~I made it through the five day “spa” vacation with my four grandkids in WV. In my last post I compared the babysitting time to being at a diet and exercise spa, but that certainly wasn’t all of it. I did lose a couple of pounds according to my very unreliable scale. That’s the best kind of scale to have, isn’t it? That way you can always say the crazy thing must not be working right if it shows you gained three pounds over a weekend or something totally ridiculous like that. Certainly it wouldn’t have anything to do with that cheesecake you ate. 😉
~There wasn’t any cheesecake eating going on this weekend for me. Just leftover hotdogs and that delicious mac and cheese. Eating that stuff you can believe I got plenty of running exercise to lose even one pound.
~But I got to thinking about other classes the grandkid sitting experience opened up. Say craft class – learning to express yourself with clay. I’m really good at making snakes and worms. Here’s Katie with her turtle creation she did all by herself while I checked on the twins who were napping.
~There was the negotiation class. “If I tell you fifty eleven stories, will you go to bed?” Give or take a few stories. Or “Eat two bites of your chicken and then you can have ice cream.”
~I can’t forget time management. Diaper this one, diaper that one, break up a scuffle between the girls, load the dishwasher, load the washer, wash the babies, wash the girls, cook that mac and cheese, hunt sippy cups, pick up toys, straighten rugs, grab Matt off the back of the couch, put Ashley in time-out, keep Katie away from Ashley in time-out, make popcorn, take a gulp of tea, diaper this one and that one again.
~I think I may have failed the time management, but I did manage to get Ashley off to first grade both school day mornings. That surely deserves a C plus. So a passing grade.
~Now it’s time to get back to work here at home. First I have to wade through my e-mails and catch up on chores. Tomorrow I plan to see if I can find a desk under all this stuff that has accumulated on my desk. It grows if you don’t keep an eye on it, you know. All that has to be done, but I’m itching to be writing even though I’m a little stuck on what’s next. My characters keep popping into my head and I’m hoping my subconscious is working on that what next problem. But for sure I want to be pursuing the story again with my fingers on the keyboard and my mind back in my Shaker village in the year 1845.
~Don’t forget about my February giveaway – your choice of two of my last six books and Laura Frantz’s The Frontiersman’s Daughter. You can leave a comment here to be entered or send me an e-mail from my website, www.annhgabhart.com. Thanks to all of you who e-mailed me after you got my newsletter. I enjoy hearing from my reading friends. Hope you have a great rest of the week.