I have a blog?

So anyway, 2 months later.

Seems like all my update are 240 characters or fewer on facebook. It also feels less like I'm talking to myself over there.

Planning for a trip to France. We're still in the early stages of where to go and what to see and all that. And don't even bring up where we're going to sleep, because I'll probably start crying.

And we'll see MIL, which will be great. It remains to be seen exactly when and if she will then decamp to Germany and when that will be and so on.

And geez, too many details. Right now, I'm focused on finding rolling backpacks for the kidlets. Maybe for me, too. We'll require them to carry a good portion of their own stuff that way. I don't know if that will be a hindrance or a help. When they're too tired to go another step or when DD is sleeping in the stroller or.... whatever.

But we have plane tickets and a hotel reservation (with park and fly paid for most of the time) in San Francisco. Yeah, 3+ hours just to get to the airport. Saved us $500 PER PERSON, though....

The end of a rough draft.

The last 10,000 or so words have been like pulling teeth as I try to navigate a couple of fight scenes, a magical healing scene that goes beyond the healer's former capabilities, a couple of hostage situations, wrap up subplots, and realize I need to make certain subplots and characters and themes more prominent.

So now there's a rough draft and I will let it sit and stew for a bit before making major revisions. My critique partners have already been reading and critiquing, so I should probably add their changes in before getting it out of my head too much.

I have a side project I started a bit before and abandoned, and lately ideas for it have been popping back into my head, asking me to tell that story again.

Collaborative fiction (third grade boy style)

T is my eight-year-old and W is another third-grader and son of a friend of mine, who drove them on a field trip:

"Then he and W and another boy, G, told a long saga about Big Pitts ( an enormously fat man who puts apples in his armpits and shoots them at others) and Giant Kung Fu Banana Slug Guy. G dropped out of the narrative task early on, but T and W kept the saga going for miles and miles, cracking up G and themselves. At one point, when it was T's turn, he began narrating, in a serious voice, "There was a lot of farting going on in the city. "
It turns out that Big Pits does not, as I suggested, own an orchard. Big Pitts buys the apples. he is a millionaire. he makes his money eating beans and selling his flatuence for greenhouse gasses. No lie."

going crazy on the pictures

DH took the toddler to the Vernal Pools, searching for tadpoles




It was their next outing to the stables that she really loved:




Random pic of her after she bumped her head:



Birthday pictures:




DS1 owning the fun of playing with the Barbie vet set with DD. DS2 went and hid after I took a pic of him with it. Blackmail potential, you know.



Granny sent this box:

uhhh..... (that's not what was in it, though)

that time of year again

The male turkeys get so busy showing off that they wander out into the street and don't want to get out of the way of cars.

I also don't see them eating much in our yard. I guess eating isn't cool. They hang around across the street while the females eat, though.

Notice their handsome, sky blue heads. Freaky, eh?

Also a good one here from last year: http://phyllisphamily.blogspot.com/2010/02/pictures-from-exhibitionist.html

And DD, who crawled on her belly, chasing them a couple of years ago: http://phyllisphamily.blogspot.com/2008/12/couple-of-large-boring-movie-files.html

It's been.... how long?

I really should erase the link to my blog from the signature line of my email, because I hardly ever update here. I put little updates on facebook and I write and write and write. And rewrite. And edit.

Right now, I'm trying to write a synopsis. I have to say that it's immensely clarifying to go through chapter by chapter and figure out what I was trying to mean in them. I've made a bunch of little additions and changes in the manuscript trying to be sure I got the ideas across.

So anyway.

Laughing out loud (literally), the glamor of the author.

I had heard that being a bestselling author was glamorous. More evidence here:

(their website isn't working right now and I had to get this out.)

http://jauntyquills.com/2011/01/10/glamorous-moi/

(never mind. It's working again)

(nope. direct link not working)

(go here: http://jauntyquills.com and look for "glamorous moi")

New Year's Resolutions

1) get back to exercising. THREE times a week, not two. Haven't been to Curves in about a month now, so I need to decide if it will be there or not. Without a place to go work out, I tend to never work out, so I'll stay there for a while.

Though DH is going to have a new contract (YAY!!!) and might not be home when I need him to be. Which also might mean cutting back on volunteer work at school...

2) query agents. Get one to take me on. I'm thinking with my were-fox/shapeshifter story.

3) finish and edit French historicals as well. Amp up the suspense.

4) finish the book that I have not told anyone about. It'll be fairly short and I'm getting close to the end.