Guest Blog Post - Christina's Juggling Act: AKA Two Releases in November

Read how my friend Christina Freeburn balances family and a busy writing schedule! - Pam

November is a busy month for me with two books being released. This started at the end of April when I attended the Malice Domestic convention. I saw some cute postcards from a new publishing company, Henery Press. The covers grabbed my attention, and I couldn't help snapping them up. And then checked out the press. I was excited to learn the books they published had a similar tone and feel to the scrapbooking mystery I completed, and, even better, they were taking submissions.

I was already happily writing my New Beginning Series for Desert Breeze Publishing. The first book, Lost Then Found, had come out November 1, 2011 and the second one, Led Astray, was coming out May 1. I was finishing up the third book, Safe and Sound (which came out November 1), when I decided to send off my mystery. I didn't expect to hear back for a few months, and if accepted I figured it would come out sometime in 2013 as I was wrapping up the New Beginning Series.

A few days later, I received an email from the editor saying she loved it and wanted the book. Not only that, but it would come out this year--November. I took a deep breath and agreed. I'm fortunate that I don't have to work outside the home, so I could concentrate on writing. And that was what I had to do--concentrate. Stay focused.

I hunkered down, took time management seriously, planned my days on my calendar and, when really crazy, created a "To Do" notebook where I kept a weekly schedule for family, volunteer, and writing. Once 'on the page,' the task was able to leave my mind so I could concentrate on the actual project rather than thinking about everything that needed to be done.

           

Going from one book to the other wasn't as hard as I feared as the two series have different voices (first person with a humorous tone, third person with a serious tone) so I didn't get the projects confused. My teens helped around the house, and my husband jumped in whenever the computer and I weren't getting along (this happened a lot). The main culprit was the printer that decided it wanted to quit numerous times when I needed to print out the manuscripts. I like to do the first main edits on paper.

It also came in handy to have incredible author friends who've shown me...and encouraged me...that not only can it be done...but I can do it.

-Christina

Empty Nest

My to-do list for yesterday consisted of the following:

1. Figure out the day of the week
2. Reschedule dental apt
3. Be brilliant writerly-wise

Guess which didn’t get done?

It’s a tad chaotic here on the prairie right now. DH (dear husband) is recovered from his broken/sprained ankle, sustained on Labor Day weekend. However, I am once again booted, due to surgery on my ankle. Between spouse, my mother, and me we function like a well-oiled domestic machine.

Except when we don’t.

Like when one of us is out of commission.

My mother/writing partner folds all the laundry, God bless her a thousand times over. Two autumns ago she had hand surgery. I nearly wept with relief when she could go back to sorting socks.

Husband cooks. 

I however, clean. I take a lot of ribbing from friends, but few things give me more satisfaction (domestically) than scrubbing toilets or dusting. Cutting clutter gives me enormous satisfaction. I find the older I get, the more I need order in my surroundings.

When I can remember where I am and what day it is….

This fall with two graduations looming (older son from college in December; younger son from high school in May) I keep telling myself I’ll miss the mess because it means they’ll be gone.

Technically, though, the big guy is the biggest clutter culprit …. not planning on him going anywhere soon. The absent-minded college professor stereotype exists for a reason.

But he does cook.

And we won’t really have an empty nest because my mom lives with us and has for the last 13 years.

She is an organizational whiz, able to eyeball a room and know exactly how to pick up and arrange things perfectly in intelligent systems

Me, I handle maintenance.

Lately I’ve been trying to envision life without clutter, without children in the house. Since my early days of motherhood when I held my firstborn six-pound son in my arms I knew if I did my job as a mother ‘right’ he would eventually leave me. Same with his little brother. The goal is and always has been to launch those baby birds out of the nest.

So I’m going to enjoy all the twigs and pieces of yarn scattered about while I can.

More Leaves

And today  the Nebraska winds have blown  the expansive carpet of leaves in my front yard into a small neat pile and made the rest...disappear.

Leaves

In a few minutes (CST) October will be halfway over. Been a strange year, and this month is no exception. It’s warm enough to have the windows open and the skittering of the leaves is creepily comforting….

Friends of mine (more than one) regularly admonish me whenever I wish the day, month, year away – and rightly so.

Others tell me to live in the moment, to cherish where I am at that precious point in time.

In turn I tell younger moms to enjoy each moment with their children, and as my friend Elizabeth attested to this summer (and I talked about in this space), she is taking this to heart.

Do I take my own advice?

Recently I posted a status on my Facebook wall akin to being ready to say about this year “Happiness is 2012 in the rearview mirror.”

I was quickly taken to task by dear friends, reminding me not to wish time away.

They are right. Some nights I lie awake, incredulous that in seven years and change I’ll be the age my mom’s father was when he died. Time feels like it’s screeching by – and yet some days I want it to accelerate.

Mostly the moments when the bad seems to overpower the good.

But life encompasses everything, a wise friend said recently.

The minutes have passed, and October is officially halfway over. The leavings start this year and continue into next.

Years ago, I’d assign my beginning reporting students a ‘fun’ assignment (I thought it was fun): interview a partner on what superpower he/she would want.

Invisibility, invincibility, the ability to leap tall buildings in a single…leap.

Would I want to be able to slow down or speed up time if I donned tights and a cape (probably would want to slow down cellulite in that get-up)?

Guess I’d settle for the power to just savor the good moments and survive the bad.

And make the leaves dance into a pile awaiting the rake.

Grandmothers

Lately I look in the mirror and see my Grandmother Rock’s face (which isn’t a good thing since she’s been dead for more than 30 years). What’s remarkable about this is I don’t resemble her at all. I have my Grandpa Rock’s round face and temperament, and my Grandma Andrews’ sturdy calves, slender ankles, and shelf-like bosom.

But when I’m tired, the resemblance to my maternal grandmother, Violet Stubbe Rock, stares me in the face. The lilac shadows under my eyes and the hollows around my lips are hers.

Her remarkable fashion sense (she rivaled Imelda Marcos in number of shoes until she, like me, developed bunions) eludes me to this day. She also had a way with the rouge pot and knew exactly how to layer on scents (Tabu and Amber).

Playing dress-up at her house was one of my favorite childhood pastimes. Her flowery housedress discards, tucked into an old hardbound suitcase, were paired with real reptile-skin platform pumps (four-plus pairs: two ruby red, two emerald green, plus one brown pair of peep-toe).

The days I spent at her house (my grandfather died when I was ten) were dictated by routine: I’d get up and watch TV while munching on Pop Tarts or those marvelous 70s snacks: Space Sticks, reputed to have gone up into the stratosphere with the astronauts. Much later, she’d come down and have her usual breakfast: orange juice, coffee, toast, and a cigarette.

Later, we might go shopping at Sears Roebuck & Co. for clothes or the dime store for paper dolls. When I was younger she’d take me miniature golfing (my favorite) or to the Elks Club to swim. We also played countless hours of gin rummy or double solitaire for nickels. She loved to gamble. Often we’d ‘dine’ at Howard Johnson’s where I’d gorge on clams or spaghetti and chocolate milkshakes. Grandma Rock would order a ‘double bubble’ martini with her meal.

Evening time my grandma would knit and smoke, and we’d watch Twilight Zone re-runs or old Clark Gable movies. Also part of our ritual was the ‘midnight snack’ which consisted of M&M’s, miniature marshmallows, and sometimes cashews. This long-time tradition ended when my grandmother was diagnosed with adult onset diabetes. The summer of the Watergate hearings I spent time watching the proceedings at her house and  following her exchange plan ‘diet.’ I lost 20 pounds and went on to lose a total of 45 my freshman year of high school.

Eventually emphysema and alcoholism took their toll, and she moved into a nursing home in her 60s. She died five months before I got married at age 22.

Her IQ score was off the charts, and in the 1930s Violet headed off to college to study journalism with a fur coat and her own car. She dropped out and married my grandfather, who graduated with a pharmacy degree and later bought his own drugstore.

She loved to drive and, as chronicled here before, would take my mom and her siblings plus great grandpa on car trips all over the country. My grandfather could never leave his business. The only state that ever did her in driving-wise was West Virginia (birthplace of my younger son and ‘home’ for 15 years), pre-interstate highway.

Whenever I’m stressed I crave M&Ms mixed with mini marshmallows in a little paper cup.

And wish all of life’s problems that cause those lilac shadows under my eyes could be solved by a ‘midnight snack.’

Back to school

This morning my 16-year-old (for one more week) told me he graduates from high school in nine months.

This ‘revelation’ kind of took both of us aback.

He’s ready for school to start, ready for senior year, ready for what lies ahead…college...and beyond.

Me, I think I’m ready for the nursing home.

Also this morning I had a routine appointment with the surgeon who did my foot surgery last summer.  Earlier this summer I had a blood clot, most likely caused by hormones and a long car trip.  Since then I’ve been having shin pain, and the ‘good’ news is that annoyance isn’t  alarming. It just takes time for all the ‘vascular systems’ to return to normal after a blood clot.

But I also got some ‘not so good’ news. The nerve damage in my other ankle has worsened. Deep down I think I’ve known this as I limped along on my daily hour-long walks. Fortunately, I inherited my mother’s high tolerance for pain.

Unfortunately, high tolerance notwithstanding, this needs to be taken care of surgically so I can continue to be active into my declining years.

Which quite frankly have felt like this summer.

Now a disclaimer…

None of this is life threatening (well, except for the blood clot), it’s just annoying and depressing. Recovery won’t be nearly as extensive since I’m not having toes pinned, etc. as I did last summer. But the bottom line is I’ll still be inactive for a longer period of time than I’d like.

Exercise makes me happy. It keeps the endorphins flowing and prevents me from being pudgier than I am.

My ‘baby’ graduates from high school in nine months, and it took me ten years to lose the worst of the baby weight.

Another disclaimer: My mother says the statute of limitations is up on that area of blame.

Exercise also gifts me with excellent cholesterol numbers, keeps me off high blood pressure medications, and staves off the diabetes which runs rampant on both sides of my family.

So…if I want to be able to keep exercising I have to take time to have surgery and recover.

Time has a way of passing quickly though.

After all, in nine months my baby graduates from high school.

Dog Days of Summer

As I sit and write this in my air-conditioned-resembles-a-room-on-TLC’s-hoarders-office, I’m reflecting on yet another summer come and soon will go.

Good riddance to bad rubbish I say, or rather write.

My six-year-old niece is in the hospital getting hopefully her last EEG to see if she can be weaned off her seizures medication. Serious heart issues as a baby led to surgery as a toddler. Meanwhile, in Dorothy Gale’s home territory, my 44-year-old cousin is recovering from quadruple bypass surgery after a second stint in the hospital due to a blood clot in his leg.

His adorable wife says he was just trying to copy me.

Recently the ‘perfect storm’ of circumstances led to the diagnosis of a blood clot in my right leg, the kind that can cause a pulmonary embolism. Today I got the ‘go ahead’ to resume most normal activities (see aforementioned office in need of shoveling out) and the quest to regulate the drug I’m on continues.

Fortunately, we have excellent medical care. And everyone who’s ever been on blood thinners assures me this is the way it is with, well, blood thinners.

If not for Coumadin, we never would have met one of our oldest (not age wise) and dearest friends, Jean Holter. She was our neighbor years ago, as was her mother, Doris. When Doris, whom we’d never met, had Coumadin-triggered nose bleed, Ralph took her to the ER… it being the neighborly thing to do.

Since that day, even though we may not literally share blood, Jean is family through and through.

This morning I went into the clinic for bloodwork. Sitting across from me in the waiting room sat a man staring pensively at the ground. He had a port in his arm… chemo therapy for cancer? He also had a titanium leg… bone cancer? His posture said he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Another dear old (not age wise) friend and I often ruminate on how feeling sorry for oneself is selfish because there are always others so much worse off. Conversely, we take turns reminding each other we can’t always adopt the attitude ‘There but for the grace of God go I (and mine)’ no matter how noble.

But at the end of the day, we know we are fortunate no matter what trials and tribulations (health or otherwise) life throws the way of us and our loved ones.

This summer has seen some crappy lows and some wonderful highs -- including time spent with those longtime (not old) friends and others. Instead of wishing the season away, I’m just going to enjoy every day – if not every bump in the road.

Recently on a steamy night, another friend, Elizabeth, and I (definitely not old…she was born the year I was a junior in high school) sat on my deck. She has two wonderful children, a pre-schooler and one about to enter kindergarten. It’s always hard to process when your first child is about to head to school. Me, the queen of holding on and letting go, is finding it hard to believe my ‘baby’ is going to be a senior in high school. I’d say it seems like only yesterday he entered kindergarten (God Bless Mrs. VanHorn) but in actuality it seems like an eternity.

Anway…I digress…as usual. My young mom friend told me I was the one who told her to enjoy the moment(s) with her children, and she’s taken that to heart. Her disclosure touched me.

No matter what’s going on in life, we need to enjoy and embrace every moment…and not let the sucky ones get us down.