So Much for a Bold Start

There's an old saying about the road to hell, good intentions and all that. I may have paved the express ramp to the hot place, as far as this blog is concerned.
I considered just carrying on with a post as if there was just a heartbeat's pause between my intro post in July and this one...several months later...but I'm just not that brazen. (no matter what people say.)
So, here's my big excuse: It was about ten days after I took the plunge into the blogging pool, when I got a call at work from my husband, requesting my presence at the local Emergency Room. Brian works in film and video and he slipped while on set and sprained his ankle. When I first got the news--aside from being in a total panic--I kept telling myself that it was just a sprain. Now, I know there is no room in that sentence for "just."
Brian was released from the hospital with crutches and a cast...he was flat on his back for about two weeks, with limited mobility for about two months. I have to admit that before this accident, I would kvetch about him not doing ENOUGH around the house...you know, putting dishes in the dish washer, running a load of wash while he still had clean clothes, that sort of thing. However, after now experiencing what life is like when I had to do EVERYTHING : bring in the groceries, drag the sprinkler around the lawn, tend to the garden, (okay, I'm overstating on the garden. I just let that go to hell, really) as well as cook, clean, and not smother him with a pillow to stop the plaintive moans of pain when he put weight on his foot...well, I really gained a new appreciation for his help.

FINALLY--or about two months later--he's fully recovered and life is back to normal, but it took awhile.  And, lest I sound like a complete bay-itch, I am really glad that he made a relatively quick recovery, but I really didn't get much done outside of work, cooking meals, laundry, and fighting the forces of chaos. Oh, and I dragged his invalid self to San Diego for ComicCon a week after he fell-- and got him a spiffy little scooter to make it all possible. (Next year I may consider getting one for myself, just for sheer laziness.) Yes, it was a production, but we had non-refundable tickets.

So, that's where I've been. Here's where I'm going: in addition to the writing I do as part of my day job for the Oregon Attorney Assistance Program, I'm taking the month of November to jump in with both feet and sign up for National Write a Novel Month (or NaNoWriMo, for short.)
I did my first NaNoWriMo last year --I wanted to gain the discipline of writing every day. I can't say I completely accomplished that, but I did complete my word count goal, and somewhere here I have the bones of memoir waiting to be exhumed.
This year, at the urging of my friend and collaborator Austin Camacho, I'm tackling an honest-to-gosh piece of fiction. I'm looking at the calendar and November 1 is just around the corner, so I need to catch up with the outlining and other writer-ly behaviors, as well as the practical chores of putting away pre-cooked meals for a month (honestly, you can only live so long on pizza and chinese food. I discovered that LAST November. 
Wish me luck-- I have the intention of posting regularly, but we all know that those good intentions frequently wind up as satanic tarmac....

Off the Deep End

For a person who frequently jumps into action without a second thought, I can find myself taking an awfully long time to make the most simple decision. For example, it was easily five years ago --or more-- that a number of friends (but most notably, Jim Chadwick) suggested that I should start a blog. Of course, that was at a time when everyone and their cat was blogging, with most of the interesting commentary being made by cats. Thankfully, my cats never got the hang of using the internet, so I don't have to compete with those chatty little critters.

So, now that the playing field has been cleared, leaving political extremists, dispensers of helpful hints, and single folks with too much time on their hands, I finally decide to bash away at the keys. It'll be interesting to see how it goes--I'd love to make grandiose promises, but I prefer to lower expectations and then surprise readers. I'd love to have you along for the ride, metaphorically speaking...which is probably preferable to actually surviving my driving. (But that's another story...)