I’ve been in nesting/organization mode lately around the house.  This past week/weekend, I:

• redid our budget
• made up new meal plans and staples grocery lists
• organized my control journal ala Fly Lady.  I’ve tried this many many times but always fall off the track pretty quickly.  Sigh.  But so far I’ve managed to keep going for a full week.  I’m not doing the cleaning routines yet — just maintaining the daily to-do, checking the regular school routines, mealplans, bill schedules, etc.
• Oversaw the monsters while they cleaned out their dressers and put away their summer things.  Began dragging out all the winter things.  Sorted through all their clothes and made a huge donation to Disabled Vets.  I even went through my closet and cleaned out another huge stack of things that don’t fit.
• For once, that “doesn’t fit” category means they’re too big!!!!  I even tried on my suits I wore to interviews when we moved down here almost 12 years ago (after a Weight Watchers stint after the birth of the first monster).  Lo and behold, they FIT.  I was stunned.  I did donate most of those two mix/match suits because they’re so dated — but I kept the straight skirt that I wouldn’t have come close to wearing a few months ago.
• I got rid of all my “fat pants.”  You know, the loose, comfortable ones I could wear at my biggest with plenty of room.  It was a little scary – like a comfort zone.  If I start gaining, what will I do if my current stack of saggy jeans suddenly get tight?  Well, duh, that’s the point….
• On a fun note, we had another weenie roast at my Dad’s this past weekend and we dragged my BIL & SIL along for the ride.  So much fun!  Although now I’m angsting again (see yesterday’s post).
• I made it to the post office!  I had to wait until Princess was out of school so she could help me carry all the packages inside.  I still have a couple of things to mail out (I ran out of ARCs temporarily) but finally got out all the latest prizes.

As you can probably tell from the scarcity of my posts lately, I’m battling a bit of ennui.  I think it’s a mix of Evil Day Job stress and two releases coming out back to back, plus all the blog promotion, etc.  I’m just burned out a bit.  I haven’t done any productive writing since August and that makes me very very sad.  However, I haven’t felt the burning desire to jump back in, either. 

I guess I needed time.  However, I planned a ton of vacation around NaNoWriMo this year, so I’ve got to find my writing gear again by the end of the month.  I’m going to start out by finishing that #%&*@#! synopsis.  There’s no reason I can’t whip that puppy out and get at least one book off my list!

I’ll check back in as soon as I finish the synopsis!

I feel like I’m on the verge of several different changes, both personal and career-wise, both writing and the Evil Day Job.  We’re finally on the verge of coming out of a dark hole we’ve been in for years.  The world is changing, as technology changes.  People are in scramble mode everywhere to figure out where the industries are heading toward.  What’s the next big thing? 

Who the hell knows.

What I do know is that we’ve been up to my dad’s two weekends in a row (sorry, Sis, we promise to go in Nov too as soon as your schedule frees up!) and we’ve had the BEST time.  Sure, we have a bonfire and roast hotdogs, etc. but it’s more than that.  It’s the time we share with my dad out in the country. 

The girls are learning so much — just in the few hours we’re there.  They’re learning how to be friends with their horses AND how to ride.  They’re seeing cows, quail, a real garden.  They walked down by the pond the other night and saw 4 raccoons.  There’s no McDonald’s or Wal-Mart within a 30 min radius.  It’s small town all the way.  We hardly even get a cell signal, unless we’re sitting outside.

Every time we come back to our city life, I wonder what it’d be like to stay.  Since I telecommute, I can work anywhere, as long as I can get high-speed internet.  Even That Man’s job is moving home, hopefully later this month, so he isn’t bound to commuting into the city. 

However, my greatest worry is the country school.  Our schools here are Gold Star, advanced, 4A schools, compared to 1A barely getting by school that both That Man and I graduated from.  We deliberately chose to live here because the schools are some of the best in the state.  I know firsthand how hard it was to get scholarships to college, even though I was valedictorian and had a 4.27 gpa.  As a math major, I never even took Calculus until college.  My school just didn’t have it.

So I hesitate.  I worry about making it harder for my kids to be successful by starting them out at a less than stellar school system.  But then I see their glowing faces as they ride their horses, with Papa coaching them in the corral, and I see the sadness in their eyes as we say goodbye and come home.

As technology makes it more and more possible to do things we never even dreamed about before, I at the same time long for a simple life.  Where we eat mostly what we grow and prepare our own foods the majority of the time, because there’s only Peggy’s diner down the road.  (Do you know how much easier it’d be for me to stick to my diet if we didn’t have so many places to eat out?)

I don’t know if we’ll ever get there.  But I am dreaming about it.  And CHICKENS!

I just don’t understand it when an author in today’s day and age has NO internet presence.  None!  How can that happen – especially when I was looking at only electronic works?

Seriously, people, have a bio somewhere that lists an email, a free wordpress blog, SOMETHING.  It’s not that hard.  So you hate Twitter and Facebook, fine!  Why not update your GoodReads profile to include an email address?  Or your Amazon author page? 

Look at all those missed opportunities when someone reads your story and wants to see what else you might have published, even if it’s “just” a short story.  Or what about fan mail?  There’s nothing better than fan mail!  It makes all those rejections and revisions seem so less painful when even one reader takes the time to write you a personal note.

If they can’t find you, you’ll never know how much they loved your work.  You’re missing the chance to make a personal, real connection with a reader.  Why would you want to miss out on that opportunity?

(Even Conn would at least have an email address listed on the university website – even if he never reads it!!)