down time...

The weekends that Goom is with his father I usually start off a bit lost if I haven’t made immediate plans. The house is quiet, too quiet. There’s no one yelling “MAMA!” from the other room or needing my constant attention. It’s a big shift from being an always-needed mom to single woman on my own. It’s hard to find my “single” rhythm. I usually transition into my “d-own time” by watching a couple hours of TV, eating junk food and doing absolutely NOTHING –healthy right? Luckily, I’m pretty good at only letting this last a couple hours before refocusing and getting started.

This weekend, however, I never found my rhythm. Hours of unplanned time stretched before me that I had hoped would be filled with writing were spent watching more than the usual dose of a couple hours of TV and procrastinating everything, even the cleaning. (The 90-degree weather didn’t help) Even as I finally found my way to the computer last night, in lieu of writing I looked through pictures of the Goom. As I glanced through picture after picture, I chuckled realizing that this had become a bit of a ritual, not the procrastinating but looking at pictures of Goom while he’s away.

He’s really only ever gone for forty-eight hours (at the most) and yet there is always that moment while he’s gone when I find myself adoring him picture after picture. I laughed. It is never planned. I never think oh, let's look at pictures of Goom. It's just where I find myself. I'm reminded how much I love him.

Last night this picture made me especially happy.


I hope it does the same for you.

My muse never did find me this weekend. Perhaps it wasn’t the weekend for massive amounts of writing, maybe I just needed a little down time, a little recuperation, or to be lazy.

Really, those are just a bunch of lame excuses. What I really need is to get over my fear of writing a book and stop making excuses. I just need to do it, one word at a time.