I found a fortune cookie paper while sweeping the kitchen floor tonight (which is weird because we haven’t had Chinese food for approximately 6 months). I closed my eyes in a superstitious manner and secretly told myself that whatever the paper said would be true for me. I exhaled, opened my eyes and read it:

“Good luck will be with you this month.”

Even when adding “in bed” at the end, it’s a big fat liar of a fortune.

I punched the fortune cookie paper in the mouth and threw it away.

The end.

Undiagnosed abdominal pain in November: $2,800
One hospital stay in December: $4,700
Moving to a different hospital: $14,500
Unnecessary appendectomy: $18,200
Most recent hospital stay: still calculating…

Finally getting my husband to a hospital where he’s surrounded by specialized doctors who know what the crap they’re doing:

FRICKIN’-A PRICELESS!

Imagine that I am a professional juggler. (I can be wearing a brightly colored court jester outfit, if that helps you establish a solid mental image.) Got it? Good. Now I am no spectacular juggler by any means. But I’m adequate. I’m good enough to keep entertaining the King’s court without being beheaded… or whatever they did to really sucky jugglers back in the day.

Each of my balls are smallish in size. Nothing too tricky. I don’t necessarily do any frickin awesome tricks with them, I just manage to keep them all in the air.

One of my balls represents the kids. Their general health and well being. My ability to remember and successfully transport them to their various activities is represented by another ball. There’s a ball for Jon, a ball for keeping the house in semi-functional order, a ball for my church work, a ball for school volunteering, a ball for social time (lately that’s been a very, very small ball), a few more balls for whatever. I’ve really tried to focus more on my writing for the last year or so. That ball got a little bigger, a little brighter and shinier… but it fit into the rotation okay. All of my balls were still in the air.

Last year Jon got sick with a weird heart thing — which, luckily, turned out to be nothing horrible — and for a while I was juggling that. Only that wasn’t represented by a ball. A ball is something that any competent juggler can handle. ER trips and medical bills and uber-anxiety weren’t things that I was used to handling. So Jon’s heart thing was something more of a bowling pin.

So I had a bunch of balls and a bowling pin. But still, everything was still in the air. It wasn’t super pretty, but I was keeping it all up there.

Then Deacon had his hospital stay. Deacon’s thing was way beyond the scope of my normal juggling abilities. Deacon’s hospital stay — and all that whole ordeal encompassed — was represented by a large frickin dining room chair. It was hard, and foreign, and — if not handled properly — could have poked out my brain via my eye socket. When one gets a dining room chair into the juggling mix, one is bound to have some balls fall. And some did. I started fumbling, balls started dropping, and I imagined hearing the people of the King’s court booing me. Threatening to behead me… or whatever. But as flustered as I felt about dropped balls, my main concern was just keeping the damn dining room chair in the air. Just the chair, baby.

But the chair passed. I got to toss it out of the rotation. Got a short reprieve. I was back to my usual balls.. even though I couldn’t quite get back into the rhythm of my simplistic juggling routine. The chair really threw me.

Then Jon got sick. And we couldn’t figure out what it was. And he stayed sick. And we still couldn’t figure out what it was. And he got sicker. And they only sorta figured out what it was. And he’s still sick. Jon’s poor health is a long and drawn out situation. It can only be represented by something heavy, weighty, and fatiguing. Watching him in constant pain and frustration feels not so much like something impossible to handle, so much as something that is mentally, emotionally, and spiritually draining. Sort of less like having your legs torn off by a shark, and more like having them sucked dry by leaches.

So picture me again: bright jester suit, pointy shoes. Balls in the air, accompanied now by a bowling ball. A real heavy sucker. And the bowling ball has precedence over everything else, because it just has to. The bowling ball’s not going away. And dude, if you could see me trying to keep everything up in the air… wow. I’d be beheaded for sure. I’m fumbling, faltering. Balls are falling and rolling away. And kindly people are stepping down from the King’s court to help me with my dropped balls. They are picking them up for me, tossing them back. Some people are keeping my dropped balls altogether, pocketing them until I seem able to handle them again.

People are kind.

My juggling act is a joke. But not a haha joke… just a sad-ish joke.

I miss my simple, adequate routine. I miss seeming plain, yet competent. I miss sleeping well. I miss being completely awake. I miss my husband being happy.

And I so very much look forward to the day when I can drop the bowling ball out of the rotation, when all of my balls are back up in the air.

It may not have been the fastest… but who gives a crap. Dude, look at it!

WHOOOOOOOOSHHHHHH….

That’s the sound of a thousand ideas swirling around in my brain. Those ideas are all colliding with one another. Some are salsa dancing. The rowdier ideas are “crunking” with each other. It’s pretty out of control up there.

Creative flood gates have been opened. Stuff is multiplying, pouring out, overflowing… and my inability to focus and control it is wreaking some havoc.

Mostly in my kitchen. (And my desk… sweet baby Moses, the poor desk again.) Because creative ideas don’t give a care about the dishes, nor about the piles of unread mail. Creative ideas are all, “Suz, write me down!” and then others are all, “No, write ME down!”… and then the ideas go all fistacuffs with each other, and I don’t know what to write down.

So sometimes I just stand in my messy kitchen and stare at the desk.

Focus, people. I need focus. Any one of the ideas could be really great if I could follow it through all the way. I’ve been typing away on my YA fantasy novel, forcing myself to power through the crap. I don’t know how published writers do it… hunker down and get through the crap. It’s like a Jedi mind trick that I haven’t yet grasped. (I’m still a padawan in many respects.) And today, Jachin gave me an idea for a picture book that is GOLD, baby. I asked him if I could steal it. He said sure, if I agreed to pay him $5. He later re-thought the math and told me I had to give him 25% of all profits once it’s published. (He’s sharp, that one.) Plus I still haven’t thought of anything stellar to submit for the Highlights contest this month, and I’m also trying to figure out something for another contest.

My attention is too scattered.

This post is even scattered.

I should probably be on medication for that.

Ow, my brain.

Ok, my attention is now turning back to my warring ideas. May the best idea win.

A comprehensive quickly thrown together list of things I want to do this year:

* Write something every day. Even if it’s short. Some days, it can even just be the shopping list.
* Submit three stories/queries per month to magazines
* Have a completed rough draft of one of my already-started novels by June 30th
* Find at least three occasions this year to play my flute in front of an audience
* Run jog walk use bipedal motion to finish at least two 5ks this year
* Read at least 6 novels to my big kids (bedtime)
* squeeze my butt into those size 26 Lucky’s that have been sitting in the closet with the tags still on for almost two years now…
* find some scripture study time daily

Have your goals laid out?

Happy New Year!

Clue #16 that your geek-itude is rubbing off on your children-

If you hear your children say the following while watching A Christmas Carol:

“Why is Captain Picard playing Scrooge?”

(If you do not understand the above clue, rest assured friend, you are not a geek.)

No one crying. No one hitting. No one whining. No one with their fingers up their nose or anyone else’s nose. Showered, hair brushed, and generally clean.

And it’s immortalized on film.

Score.

This blog is in the middle of a face-lift, which included a host switch. Most everything made it “over” to the new host without incident or injury. Some stuff, however, did not. Like, for some reason you can’t read or leave comments on a lot of my stuff. Also, some of the picture links are broken. Jon informs me that this is because I have an “ancient version” of Wordpress. I have version .0023 or there abouts. See, while I have been hammering my posts into a hunk of granite using a rudimentary chisel (and then uploading an image of the granite), the rest of the world has been typing posts directly into their computers using something called a keyboard and then hitting something else called a “publish” button. I know, I’d never heard of it either.

Anyway, new themes are being sorted through and ideas are being fleshed out with my totally hot website designer (hi, hottie pants) and my blog will be shiny and awesome in a little while. The sad news? More of my stuff will probably fall off the face of the earth when we try to change over things.

*sigh*

I’m bummed. I hope it isn’t anything that I posted hoping never to forget. Because I probably already forgot it. And since it won’t be there any longer for me to find, I will forever be forgetting what I forgot.

I know, it hurts to follow my logic.

So stay tuned for exciting changes and lost memories!!

My old neighbor, Kristen, (I don’t mean old like, she is old, I mean old like she moved a while back and is no longer my neighbor…) did some pictures of the kids this morning. It was originally supposed to be a family shoot, with nice family pics for the Christmas card, but Jon decided to go get all sick. So instead it turned into a shoot for the kids. Kristen is the one who did my maternity shots and also the shots of Deac as a newborn. She is awesome! She has already put a few shots up from this morning on her new blog (she is good AND fast) and — holy cow — are they cute!

Umm, seriously? Could you die? The really amazing thing is that she even got this shot. He pulled that hat off over and over and screamed about it being on his head. She snapped this during the one split-second that he was not freaking out.

Yeah, she’s good.

I can’t believe that this used to be my baby. Now he has smoldering looks for the camera. Looks that don’t include his tongue hanging out or his eyes crossed (though he did try to pull that on her a few times… along with the wink and finger guns).

And Zoe did not want her photo shoot to end. She rocked the camera with all kinds of sassy poses and looks. She wore tu-tu’s in two different colors with coordinating scarves. It was high fashion, make no mistake.

Thank you, Kristen! You are amazing!