The almost reality that wasn't

For the past few weeks I have been forced to come to terms with the possibility of a long term future without Romeo. And I wasn't dealing very well with it. On the surface, nobody but me (and maybe my closest friends) had any idea of the inner turmoil that I was dealing with. I'm good at hiding things emotional things, usually. Unless it's a really sad movie, or commercial or something, then I struggle a bit.

Sure, Romeo and I have had our problems in the past. We've even split up a couple of times and been THISCLOSE to divorce. And yet, we still managed to pull through those times and our relationship is stronger and closer because of it. We truly have found our soul mates in each other, as cheesy as that may sound to some. We have been together since we were teenagers and the thought of even contemplating a future without him is horrible. The man is truly the love of my life.

Romeo has had some health issues for the past couple of months that they were trying to figure out what it was. A few weeks ago he had a CT scan done that came back a little abnormal. He was sent to a specialist who told him that it might be bladder cancer. So, it was schedule more tests, wait for appointments, wait for results and all the fun that all of those things entail.

The thoughts that go through your head while waiting for results like that are scary. The futures that you envision for yourselves during that time and the uncertainty of a future that you thought was certain is mentally and emotionally draining.

All of this while in the midst of buying a house. As in, already in contract, just waiting on everything to get done to close.

Finally got the results of the testing back, and good news! No cancer! Yay! They said that he may have had some sort of stones that were already passed or something of that nature.

Closing on the house is supposed to happen next Monday, but who knows. It's a bank owned property and banks seem to be on their own time schedule. Then we'll be moving.

So needless to say, I haven't been writing much lately. In the new house I will have my own office though, complete with a door that I can close when I need to! So hopefully that is something that will be remedied relatively soon! :)

Off to work.

Best Laid Plans (and all that)...

So, I totally had a plan. I was going to start writing more and start blogging more. I was going to get this done, damn it! Yeah well, I shoulda kept my mouth shut. LOL

Let's see...first my son got hit by a snow plow. Yeah, you read that right. A freaking SNOW PLOW hit my child...and then drove off. Luckily, he wasn't too seriously hurt...at least compared to what could have happened but he still went to the ER by ambulance and was sent home on crutches where he limped around for about 2 weeks. It took a big gouge out of his shin along with various smaller gouges here and there, scratched up his back and side pretty good and turned both of his legs yellow with bruising for a while.

Now, my son is not small. He is a 6'2 sixteen year old with the build of a linebacker. He was not walking too close to the road and he was with two other people, both girls, one of which was also hit. You cannot tell me that the driver didn't see them, or at the very least, feel that hit. We made a report to the police, who checked to make sure it wasn't a city snow plow since they can track those by GPS (apparently all the city snow plows were already back in the garage at the time of the incident) and....that's about it. That's all they will do since nobody got the license plate number. I kind of think it's crap, personally. He may be a big kid, but it's still a hit and run of a kid.

Oh, and the conversation with the "Accident Investigation Division" was quite pleasant.

• Officer: "If it was a city snow plow wouldn't you agree that they probably didn't see him?"

• Me: "Well, I would agree that it's possible they didn't see him."

• Officer: "Well, then it's not really a hit/skip if they didn't know they hit him then, is it?"

• Me: (incredulous) "Ok, so this guy can just say they didn't see him and he gets away with it? He has no responsibility? WTF?"

• Officer: "No, he would still be responsible but if he didn't see him then it's technically not a hit/skip so it wouldn't be something we would investigate."

Wow. That's all I can say about that.

On top of that, somehow we ended up dog-sitting my mother-in-law's (yes I know it's mothers-in-law but I hate that, it just never looks right to me) sick dog so that we could see if he would get better before she just took him and put him down because she's not capable of caring for him. That was fun. Oh yeah. When we first got him he couldn't even walk. We had to hook him up in some harness at his back end and support him so he could walk. LOTS of work and attention. Within four days he was up walking on his own and snarling at our dogs (SO not happy about that) and getting territorial. By day five one of his hind legs was swollen. Took him to our vet and found out that he's actually got bone cancer (she had been told hip dysplasia by a different vet). *sad face* He's too old for any of the treatments to really be a viable option. So, we sent him home so that she could spend some time with him and decide what she wants to do.

My son does virtual schooling and is a sophomore so it's time for OGT testing (Ohio Graduation Testing, I think is what it stands for) - mandatory state testing for all sophomores. Which means transporting him to an off site location each night to do the testing. Not a big deal, but time consuming.

We are also house hunting, so any free time (haha) lately has been devoted to following a realtor around looking at houses and all that fun stuff.

Oh yeah, and working. Can't forget that.


In the midst of all of that I didn't get much of a chance to write. Can you imagine? I did, however, manage to do a bit of research, work out a problem in my plot that I was having and do a (little) bit of character development as well as some free write stuff.

And now, I'm here as promised.

So, that has been my crazy, chaotic life for the past few weeks. Unfortunately, it happened right when I had multiple workshops going on over at Savvy that, as a result, I didn't have time to participate in, which really stinks.

Out of hiding...

Wow, it's been a long time since I wrote anything here! Yes, I sort of gave up on the writing for a while. Oh, it was never far from my mind...but I just couldn't seem to make myself sit and write anything. Fear? Writer's block? Maybe a little bit of both.

Somehow, I found my way to a website a few months back of an author named Holly Lisle. To be perfectly honest, I've never read any of her work but her website has been helpful. I also signed up for her newsletter and recently found out that she is hosting this workshop about editing. In following the link to the site that is hosting the workshop I found a plethora of other workshops, and many of them were being offered free to members of the site! Just the thing I needed to give me a kick in the ass to get writing, I decided. So I joined the website and signed up for a bunch of the workshops.

Where is this magical place, you might be wondering? Well, it's at SavvyAuthors.com. The cost of joining the website is $30 for a year, which considering the number of workshops I'm getting for free is well worth it. They have other workshops that they host as well that there is a small charge for, but they typically only range from $5-$15 for their members. It gives you the chance to mingle with other writers, both published and just starting out, they have worksheets for character building and a database of editors/publishers. Most of the workshops are hosted by published authors as well.

The workshops that I have signed up for? Well, they are hosting what they are calling the 2010 Writers' Boot Camp, which includes several workshops and some free book and software raffles. So far I have signed up for the following:

• Assaulting A Writer's Thinking
• How, When and Why to Change Point of View Mid-Scene
• Foreshadowing
• Before Copy-Editing
• How To Promote When You Don't Know How
• Editing & Book Design
• Crash Revisions
• Promoting With Social Media
• Ten Ugly Truths About Publishing

Now, granted I'm not so far into my writing that I need some of these workshops but I figured they are free so I might as well take advantage of them!

One of the first things discussed in the current workshop was setting goals. Another thing touched on was the importance of networking and using blogging as a tool to get our presence out on the internet. So one of my goals was to start blogging more. I'm going to try to stick with that. My problem is that I just usually don't have much to say that I think anybody cares about! I'll have to work on that.

That, and oh yeah...my habit of procrastinating. Procrastinating won't get my book written!

Neither will thinking about what I want to write as I go to bed at night, drive in the car or take a shower.