Sweet Dreams

Life is just too busy to blog these days. I was sick for two weeks, but I’m over it now. Martin, Shea and our nanny all caught it from me, and Martin and Shea are still getting over it. Shea had a really high fever the last three days, so I took him to the doctor. She was baffled. She said he was the healthiest sick person she’d seen all week because he was talking (bababa, dadada), smiling, etc. I could tell that he wasn’t himself because he wasn’t jumping around and laughing like he usually does, but she couldn’t find anything wrong with him. I gave him both Tylenol and Motrin again last night and his fever was gone this morning, so we’ll see. (Yesterday the same thing happened and his fever was back to 103 by afternoon).

I’m having a harder time sticking with my writing schedule. Rather than force myself to do the five hours in one day, I think, “Oh, if I don’t do them, I’ll just make them up some night this week.” So yesterday I only did two hours and now I have three hours to make up and no evenings free to do them. (And yes, I should be doing them now instead of blogging.) Anyway, goals are much more enjoyable when you make them, so I’ve got to get back on track today.

I took on a new SAT student last week, and I haven’t tutored the SAT in more than a year (maybe two) and I’ve forgotten everything in those practice tests (I have my students do a test a week), so now I’M doing an SAT a week, and it’s a LOT of extra time out of my schedule.

In addition to my strict new writing schedule and doing an SAT a week, our house near Guerneville is about to go on the rental market, so there’s been a lot of last minute things to do, including all the paperwork with the management company. I spent half my work day doing that stuff yesterday. I’m happy that it’s almost done, but it’s really taking up a lot of my time. And when I was up there this past weekend, I was feeling despondent that I never get to have any FUN when I’m there. The point was to have a place to hang out, play board games, go hiking, etc. I hardly ever get out of the house when I’m up there (which is almost every weekend) because I’m either working or watching Shea while Martin works. I’ve hardly done any hikes, haven’t been in the river once all season, and have played maybe one board game all year. But we did get our pool table Saturday and I played one quick game, and I make sure to use the hot tub at least once per weekend. Still, I’ll be happy when I can go up there and enjoy it and not spend every weekend painting, cleaning and running errands.

I signed Shea up for music classes yesterday, so in September we’ll be going to the library Mondays for their little baby/toddler story hour and to music class on Thursdays (as well as swimming). Should be fun.

Shea still isn’t crawling, which is fine since we still haven’t babyproofed the house yet. I think he’s just not that motivated to go anywhere. He’s been on all fours for two months, rocking back and forth and maybe moving one hand forward, but then he just gets tired and lies down. He can sit up on his own now, though. And his new thing is to point up in the air and say, “Da!” I thought he was pointing at lights at first, but he seems to point at anything that interests him. He’s also started reaching his arms up when he wants you to pick him up, which I think is so cute. Before he would just cry.

Last night we had dinner at Quince, a fancy restaurant in San Francisco. It was very exciting to CROSS THE BRIDGE for dinner. We had our friends A&A babysit, and Shea did wake up (which he doesn’t usually do), but they managed to soothe him back to sleep. Quince was delicious. At first I thought it wasn’t as good as Chez Panisse (and maybe it isn’t), but then my duck came and I had to reassess. It was damn good duck and I haven’t had duck since I lived in Paris! Crazy! I used to eat duck all the time, and I miss it—yum. So we ate and ate and ate, and then forked over our life savings to pay for the bill, but it was worth it.

So now it’s 6:50 a.m. (I slept about five hours last night) and I have to read pieces for my writers group meeting, then get ready for work, then take care of Shea when he gets up at 8, then leave for the city at 9, work until 2 when I have my goals meeting, come home by 5, take care of Shea until 6:30, then go to my writers group, come home around 9:30 or 10 and do some SAT. This is my life. There’s no break! And when I do have a break late in the evening I watch Battlestar Galactica with Martin. We’re near the end of Season Three, and it’s so good. I love that show. It was killing me to have the disc with me all weekend up at the river and not have time to watch it.

Our river house, by the way (which isn’t actually on the river) is called Sweet Dreams and will be listed very soon with Russian River Getaways. I’ll post a link once they have the listing ready (ie once I send them the photos, something I plan to do, uh, at 11 p.m. tonight?) Zzzzzz…

Quick update

Home sick this week. Feel like dog poo.

Shea has a third tooth coming in, so he’s waking up a lot during the night.

Took Shea on the steam train in Tilden Park today. So fun. I wanted to go for a second ride, but my back was hurting from sitting with him in the Ergo - since there are no backs or sides to the train.

Made my goals last week. It feels great to be getting so much work done (13 hours on my book), but I need to find a way to do it without getting sick. I’ll be happy when all our weekend home improvement projects are over. Almost there!

Behind on reading a book for the Chronicle, but it’s really good, so I’m going to get to it as soon as Shea goes to bed tonight.

Our 2nd wedding anniversary was yesterday. We celebrated by … doing nothing! Really the plan was to go out for dinner tonight because I had writers group last night, but I ended up too sick for either one, so we’re postponing until next week.

Pseudoephedrine is evil. I’ll never ever take it again. Hate the stuff. Went through my big stash of cold medicine and threw everything out that had it in it - which was almost everything. Makes me really ill. Ugh.

That’s all for now!

Fuck my life!

My nieces’ and nephews’ statuses on Facebook are always so dramatic! “Fuck my life!” “No matter how much I try, it still hurts,” etc. etc. Was I like that when I was in high school/college? No my life is so boring: “M- is tired,” “M- is writing,” “M- is changing her fourth poopy diaper today.”

This is Gonna Hurt

I hired a motivational coach this morning, the one I took the seminar from last year. I feel like I don’t have anyone in my life who’s pushing me to get my book done right now. The members of my goals group have been slacking—not showing up to meetings and not setting goals. Same with my writers group—not many people coming or turning in chapters (every meeting it’s me and one other person up for critique). My writing partner isn’t writing much, and I have 500 other things to keep me distracted. So I hired the coach. And she’s tough (her name is Martha Borst if you’re wondering.) So now I have goals that I can’t slack on because she’ll open up a can of whoop ass on me if I do. Or she’ll refuse to work with me. That’s what she said. When I told her my goal was to finish my book ASAP, like end of September, she said I needed to quit focusing on finishing it and focus on working on it instead. Otherwise I’ll write a crappy book. And with the attitude of wanting to be done with it instead of wanting to be working on it, I won’t enjoy working on it. And I’ll write a crappy book. She said to make my goal to finish this DRAFT with the understanding that it may need more work after that (Oh God, please no!) and she convinced me to give myself until October 15 to have a more realistic deadline. And I agreed to a bunch of other things that sound un-fun, but will help me get it done, like:

1. Get up at 7 a.m. on my work days and run, shower, eat breakfast BEFORE Shea wakes up at 8 (this means going to bed earlier).

2. Have laptop, etc. packed the night before (This means no checking e-mail in the morning).

3. Get out of the house within 15 minutes after the nanny arrives (Gulp. It usually takes me two hours).

4. Take 15 minute lunches (Gulp. This means eating at my desk.)

5. Write for FIVE hours of the five hours and forty-five minutes I’m at the office (Double gulp. This means no e-mail, no Internet, no talking to friends, just eat, pump, pee and write.)

6. Write three hours on Fridays, my work-from-home day (That’s reasonable).

7. Complete revisions of all chapters I’ve submitted to my writers group by next Friday (Gulp).

8. After that, revise two chapters a week, plus additional revisions to chapters given to my group.

9. This doesn’t include writing book reviews. Work extra hours at night if I have to.

10. Complete third draft—this is non-negotiable—by October 15. Then regroup.

Gulp.

Too much to do in too little time

I’ve been trudging along very slowly on my book these past two weeks. Last week I wrote almost nothing at all. I spent most of my nanny time doing other things, like paying bills and doing laundry. I needed to do some things for myself - go running, do yoga and read. I’ve been doing those three things and it feels good, but I’m also anxious to get back to work. Yesterday and today I tried gluing myself to the chair, turning off e-mail and doing nothing but writing for three straight hours. Yesterday I lasted 37 minutes. Today I didn’t even last that long. I feel a weird sense of calm mixed with an overwhelming sense of having TOO MUCH TO DO. I feel behind on everything and yet know that none of those things are urgent. Here’s my list of things I’ve behind on:

1. Reading the baby sign book
2. Writing in Shea’s baby book
3. Organizing vacation photos
4. Writing thank you cards
5. Childproofing
6. Reading (and yet I’m reading more than I’m doing a lot of other things right now)
7. Revising chapters
8. Going to Brushstrokes to finish the plaques of Shea’s foot prints that I started two months ago
9. A bunch of other “busy” things, like balancing checkbook, ordering light-blocking shades, buying a neck brace, changing doctor appt, changing long distance phone plan, etc, etc.

Okay, so what HAVE I been doing?
1. Attempting to write
2. Reading Stumbling on Happiness
3. Laundry, dishes, general house stuff
4. Taking care of Shea
5. Buying and making my own baby food - zucchini, yams, applesauce with cinnamon, soy beans, tofu, mango, peaches, etc.
6. Running, yoga
7. Some tutoring
8. Some errands
9. Some childproofing

I’m tired just thinking about it all.

Gunshots

I heard two gunshots on our block-long street about half an hour ago. Called the police. Someone else had just called, so they sent someone over. I went out and talked to the cop, but I don’t think there’s much he can do. A car had sped away afterward (and then another car, unless it was the same one twice), but no one saw it/them. I was too afraid to go outside to look. Hopefully just some kids screwing around.

Pictures!

It will be a while before I have time to cull through these photos for the good ones, but for now here are 1100 (gulp) photos we took during our vacation to Michigan. It’s easy to click through pages if you have the time.

Cute!

Shea is at such a cute stage right now. He has two teeth halfway in, he’s sitting up and he’s laughing more and more. I used to have to tickle him to get him to laugh, but this week he’s been laughing spontaneously for really silly reasons. I’ll have him in the Bjorn and bend over and he’ll start laughing, or he’ll drop his ball and I’ll give it back to him and he’ll laugh. Today I sat him up on the bed and he fell back on the pillow and started laughing. So cute! And he’s eating bananas now and puréed (yum!) turkey. Also peas, green beans, peaches, mangos, blueberries, apples, pears, yams, sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, potatoes and corn from baby food jars. I’m working on making him more homemade food - zucchini and apples, beans and yogurt. And we’ve been trying to teach him to crawl. He can scoot and little and he can stand on his hand and knees, but hasn’t put those two together yet. He’s getting big! About 18 pounds now. I’ve started carrying him in the Ergo on my back because he’s a bit too heavy for the Bjorn now (at least for my shoulders to withstand him.)

Writing, etc.

I’m having a hard time getting back to work on my book. I always have a hard transitioning after vacation. I started reading a good book, though, which is motivating me. (It’s called The Good Thief and it’s not out yet.) And I did get an hour and a half of writing done today.

I’m blogging so much tonight, by the way, because I took two Excedrin migraine pills and they have caffeine in them. I’m really sensitive to caffeine. I need a time release capsule on my blog posts so you can read them over the next two weeks.

I had bad headaches today, by the way, because that fun thing that comes every month for women just started for the first time in a year and a half. It was fun being a man for a while. I’ve felt sick to my stomach, moody and achy for several days now.

FieldReport

The FieldReport contest took up so much of my time over the past month that I don’t feel like spending a lot of time writing about it now. I am happy to say, however, that I won my category (Travel & Nature) with a $2000 prize. Here’s a link to the site and all the winning stories. Please stay tuned for their next contest and enter to win cash prizes if you have a good “true life” story to tell. And now my drama:

There were 18 categories, two of which paid $2000 prizes and the rest which paid $1000. I entered two categories — Travel & Nature for $2000 and Food & Drink for $1000. The grand prize was $20,000, which is what motivated me and several of my writer friends to submit stories in the first place. (I didn’t, by the way, submit anything from my memoir because I knew that the website would have rights to my story if it won a prize. In fact, I wrote two new stories specifically for the contest.) Anyway …

My Food & Drink story was in first place in its category until it got labeled “miscategorized” and bumped to Friends & Family, where it remained at number seven until the last day of the contest. My other story made it to the top ten of all categories a day before the contest was about to end. So I e-mailed my friends and family members and said, “Vote for me! I could win $20,000!” FieldReport has a method for preventing people from voting for their friends (which I won’t go into), but suffice it to say the method was flawed. A bunch of my friends and family members voted for me the night before the contest was to end and sent my stories to numbers one and two for the $20,000 grand prize! I couldn’t think for dreaming about winning $23,000 (with category prizes). Then, at 11 p.m. that night, I was suddenly erased from the site. My stories were removed, and so was my profile. No explanation. No word from the website. I e-mailed a query and got a response from the CEO saying they were investigating “suspicious reviewing activity” and that my stories were temporarily removed. The next morning I set my alarm clock up to get early (the contest ended at 9 a.m. EST). I was still erased from the site! I wrote the CEO another e-mail asking why I’d been disqualified for asking my friends to vote for me. Then I noticed that the contest had been extended a couple of hours. Still no word from the CEO. Then the contest got extended again. This happened throughout the day until I eventually stopped checking the site. Toward the end of the afternoon, I got an e-mail from the CEO saying some people who had reviewed my story had abused the system, so their reviews had been removed. The contest was over at that point and I had won the Travel & Nature category. My second story was still removed, but he assured me it would be reinstated for the next contest. In the end I was ranked number 9 for the grand prize. I didn’t argue. I was happy to be back in the contest and to have won $2000. I knew, anyway, that it wasn’t really fair to the “real” grand prize winner to flood the site with votes from my friends. So I’m glad it worked out the way it did. And soon they’ll announce the prizes for their next contest. The website officially launched July 1. I was in on their beta version. And that’s my story. Maybe I should enter it on FieldReport.

UPDATE: It’s appropriate that I blogged about FieldReport last night. They just announced their next grand prize of $250,000—possibly the largest prize for a single piece of writing on Earth.