Progress

I am still sitting in my hotel room as I write this, so some things in my life are not progressing.

However, for the things within my control, I'm doing pretty well. And I am not alone.

My daughter, famed socialite that she is, already has about a dozen friends at her new school. She climbs in the car at the end of the day with a new Georgia accent, too, slipping out of it only after several hours with us (and it is SOOO cute!).

My son has progressed from "needs work"--a kind way to say he's acting like a complete brat at school--to "Good"--a kind way of saying he is working harder and isn't quite so annoying. Even better, he's waking up with a smile and looking forward to school. They both checked out their first library books at school yesterday, and I had to pry these books out of their hands to get them to do anything this morning. Definite progress.

My husband has progressed a great deal over the last month, too, from not enjoying his job a whole lot to LOVING his (new) job. He comes home with a smile on his face every day, and our interactions with the community so far have made him pretty much decide he's the luckiest person on the face of the planet.

And even though I am not out of the hotel room yet, and we overheated the microwave cooking dinner a few nights ago (manicotti tastes almost as good when it isn't quite warm), I am still writing. No, that's not right. I'm finally writing again. Over the last three days I have edited through 180 pages of my novel, and now I'm perhaps 6 chapters from finishing the new version entirely. After not writing on any novel since before Thanksgiving, I am quivering with happiness to be doing what I love most.

Can you feel it? Can you feel the quivering? It's called progress.