Aack! I just lost my blog post Okay, in a nutshell (because I really need to get back to work), I was saying how wonderful it feels to actually feels as if I'm getting my life back. Found out that caffeine was interfering with the medication I've been taking, so I had to go cold turkey on my beloved Diet Pepsi , but I finally have enough energy to do laundry and dishes (yay???) and I'm able to concentrate for long enough periods to actually write again. So yeah, even laundry and dishes are welcome additions to my day! Off to write a new scene.

It's A Dog's Life

HAPPY DOG!!!

NOT SO HAPPY DOG

Ah, the indignity of it all!

Shoes . . . Who needs 'em?

I don't want to jinx it by saying this aloud, but I think spring might finally have come to the Rocky Mountains. It's a seriously gorgeous day today. The kind of day that lifts your mood and makes you want to get up and do things. Tulips and daffodils are in bloom in my yard, flowering shrubs dot the landscape, and fruit trees are in bloom everywhere you look. Three days ago, we had six inches of snow on the front lawn; today, the temperature is supposed to hit 72 F, and there's no real snow in the forecast. That means that I finally get to put away my shoes (have I ever mentioned that I really don't like shoes?) and pull out my flip-flops. I love flip-flops. Always have. When I was a girl, my mother made me wear saddle oxfords for almost every occasion. I hated them. One year, she even told me that they would make me run fast, and I, gullible little thing that I was, believed her.

She lied. The only time she let me wear flip-flops (known as "thongs" in the olden days, but not now for . . . well, obvious reasons, I guess) was when I went swimming. The minute I came home, it was back into the saddle oxfords for me. Now I'm not saying I was rebellious, but the more I had to wear the saddle oxfords the more I longed for the thongs. And now, as an adult, I've finally given myself permission to wear them. My collection will probably never rival Linda Howard's (a collection of flip-flops that is truly amazing) but it's growing. I'm currently on the prowl for a pair of cute, black, beaded flip-flops. You know . . . for your more elegant occasions.

I'll keep you posted

Random Thoughts on a Monday Morning

Yesterday the weather was warm and springlike. Perfect for Easter. 65 degrees and sunny, a slight breeze for most of the day. In the afternoon, though, the wind picked up and around here that's always a bad sign. That means a storm is on the way into the valley. Sure enough, this morning I'm sitting in my chair watching snow fall. Lots of snow. That's springtime in the Rockies For those of you who celebrate Easter, I hope your holiday was a lovely one. We had a very quiet day at my house, which is exactly what I wanted. I've been a single mom for most of my kids' lives, and now that they're getting older and out on their own, there's nothing I like better than to have them both at home, kicking back like we used to. Nothing special. No huge meal plans. Just the three of us in comfy clothes talking or watching movies or whatever we feel like doing at the moment. That's what yesterday was for me, and it renewed my spirit in a way nothing else can.

I was scheduled to travel out of town for a firewalkers critique group this weekend, but one of my critique partners is a rancher with cows and irrigation issues and all the stuff that comes along with cows and ranch land. The cows need her this weekend more than the Firewalkers do, so we're skipping our meeting this weekend. I'm disappointed in a way because I always love our weekend getaways on Jo's property, but I'm also relieved in a way because the projects I'm working on right now are very fragile in my head and they're not ready to be poked and prodded by anyone else yet. Not that the Firewalkers poke or prod where they shouldn't. I don't mean that at all, but I am noticing a difference in my creative process. When I first started writing, I found it much easier to discuss ideas and works in progress with other people than I do now. Now, I find that the story has to have a certain amount of substance before I can release it to anyone else. A lot of times I have to write many pages of what the story isn't before I find what the story is. Until I have a fairly firm grasp on what the story is, I can't let any part of it go. I don't really know what has brought about the difference, but every time I allow someone else's fingers to stir the mist of an unformed story, I regret it. So while I'll miss seeing my friends, catching up on their lives since the last time we got together, and all the laughter that always punctuates any Firewalker weekend, on a professional level I'm relieved to have a little more time to put some substance in the story clouds that currently fill my head.

I Walk the Line

As always, I'm way behind on my movie watching, so I just saw "I Walk the Line" for the first time over the weekend. I'd already added it to my Netflix queue, but Vanessa, my youngest daughter, decided to buy the DVD after seeing the movie in the theater, so it got bumped up in priority. I realize that my opinion doesn't matters all that much, but I'm probably one of the few people on the planet who came away from that movie both a little creeped out by the relationship between Johnny and June Carter Cash -- at least the way it was portrayed in the movie -- and confused about why Reese Witherspoon would win an Academy Award for her performance. I'm hoping that the real life relationship between Johnny and June was more like love and less like unhealthy obsession than Hollywood made it seem. I was the object of an unhealthy obsession back in my younger years -- one that took place in the world of musicians and performances a lot like the Cashes -- and all I can say is that having a married man get drunk and high and become self-destructive over you is nowhere near as flattering as it looks on screen. As for Reese Witherspoon's performance, it wasn't bad. Really, it wasn't. She did a pretty good job, in fact, but there wasn't one moment during that movie when I forgot that I was watching Reese Witherspoon pretending to be June Carter Cash. She never became June to me, and that means her performance fell a bit short of my personal standard for Oscar-winning performance. Of course, as I said before, I'm seriously behind in my movie-watching, so I have no idea what the competition was really like, although I have to say that just based on the trailers I've seen, it's very likely that Felicity Huffman would have won my vote. You know . . . if I'd been asked. Which I wasn't. So I guess I'll stop thinking about Reese and Joaquin and Johnny and June, and start thinking bout revising the opening scenes of my current Work in Progress so I can get this proposal to my editor -- which I really need to do soon.