Happy Valentine's Day!

I got home from teaching my class this morning, peeled off my dress and the nylons and heels - and discovered two boxes of pecan/caramel turtles and chocolate truffles sitting on my desk chair waiting for me. And a beautiful card from my darling husband with a personal note that made me cry. He is so perfect! I'm feeling very blessed today. It's always a doubly special day, too, not only is it Sweetheart's Day, but it's my birthday as well.

So I'm forgetting about being another year older and thinking about being loved instead. Hope you are, too.

What's for Dinner?

Ah, the question that never goes away and must be answered EVERY SINGLE DAY! Sometimes feels like the bane of my life. Just got home with wet hair from Misty's Hair Salon and have been worrying this question all morning like a dog with a bone. So I checked out the fridge and discovered three dishes of leftovers. Italian chicken, meatballs with penne noodles and cheese and veggie lasagna. All of them created by *moi* in the past three days. Throw together a salad, warm up some bread and voila! Dinner is served.
Now I can get back to work . . .

Breakfast Musings

I'm sitting here eating my morning oatmeal, cruising email, websites, and my favorite blogs and trying to get my derriere in gear to start work on another project. (*Derriere* being the perfect word since the next project in the queue is partly set in Paris and has lots of fun French phrases sprinkled throughout. Title: IN A PARIS MINUTE.

This weird and aggravating place I'm in is not becuse I don't have plenty to work on. There are two completely drafted manuscripts waiting for rewrites, research, future ideas to outline, but I'm in this awful abyss after sending off one project and trying to get past the inertia to begin again.

This drives me crazy. I was determined last week that I would only take a day or two off and then get going again. I DO have a goal to get a couple more full novels subbed to publishers before spring hits. Never seems to work. It's like I mentally shut down. Just want to rent about five chick flicks and veg out in front of the TV.

I am easily intimidated by other's success and talent.
I am easily overwhelmed by the sheer mental and physical work writing is, especially because a couple of my critiques on the PARIS project are not particularly kind.( I mean I know there are problems but they could have been *nicer*, right?)
Maybe it's pure laziness.
Maybe it's fear.

Or all of the above.

So I make these lists of everything else I got accomplished while I wasn't writing just to make myself feel good. Visits, phone calls, bills, shopping, reading (got through about 10 books in the past week. Some good, some ho-hum), helping kids with homework, cleaning, knitting a blanket for the premie hospital project our church is doing, making homemade chicken soup.

I need to call my mother, too.
She probably thinks I've dropped off the planet.
I have.
It's called the writer's abyss. I'm at the bottom.
Wave if you can see me.