner. As far as my novel goes, then, I'm giving myself a C for effort--and that's only because I'm grading on a curve! ;) Maybe next week I'll feel less tired and stressed and more inspired. Here's hoping!

I have been managing to keep up with my 100-word exercises, however. I enjoy them. They usually don't take long, which has been a bonus lately, and they allow me to get other thoughts out of my mind in order to make room for reflection about my projects. (Even though I haven't been writing my WIP, I have been thinking about it.) The exercises are also a good way for me to banish some of the doubts I have about myself as a writer. Through them, I let my inner critic speak. When she's done having her say, I feel like I can ignore her for the rest of the day, which helps my creative mind immensely. I generally don't post these 100-word "talks" with my inner critic, but maybe someday I'll share some of them here.

Enough about me: I feel like I'm so behind on all of your projects. How are they going? How would you grade your progress?

In the game again

It's true what they say about vacations: you need one to recuperate from the one you just took. Ever since we arrived home late Saturday night, I've been unpacking, doing laundry, cleaning, and taking the kids to appointments and storytime. Yesterday I even managed to catch up on some of my writing. (Yay!) I've been busy.

And I am exhausted.

Returning home from vacation is always difficult for me. If I could, I would move back to Michigan, back to my small town with its small-town way of life. I don't dislike living in a large city--I certainly appreciate all of the opportunities living here presents to me and my family--but I miss the atmosphere of a smaller town and the sense of community and belonging that usually goes along with it.

And then there's my family. We've always been close, and it's hard to be away from them, especially when I know I can see them only once a year. I wrote a 100-words entry about this shortly after arriving back home:

I've been back in New York for only two days, yet I'm already homesick. Although I can think of many good things about living in a large city, I still miss the small town I grew up in. Mostly, though, I miss my family. Neither my husband nor I have relatives close by, and that's really a lonely feeling. I'm not the type of person who has a large circle of friends, and even though I've made one close friend since moving here--a friend I would miss so much if she weren't in my life--the loneliness doesn't subside.

But enough of the sad stuff. What I'm happy about is being back here, blogging and interacting with my online friends! It was hard to be away for so long, and I'm very glad to be back to the world of writing.

So what's up next for me and my blog? More writing and more writing about writing--just more of doing what I love.

And I can't wait.

Vacation! or We interrupt this blog...

Despite the title of my blog, my blog posts won't be daily for the next couple of weeks. My family and I are leaving for our vacation this morning, and we'll be away until August 27. I'll only have sporadic Internet access while I'm gone, but I hope to get to a computer at least a few times so I can post and catch up with all of you. I hope you have a great two weeks, and I'll talk to you again soon!