Deadline Mania

By 9:00 a.m. today, Demon Baby and I had been to The Dollar Store (my new favorite--do you know EVERYTHING is a dollar? Mine even carries name-brand cereal and juices.), the grocery store (because the Dollar Store is wonderful, but they don't have produce), and answered 987 questions from Demon Baby, 986 of which began with WHY? WHY did a bird poop on our car? WHY did someone leave a penny on the ground? WHY does our cart have a wobbly wheel? WHY doesn't the grocery man FIX the broken wheel? WHY? WHY? WHY?

By 9:00 a.m., I felt brain dead.

However, the early-morning trip was brought on by the fact that my poor family has been living under deadline mania for approximately two months. Just back-to-back deadlines. I even worked about 6 hours a day on vacation while my cousins took the kids to the beach. And by the end of this particular bout of Deadline Mania, I looked in my fridge this morning and Demon Baby had no orange juice. I can assure you, a nuclear explosion would be quieter than a Demon Baby with no orange juice (his favorite). Laundry isn't done. Beds aren't made. My kids have been living on this. In short, I surveyed my world and it's not pretty.

So today is Recovery from Mania Day. I will do my favorite thing. Putter. I will slowly restore order to my house. My kids will have orange juice and a nice spinach salad for lunch. I will try to recover until the NEXT Deadline Mania.

So writers . . . since none of you have a Demon Baby to scream at you that there's no orange juice, thereby waking you up to just HOW out of control your life has gotten, how do you know when you've been too self-absorbed and too busy with writing so that the rest of your life is looking sloppy around the edges? Or do all of you do the dance between real life and writing life perfectly. And if you DO . . . what is your secret?

True Confessions

If you are a regular reader of this blog, I am fairly sure you occasionally think, "She's nuts . . . FOUR kids, THREE dogs, TWO birds, ONE python, an active volunteer, AND she writes three books or more a year?"

Yeah. I'm nuts.

BUT . . . my life when I am NOT in "intense" deadline (intense being subject to definition . . . say, a book due within three weeks) is fairly normal--at least what I "think" passes for normal for most people. Laundry is done, Demon Baby has bathed, children have done homework, we eat well (healthy . . . for me, vegetarian), the house looks like HUMANS live there.

Where I live (Virginia) it is POLLEN season. I have never had particularly bad hayfever before, but I basically sit and tears roll down my face from allergies right now. You wash your car, and you can write your name in 1/4-inch green pollen gunk by sundown. Consequently, I have a headache and feel tired.

I am on deadline.

I ate peanut butter on whole wheat today for breakfast. I didn't use a knife, just grabbed a spoon, slapped it on, ate it. My coffeemaker blew up (yes, SPY, I know it's a sign from the gods to give it up again). I therefore, on deadline and feeling crummy, drank coffee with GRINDS floating around in it. Lunch was at three because I forgot to eat. Ramen noodles with some broccolli tossed in. RAMEN! Like some college kid. I just ate dinner. A cinnamon bun leftover from one of my kids.

I am still in my pjs. It's 7:00 p.m. I won't be dressing today. I have no makeup on. My hair is styled, but . . . I wouldn't answer my door if anyone rang the bell, put it that way.

There's my LIFE. And there's my life on DEADLINE.

So tell me . . . true confession time. When deadlines beckon . . . (can be day job or writing, or self-imposed deadlines or needing something for a conference) . . . what is the good, bad, and ugly of your deadline life? 'Fess up.

A Parallel Universe

Through a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events, I have four deadlines riding up against each other over the space of three months.

It's doable.

It's doable in some parallel universe with no Demon Babies and no soccer practice, no softball practice and no family crises or illnesses. If I don't ever have a kid puking in the next three months and if everyone can always find their homework.

It's doable if I opened the door one day, and he walked through to cook dinner every night. While he was at it, if he felt like making out on the couch for a while to relieve some stress, I wouldn't complain. Someone else might, but I wouldn't.

In this parallel universe . . . I would have an entire laundry TEAM. All they would do is match socks. The Sock Commandos would have their work cut out for them, and the Sock SWAT team would guard the laundry room door and the dryer for any stray socks who even THINK about escaping to wherever it is unmatched pairs run to.

I would have a Demon Wrangler. He would carry holy water and yell "The power of Christ compels you" every time Demon Baby tried to feed--like yesterday--plastic sandwich baggies to the dogs. The sad fact is, Dreamer is dumb enough to try to eat them. So I would also need him in my parallel universe.

If one of my kids DID get sick, I would have him. If he also felt like relieving my stress . . . not complaining.

In this world, I would have them. In particular that bald guy. I think he's hot. Yeah, I know the OBVIOUS choice is that tall guy with the thick blond hair. But no, gimme the other one. Especially since he cleans. I bet a guy like that also knows how to change the roll of toilet paper when he's used the last sheet NOT take the new roll out, set it on the sink counter and leave the empty cardboard roll on the toilet paper holder.

If ALL these things come together. If she sprinkles pixie dust, I can do it.

So tell me, in your parallel universe . . . who's on your team? Anyone got deadlines?

Coming Up for Air

I am a putterer.

According to the dictionary, this means:

1. to busy or occupy oneself in a leisurely, casual, or ineffective manner: to putter in the garden.
2. to move or go in a specified manner with ineffective action or little energy or purpose: to putter about the house on a rainy day.

This isn't really an accurate description for what I do, then. First of all, when I putter in the garden, it's not ineffective. I am tending my plants and helping them grow, getting rid of weeds, plucking off dead blooms. When I putter in my house, it's PURPOSEFUL (in direct contradiction to definition #2). I usually tackle something I've been putting off awhile. Like filing. Or cleaning my desk. Or organizing my research. Or going through my kids' clothes and packing away the summer stuff and taking things to Goodwill and so on.

But, purposeful or not, I adore puttering. I listen to my iPod and decompress by moving from project to project, usually just feeling JOYFUL that I am home, amongst my pets and my kids and my things. Home without some deadline looming oppressively. Home and free to be creative.

Which brings me to this post. I've been working on deadline for a while now, stressing over proposals, working on the story bible for my new top-secret project, and so on. Deadlines until I couldn't see straight. In fact, until my left eye developed a very un-Zen-like nervous twitch.

And finally, I got caught up. And finally, I got to come up for air. To me, coming up for air means getting to putter, to let my mind wander where it wants to, to play with my birds or to brush one of the dogs, to deadhead my flowers and sweep the front steps. And somehow, I am a better writer for days like today.

Anyone else?