Right between the Eyes

Yep, just got smacked. Another year got me.

It has been CRAZY chez moi. A day or two after Dolly's mega-adventure, her boy came home from college evac. He'll be back in school on the local campus in the next week or so. A few days after that, he went with me to fetch the parents, since I was NOT letting them drive through Houston. We got to see my baby sister for a little visit, and some nieces and nephews, and then we were off, zipping back through the heinous Houston traffic. (I took the tollway, since I didn't want to deal with downtown traffic, even during off hours.) And the parental units finally agreed that they really didn't want to drive through Houston. The traffic was scary and the signs and exits were confusing. Given that Daddy got lost inside my house (!), I think it was the best decision. He has spatial issues and motivational issues. Mama just can't hang onto events. She couldn't remember whether she'd made arrangements to have her chairs recovered. (I went with her to do it, so I know it happened.) That sort of thing. (I figure the writing is on my wall, so I plan to enjoy my next 20 years or so...)(A LOT.)

It was good to have them down for a visit, though. The older son came in Christmas evening with his boys and we had Christmas all over again. The grandkids made out like bandits--which is as it should be. The boys had an all-night movie-watching marathon, which got postponed because the electricity went out for about 4 hours. (We had a cold supper that night.) We played our new games and laughed like loons--one of the games we got required writing down things that belonged in sets, like "Things a lady should not do" or "Things you should not say to your mother," then guessing who wrote what. We had to repeat the things numerous times because Mama had trouble remembering what they were, so we got to doing them in a sort of shorthand. And of course, we decided that "Fart" could be a "thing" on most of the lists--and of course, boys being boys, "Fart" was the answer they gave a great deal of the time. And I got my tang all toungled repeating the answers so many times, and came out with "spart and fit" instead of what it was supposed to be, and made everyone laugh so hard I thought I might fall out of my chair.

You had to be there, I guess...

The little guys had to go home Monday morning, so I took the great grandparents home Monday afternoon. We had such a good visit. And then Tuesday, after I worked really hard on the writing and got lots of good stuff done, I went to the dayjob, and fell apart. The crud hit me so fast and hard, I was falling asleep over the computer, so I took my sore throat and icky feeling home and went to bed. I'm still coughing like I could lose a lung, but the ickiness is gone. The main problem was that the ick hit the brain.

I tried to write...one other day that week. Thursday--New Year's Day, maybe. And the writing was good, but I had an inspiration during the writing for how the blackness of the moment would resolve itself...and when I finished the writing, I couldn't remember what my inspiration was to make myself a note. Usually, I can remember, or at least reconstruct, but it was just gone. So I resorted to typing in/revisions for the next several days.

Today, I let myself get back to the writing, and it's coming nicely. I like what I got today. It flows--and the braindead writing worked too, believe it or not. I have 3.5 more weeks to get this finished, typed and completely revised. Wish me luck. I'm going to make it. Without too much panicking involved...

The next book, however...

Happy New Year to all y'all.

I'll try to post again this week, maybe about goals...