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Welcome to Someone, whose subscription to my blog today brings the grand total number of subscribers to… 65.

*blink*

Yep, it looks like someone else unsubscribed. That’s OK, it’s one less copy of my book I will have to sign someday. And – hey! I’m holding steady at 65. At least I didn’t go down a subscription today. It all evened out in the end.

And someday, I’ll hit a hundred subscribers, right? Someday…

A friend of mine recently hit “666″ Twitter followers. Being a monster scholar, that delighted his soul. He therefore declared a moratorium on any more followers, stating that if anyone else wanted to follow him, s/he/it would have to kill off one of the current followers.

I promise you, I will never require bloodshed from my readers. Although chocolates, books, items with dragons on them, dragon statues, and anything with velvet or (pretty, not gaudy) sparkles in normal colors that you can wear in a US women’s size 6, while not strictly required, will always be acceptable by way of tithes, offerings, or gifts. And while I would love to have 666 people and counting who want to read my writing on a regular basis, we’re a far cry from that, anyhow. So, don’t worry. This is a blood-free zone.* And therefore, if you suggest to your friends and family members that they might want to subscribe to my blog and read my more-or-less daily ramblings, you would be totally safe.

And now, back to the regularly-scheduled post already in progress…

In My Head: Right now, there is a major fight going on in there between the characters in Mighty Knights. I’m still setting up this fight in the narrative, so until that’s done, I have several teenagers yelling at each other in my head. It’s really extremely stressful and crazy-making. I’m planning on finishing this scene TONIGHT, so I can get some decent sleep. Last night, they kept me up until after midnight with the drama. It’s getting out of hand, so I need to get it out of hand, onto keyboard, and into computer, STAT.

In My Cup: Green tea

Currently Playing: Kitty cat purrs. (Sorry, Julie, but I have five of them, they’re going to show up in the blog on occasion. Hang in there, the cat part is over now. :o )

Daily Run: 5K warmup @ 9:45 miles; Intervals: 2 x 400 @ 1:47 with 180 recovery after each, 2 X 180 @ :40 with 20 yard recovery after each; 5K @ 8:45 miles. Total running time: 61:04. That was a relief, because it means that I am running at the pace I need to be running at in order to achieve my goal of a sub-2 half marathon. However, it is also concerning because I was pretty much done, when I was done. So I definitely need to work on increasing distance endurance now.

On the Desk: The Mighty Knights and Female Biography Project edits.

On the Nightstand: “Fiddler” script

Casa Chaos is a little more organized today, thanks to a communal effort to sift through the detritus and restore a modicum of order. I think Studying Parent’s post the other day about her daughter’s stress and its effect on her physical environment had a major impact on me. Here was the response I left after reading her post:

This is VERY apropos in my world. When I have a billion things on my plate and I’m just hopping from one to the next of my projects frantically trying to meet deadlines and expectations, the FIRST thing to go is physical order – dishes pile up, the juicer’s not cleaned out, the car looks like an archeological dig could happen in there, all forms of clothing can be accessed from the top of the dryer where they were dumped after being washed, unless they are on the floor – which does not necessarily mean they are in need of cleaning, but rather I was in a hurry and didn’t have the time to search for a hanger to re-hang a garment. Unless it’s the floor of the bathroom, which means it’s probably my running clothes, my husband’s workout clothes and whatever the kids were wearing, smeared with whatever they did or ate any given day at school. My desk is piled with the books and papers associated with my current WIP, with my current research, and with the slips of paper, Post-it notes, backs of receipts and index cards with new projects and ideas for future ones scrawled on them; the couch in the front hallway is covered in piles of mail from the week plus my bag and my husband’s bag and my daughter’s backpack – and those are just the spaces I frequent, who KNOWS what is going on in the rooms I don’t visit every day, because my husband is in charge of those. And all this goes on until I reach a point at which I can’t find something I need, or forget something important, and then I grow quite cross and savage and demand that everyone pitch in and pull their weight. Which results in a lot of whining and a little clearing away – enough to get us through, anyhow.

And then, when I dot the last “i” and cross the last “t” on the last really pressing item, I do a rather ceremonial, day-long clean fest and feel shiny and happy again… until I start working on the next project….!

Vicious cycle! lol But, it’s mine, anyhow.

Well, that got me to thinking about cleaning, especially when I got home and realized that…well, everything I wrote was spot-on.  This realization that we were complete pigs somehow seems to have had a trickle-down effect on my family, although to be perfectly honest my husband seemed very keen, himself, to embark on the cleaning spree we held today. He actually talked about it last night. Like, wanted to make sure that I knew that his plans today were to get the house in order. In other words, we arrived, at different times and in different places, at the same conclusion: Enough is enough. So, today we played sort, toss, organize, wash, dry, fold, and put away, on repeat, for several hours. And it really does feel a lot better in here.

Except for my desk, which is still buried.

And also, my dresser, which really is, I am sure, somewhere under the pile of clothes.

Also, nobody even looked at either vehicle, because that would have been too daunting and we would have despaired and nothing at all would have gotten done.

And YES, for those of you who are dying to ask but didn’t want to offend me, the Christmas tree IS still standing. I’m thinking of just leaving it up and hanging doily hearts all over it for Valentine’s Day. It will still be red, white and green, after all, so I’m sure nobody will even realize it was the Christmas Tree, and instead everyone will be be totally impressed with our awesome Valentine’s Tree idea. I can even leave put the several bird ornaments we possess that are already hanging on it and claim that our Valentine’s Tree is based on my reading of the “Parliament of Fowles”, which is Chaucer’s bird debate poem, and features a bird’s Parliament, hanging out in a tree-encircled clearing, debating who’s going to marry who. The bird debate in that poem takes place on Valentine’s Day. That then makes me a creative genius and serious academic who marries her reading to her everyday existence in a tongue-in-cheek, humorous fashion a la Chaucerian wit, rather than a slacker working Mommy with myriad other projects which cause her deliberately to ignore and simultaneously be guiltily all-too-aware of the Tree still hanging out in the library.

But, I mean – at least the dishes got done!

(Because DH did them).

Hey, I wrote a thousand words, ran seven miles, cleaned the bathrooms and dining room, picked up the library (except for the tree) got the girls washed, dressed, brushed and off to Girl Scouts, and helped my youngest finger-knit a hair bow as her project. I can’t do everything.

That’s why I make sure to do the things I want to do, first. ;op

(ETA: I just remembered, that I also made the girls lunch.)

(ETA #2: And also, I picked up all of the shoes and put them in their cubbies in the front hallway.)

(ETA#3: And ironed the patches onto my oldest daughter’s Brownie sash so she could finally wear it today.)

* Disclaimer: The phrase “this is a blood-free zone” might be a little misleading. While I will never require blood from you, I demand blood in most of my reading and film watching, so there will be blood in the blog. Just not yours. Or real, even. But there will be scads and scads, pints and gallons, of fictional blood. Because…you know, I am a medievalist with a major thing for dragons. Blood is pretty much a prerequisite in such cases.

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