Birthday Resolutions

Today is my birthday, in case you haven't seen the blanket of well wishes on my Facebook wall. And if you don't already know, I always view my birthday as a new beginning. A clean slate. A brand new year to achieve my goals.

Instead of New Year's Resolutions, I make myself some Birthday Resolutions. A few things I'd like to focus my energy on. This last year got eaten up by my new life as a Mommy, which I suspected. I met a lot of my other goals, but not all of them. I'm pretty happy with the overall results, though.

The Sun Came Out!

I am so ecstatic about my daily dose of vitamin D right now! The sun is out! It's back! I love it!

Anyway, when you don't really have many places to go during the day and it rains and rains and rains for so long, you start to get a bit stir crazy. I've been trapped indoors with a baby and a neurotic dog for days. Possibly weeks. I don't really remember the last time we took a walk together.

Before today that is! I just took my girls for a walk and I think it has improved all of our attitudes. Penny is nappy, Ellie is napping, and my brain doesn't feel so cluttered. Oxygen. Sunlight. These are things we need to survive.

I'm not going to let that ever happen again.

Baby Laundry

Everyone warned me that a baby would quadruple my weekly laundry. But it took until now for me to really get the full understanding of that. It seems like Ellie uses more and more clothes, burp cloths, and bibs as she gets older. I really thought it would be the other way around - tons of clothes per day for the really little babies, and less and less per day as they grow.

Nope, not so much.

I don't mind doing the laundry. Let's be honest, it's teeny tiny. When her hamper fills up, I dump it in the washing machine. She has enough clothes, blankets, bibs, and burp cloths to fill up about two hampers, so I just get everything rotating in and out. She's never naked, and I'm not washing clothes every day.

The Time In Between

Sometimes I find myself living my life as a series of end points... when this happens, when that happens, when I finally .... In reality, I shouldn't do this, because then I miss stuff. All the fun stuff that happens in between. All the time when I could be improving this or that. Instead of looking for landmarks, I should be more focused on the journey from point A to point B.

Mike and I had a two-year engagement. At times it felt like an eternity, waiting and waiting for that day to arrive. But when I thought about the day-by-day steps it took to get me from the day he proposed to the day I walked down the aisle, it really didn't seem like that long. During the time in between, I went back to school and finished my degree, changed jobs, traveled to England, went to Disney World for the first time, and save a whole bunch of money. The stuff in between was fun and shouldn't have been glossed over. I grew a lot in that time and I wish sometimes that I hadn't sat there, hoping it would go by quickly.

Ellie's Fan Club

Last weekend, we finally got the chance to celebrate Elissa's baptism. It should have been months ago, but for obvious reasons we delayed the event. Finally, just a few days shy of seven months, we had her christened officially.

And we sorta took over the church.

It's true that there are a lot of friends and family in our lives who've grown very fond of our little Miss Ellie. She did give us a heck of a scare with her "dramatic entrance" to the world. True story. And we've always joked that she'd be the kid in the dance recital with a whole seating section of fans (probably holding signs and cheering enthusiastically for her).

My Laptop Can Bite Me...

You know how you can drive a car for years and nothing's wrong with it, then Poof! One thing goes wrong, so you fix it... which causes another problem. You fix that problem, find another one, fix it, then the whole thing falls apart? In reality, all these things were probably going on at once, they were just hidden... really, really well.


I think my laptop has been a ticking time bomb this past year or so, kinda like that Honda Civic with the blown transmission that Mike had to replace last November. And now, I fear, it may also be toast.


Stuff like this always seems to happen when I'm climbing back on the horse. I start a new exercise plan, then twist my ankle. I get some really aggressive writing done, and the tendonitis in my hand flares up really bad. I buckle down to a routine, build a desk, get going again... and then my laptop crashes and burns.

Ugh.

So I'll deal with this, like I've dealt with all the other tiny details. It's just one more hurdle on my obstacle course, no need to stop running. There are bigger things going on out in the world, beyond the walls of my apartment. Bigger problems that can't easily be solved. I realize this, I'm just frustrated.

I feel better now that I got that out...

Back on Track

It's been a bit difficult for me to wrap my brain around my new schedule... And no, being at home all day doesn't mean I don't have a schedule. While it does mean I can wear sweatpants to work, it definitely doesn't excuse me from daily responsibilities.

Juggling those responsibilities, I'm learning, is harder than I thought it was going to be. Take this blog, for example. It's not a "responsbility" per se, but it's definitely something I like to keep up on. See how well I'm doing with that? Yeah.

But I think things will be better now. I spent the better part of three hours last night putting together the world's most complicated desk. From now on, I buy pre-assembled furniture, just saying. Anyway, it's assembled and it's sturdy. So this morning, I built my new little shelves, opened that hot-piece-of-printer I bought back in August, and I officially have a new workstation. Just for me.

I'm hiding in it right now. And as soon as I unpack my camera cord and I can post a picture, I will.

So now it's back to deadlines and projects, with a side of book editing. If I don't get that book completed by December, I'm going to be really mad at myself, people.

Mark my words: Done by December. Then I'll edit that second book while I submit the first one to agents (again). Because if I don't, then why did I just spend this money on a new "office"? Exactly.

Here's hoping that a little normalcy and consistency will bring me great creative energy.