It's the most wonderful time of the year!

The holidays are officially OVER.

The very first week of January could quite possibly be my favorite time of the year. It's a fresh start to a new year. It's 300 days until we have to deal with the holidays again. It should be 330 days, but thanks to retail America, we get Christmas shoved down our throats sometime around Halloween.

I love the idea of the holidays. The family time, a reason to annihilate the kitchen, an excuse to drink to excess. I love Christmas lights hung outside. I love lying to small children about Santa. I like peppermint flavored things and pumpkin pie. There are plenty of reasons to love the holidays. 

Problem is, almost all of the good stuff gets buried in the nonsense of the season. There's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer playing at Target before Thanksgiving. There's advertising galore, slick newspaper inserts filled with Chinese crap. The obligations to buy buy buy. It feels like one big retail orgy and we Americans are all too willing to participate. 

This year was our first Christmas back in the house. Before, when we were living on the boat, Christmas caused me major anxiety. We had no spare room for extra stuff. The kid's toys were already taking up much of our minimal storage space. And then bam! Christmas and three sets of grandparents and a great-grandmother and aunts and uncles and everybody wanting to buy him toys and even right this second I can feel myself hyperventilating just thinking about it. It's not like he got tons of stuff, but when you have nowhere to put the stuff you already have and then have to make room for more stuff...well. It's stressful. 

We didn't decorate much on the boat. We'd hang a few strands of lights on the lifelines around the deck. We'd buy a rosemary plant shaped like a Christmas tree and decorate it with felted elves and strings of cranberries and keep it on our table. I'd use the rosemary in stews and meat pies all winter long. We'd use our own wool socks for stockings. We started a tradition of making Mexican food for Christmas dinner. Chile verde and fresh tortillas and margaritas. It was all simple and relaxing. No fuss. 

This was our first Christmas in a house in five years. I could've bought a tree, a tree skirt, a star for the tree, lights, garland, stockings. We could have had a wreath for the front door, poinsettias for the entry. We could've bought our kid fifty presents, because now he has room for them all. He wanted an Xbox. He wanted a TV. His friends got both. He got a microscope, which he needed for school anyway.

Instead of a tree we bought some Scotch pine seeds and we're attempting to grow a tree from scratch. We have a Vanderwulf pine out back and we made garland from popcorn and cranberries and draped it over the branches. The squirrels loved us for it. Kiddo cut out some paper snowflakes and we hung them on the windows. His stocking was a beanie he was getting as a gift anyway. Jon bought me a fire pit. I bought him a bottle of scotch. We sat outside around the fire pit. A light snow was falling. Kiddo wore his beanie. Hubs sipped his scotch. Chile verde simmered in the crockpot. We enjoyed the season for what it is: A time to hunker down with family, with the people you love most. A time to enjoy each other. To appreciate the little things.

Winter is for staying inside, staying warm. It's a time to catch up on reading, to play games, think quiet thoughts, take a deep breath from summer. But instead we run around like a bunch of mad fools, shopping, shopping, shopping because it's what's expected of us. It's what we're supposed to do. Stress out, make ourselves sick, over-plan, over-spend, fill our homes with junk.

I propose the fire pit. The scotch. Let's take back December and celebrate the season in a meaningful way. 

Three hundred days left. Enjoy your year. 

Immortal Greyhound

Ten years ago I decided we needed a dog.

When the hubs got the airline pilot gig we were engaged and living with my dad. I had people around me all the time even when hubs was off flying a trip. Between all of us, we had a slew of animals. A couple of dogs (my dad's), a few house rabbits (our's) and a cat who had come to us from the fiery depths of hell (Satan itself). My brother and his girlfriend were always hanging around and they had a boxer puppy. Life was hectic and crazy and kind of fun.

And then we moved to Denver.

We moved into an apartment and all of a sudden I was alone four days a week. I didn't know anybody here and for the first time in my life, I was really, truly alone for the majority of the week. We didn't live in the best area and I thought that if I had a dog I'd feel safer, a little less lonely. I wanted something big, with humongous teeth and a fierce loyalty to me.

I'd seen ads for a few different Denver greyhound rescues and I thought a greyhound would be awesome to live with.

We were living in a third-floor apartment and only one of the rescues would place greyhounds in apartments, so by default we went with them. We spent some time browsing the available dogs on their website.

And then I found him.

He was a huge dog, pony-sized, and his racing name was Nodak Fiddler. He was a beautiful fawn color, with a dignified look about him. He looked nothing like the other greyhounds, especially the little ratty one sporting a dumbass look on her face. We called the rescue place. We told them we wanted to adopt Nodak Fiddler.

But of course somebody else had just adopted him. My beautiful, strong boy. It wasn't meant to be.*

We drove to the rescue place to pick one out in person. The dogs were all in a huge pen and when we went in we were swarmed. Barking, jumping, excited dogs. Pick me! Pick me! It was overwhelming. And then there she was. The scrawny looking one, the one I saw online and made a joke about. She came up to us sweetly, gently. Leaned against us. Gave us her best I-might-be-a-dumbass-but-I'm-really-very-super-sweet look. Okay. Okay, we'll take you.

So I wanted a dog in part to feel safe, no?

We get her to the apartment and she's all excited and happy and then we get to the stairs. Three sets of them. And she looks at us like, whatthefuckarethese? Her legs--legs that had carried her miles upon miles around the racetrack, legs that had won many races--no longer worked. She looked up at the hubs with her big brown eyes. He scooped her up and carried her up all three flights of stairs. And then back down and up again each time she felt the need to pee. And then he taught her how to climb the stairs by strategically placing each paw on the correct stair and nudging her up with a sweet cooing voice.

So much for fierce. I was hoping the criminals weren't watching this.

Also, so much for loyalty to me. She was smitten with the hubs. She tolerated me only because I knew where the food was when the hubs was out of town.

Eventually she got the hang of the stairs. After that it didn't take her long to adapt to house life. She claimed an armchair as hers and parked her ass in it for no less than twenty-three hours a day. She quickly learned the art of being naughty and she was very good at it. She loved to knock over the trash can and scatter coffee grounds and eat the egg shells. She'd somehow climb up on our dining table and stare out the window overlooking the parking lot. She'd howl like a banshee when we were gone, like somebody was murdering her.

She wasn't thrilled when the baby was born, but she dealt with him much in the same way she dealt with me. She wasn't thrilled with boat life, but she liked the daily walks and her encounters with all of the dipshit city folk who'd never seen a greyhound before. I've lost count of all the people who would ask me if she was a cheetah or a tiger. Yeah, 'cause I'd totally be walking my cheetah around town. She tried to prove her cheetahness by ripping the face off any labrador that came too close. She had a thing about labs.

We knew going into greyhound adoption that our greyhound would likely have a lifespan of only 10-12 years. She was three when we adopted her. When her tenth birthday rolled around we were both a little sad. She was officially in the lifespan range. Her eleventh birthday came and went. And then the twelfth. Last July we celebrated the big thirteen and she earned the nickname of Immortal Greyhound. She was healthy and showed no signs of slowing down.

Until the day she did. It was a couple months ago. She developed a limp and we attributed it to either her clumsiness or arthritis. We upped her glucosamine and helped her up and down our steep patio steps. And then all of a sudden she developed a mass on her shoulder. It doubled size in a week and she went from playing and dancing around one day to not being able to move the next.

We knew it was time. It turns out that she had osteosarcoma, a form of fast spreading bone cancer.

We said goodbye two weeks ago. It was incredibly hard and sad but it was the best thing we could do for her. The vet came to our house and our old girl was able to stay comfortable as she passed away in her own surroundings. It was as peaceful as it possibly could have been and I'm so thankful she felt safe and comfortable in her final hour.

It was a good run. I'm glad she found us that day in the kennel and decided we were hers.

*After a year of greyhound naughtiness we decided she was lonely and that a companion might relieve her separation anxiety. We called the rescue to tell them we wanted another. That very same day Nodak Fiddler was brought back to the rescue because his family couldn't care for him. We drove right on down and picked him up. Talk about the craziest of coincidences.
He passed away when he was ten.

Chaise

Racing name: EJ's Destructor 

Nicknames: Brindle, Immortal Greyhound, Chizo, Snax

Trot

Racing name: Nodak Fiddler 

Nickname: Ot

Chaise, sharing a bed with pal Mo. Trot is the big boy in the background. All are probably creating mass havoc in the afterlife. This trio is missed. 

Nesting

Writing is pretty easy to blow off, especially when you're a distracted homeschooling mom with ten million other things that need attention rightthissecond. I oftentimes feel guilty spending a couple of hours holed up writing when the dishes need doing and the dinner needs cooking and the iPad has been doing all the parenting. It's sometimes hard to sit down and write when I know my time could be spent doing something else. But would that be time better spent? I can spend an hour washing dishes and scrubbing toilets and cleaning up dog shit and I'll have real things accomplished, or I can stare at the blinking cursor, the blank page, the keyboard waiting to type the story. I can create something that is mine, mine all mine. But sometimes real life wins. More times than not, thankfully, writing wins.

Having a solid routine helps tremendously. I typically write at night, when the kiddo is in bed. This means I have all day to get the real life things done, the whole day to play mom. He goes to bed and I pour a huge glass of wine and open my laptop and it's like a sigh. Writing is relaxing, it's my end of the day, it's going to bed knowing another thousand words are on the page.

A routine isn't foolproof though. Sometimes I'm exhausted at night and all I want to do is crawl into bed. Some days the kiddo never stops talking, not even for a single second, and by evening my brain is pudding and I'd be hard pressed to recite the ABCs at gunpoint. Sometimes I start projects that cut into writing time at night. Sometimes I just want to hang out with my husband and not be reclusive writer person.

We inherited a thousand projects when we moved back into our house this summer. We'd been renting it out for five year and it turns out out our tenants were shits. Their dog peed all over the down stairs carpeting. Their cats shredded our stairs. Their kids were destructive chimps, swinging from the kitchen cabinets and slamming doors so hard that the knobs caved in from the contact with the walls. Weeds choked the tiny yard and several trees were dead. The place was a mess. I was bummed because all I wanted to do was work on my writing. I was in the final revisions of my novel, Sail Away Home. I was working on the query, the synopsis. I had a new book idea I wanted to get to work on. But instead, I had a million things to do.

And I fell into the trap. The I'm too busy to write, I have more important things to do trap. I spent most of the summer reviving my poor yard. Cutting down dead tress, planting new ones, staining the deck, building a huge wall between our house and the annoying neighbors. I'd go to bed exhausted, way too tired to write. Fall came and so did inside projects. Ripping up ruined carpet, laying down new flooring. Painting over butterflies and flowers in my son's room. Getting organized.

Now it's time to get back into writing. I want to start submitting Sail Away Home after the first of the year. I want to start writing my new book as soon as possible. But I don't need anymore reasons to procrastinate than life already has to offer. I need my to-do list down to a manageable size. I need the big projects complete so my mind isn't on them, but on my new book.

For the past week I've painted the master bedroom, the kitchen, the living room and a bathroom. I've replaced the carpet in the master bedroom. I still have more to go and I should be done in a week. It feels good knowing it will all be done and I'll be free to write in a couple of weeks. It's like I'm nesting, like one might do in the final weeks before a new baby is born. In my case, the baby is my next book. I'm getting everything done and out of the way so I can concentrate on the new baby, give it my full attention. Because this time around it isn't just about the new book. There's still Sail Away Home, and the business of trying to get it into print.

Here are a few pictures of my progress so far:

Ripped-out the carpet on the stairs. Did a paper floor treatment. Will blog a tutorial later. 

Paper floor in kid's room. Fresh paint.

Fresh paint and paper floor in the master bedroom.

Paper floor hallway

Bathroom paint

Kitchen paint. 

Writing for the win!

So the other day when I was feeling sickish and lazy, literary agent Janet Reid opened a writing contest on her blog, www.jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/. The contest was based on the Alot monster from this post: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

I thought about the contest for a bit, had a couple beers, and came up with the idea of a "dumbass" factory that makes grammar and usage and spelling bad. I had 100 words or fewer to work with. I wrote a poem. It's a poem a third grader might write if third graders swore and drank.

The next day I felt sick and blah and the amount of work my crappy poem needed was way too much to consider on a sick stomach. But after a day of ignoring household obligations by way of napping and reading, guilt began creeping in. So I finished the poem and hit submit.

I immediately regretted it.

It felt so, I don't know. Goofy. But I kind of liked it. I hoped it might get a laugh out of Janet, but I was sure I bombed the contest. I thought about deleting it at one point. Would anybody get my drunken, potty-mouthed, third-grade humor? Did I make a grammar mistake somebody would point out? But whatever. I stand by my words. It was from the heart, dammit! And actually, I'm totally not a grammar nerd and I normally don't pick on the grammar/usage/spelling impaired. Aloud, anyway.

So this morning I opened up the blog to the results. As I scrolled down, my heart sank. I didn't even get a mention, like a "Not a story, but kind of funny in a bad third grade poetry way." I read through the finalists, mentally congratulating them on doing real writing. They were all very, very good. And then the winner.

Wait. What? What the fuck? My...my little crappy poem about words blowing up the bad grammar factory...won?

Which means a few things, which is what the whole point of this post is about.

1. There are people out there who have the same sense of humor as me. This is terrifying, to be honest.

2. No matter what, NO MATTER WHAT: write. If you're sick or tired or don't feel like it, just sit yo' ass down and WRITE. Another nap sounded great, hell, throwing up sounded great, but I hacked away at my entry instead.

3. Submit stuff. Because you never know who might love it. I really thought I flopped. Sometimes, (most of the time), I think my novel is going to flop, but I'm still going to submit the beast. You never know who will like your stuff. I almost didn't enter this contest and once I did I almost deleted it. Winning was a humongous confidence boost. Big bad shark agent read a tiny piece of my writing and liked it enough to declare it a winner. It's enough to fuel me for awhile, keep me going. Every word counts. Every word makes us better as writers.

I heart writing.

Lazies

We've been down with a stomach virus this week and have been lazing around. Our laziness inspires this lazy post. Basically, I'm too lazy to cobble together a coherent thought, so here are pics of my dependents being lazy.

Doesn't get lazier. 

With Gramps on the beach.

Morning coffee

Too lazy to finish that bite.

Too lazy to shake off Shamu.

Dinghy fun

When we decided to move off the boat the kiddo was especially sad. The boat was the only home he could remember. The boat had always been his safe place, his play space.

 We decided to do something special for him and give him a little bit of boat life in Colorado. He was very attached to the dinghy. There was only one thing to do.

He loved filling it up with water and using it as a kiddie pool.

Sailing with Dad and a friend.

"oaring"

Propped up at my mom's house

Cleaned up with fresh paint

Dinghy bed!! 

The steps were our sailboat's boarding steps.

Liveaboard kiddo approved!

We packed the dinghy into the back of the moving truck and propped it against the side of my mom's house. I cleaned it up really well and painted it the same color as our sailboat. We recruited my stepdad, brother and mom's neighbor to help us finagle it up our stairs. That thing is heavy and awkward as hell. We cut plywood to fit inside to make a base for the mattress. The mattress itself is a twin foam mattress from IKEA, and it fits inside the dinghy perfectly. We bought four huge rubber chocks from Harbor Freight and those are what keeps the dinghy stable.

This kid has never been able to fall asleep on his own. He's always required us to sit next to him while he falls asleep. The first night in his dinghy was the very first night he didn't need anybody to stay with him while he fell asleep. You rock, dinghy!

The bonuses of being landlubbers

There are many benefits to being back on land. Three right off the type of my head: Mr. Washer, Mrs. Dryer, Sir Dishwasher. Oh how I missed modern day appliances. I have a real laundry room. In case that isn't clear, let me restate it: An entire room. Devoted to laundry. The machines don't take quarters. No strangers are washing their underwear in them. Oh yeah.

Biggest bonus: Clio. When the decision to move back to the house was final, I decided we should get a tortoise. Not a turtle, but a tortoise, something that would get huge and eat entire heads of lettuce in one sitting and follow us around the house. Something that wouldn't live in a tank of water and spend the winter hibernating. I wanted a sturdy brute of a tortoise. The real deal. In teeny tiny baby form.

Everything good is mail ordered

CLIO!

Peek-a-boo

Piglet

Old Lady and a baby

Clio is a redfoot tortoise. She'll get between 14-16 inches long. Right now she's about three inches. She requires multiple heat and UV lights which we never would've had the power to run on a boat. Score one for landlubbering!

Gymnastics

Aspen tree high bar 

Kiddo is a gymnast. He never had room to practice on the boat so when we moved into the house we decided not to get any furniture. He has rings, a trampoline and tumbling mats in the living room where normal people would put a couch. There's a high bar installed between two dying Aspen trees out back. Score two for landlubbering!

Homeschool chemistry. Or, the art of making beer.

Homeschool journaling. Or, the art of being awesome.

Beer. And a full-sized refrigerator to store it in. Score three for landlubbering!

flowers in my flower bed

Love my pretty flowers and dirty hands.

Sea glass stepping stones made from sea glass collected on sailing trips around Boston Harbor Island.

broken dishes sea glass

My Vanderwulf Pine. Planted in hopes that it will grow like a sonofabitch and block my annoying neighbors. Grow tree, grow!

Vanderwulf covered in an early snow.

My helper

I love growing things. We grow lettuce and hibiscus indoors for the tortoise. Kiddo keeps a pot of sunflowers. We have a big flower bed out front and garden areas out back. One day we went to Lowes and noticed a swarm of butterflies, moths and bees buzzing around a display of plants. They were butterfly bushes and without even thinking we immediately bought two. We got them home and realized we didn't really have a place to plant them. No matter. We'll just dig up a hunk of lawn. We planted those bushes right in the grass and immediately the winged creatures came out of nowhere for a visit. The bushes will come back every year. We lost some grass but gained a hundred butterflies. Score four for landlubbering!