I'm Not Lazy; I'm Just Busy Setting Things on Fire

I've degenerated far from my daily blogging habits! My five a week posts whittled themselves down to three, and now two, and even that is a struggle sometimes. I feel lazy for not posting every day, but it's not because I don't want to or have something useless to say; I'm just incredibly busy.

I was going to write a post about how, when things are going really well with writing, I don't want to do anything else. Not shower. Not eat. Not go to the gym or pick the kids up from school or even watch TV. When the kids are in bed and I sneak to the basement with the intention of writing a blog post, I always end up opening my WIP instead and working on it until my eyes are blurry. I was going to write about that, but then Kim Derting beat me to it.

So instead, I'll tell you why I didn't get around to blogging yesterday.

I got up, woke three kids up, took the dog out, threw in a load of wash, fed three kids and packed their lunches and hemmed a pair of pants because my daughter's grown six inches since last fall and looks like one of the farm kids on Little House on the Prairie with her too-short jeans. Then, eventually, I got them all out the door and to the bus stop (at different times, because their schools start an hour apart).

I drove 20 minutes to the gym for a workout. This is not normally a Thursday thing, but Monday my son had an ortho appointment (where they changed his rubber bands to orange, which I asked why in the world orange since Halloween is over), and Tuesday I had a sick little girl at home and Wednesday I spent two hours in the public health clinic getting a 15-second MMR shot that I need for school in January (oh you can bet there will be a post on THAT experience!!), so Thursday it was.

I showered. I drove 20 minutes to a store to return a shirt I bought that had a hole in it. I stood in the customer service line for 15 minutes playing Angry Birds on my itouch because I'd forgotten to pack my Nook in my purse the night before. After that, I went grocery shopping, because we were completely without milk. The horror!!

I came home and had time to get the cold stuff put away before turning around (without lunch) and going to pick my kids up at school. One is fifteen minutes one direction. The others are 25 minutes in the other. I played more Angry Birds waiting on them in the carpool lane because again, I'd forgotten to grab my Nook in the ten minutes I'd been home.

All kiddos gathered, we headed to the library, because swim team practice (which is why I picked them up) is 25 minutes in the opposite direction of the house. They crammed down a snack on the way to the library, where we set up shop for 20 minutes doing homework, before we turn around and get back in the car and go to swim practice.

On the way home, at 6:40 pm, I realize I'd forgotten to put the lasagna I'd set out for dinner in the oven. So instead of arriving home to an aroma of Italy, it still smelled like wet dog and Febreze. Fine. We'll have bratwurst instead. I'll pop them on the grill and they can cook while I help the girls with the rest of their homework.

Except we got caught up in rushing up and down stairs, me mostly muttering and faux-cursing my youngest's teacher for giving her an assignment she couldn't possibly do (like finding pictures of her ancestors, artifacts of family importance, pictures of cultural customs our family does regularly, flags and maps of where we hail from....you get the idea)... I forgot about the bratwurst.

Until it blew up.

The whole grill was a ball of fire, and somewhere in there was our dinner...blackened to a crisp.

By now it's almost eight o'clock. I've run out of decent food choices I can make quickly. We have hot dogs. With broccoli and mashed potatoes, because they didn't burn on the grill.

So by the time we eat, I clean the dishes, feed the pup and take him out... it's nearly ten. And yeah... I didn't feel quite like blogging. I did, however, find my Nook and cuddle under electric blankets and read.

So today it's Friday, and I usually do my thankful things. So this is what I'm thankful for:

• That only my grill exploded in a ball of greasy gaseous flames, and that my house is entirely unscathed.
• That my kids were gracious enough to laugh and ooh and ah over the fire, and not complain that we had hot dogs instead of lasagna (my son's favorite dinner) or bratwurst (my daughter's favorite dinner). 
• That my husband has a great sense of humor, and when he got home at eight-thirty he didn't complain about eating hot dogs either, but did ask if I felt lonely enough with him working late that I needed some lame ploy to get the fire department over. 
• That I didn't actually need the fire department.
• Bun warmers. Seriously. I was in the car more than out and sometimes it's the little things that make it all worth while
• That my book is finished. Complete. Done. Revised three times, edited, proofread, beta-read, and done. And ready for it's next step, whatever that might be.
• That my MFA assignment is done and handed in, and now I have the holidays stretching in front of me with little pressure but to make them special for the kids. And that the assistant director wrote me and said, "We got your package. I can't wait to meet you in January."  Small things that make me joyous!

What things made you happy this week?