Don't Forget NaNoWriMo--or Find Your Goal

Although I'm going through a BUNCH of unplanned stuff this year, I am also planning on participating in National Novel Writing Month (November 1-30)! And you should too!

Even if you don't write novels, sign up for it. It's FREE, and you can use the e-mails and inspirational articles from the Office of Letters and Light to use for any of your efforts--from painting to music to drawing to reading to weight loss to pretty much any goal for anything you have in mind. Just sign up, and everything comes to your e-mail… and it's more helpful than you might realize.

I have found it hard to keep going without goals, without a plan for the day, for the week, for the month, for the year. Without goals, I am unsure what to do next. With goals, I have specific tasks automatically ahead for me.

Remember, too, that we are 2 1/2 months away from the new year. Why wait until January 1 to set a goal? Why not begin that resolution soon?

My resolutions (BEFORE January 1):

1. Finish my mermaid novel.
2. Lose the weight I've needed to lose for more than a year.
3. Find a happy place with Richard's cancer treatments.
4. Sew several costumes (three planned so far--Elsa from Frozen, Queen Elizabeth I, Antebellum dress)

Not a lot, but one of these would probably keep me busy. What are YOUR resolutions before January 1?

Fighting On

I'm here! It's been nearly a full year since I've posted on this page--and I'm sure all sorts of friend bloggers have assumed I've given it up for good--but I'm here.

I posted on my Not Writing Anything Anymore blog a few weeks ago, resolving to make blogging on both blogs a priority. But then life threw in the biggest of big wrenches, and I had no choice but to switch to what is more important: my husband's welfare.

My husband, on his way to run an Olympic length triathlon in Arkansas, ended up in an emergency room in Alabama with acute pancreatitis. Three weeks later, after a CT scan, tons of blood tests, and two ultrasounds, doctors concluded its cause was a 3 cm cancer tumor in the pancreas. Filled with anxiety (for the prognosis for pancreatic cancer sufferers is extremely bad), we went to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL, where they determined his cancer was operable (thank God!), and where, a little over a week ago, he underwent the Whipple procedure. (It's a BIG surgery--look it up online, and you'll see how serious it is). Through his fight, he's adopted the mantra of his favorite college football team: Fight On! I've even ordered shirts and hats with the saying on them, for him, his friends, and our relatives to wear.

A week later, we were heading home from Jacksonville when the doctors called, and the news is now much more positive. The cancer was caught far earlier than it usually is, and after six months of chemotherapy, Richard will most likely live a long life without pancreatic cancer ever returning. Yay!

Our lives have been turned upside-down, though, and I found that even reading was impossible while I watched over him in the hospital. It was only when tests of the tumor were complete and we were given the great news that I could even concentrate on reading a book again. Now it's time to put my focus back on writing.

Richard was told by a friend who had beaten ovarian cancer that he had to concentrate on more than the cancer, and she told me the same--I had to have more to do than support him and rehash the cancer stories over and over. So that is what I am doing. I'm getting back to my mermaid novel, back to painting (I have accumulated several castles I want to paint), and back to playing piano. All three will soothe my soul through this, making it easier for me to soothe Richard's.

If you've read through this whole thing, thanks for visiting! Hopefully I'll have worthwhile stuff to share with you in the future!

Dreaded Bugs

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Why is my life such a train wreck?!?

I was just about to put my kids to bed for the night, just about to settle in for an evening of grading my beloved essays (from all four classes I'm teaching), when my child shocked me out of my complacent plans. Leaning over the sink, she reached behind her head and scratched. Hard. Like she was really digging. Like it was really itchy.

My stomach could not have lurched more, but I tried to remain outwardly calm. I fiddled through her head one way, then the other. Little bits of...dandruff? Sugar? Oh, but they were stuck to her hair like sugar. I had to pull them off with my fingernails. 

Knowing the truth already (and if you've had this happen, you know the truth, too), I ventured further down, towards the neck. And I cursed (inwardly), for there were the creepy little almost unseeable bugs. Dammit! 

Now, don't get me wrong, there is not a time in my life when lice will be welcome. Not on my kids. Not on me. Not on my husband. Not on a flea in the front yard. If there is a creature that does not deserve to live, it's that one. But right now? I don't have the time! I have papers to grade! Rough drafts to scribble all over! Homework to help my kids with! Reading to do! Classes to plan for! Weekly grades to submit! I am OVERWHELMED with my life already!

Richard ran off to get the pesticide (and, yes, I realize I'm poisoning my kids--they'll probably die of brain cancer someday and it will be ALL MY FAULT), and I started washing bedding in hot water. We soaked all the brushes, cleaned all the stuff we could find, collected everything that couldn't be washed and vacuumed it (spraying it with some more pesticide, too, so that my kids could get cancer somewhere else), and washed everybody. I used the little nit comb and went through everyone's hair systematically. 

Everything seemed fine. Had it worked? I checked my daughter's hair this morning--the only person I'd seen signs of lice on--and she seemed good. Hair looked clean. Didn't see a single nit.

I should have been relieved. I did actually get some grading done. But then the nurse called. It seems all the bugs were gone (though she did tell me what I'd used was a pesticide, and it was not recommended, without telling me how else I was supposed to kill the creepy bugs), but she said my daughter's hair was "filled with nits," and to get rid of them, I was going to have to "go through Crystal's hair strand by strand, physically pulling off every one to get rid of them."

Great. Now, instead of grading papers, I'm FREAKING OUT! And tonight, instead of working on my classes as I should, I'm going to spend, oh, FOUR HOURS combing through people's hair! And my husband's going to have to spend the whole evening combing through mine once the kids go to bed. 

And I get to do it all with an itchy head, because whether I have them or not, even if I dosed myself with the cancer-causing pesticide last night and killed all the crawling ones, I'm itching from the mere idea of them. 

The nurse wished me luck. I don't think that's enough to pull me through this one.