The shrewd reader of this blog (okay, only the very shrewd reader) will notice that I missed my Sunday post this week. I’ve been attempting to blog on Sundays and Thursdays, at least; but then, in the last two weeks, things sort of exploded on me. Here’s a summary.

Last week:
I received notice that a story I’d submitted to a publication had sold, so we had to deal with the attendant contract. As this was my first story, this was my first experience with the process.
On the advice of multiple colleagues (friends, actually, but “colleagues” sounds more professional,) I decided to join Twitter – and then I spent buckets of time setting up my account and learning the ropes. (I’m still figuring out how to best manage the whole thing.)
Our baby turned two years old. I made him a complicated cake and threw him a simple party, and much merriment ensued.

This week:
We’ve made one trip out of town and may make another one tomorrow.
I thought up some story and essay ideas, started fiddling with them, then started researching which magazines to submit them to. As my fellow writers know, this is fun but takes forever, especially when you’ve never done it before.
Our four-year-old starts preschool this week, and I’ve been busy making last-minute supply runs and schedule changes, filling out forms, and preparing the little creative projects that he must take with him on his first day (and which I’m desperately hoping do not turn out to be the lamest specimens in his class. I am SO not crafty. Why couldn’t they ask me to write an essay about the first day of school, or bake a quiche or something? I’d be all over that.)

In addition to all of this, I’ve had my normal tasks of: chasing after and snuggling with and tending to two very cute, very high-maintenance toddlers; menu-planning and shopping and cooking and baking for the family; giving piano lessons; running 12+ miles a week; keeping our house to a tolerable level of “clean” (tolerable to us, that is, which is admittedly a lower standard than that of my amazing sis-in-law, whose floors you could eat off of at any given moment); and picking up clutter, and picking up clutter, and picking up clutter…

Basically, suddenly, writing has gone from being a jolly hobby to being something akin to an actual second job – a job that I adore, to be sure, but one that I have very little time for and which hasn’t much of an income. The lack-of-income part is fine; the lack-of-time part is an absolute beast.

(And to think, as of a couple of months ago, my only intentions were to quietly practice writing for a few years, and maybe start up a simple blog! What do they say about the best laid plans…?)

(Oh, you may have noticed that “reading” was not listed anywhere in the recent activities. We’re not mentioning that fact around the blogger right now. It makes her testy.)

Last week my boys, confronted with a persistent profile view of me hunched over the computer and with my general distractedness, staged an understandable revolt. They got whiny. They got hysterical. They stopped following directions. Nobody was happy, and I wasn’t getting any writing done, to boot. I guess I’m right in the middle of a period of life frustrating art – which is much better than the other way around, to be sure. I’ve just got to figure out how to juggle all of these new demands, without them gobbling up time that rightfully belongs to my boys.

All of that to say, I hope to have you back to your regularly scheduled programming within the next week. I have been working on some blog posts, in between everything else. I’m fervently hoping they turn out to be coherent. And in English.

I appreciate your support and continued interest, from the bottom of my time-strapped heart.