(Written at 7PM Thursday Night…)
Rocking Bath Time
There is nothing quite so cool at bath time as Color Bath Dropz. One of Andy’s colleagues gave us some the other week, and I have about as much fun as the Little Guy does dropping the dye tabs into the tub and watching them fizzle and spew red, yellow, or blue. Not going to lie: it makes me feel like a wizard. My favorite combination (because they mix astonishingly well) is red and blue, which takes the water from bright pink to a deep indigo. Watching clouds of blue water collide with clouds of pink water is just stunning. It reminds me of the end of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, when Flora and Merriweather are fighting over Aurora’s dress–Pink! No, Blue! It’s magical, to say the least. And it entertains the Little Guy for a good twenty minutes in the tub, which is a little miracle unto itself.
Progress and Cheats
The last few days I’ve been banging my head against the proverbial wall trying to hash out some plot-expansion problems for the current novel re-write-in-progress. They’re the kind of issues I really need to commit some serious, quiet brain-time to, which with the Little Guy racing around, can be tricky to come by. Enter MOTHER LIFEHACK: Now that we have a car during the day, I’ve realized that if I drive him around at nap time, not only do I get to get out of the house, but he’ll sleep for like…at least an hour and a half in the car! That’s precious napping that otherwise would have to happen on my lap (the Little Guy lately has been very clingy as he sleeps (read: he wakes up in a tantrum if I try to put him down)), and it means I can park somewhere and pull out the ol’ laptop and get some work done. Other than accidentally draining my car battery on Monday (oops), it’s been a great way to wrestle a couple extra hours of writing out of the busy week. Huzzah!
I’ve also managed to get back on the flash fiction horse this week, which feels great. It’s a mess, but hey–one thing at a time. I’ve picked up a cheap Steno notepad (originally, my least favorite kind of notebook) because I really want to experiment with writing flash by hand, and any other notebook I have is either A) too big, B) too stiff to be held open with one hand (which is essential for a mom), and/or C) too soft-covered to support itself. So we’ll try the Steno pad, and see how that works.
Facebooking, or not…
Rather on a whim, I decided yesterday morning to take a Facebook hiatus for a week. I’ve been on all the time, lately, maybe three to five times at day at least, and I always sign off more frustrated/self-conscious/envious/anxious/outraged/etc. It’s getting exhausting, so I thought taking a step back for a chunk of time to remember what life was like before the Great Book of Face might be healthy. It’s funny, but I think I’ve been going through a kind of mild withdrawal, so it was probably a good decision! Makes me wonder what a week’s worth of totally abstaining from the internet would be like, but there’s a part of me that’s legitimately scared to think about being that disconnected (not like I wouldn’t still be reachable by phone/text, but still…) May have to try it sometime during a future vacation!
Maggie Slater 