D started kindergarten this week, which is a full day program here where we live.

I’m packing him a lunch from home, so far. I’d first been worried about his peanut allergy (come to find out, they only have one, very apparent, item that has peanuts in it – a peanut butter and jelly sandwich). Then I was then worried about all the other hippie stuff I worry about, high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated bullshit. But that’s sort of beside the point though – the point being that D broke his brand new Transformers lunch box zipper on the second day he used it. That was kind of tragic for him, because he loved that lunch box and was very excited when we found it.

You know, it’s Transformers. (more…)

My boy finished his last week of preschool last week. This first year for us – first year of school for him, first year working on anything in a very focused capacity for me – went by sort of unnoticed, I think. We started it, and became immersed in it, and just as soon it was over.

I know it made a big difference for him to be in school. But I spent a lot of the year not feeling like I’d accomplished very much. During the days while he was at school, I’d often find myself on Twitter or blogs. I struggled with the discipline to sit down for those 3-5 solid hours and write for the whole time. For so many years, I’ve trained myself to write in little pockets of time. 20 minutes while he watches a cartoon, or 35 minutes while he’s in the bath, or 15 minutes when some toy has caught his attention, or 45 minutes before bed. So suddenly when I had a stretch of 5 hours uninterrupted, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I’d like to say I got better at it as the year went on. Maybe I did. It’s hard to measure in any certain capacity. There were days when nothing went according to plan – hubby missed his train and I had to drive him to work, or I had household stuff to do, phone calls to make, errands to run or whatever. There were plenty of days where one, or two, or even all three of us were sick. (Starting school = disease, let me tell you!!!) There were days when one blog after another after another were just so damn interesting that I never got around to the writing, and before I knew it, it was pickup time already. (more…)

(This is sort of loosely inspired by this really great article by Tawni O’Dell, about being proud of who you really are (as a writer, especially). Please read it!)

I was never cut out to be valedictorian. Too much work. I almost made the top ten, but didn’t. I was having too much fun. #28 in a class of 400-something. I could just never get it together enough to really buckle down the way I needed to, to make those top grades every single time. You know, those kids who never got anything less than straight A’s? Well, I got a couple B’s. I surely did. I was busy falling in love (a good few times…), breaking up, making friends, having jobs, quitting jobs, being a teenager.

My college experience was much the same. I did well. But I didn’t quite make the grades I needed to get my magna cum laude cords. I was so jealous of everyone who had them. I got my honors cords instead, had just “cum laude” listed after my name in the program. Again, I was too busy… working two jobs to put myself through school, falling out of love, falling in love with my honey, making friends, losing friends, getting married, watching people die, changing my major a good dozen times.

Some day, when I have to write an author’s bio, I want to remember to say that I didn’t get my MFA because I didn’t want one. I got married and pregnant instead, and that was what I wanted. I know they’re going to think of me as a lesser writer because of it, and they’re welcome to go fuck themselves while they’re at it. It’s just a point I want to remember. I’m not very good at remembering these things in the moment. I’m a sensitive type, in the moment – more likely to ball up and cry.

I suspect the rest of my career, my life’s ambitions, my successes will follow that pattern. #28 in a class of 400-something. Almost the smartest, but not. Almost the best, but not. Almost popular, but not. Almost successful, but not.

Obviously those things aren’t the most important to me. I made decisions along the way that demonstrated the fact that I didn’t really want to be all of those things, but instead, wanted to be a little bit of them. I wanted to be close to them, but not. It left me the space to live a life, have experiences, make the connections that inspire all these stories I’m able to write.

I remember being so hard on my little eighteen year-old self, for not making that top ten group. And as a ripple-effect, not getting into the college I wanted. Not getting the scholarships I wanted. I felt like such a failure. How was I supposed to know I was doing everything exactly right? How was I supposed to know, that looking back on it from here, I wouldn’t change a damn thing?

Out hiking in the woods. It’s dark and ominous, about to storm, the kind of day that inspires stories… No, really, we’re a mile from home and about to get rained on.

Chapter 5 continues to be this big fat black hole, where I keep putting things into it, and nothing ever comes out.

Reading my first Janet Fitch (Paint it Black), she’s amazing! Every sentence is so nuanced and alive! Oh, *sigh* I want to write like this!

Bought some fresh, organic, local strawberries today from the farmers’ market, and they came with a fresh, still alive and wiggling worm… Cut your strawberries open before eating, people! You know, unless you like the extra protein… :\

Dylan says, “Mommy, I’m getting bigger. I’m almost a man.”

Dylan, on his bug bite medicine, “Like lotion for vampire bites.” – and it even doubles as a good title for a short story too, lol!

Pilot Speed are my new favorite band of the moment! (Remind me a lot of Radiohead, or Muse) Love, love, LOVE!

Note to self: probably not possible to finish both five novel chapters and six LH updates before this trip, in two weeks, just so you know.

Well, at least I accomplished something before the monkey-child started climbing on me. Maybe more later.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions (they’re always just begging to be broken), but I do have some goals for 2010. Maybe resolutions and goals are the same thing? For some reason, a goal feels less likely to be broken than a resolution. Who knows… Anyway, I shall put these goals out into the world so that I might be held accountable

health:
- cook more, eat out less, less prepared convenience foods
- exercise 5 days a week (currently doing about 2 or 3)
- more strength training (trying out Jillian Michaels Shred to start!)
- lose 25 lbs before I get knocked up
- 1 glass of wine a day is healthy, 2 or 3 glasses not so much…

hardcore writing goals:
- novel finished, revised, and out to agents by the end of the year! (Whoa, that’s ambitious! Can I get some cheerleaders on this one?)
- get Dylan in preschool/part-time care for daily writing time, so I can accomplish my ambitious goal of finishing my novel by the end of the year
- publish a short story
- keep up with my weekly progress reports
- pre-draft novel #2 during NaNoWriMo 2010

family life:
- get a babysitter and go on regular dates with my hubby again
- as a possible side-product of all those dates, get knocked up… (but no sooner than March/April, so that I can finish my novel by the end of the year)
- save a downpayment to buy a house next year

Good luck on everyone’s goals for 2010! Let’s make it a good one!

I’m finding it MUCH harder to get writing done with a three year-old than at any previous age. The “terrible twos” were difficult, in terms of behavior, but the terrible threes are just as terrible, for different reasons. Two year-olds just don’t understand the things they want, which makes things frustrating – but three year-olds understand everything, they know their parents well, and they know just how to get what they want. They’re bold and manipulative and stubborn!

And they don’t nap anymore.

And they don’t sleep through the night because there are monsters in their bedrooms now. And they have bad dreams.

And even though it’s lovely that they’re potty trained, now they’ll wake you up to take them to the potty in the middle of the night. You almost want to tell them, “Oh, just go in your underwear, we’ll pretend it’s like a diaper and we’ll change them in the morning, Mommy needs to SLEEP.” But you don’t.

And they wake up at 7:00, on the dot, every single day, and ready to GO – and keep going, and going, and going…

The amount of involvement he needs is just so much greater. He should be in school this year, but you know, life happened in an epic way this year.

This has to be the hardest age. At one, they were adorable! Do you remember one, with their toddling and babbling? And newborns! My God, newborns were easy! They sleep 16 hours a day! Just strap that sucker to your chest and you’re good to go! Two was trying, because they just don’t understand the world yet – but three is impossible because they do.

Four gets better, right? Somebody tell me four gets better! (Lord, please, lol!) But if nothing else, at least there will be preschool next year. God bless school!

progress report for the week of 11/9:

If a zombie tried to write a novel, she might write about 1200 words in a week.

But they can’t all be great weeks. They can’t all be like last week, where I sat down and wrote about 1200 words in one single hour. Nope, not all hours can be like that. Certainly not. It might be near impossible for me to make my 20,000 words for the month, but I’m not giving up hope just yet. Better weeks will come, they always do.

On a more positive note, part 2 is itching to be written. Which is odd since I don’t have a damn clue what happens in the present narrative of part 2, but all the corresponding flashbacks are screaming at me!

Hey, that’s better than nothing, right? It’s better than being a zombie with no part 2 screaming to be written.

I changed the title of this blog a couple years ago. And when I wrote this new title, it wasn’t to put down those who write mommy blogs. Not at all. I enjoy reading mommy blogs. But this blog isn’t supposed to be one. This blog is a reminder to myself that before I became a mother, there were these things I wanted, and that my life was headed in a certain direction.

My hubby asked me a very important question a couple weeks ago, except he didn’t know how important it was when he was asking. He tends to do this, spout off insightful comments without knowing how insightful they are – and then I usually unleash a bitch-fest on him, because I don’t do well when the truth hits me hard in the face.

He asked if I thought of myself as a stay-at-home-mom, or a work-at-home-mom?

My answer to this question means two very different things. Am I a stay-at-home mom, who raises children for a living and writes for a hobby? Or am I a work-at-home mom, who aspires to write for a living, while simultaneously raising a child and not keeping up with her housework? In my current state, I’d say I’m pretty unproductive at both. But in truth, what I want to be is a work-at-home mom. The only distinction between me and other working moms is that my career ambitions don’t pay out until after the story is already written and published.

I need to start taking my writing life a lot more seriously. Events like these are effective enough to make you stop in your tracks and say, whoa, we might not have as much time as we thought we did. Considering my parents checked out at 38 and 54, I could be well past prime here.

This year has sucked, I’ll give myself that much credit. Do you want to know how much this year sucked? Hubby lost a job and found a very swift relocation, epic cross-country move, no family or friends here, gained fifteen pounds (!!!), hate this apartment, dad died – and hey look, I’m actually an orphan now (if a 29 year-old woman can be counted as an orphan – I don’t feel ready to not have parents). This year sucked! This year sucked so bad, you might even be inclined to laugh, in the way something can be so unbelievably horrible it becomes laughable.

I might even rank it up there with my 24th year, where we ended up moving back home to my dad’s, sleeping in a closet because there wasn’t actually room for us there – it was a big closet, you might even call it a room if it had a window. Come to think of it, I gained fifteen pounds that year too. I guess I’m quite obviously a stress-eater.

But even in my 24th year, I finished my degree. There was that. No year can suck in its entirety.

I had this draft saved from almost three years ago:

This was my first post to my paper journal after I found out I was going to have a baby:

“I haven’t written in this thing for so long. I find myself wondering if there is even any point anymore. I guess there must be. When I am 45, when my children are grown and going off to college, I’ll probably wonder what kind of woman I used to be before it all started. When I was young and newlywed, when my breasts and butt and belly were all in the right places.”

I could so easily become engulfed by this sweet sweet boy. I could forget everything I had ever hoped for myself and want nothing more than to be his mother. That is exactly what I am afraid of.

I had this conversation with Jim this morning (sometimes I amaze myself with my depth of thinking and intellect – only sometimes): that Dylan has come and joined our family, not the other way around. We were on a path before he came, and he joined us. It doesn’t mean we should change our plans, and it doesn’t mean we should stop. But just accommodate this little traveler and make him a part of our already existing life.

Even then, I was so afraid of letting my life escape me, and forgetting about all those dreams I had as a young woman, all those things I knew I really wanted.

So if I am going to consider myself a work-at-home mom, then that means not having made any money off my writing yet makes me a very unsuccessful one. This is not a mommy blog. This is the blog of a woman who is trying to jump-start her professional storytelling career, who happens to also be a mother, among other things.

I remember my very last rejection. It was from Zoetrope All-Story, aiming quite high for my first submission out of college, lol! But I got a note handwritten from whoever read it that said, “Thanks for the interesting read.” Hey, I’ll take “interesting” as a compliment, because from what I hear, magazines don’t just toss out compliments or even comments just for the hell of it.

I wasn’t very disheartened by the rejection. I mean, hell, it was Zoetrope, and it was exactly my fourth submission to anything, ever! We were taught well in my undergrad writing program about how many rejections writers get out there in the real world. We were taught about constructive criticism and how to make your writing grow from it.

I also took it as a sign that I wasn’t quite ready yet. I had just finished my undergrad work, I needed to practice on my own for a while, and that’s what I’ve been doing. I moved to two different towns, I had a kid. I wrote many failed short stories, two failed attempts at a novel, much, much, much practice writing, much learned from my former writers group, and five years later, I think I’m finally at a point of ready to try again. For real, this time. Taking myself seriously.

Trying is scary. I have this theory about avoiding fear of failure though not trying. If I never tried to publish one of my stories, then I could still say I haven’t failed. I could say that the only reason I haven’t published is because I didn’t try, or because I didn’t really want it. It wouldn’t be because I wasn’t good enough. I could still tell myself I’m as good as any of those writers. I could tell myself I could be published, if I wanted to, if I really tried. And I could make myself believe it. I could keep on writing for a hobby and finding people who love the stories I write, and live secure in this fallacy that I could be published, if I wanted to.

That’s how you avoid fear of failure through not trying – and I am expert at it!

Or I could try, actually try, and here’s the scary part – if I try to make this all real, and it doesn’t work, then I really have to say I’ve failed.

So I’ll try then. I will stop wasting time, I will finish stories to completion, and I will submit them. I even have a story in mind to start with, the one I submitted to Zoetrope, the “interesting read.” Looking at it five years later, I can see where the voice hadn’t matured yet, and where I am now better able to pull it together. Looking back at it again, it was a damn good story, just not ready yet. And maybe I’ll start a little more modestly this time. You know, maybe not one of the top paying markets in the country, lol!

I need public accountability. I need you all to take note of these goals and be critical of how much I’ve accomplished by Friday. I need that because I don’t know if I can keep myself accountable enough on my own. So…

writing goals:
- I’m going to submit something, somewhere, by Friday. That’s my assignment for the week. I just thought I’d put that out there, and I hope you’ll all hold me to that.
- also I want to make a good stab at chapter 3 of the novel
- fill out the bones of a second short story I’m working on (also have a market in mind for this one)
- finally (for crying out loud!) finish reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being!!!
- and don’t worry LH fans, two scheduled updates for you this week too

non-writing goals:
- finally get my Virginia drivers’ license and plates – I’ve been here seven months, I think that’s highly not allowed, lol!
- buy a new dresser from Ikea (oh the hard work!)

All this while raising a brilliant, well-adjusted, and potty-trained (thank you very much!) three year-old?

We’ll let the laundry suffer probably. We usually do.

This has never been a very personal blog, apart from telling you how much of my novel hasn’t been written, or some adorable thing my child did. I feel much more comfortable masking my personal life in writing by wrapping it up in fiction.

There are things I want to write about, but none of them are describing what’s going on with my dad right now, especially when I hardly understand most of this to begin with. Writing about all of that, how fast things can go from one thing, to another, to another, makes me feel kind of panicky. So instead, I’ll carefully skirt around what you’re probably most curious to know, and tell you everything else…

I want to say that it was nice to catch up with family again, even if it is under the most stressful of circumstances. I’m always surprised at what a BIG family we have, when you add us all together, my dad’s side, my step-mom’s, and even my mom’s side, closer than ever even after she’s been gone thirteen years. We’re a regular circus, let me tell you!

I’ll tell you that Dylan spent four days in the ICU waiting room, and came home snotty with a temperature of 100.5, which isn’t even a real fever (is it?) and now I’m worried he might have swine flu or that flesh eating bacterial infection you get from hospitals, when really, it’s probably just a cold from playing with his cousins and random strange children. And now he’s cranky and needy, and hugely spoiled on attention from the past week.

But he seems to have gotten even smarter, cuter, and a little more mature in the past five days, if that’s even possible…

Which leads me to say that this child needs to potty train! I think it’s not his choice anymore. He turned three in July, and he’s way too smart to be wearing diapers like a baby. Just like all his other growing up steps, giving up bottles, moving to a big boy bed, giving up his binky, we’ve had to just give him a firm push towards it (= make him do it, lol!). Because left to his own devices, it’s looking like he’ll be quite happy to wear diapers until he’s in college.

I want to say that I’ve always been more of a thinker than a talker. I’ve been called shy, but as a child, my teachers called me reserved, and I think that’s much more fitting a term for it. So even when my dad’s nurses say, “Talk to him, he can hear you,” I still don’t have much to say, not after the first or the second or the third time. I don’t say much under normal circumstances. So I sang a couple songs instead. I never sing for anybody without begging, so maybe that counts enough.

I’ll tell you that for as long as I can remember, I’ve been prepared to receive a phone call like I got Sunday night (and that alone is enough to make me feel terrible.) Maybe that’s partly because I’ve already lost my mom, and that I know these things – parents – don’t last forever. Some barely live long enough to see their own children reach adulthood. The other part is that people have faults. People have bad habits, and lifelong bad habits have consequences.

And I’ll tell you that three year-olds say the most heartbreaking things sometimes, and of course they don’t know what they’re saying when they say it – in fact, from their point of view, it’s all quite simple. The most heartbreaking thing I’ve heard all week is when Dylan said, “Grandpa just needs some x-rays and some medicine, and then he’ll wake up, and be all better, and we’ll say, Yay!”

Dylan learned a new phrase today: “It’s a fucking alien!” (and he repeated it too, lol!) Because good Lord, look at this thing!

And other native wildlife…

We took a nice quiet stroll through DC after the fireworks, waiting for the trains to clear up – that didn’t happen, by the way. We walked for an hour after the fireworks and still waited for half an hour to get on a train back home. Everyone said it would be unbelievably, insanely busy. I guess it’s a learn from experience kind of thing – so hey, folks, guess what? The DC fireworks are insanely, unbelievably busy!

Hope everyone had a safe and fun 4th of July