Balance, Juggling and Writing in the Summer Months

I'm in awe of authors who manage to write in the summer months. Many juggle a house full of children, hold full-time jobs and keep spouses and significant others happy while managing to write and publish books. I'm single and dating, I juggle a small house, care for a largish Pug and a year old kitten. I have a great group of friends I love to visit with and I can barely manage to write for three or four hours a day this summer. How do they do it?

I suppose this is where babysitters, summer camps, stay-at-home husbands, and grandparents come in for these super authors. I like to imagine that their homes look like a train wreck or look like a small tornado went through, but I highly doubt it. I see incredible organization, spotless homes decorated a la minimalist, and no clutter. I certainly don't see piles of laundry, papers that need sorting through, and pets holding their water and food dishes, hoping to get their master's attention. Okay, that's my house. I'm seeing my house.

I read several blogs written by women authors and I can look at a photograph and know who has their stuff together. There's a confidence that radiates from some of these women and I know they run their homes and lives like a well-oiled machine. I ran such a machine when I was married and had children at home, but I didn't write books in those days. I wrote in my journal daily, but I certainly wasn't writing books.

As a single woman with no children at home, I'm finding it difficult to write in the summer months. That shouldn't be, right? Well, believe it. My garden and the Museum rose garden I volunteer at on Saturdays constantly call to me for more attention, especially in light of all the rain we've had this month. My old house is a work-in-progress and as with any 107-year old house, there's always a window sill to strip and a staircase to sand in preparation for painting. I still have two upstairs bedrooms to paint and tile floors to put down in my kitchen and bathroom. The work never ends in this house I bought two years ago. My house wasn't exactly a fixer-upper, but it definitely needed painting throughout.

How will I organize myself in the summer months to write? I won't. I won't drive myself bonkers, trying to get it all done. How will I get this new book written? One page at a time. I just have to reorganize my priorities. The painting will get done in the fall and winter months when the gardens are slowing down and the new flooring will be down before Christmas. I'll continue with my weekly cleaning and write when I can this summer. I'm going on vacation with my kids and visiting friends in NYC in August which I'm excited about and I'm planning a trip to Boston with a new friend in September to visit his daughter and then, shoot up to visit my family for a few days. I also have blogger friends I want to see this summer.

Balance. I'm trying to find the right balance in my life where I get my work done and I also have a life, especially a social life. After all, I'm a single girl :)

Peace and love,
Ellie

Spinning Yarns and Ghost Stories Around the Campfire

I spent Saturday evening sitting on that log around a blazing fire in the fire pit pictured below with two good friends, a married couple, their enormous Golden Retriever and their male friend who became a new friend to me.

When my Northern Virginia friends called to invite me to share their rented cabin, I was thrilled. I love the mountains and boy, were they really tucked in deep in the woods. After a few wrong turns, I finally found them.

As soon as I arrived, the grilling began--hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken thighs and the best baked beans ever which reminds me that I need that recipe. Well, after our delicious meal, it was time to sit around the campfire which our host had dug out earlier that afternoon.

We each had a log to sit on around the blazing fire and the conversation and laughs continued under a starry, starry night. Around 10 pm, the subject of ghosts and spirits came up as it ALWAYS does around a campfire! Here we are, forty and fifty year olds, sitting around the campfire spinning yarns about ghostly apparitions, telling ghost stories about unexplained phenomena, and urban legends from around the world. We four were clearly storytellers and nothing had changed--we four seemed to go back in time and became kids again.

As the stories continued and I told my story about the ghost in my house (true), all of the sudden, the cabin seemed far away and the woods around us seemed to circle in closer. I honestly was a bit afraid and kept looking over my shoulder into the woods imagining all sorts of things! Bears, bobcats and rogue West Virginian mountain men! My girlfriend's husband is a real jokester and loves pranking people, so I was alert and watched him like a hawk. My friend doesn't mind being his accomplice, so I was watching her, too. I just knew that he was up to no good. Every time he excused him to either get a beer or use the facilities, I stood up and kept a good eye on the path from the house to the fire pit. No one was going to sneak up on me!

At one point, our hosts went inside for more drinks, leaving me with my new friend, a former police officer. We'd just discovered that we shared a love of travel and adventure and he was telling me about a recent trip to Brazil. We were so engrossed in conversation that I'd neglected to keep an eye out for our hosts. I told him that I was a little spooked about how dark it was and how I didn't trust our host when all of the sudden, I felt a furry paw on my arm. Well, I screamed what was most definitely a blood-curdling scream. I jumped up and grabbed the man's arm and he yelled, too! This big, burly guy and I whipped around the see our host's Golden Retriever wagging his tail and 'smiling' a goofy smile like only a Golden can. The 'monster' dog  quiet had been quiet as a mouse and as stealthy as a thief as he approached us, we hadn't heard a thing until his paw landed on my arm.

Of course, my (our!) scream brought out our hosts and soon we were laughing our heads off. What a night :)

I hope you had a super weekend. I sure did.

Peace and love,
Ellie