Awe, Panic, and Wonder
Oof. I can't believe I have a nearly-four-year-old son! MrD and I are reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's On the Banks of Plum Creek together right now, and he's even starting to read a few of the words himself. How did that happen???
Seriously, look at this tiny baby:
How can he already be nearly four?!
In less gasping-with-wonder and more gasping-with-horror news, I also can't believe how much our local play centre costs for birthday-party booking, ack ack! And of course most of all I can hardly believe that I gulped and paid it...but that's what comes when I've been so overwhelmed for the past month that there was no other way a birthday party was going to happen at this point!
Sigh. Maybe I will sell a short story soon to pay for it. You never know! (Well, I kind of do know, in that I haven't actually written a short story for several months now. But let's ignore that point, okay? I am all about positive thinking right now!)
Today I'm having a day of feeling absolutely swamped by exhaustion, but that actually hasn't stopped it from being a pretty good day. To my huge relief, I managed to book a party that will take place within only a few weeks of MrD's actual birthday, something I'd been really worried about.
(I know I have some really wonderful friends who start planning their children's birthday parties several months in advance, come up with amazing themes, etc...but, well. I'll just have to keep feeling awed admiration for the parents who approach birthday parties that way rather than using my usual methods - i.e., dread, panic, and procrastination. Organization is, er, not quite my middle name! Maybe by the time MrD is sixteen I'll finally be on top of birthday-party-organizing? Then again, when he's sixteen he'll probably prefer I stay right out of it...)
I also revised forty pages of Low Road (woot!), read MrD four chapters of Plum Creek, and dealt with the chill of incoming autumn by wearing the fingerless gloves I knitted last year (best project ever!) and making my very favorite soup, Nigella Lawson's Broccoli and Stilton Soup.
Seriously, when I tell you that I (a hopelessly lackadaisical cook) make this soup multiple times every autumn to fight the chill, that should be a sign of just how easy it is...and it is amazingly delicious. I ate a big steaming bowl of it with good bread on the side, put more in the fridge, and froze a last few portions to pull out on cold days in the future.
I also had an amazing gift arrive in my email inbox! Will Steele, who designed the cover for A Reckless Magick, had read my last blog entry, where I lamented that I couldn't manage to take a photo that really got the colors of the cover...so he sent me one of the whole trilogy! And I just gasped with delight when I saw it:
In six days, A Reckless Magick will be published in the UK. In fewer days than that, I'll have a four-year-old son.
The days may be drawing in around us for winter, and I may be feeling pretty tired right now...but life is pretty amazing anyway.
Seriously, look at this tiny baby:
How can he already be nearly four?!
In less gasping-with-wonder and more gasping-with-horror news, I also can't believe how much our local play centre costs for birthday-party booking, ack ack! And of course most of all I can hardly believe that I gulped and paid it...but that's what comes when I've been so overwhelmed for the past month that there was no other way a birthday party was going to happen at this point!
Sigh. Maybe I will sell a short story soon to pay for it. You never know! (Well, I kind of do know, in that I haven't actually written a short story for several months now. But let's ignore that point, okay? I am all about positive thinking right now!)
Today I'm having a day of feeling absolutely swamped by exhaustion, but that actually hasn't stopped it from being a pretty good day. To my huge relief, I managed to book a party that will take place within only a few weeks of MrD's actual birthday, something I'd been really worried about.
(I know I have some really wonderful friends who start planning their children's birthday parties several months in advance, come up with amazing themes, etc...but, well. I'll just have to keep feeling awed admiration for the parents who approach birthday parties that way rather than using my usual methods - i.e., dread, panic, and procrastination. Organization is, er, not quite my middle name! Maybe by the time MrD is sixteen I'll finally be on top of birthday-party-organizing? Then again, when he's sixteen he'll probably prefer I stay right out of it...)
I also revised forty pages of Low Road (woot!), read MrD four chapters of Plum Creek, and dealt with the chill of incoming autumn by wearing the fingerless gloves I knitted last year (best project ever!) and making my very favorite soup, Nigella Lawson's Broccoli and Stilton Soup.
Seriously, when I tell you that I (a hopelessly lackadaisical cook) make this soup multiple times every autumn to fight the chill, that should be a sign of just how easy it is...and it is amazingly delicious. I ate a big steaming bowl of it with good bread on the side, put more in the fridge, and froze a last few portions to pull out on cold days in the future.
I also had an amazing gift arrive in my email inbox! Will Steele, who designed the cover for A Reckless Magick, had read my last blog entry, where I lamented that I couldn't manage to take a photo that really got the colors of the cover...so he sent me one of the whole trilogy! And I just gasped with delight when I saw it:
In six days, A Reckless Magick will be published in the UK. In fewer days than that, I'll have a four-year-old son.
The days may be drawing in around us for winter, and I may be feeling pretty tired right now...but life is pretty amazing anyway.