Huh.

I spent most of the weekend working on household/family type stuff and wishing I had the time/ability to focus for writing instead. This morning, the alarm went off and my first urge was to shut it off and go back to sleep. "Ugh," I thought. "I don't feel like doing ANYTHING today." Being a responsible mother, I got out of bed anyhow and dragged myself through the morning, sadly noting along the way that I had not a creative urge stirring and that today would likely be a complete waste. Oh, woe is me. I cut myself a deal--sit through one hour of something writing-related, even if it was just doodling pretend notes to myself about "The Blue Wall."

So, yeah. Almost four hours of writing time in today, a really short, really bare bones draft of "The Blue Wall" (600+ words) and a full revision of my most recent "pigs from HELL" scene for Crowmaker, which included a depressing amount of cutting existing words followed by writing new words, but which turned out encouragingly well in the end. It's hard to tell since I cut all those words at the start, but I'd guess my total new word count for the day on both stories to be in the vicinity of 1,500 words.

Not bad for someone who really wanted to slap the snooze button on the entire day.

About four years ago, the boys and I sat down and picked two boys of similar ages to them to sponsor through Children International. Joey and Michael are both required to set aside certain amount of their weekly allowance to save for such things as buying Christmas gifts for other people and for the monthly sponsorship amount for "our other boys." We spent some time learning about the places Julio and Krishna came from, we read through their information that tells how they live, and we talked about how their lives are different from ours. I write to Julio and Krishna on a semi-regular basis (enough to let them know I'm a real person who cares about them, but not so often that they have to spend a ton of time writing obligatory return letters).

We got a letter over the weekend stating that Krishna's parents have decided to take him out of the sponsorship program. They didn't have details on why, but he's twelve now, and it's not hard to imagine that he can bring in more money working alongside his father and brothers than comes into the family through the sponsorship program. I don't know what that means for him. I don't know if he'll have the chance to continue any kind of schooling at all. I don't know what he thinks of the choice that was made for him, whether he's fine with it or not. I'm left feeling a little sad about it, but I suppose that's only because the situation of so many children all over the world was personalized for me. (Which is, of course, the entire point of the way Children International operates.) I'm left feeling remotely guilty that my life and my children's lives are so easy, relatively speaking, and blessed beyond belief that we have so much. We don't sleep on dirt floors or go hungry or have to haul water from blocks away. We have luxuries and leisure time in spades.

We'll be sponsoring another little boy in the same area. They sent his profile along with the letter about Krishna, there was no way I could say no to the smiling, hopeful face in that picture. Joey couldn't, either. But I've kept Krishna in my prayers (such as they are), and I hope that wherever his life leads him, he's safe and finds his measure of happiness.