Mine to make

I've settled into the routine of writing for (a goal of) two hours each morning, even setting my alarm during the summer to make sure I don't oversleep and lose the time. It worked well during the school year, since I dropped kids off and was home to start at 8; during the summer I let the kids play video games in the morning, and they often sleep in a little, so those two hours remain (mostly) quiet and conducive to creative productivity. I listen to music sometimes, and since "One Blue Sky" has become the unofficial theme song for Crowmaker, Sugarland's "Enjoy the Ride" has been the CD of choice lately. (I love Jennifer Nettles' in-your-face, yeah-I'm-a-hick-what're-you-gonna-do-about-it twang. This is a woman who knows who she is and doesn't care too much if you approve or not. We can all learn from that.) So the first song I hear starting out my morning has been "Settlin.'" (Youtube alert!) Nothing like a little I-can-do-it anthem to start the day. ("It's my life so it's mine to make...")

I found the new slant I needed for Crowmaker. Only time will tell if it's the right new angle, but it'll work for now. Wrote 1,500 words yesterday, even though it wasn't a scheduled writing day. The hubby went out of town for a business meeting, and the kids were awesome about entertaining themselves. Blocked in another 1,000 words this morning before taking a break to run the boys to Walmart; I'll try to get at least another 200 before the end of the day. End of the day tomorrow should see me breaking 30,000. A lot of that is probably going to be cut and replaced with new material before all is said and done, but I have earned some feel-good padding of the word count, so it's not going anywhere just yet.

Joey's been busting his ass to earn money, first to buy an Xbox 360 and Halo 3, now to buy his half of Rock Band. (Michael the penny-pinching money miser is pitching in the other half.) Windows are very clean at my house, fridges and stovetops are sparkling, and window frames that have needed painting for a couple of years now have been scraped down and prepped for further work once Mom gets off her butt and buys the paint. (He's a Heroscape addict, too. I could milk this for a really long time.) As of Friday, he'd paid off the Xbox loan. By last night, he had his half for Rock Band. This child is MOTIVATED.

So off we went to Walmart this morning to buy the Next Big Thing. I fully, truly intended to just haul the box downstairs for them and then leave them to it while I finished up another hour of writing. Honest. But they couldn't figure out how to get the drums together, so I HAD to go back down there. And then when they asked me to stick around and play guitar, well... What mother could say no to that? It's a pretty nifty game; I intend to pry the drumsticks out of Joey's fingers sometime and try that part, too. At one point, Michael decided he wanted to run through the guitar tutorial for some practice (he was on bass), so Joey and I were just kinda hanging out watching over his shoulder. And Joey starts in with a "tap-tap-TAP, tap-tap-TAP" on the drums. And I looked over at him, and he looked back at me, and at the exact same second we both burst out with "We will, we will, ROCK YOU."

My kids are so cool.