The Holidays End for This

Mom, wife, writer . . . holiday bum? Today is January 3, 2007. The local schools have been out since December 15th. My husband began his yearly winter vacation that same day, which is good because up to that point, we'd done no Christmas shopping. We had a nice holiday: no one was sick (yea!), we ate out, had gatherings, & went to events with different groups of friends and relatives throughout the holidays.

Because we got such a late start to the shopping, we ended up ordering items online for our youngest son's Christmas that arrived on time--so, we squeaked by for another year without being labled deadbeat parents--always a plus. Our oldest son is 25. When he was young, we had the energy to not only be organized, but to carry out the plan with umph. Now we eek by and try to hide that fact from our youngest child. We put up lights, no matter that it was mid December before we got them up. We wrapped presents and got them under the tree--a good fifteen minutes before the annual Christmas Eve family gathering took place.

On December 20th, I received my first round of in-house edits for book two. I was able to work on them for a few hours each day, but it's hard to work during a vacation--even during an annual stay-at-home one. I've edited 54,682 words so far. But those were the easy chapters to work on. Probably the best thing I accomplished work wise over the vacation is an exact roadmap of how to fix some problem areas that are threaded throughout the rest of the work. That took days all by itself. I'm a little panicky about the work that's ahead of me. I can see it in my mind's eye, but can I get it written . . . well . . . and by its due date? I only slept three hours last night for feeling the shift of the work from it's somewhat suspended-vacation-position to its on-my-shoulders and due-in-a few-weeks position.

How does the body know these things and what does it hope to accomplish through sleep deprivation?

Tomorrow I'll be up early and work late--like most Moms. I'll only take a break for the homework and dinner hours. On Friday I'll pack my bags and head somewhere close but quiet to spend a few days working uninterrupted. I won't be finished with this round by the end of the weekend, so I'll do what I can to log as many hours as possible until the next weekend, when I'll disappear again.

Both office work and life will get backlogged, but if the past is an indication of the future, my husband will cause our only still-at-home child to be glad Mom's not around by doing things Mom's not good at--paintball, ordering pizza, and playing Nintendo Wii.

As rare as it is, my husband will be gone the following weekend and Mom will try to be good at things Dad's not good at . . . like making our youngest son clean his room, take out the garbage, and finish some yet-unseen book report.

Wait. I think my weekend list needs editing, don't you? :-o)

Oh, and THANK YOU for the wonderful and encouraging e-mails. If you've e-mailed me since mid December, it may be a few more weeks before I can respond. If you mailed me before mid December, but haven't received a response you probably typed your e-mail address in wrong. When that happens, and it's very, very easy to do, I have no way of making contact.

God's peace,

Cindy