I’m Old Enough To Know …

California Sunset / Photo by Nate Sanchez

I don’t love getting older. But one good thing about having passed a certain number of decades is that you become much more confident about certain things. Here are a few things I’m finally old enough to know. …

  • Patience is truly a virtue – and one of the best ones to get you through life. Patience can make you a great parent and a great spouse.
  • Respect is the key to every relationship. Respect your spouse. Respect your kids. Respect your coworkers. Respect the guy who pours your water at the restaurant. If you project your respect with honesty and sincerity, it comes back to you tenfold.
  • The way you talk to your kids when they’re young (yelling or not, swearing or not, with patience or not, with respect or not) is exactly the way they’ll talk to you when they’re about 13. And then forever after.
  • You can’t be everything to everyone.
  • It’s okay to say no.
  • It’s important to learn what your boundaries are and then set them early in every relationship, from friendships to work.
  • Childhood friends are to be cherished. No one will ever know you better than your childhood friends. You were your purist, un-formed self with them.
  • Everyone has obstacles in life. Never assume you’ve had a harder day or a harder life than the person standing next to you.
  • You never regret a family getaway.
  • Getting out of your own neck of the woods – for even just a day or a night – reminds you of how big the world is, and how people live differently than you. Not better or worse, just different. It makes the world open up, and then your mind.

What about you? What’s your favorite thing you’re old enough to know?

Finished Book 2!

My messy desk after Book 2 was done!

Well, overall, after 8 months, 2 drafts, 99,000 words, 320 gallons of iced tea, a new computer, and some crazy holiday weekends, I think I can say “I DID IT” about my Jan 1 deadline to complete Book 2!

On Jan 1, I was at 99,960 words (perfect word count for me), and had written an ending!

However, the ending is … well … “soft” (not very dramatic). The black moment is seriously lame, and there are a couple of loose ends that didn’t get exactly tied up.
Sooooooo …. I still have some work to do!
But I gave myself this whole month to edit for that very purpose, which will be just perfect. (It’s due to Berkley on Feb. 1.)
My next steps are:
  • Cut 2,000 from the first half.
  • Write another 2,000 in the second half to bolster the black moment and make it more dramatic.
  • Then do the fun “editing on the word level” stuff, like deleting words I use too often, changing up sentence rhythms where I got lazy, deleting all of my adverbs, tightening up dialogue, that kind of thing. That’s really my favorite part of editing.
Whew!
Overall, I’m really happy about this story, though. I love these characters — Lia and Evan. The story has some fun whale-watching tales, a sweet “Cinderella” theme overlaid on top, and some serious sizzle. I can’t wait to share it with everyone!

 

Everything I Know About Entertaining in Five Bullet Points

So the house is still pretty clean. That’s because we’ve had people over the last few weekends, including the book club for nine people.

I once had a friend tell me that the fastest way to get your house clean, top to bottom, is to invite people over. She was right.

I really like to entertain. That’s probably a weird statement coming from an introvert like me, but I do.

My house is super small and doesn’t hold a whole lot of people, so we don’t entertain big. But we like having small dinner parties, like 10-12 max. I can seat about 8 at my dining table. If the crowd’s bigger than that, we do a buffet.

But I really enjoy it.

I didn’t always. It used to make me nervous. But once I started the Book Club 13 years ago with my friend Barbara, I was kind of thrust into the realm of entertaining. In fact, the very first Book Club was at my house, for six almost-strangers. And I pretty much “practiced” on those poor women for 13 years. Before them, I’d only entertained my family, but the Book Club brought strangers, then friends, then guests of friends, in all varieties, and I had to get up to speed.  Continue reading

End-of-the-School-Year Craziness

Ah, the end of the school year. This is where things get really crazy. Turning in books, verifying grades, trying to scramble for that last “B,” banquets, parties, permission slips, yearbooks, school dances, teacher gifts, dress-shoes for promotions … the list goes on and on. Moms everywhere know what I’m talking about.

Rene is in a showdown with a crazy retiring-in-two-minutes teacher who has left the entire class bewildered with “missing assignments” notes when she left for some kind of surgery and has never returned. The substitutes have been bewildered also. The kids have all been glumly picking up slips for summer school. But there might be a knight in shining armor who swooped in to finish the last two weeks as the “permanent substitute” (there’s a fun phrase). And here’s the kicker – he had this same teacher years ago when he was at the school! So he feels very sympathetic toward the students and says he believes in “transparency” and “online grades” (thank you, sir!) and has vowed to get all their grades online so they can check to see what they’re really missing and if they’ve perhaps already turned it in. So, with 1 week left, we’re ending on a cliffhanger, here. I hope everything works out for Rene.

Nathan, meanwhile, is experiencing spring fever like I’ve never seen a child experience spring fever. My two older kids have always really liked school, and seem to stay motivated until the end. But this child. … hmmm … He just wants to head to the beach every single day. Since about May 1. Poor dude. But he’s almost done, too. We remind him of the countdown every day.

Summer, oh summer – We can’t wait to see you next week!

P.S. I also think we must be the LAST district out for summer???

A Whale-Watching Adventure

We had so much fun this weekend going whale-watching!

I received tickets from Dana Wharf Sportfishing and Whale Watching Co., who hoped we’d have a good time and would do a write-up for my other blog — Things To Do In Orange County.

I’d never been whale-watching before, so I was excited to give it a try. And Superman had brought it up a few times as something he’d like to do. And both my teens were really excited about it. (Rene even had it on her “high school bucket list”!)

So we were off!

We went to pick up our tickets at will-call in Dana Point Harbor, then had about 45 minutes to kill, so we wandered around the harbor area and looked at the shops and boats. I always forget how pretty Dana Point Harbor is!

We chose a noon boarding time (options were 10 a.m., noon, or 2 p.m.), which was perfect because the morning gloom burned off right around 11:45, and it got sunny just as we were boarding. Continue reading

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