TGIF! And we’re leaping right into sharing 5 random things about our week:

1. I’m focused on writing at least a part of the day. Hoping for magic
2. Maggie is loving the nicer weather and lizard hunting. But allergies (I think) are causing her to lick and annoy her carpal pad (I think that’s what it’s called, it’s the pad around her the “ankle” area of her paw). I’ve given her Benadryl once and it helped calm the licking, but I’m not excited about drugging her more than necessary.
3. I’m still doing bands and yoga practice. I began with twice a week, barely doing anything and slowly working up. I’m up to three times a week, and doing about 4o minutes to an hour of work. My yoga practice is beginner level at best, but I enjoy it and I’m hoping my hands, wrists and neck can tolerate it.
4. A friend of mine had major surgery this week. She’s on my mind pretty much constantly.
5. It’s going to be a Turbo weekend! Turbo is coming Sunday and spending the night so his parents can have a night away from home to celebrate my son’s birthday. If all goes well, Turbo and I will make cupcakes for his dad’s birthday. I didn’t ask his dad what kind of cupcakes he wants, instead we’re making the kind I think Turbo wants, LOL! But CPA Boy won’t care–if his son makes him cupcakes, he will love them.

That’s it for me, now I’d love to hear 5 random things about your week! Have a great weekend!

I had such big plans to write a weekly business-opinion blog. But there’s only one of me and too many ideas and tasks to possibly get done. I think there’s an important lesson in that, though. We can have lots of ideas, but when its time to get serious about the work we need to:

1. Prioritize the best or most executable ideas and discard or adjust the rest. Find the ideas you love and can craft a compelling story around. Easier said than done, sure, but do it anyway. So for Wednesday’s blog–I’m adjusting my expectations and writing what I can, when I can, so I can focus on my main business priority–writing Primal Magic
2. And then focus on those ideas and do the work. Just. Do. It. Which is another way of saying, “Hold your nose and write the crappy first draft.” I’m even thinking about taking my own advice here
3. Don’t be distracted by pretty, shiny things that, for me, come in the form of…everything in the known universe, LOL! Shut out the world you live in and live in the world you’re striving to create.
4. Remember that, as writers/artists, we are our most valuable commodity. I want to stress this. All the things we create, they come from us. We–our mind, body and spirit–are the commodity.
5. Reward ourselves when we do the work. Maybe it’s a bit of chocolate, a couple chapters in the book you’re reading, a glass of wine–whatever. Rewards help us appreciate ourselves.
6. Forgive ourselves when we make mistakes. There aren’t many quicker paths to a nasty case of Writer’s Block than being too hard on ourselves. Trust me on this–I have set myself up for that crazy-making type of writer’s block way too many times in the last few years.

And that’s my thoughts for the day. As always, I love when you all jump in and share yours.

Friday was awesome! A whole day out with my sister, Biker Witch, and she bought me my favorite coffee ice cream! It obviously doesn’t take much to make me happy

Otherwise, I got my second Covid vaccine quick and easy Saturday morning. By evening my arm was sore and I was a little tired. Sunday, I had a mild headache, a few minor aches and fatigue. That’s been it so far. I even listened to Wizard and rested most of the day.

I’m hitting the computer hard today! Coffee first, then writing will happen.

I bet your weekend was more exciting. Share!!!

TGIF! Time to jump into sharing five random things about our week. Here’s mine:

1. You may have seen this on my social media already: I have an assistant again! I’ve worked with Carla a few years back, and am pleased to be working with her once more. She smart, energetic and full of ideas. Carla is the owner and operator of Everything Romance Blog and Everything Romance Promotions. 
2. The funny thing about having an assistant–it’s more work in the beginning. I knew this from experience, but let’s just say Carla’s amazing and I’m out of breath trying it keep up, LOL! All joking aside, I had planned to wait until I was deeper into this book to prove to myself I could do it before taking on an assistant. But when a good opportunity comes around, the wise woman takes it. And gets her butt in the chair and writes the dang book.
3. In Weird & Cool Finds news. I was searching old emails looking for something I can’t even remember now, and found an entire paranormal proposal (a proposal is a synopsis, three chapters and mini-outlines for several character’s stories) that I’d sent to my editor. I had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN about it. I didn’t have it stored in my normal files of books either. This had been a big deal at the time, and my agent was submitting this proposal to editors, so how I did just forget? What I think happened was I sold another contemporarily series to Entangled and had started writing The Plus One Chronicles to self-publish, so we set this paranormal one aside. And then I changed computers, and for some reason, this series wasn’t transferred over to the new one. In any case, I have it all in a folder now. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but I have it to either finish or rewrite at a later date.
4. I’m scheduled to get my second Covid shot tomorrow. I’ve spent the week getting stuff done just in case I have a reaction. I had no reaction to the first one other than a sore arm. My hope is that I have little or no reaction to this one and can log in some real writing time. This book needs my full, focused, crazy-eyed attention.
5. Today I’m meeting Biker Witch to hang out for a few hours and really looking forward to that. I would love to see Turbo this weekend too, but I have to see if I have a reaction to the shot first. I can take time off from writing next week to see him too, but I’m getting really torn between the whole having a life thing and writing this book. Can’t I just have a few more hours and extra energy five or six days a week????? I’m mean, sure, I’d probably waste them on Google or watching dog videos, but who knows, I might actually write a book. Where do I put in my request for extra hours and energy?

That’s my five random things, now I’d REALLY love to hear yours! Have a great weekend!

The lizards are back! My dog Maggie is thrilled. She’s spending hours searching the backyard for them. She circles the entire circumference of the yard, looking around the pool equipment, under all the flower pots, in the back planter, under the trashcans and on the side hill.

She does this over and over, and every once in a while she scores by finding a lizard, and the chase is on! it usually only last a few seconds, but those are the best seconds of her life. If I had to guess I’d say she spends at least five hours searching for a few seconds of chasing.

Most of the time, the lizard escapes.

But once in a great while, she’ll actually catch one. Those are magical moments for Maggie. Rare and golden, and worth all the hours of looking followed by disappointment.  She hasn’t caught one yet this year, but she doesn’t care. She keeps going with the burning confidence that she will catch another lizard and relive the magic all over again.

That’s how I feel about writing.

Except, to the best of my knowledge, no lizards are harmed or terrorized when I’m writing

Happy Wednesday!

**Once again my blog missed the 1:00 am scheduled publishing. No clue why. Frustrating.

It was a good weekend. I hope all of you who celebrate Easter had a great day!

It was Wizard’s birthday yesterday, so we focused more on that than Easter this year. We went out to breakfast for the first time in over a year, and really enjoyed it. We made ribs for dinner. And the coolest gift award goes to Youngest who surprised him with an airbrush set for painting his models and RC Cars. Wizard was stunned and thrilled.

Yummiest prize goes to CPA Boy and Special K for sending these delicious mini cupcakes. What’s really nice is these keep in the freezer, and you can thaw out however many you want on the counter in 20 minutes. Wizard is loving them and all the variety of flavors too. (I had offered to make him a cake, of course, but when these were delivered, he was delighted!)

And Middle Son spent all Saturday with Wizard as they raced together at a track. They hadn’t done that in over a year, and that was special to Wizard too. He said over and over how much he enjoyed spending time with Middle.

Wizard had a good birthday, and that makes me happy.

I’ve got a few writerly things going, and hoping that I can get in some real work time this week. I need to get the Primal Magic on track. I’m not going to get into my struggles, most of you know my process looks like this:

Nope, just not going to talk about the crazy write-and-delete-a-thon going on there. I blame Wizard for distracting me. And Maggie. And Google. Definitely Google–I go to look up one random fact and then next thing you know, I’m learning how to fly an airplane, the 7 secret uses for baking soda, and how the mafia launders their money. It’s like crack people, all the cool information just waiting for me to consume!

How was your weekend?

TGIF! Let’s jump right into sharing five random things about our week:

1. April is filled with appointments and I’m just scratching the surface of things I need to catch up on after the Covid shutdown. I made Maggie’s dental appointment and am relived about that because it’s been a couple years since her last one. Small breed dogs have a lot of problems with their teeth. In this case, preventative care really is worth the money, time and risk of anesthesia. We originally planned to do it at the beginning of this year, but Maggie’s bladder stones threw us a curveball.  We’ve renamed Maggie — Maggie Money Pit this year She’s not amused.
2. I’ve also scheduled my eye and dental appointments. Both of those are after my second shot, but overall I feel pretty safe with the protocols in place. My bank card, however, doesn’t feel safe from the price tag of new glasses, LOL.
3. Wizard and I have never had “real” bedroom furniture. I have my parents old beat up dresser and two round particle board tables with cheap tablecloths as nightstands. Today we began looking for a dresser and nightstands that actually match and look decent. We found something we like, but will we buy it? I mean it’s been three and a half decades and we haven’t done it yet. What if we’re rushing into the decision?????
4. We’ve begun real spring cleaning by washing all the upstairs windows and screens. We’ll do the downstairs next week. After that, I’ll get the blinds all dusted, then it’s carpet cleaning–I even ordered the detergent stuff for the carpet cleaning machine. We’ll get it all done in small chunks. My regular cleaning is getting ignored while we do all this other stuff.
5. I sent a letter to terminate my gym membership. For me, that’s the last place I’m comfortable returning to  this year since it wasn’t particularly clean before Covid. I can rejoin later, or maybe try something else. For the last few weeks, I’ve been using bands and progressing very slowly with mild strength training. I’m also adding in an occasional beginning Yoga class that focuses on body alignment and active muscle engagement which is key to strength and balance–something I want to maintain as time goes on. We’ll see how it goes.

That’s my five, now I’d love to hear yours! I hope everyone has a great weekend!