Change

We may end up moving this year. I hope we won't have to, because this move would come at a bad time for me; I'm busy enough as it is. I don't want to leave my friends, my house, the life I've built for myself here. And at the same time, a part of me knows it would be a great adventure to live somewhere else for a change. The east coast? The Great Lakes region? But that's so...far away. It would be a huge change for me, my kids, my elderly cat...

The Huz would be fine. His family moved a lot when he was a kid, so he's used to it. But not me. I put down roots. I lived with my grandparents in Montana for most of my life. I went to one school before college, all the way from K through 12. I moved a few times right after I started out on my own at age 18, but I've been in Boise for sixteen years. Ten of those years were spent in our starter home, and the last three years have been here, in the house I'm not sure I can bear to leave. This is the house I always dreamed about. I had a hard enough time leaving the starter home, but this...leaving this would be very, very hard. I love to travel, as long as I have my secure base to come back to. The more of myself I put into a home, the harder it is to let go.

The one thing I know for sure is that change will happen, whether or not I'm ready for it. I'm ready for some change, like publication, book tours and hard deadlines, but not for an entirely new base of operations. And what if I get the publishing contract right when we're about to move? Urk! Oh, well, bring it on. Better that than a lot of other, less constructive types of change.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

This week is always one of our busiest weeks every year. My Irish dancer daughter spends the whole day running around from one venue to another, participating in performance after performance with her dance troupe. It's a whirlwind of appearances, drives across and around town, hurried meals, flying curls and tired feet. I envy her, but I'm very, very proud of her. She's living her dream--right here, right now.

I'll also never forget the day she watched me typing for the first time and remarked, "Mama, it looks like your fingers are dancing." And so all artists make beauty in their own way....

Dance on, everyone.

Catching Up

This last couple of weeks, all I've done is catch up on things I let slide while I finished the last manuscript. The kids are enrolled in a correspondence school and have an official teacher, but for everyday intents and purposes, we function like homeschoolers. I have to get their packets ready to mail, make sure all the assignments are there, etc. Sometimes we get behind, and over the past few months, we got really behind. We'll be fine just as long as we get our work done by mid June at the latest, but we're having to make up now for some things that just didn't get done while I was lost in "book fog."

So I've had my break from writing, but it didn't really feel like a vacation. I'm starting to get antsy from not writing, and I need to get back into it soon! But I also need to take care of some of these other responsibilities as well. If it's a balancing act now, I have no idea what it'll be like once I'm published. Whatever happens, I hope it involves staff--like a housekeeper, private tutor, and personal assistant, maybe? Yeah. That'll be happening.