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Some honesty
I have to admit this book tour has been kicking my butt. It doesn’t seem like I’m doing much. Just throwing up a graphic every weekday and then resting on my accolades but I don’t know…I’m not really doing so great at it. I got my schedule all mixed up. I missed emailing some key players, I’ve been getting people the secret sentences at the very last minute and sometimes even hours after that. I’ve been dropping the ball, regularly. Work, books, life…everywhere. I was even late to pick up Bug from kindergarten today and I had promised myself I would NEVER do that.
You should see my desk right now. It’s a complete mess. Maybe I’ll take a picture tomorrow when it’s daylight because I probably won’t have it cleaned up by then. That’s the way the days have been going. But in a way, I’m thankful. I prayed for work and I got it. I’m not rolling in paychecks but I’m making ends meet and I’m busy. It’s a lot to be thankful for.
Winter has been hard on my sense of optimism as I’m sure it has on yours too. The days are so short! It feels like it’s eight when it’s FOUR! How are we ever supposed to get anything done? Well. At 3am of course. That’s why I drink coffee.
But coffee is killing me.
I tried to take some Christmas photos for a card that I was going to print up this week and mail out next but I couldn’t get a single shot of Bug and me where I didn’t look like a hot mess. Of course she is darling in every single shot but I look like I’m old and drunk with bloodshot eyes that even photoshop can’t fix. I know I could just put a photo of her on the card and call it a day but I vowed to embrace getting older. I don’t want to hide from my wrinkles and gray hairs. Women can be beautiful at any age, I’ve always thought.
I just didn’t know I would look so scary at 39!!
(I like this one the best.)So I gave up after a while and vowed to drink a lot of water, drink less coffee and get more sleep. You can see how well that’s working for me. I’m typing this at 2:58 am.
Anyway! The book tour is chugging along. I am so grateful for all my friends and co-bloggers who are saying such nice things about my books. I really don’t deserve it or them. And before you correct me and say that all my hard work is paying off let me correct you and say that my work is nothing in comparison to how kind my friends (and family!) have been to me lately.
They’ve picked me up when I’ve been crying. They’ve given me attitude adjustments when I felt like a failure. They’ve pushed me when I just wanted to give up. They’ve watched Bug for me when I had deadlines. They’ve let me stay at their houses when I had nowhere to go…They’ve nodded when I didn’t have the words. They’ve fed me and Bug when we were hungry. They’ve told me that it’s been a hard year and it’s okay to feel like this. Sometimes I guess I need to hear that because I keep wondering why I’m not doing better than I am.
The autographing party went off smashingly! I didn’t actually autograph any books though. Funny how that happens. You set a date, you get everything ready and then you get in a room with your good friend, good food, a glass of wine and next thing you know you are spending the night talking instead of working.
This is Calee, my publisher, friend, book-maker extraordinaire.
She made soup. That’s kind of awesome, isn’t it? I thought I would order a pizza but she said she had some vegetables that had needed “souping”. How funny is she? Vegetables that needed souping. I wasn’t going to say no to that. If vegetables gotta be souped, they gotta be souped! She saved me $20 and got me to be healthy at the same time. It was quite tasty. I wish I had the urge to soup vegetables now and then. I might have to work on that.
Bug was a little disappointed at the soup instead of pizza (and potato soup at that, the crime of it!!) but it was nothing a few thousand olives couldn’t fix.
Besides all the soup-eating, olive-eating and merry-making, we did get a lot of things organized and the kids had a blast painting.
A little too close to the books for my liking but thankfully no books were marred! A few paypal invoices might have taken one for the team but what can I say? It kept the kids busy and happy and out of our hair!
Today I actually did autograph all the books and I sent them off as promised (yay!). Bug worked very hard at hers. I love that a few readers requested her signature.
She takes it very seriously, adding flowers and hearts and clouds. She is an eternal bright spot. Talk about God knowing what you need when you need it….
Did you know she makes me coffee? She might be a bit of an enabler but who could say no to that face and a cup of hot steaming coffee with just the right amount of cream and sugar? Not me!!
You should see her holding the cup with a towel so it doesn’t burn her and walking so slowly to my desk so that she doesn’t spill. My heart explodes every time.
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A weekend with friends.
I don’t know the last time I did something clichéd like go camping or have a picnic on a holiday weekend. I think most of these sorts of things just get turned into any other day for people like me. When you’re a freelancer, every day is Monday and every day is Saturday so holidays were just days when the post office is closed and there are more people on the road making all kinds of traffic and beaches are crowded.
But now I have a kid in school and everything is different! I have to set an alarm to make sure we get up in time and then I watch the clock to make sure I don’t forget to pick her up from school. Imagine that, I’m a slave to the work-week schedule just like anyone else. And you know what that means besides making me an annoyed clock-watcher? Holidays and weekends are more special now! Woooo-Hooooo! TGIF means something to me now!
So you know what Bug and I did for our very first special holiday weekend? We went camping. With friends. For the WHOLE weekend. It was awesome.
First we hung out with these monkeys.
This baby is so photogenic.
Then we went to the beach. Good thing I had my new handy-dandy smart phone since I forgot to charge the batteries for my handy-dandy underwater camera.
This is Carrien (pronounced Kareen) who I met through this blog. Funny how that works. (I have a better picture of her further down.)
Then we went to her in-laws and camped in their front yard. As you can see their front yard is nothing to sneeze at. I didn’t do a very good job at taking an establishing shot (perhaps I was too busy having fun) but the inside of their house was amazing and I did manage a few random shots here and there. I hope they don’t mind me posting.
I loved it there. It felt like home. Someday I want to have a home like this. Maybe not as big (they have eight kids) but as welcoming. That was what made it special. It was this big sprawling ranch house with art everywhere and a long country table that invited you to sit down with your coffee AND your laptop. I loved that there were probably at least four or five laptops sitting around at all times. Nobody thought it was rude if you looked down to check your phone.
Carrien’s husband, Aaron, made me Turkish coffee. It was really good with a lot of sugar and no cream. I’d never tried it before but I found I liked it. Like that’s a big surprise. Any kind of coffee made with care is probably going to go over really well with me. I was happy. Coffee, wifi, good company…it was wonderful. I could spend the whole weekend there and I did!
Bug was having her own kind of fun: kids and bouncing. They had a trampoline and a swing-set and a clubhouse and of course lots of hills and trees and rocks to explore. She was in heaven.
There was pomegranate picking…
and chickens
and egg collecting (photo by Aaron)
And a fire pit! We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows.
And then we camped under the stars.
Camping bedhead brought to you by Instagram!
Also, it rained! At 4 o’clock in the morning I felt this faint mist on my face. I thought it was a very pleasant dream but then I woke up and quickly went into survival-girl mode. I put the rain guard on in the dark as lightning flashed around me. Within minutes the raindrops fell. It wasn’t a very heavy rain but it was enough to soak one of the other tents that didn’t have a rain guard. I’m glad I’m one of those people who wakes up pretty easily otherwise this post would have been about a whole other kind of adventure.
We did have a visit from the ranch dogs who were terrified of the lightning but thankfully Bug was pretty aggressive at telling them to get out while I was outside putting on the rain guard. Living with my mom’s dog, Spreckles, has definitely taught Bug how to handle dogs with authority. She’s no wimp.
You’d think that would sum up our super-fun weekend but you would be wrong. We also went to church (after camping!) and to La Jolla for a picnic lunch and some tide pool sight-seeing.
At one part there was a ravine full of kelp. We were all curious how deep it went. So of course we had to investigate.
It was about a foot and a half deep. The kids had a blast walking around in it, jumping in it and generally slipping and sliding and not paying attention to the try-not-to-get-wet admonishments. Who are we kidding? We all knew they were going to get soaking wet anyway. It’s the beach and they are kids!
So they sported the side-knot—a new look for fall.
AND THEN!! As if we hadn’t done enough, we went to a birthday party and the kids slid down this thing:
I’d never even seen one of these before. What a riot! I really should have gotten a swimsuit on and tried it myself but it was in the late afternoon and I was too busy sitting with my mom-friends chatting.
It’s safe to say that everyone slept well after this day. Rain or no rain.
We were very sad to go home. I think I’m adding their neighborhood to my list of possible places to move in June.
