Dreams to Reality & Anything In Between

Today is my 20th wedding anniversary to the most wonderful man on earth! I love YOU!

Learning Italian

Buongiorno, Parli Italiano? Sto imparando, perché voglio viaggiare in Italia.

Good morning, do you speak Italian? I am learning because I want to visit Italy. Yes, it is simplistic but I’ve only been studying for four weeks. And I am teaching myself! I hope I am not butchering the beautiful Italian language. I took French in high school because I was required to take a language to graduate and today I can pick out a handful of words and say a few as well. I wish I retained what I learned from the three years I took. Part of the reason is I never used it and I wasn’t taught anything useful like how to have and understand a conversation with everyday people. There’s no guarantee that learning from the CD’s I have will work either, but I am going to try!

I’m also teaching myself how to build my own WordPress theme/template. In the past, I fiddled with code and enjoyed doing so. So why am I learning WP? Well, I’m thinking of using it to redesign my personal website as well as my blog. My web host has it already installed or ready to install on my control panel so why not use it. Instead of updating, a few places why not put it all in one place. I want to make blogging my thoughts and photos easy and the fewer steps I need to take the better. Not sure how long it’ll take me to get my new blog and website up and running but I am going to give myself a deadline. By November 1, I hope to have a revamped and easily navigated website!

I need to be finished by or before November 1 because I plan to participate in NaNoWriMo for the eighth consecutive year.

Until next time, live well now!

What If?

My To Do List is getting smaller. All the miscellaneous items I’ve let slide are being completed. I’ve got my fall garden planted and the spring bulbs are bought and will be put in the ground this week. I have over 150 bulbs. There will be no doubt that spring has sprung at my home next year!

The research for my new novel is moving along and I have enough to start setting the stage for a vampire stagecoach robbery! I have a good mix of Wild West history and my own version of history to mix it up. I spent the summer asking “what if?” to find novel ideas that sparked my imagination and the Wild West was a theme that kept appearing in my lists. This one is for my Dad. He was a western novel and movie man. While I watched them with him, I was young and they bored me. Part of my research has been to watch a few movies and read some of the old dime novels. The cool part is I feel my dad with me. He died eight years ago and just before he died, I told him maybe one day I‘d write a western. I don’t think he thought I’d include vampires, but hey, it’s a western.

Well, time to get back to some revision of my first chick lit book.

Until next time, live well now!

Lists Make Way for Dreams

Do you dream all the time or only occasionally? I dream all the time! Sometimes too much and I run into problems getting to the non-dream stuff. I love a leisurely pace. I’m rarely in a hurry to get anywhere. However, that doesn’t mean I’m always late, on the contrary I’m usually early.  Some mistake my leisurely pace for procrastination, but it that’s not the case. I’m an observer with tendencies to do and get things started and finished. I don’t think a procrastinator could lead a leisurely pace of life because they would always be trying to get current with whatever they have due.

When I notice I am panicking about getting projects finished I step back and look at my dream life. If my dream journal is over flowing then I know I ‘m spending too much time in La La Land. To continue living my laid-back way I needed to go back to making to do lists. My to do lists help me prioritize, if I get the major things finished then I can do the fun things like playing with my dogs and lounging on the deck with them and day dreaming!

Take today as an example:

My To Do List

·         4 am wake, shower and drink coffee

·         4:30 am write, work on novel

·         5:30 am wake daughter continue writing

·         6 am wake other daughter. Get things together for AM Day Care

·         6:15 am continue with Daycare stuff or write if DC is ready until first child arrives

·         8:30 am Walk Day care kids to school

·         8:45 am Italian Homework

·         9:30 am Blog

·         10 am go back to writing

·         12 pm finish up loose ends

·         12:30 pm lunch

·         1 pm – 3 pm Free Me Time!

·         3 pm – 6 pm Day Care

·         6 pm – 10 pm Family time

Today is an easy day because it’s Friday and I try to do the least amount of work on this day. I do laundry while I write or after drinking my coffee. All the other household chores like sweeping, vacuuming and dusting I do as a part of getting the day care ready. The first floor of my home has never been cleaner since I opened the day care. The upstairs is another story, it’s a disaster but I don’t worry about that, because no one ever sees the upstairs and I have better things to do than make my bed or room spotless, like day dreaming, writing or playing with my dogs!  

My lists let me continue to dream!

Until next time, live well now!

Finding the Will

Making my dreams a reality hasn’t been a priority in my life lately and it’s showing in my attitude toward the people in my life and life in general. I took myself off the list back in 2009 when I opened an in-home licensed daycare.  I needed to build the business. That’s an ongoing process when you own a business. So it’s high time I find the balance that’s right for me.

I have a list of dreams waiting for me and it’s time to make room for them to come true.  Dreaming about how life should be is fun, but dreaming doesn’t make things so. Hard work, perseverance, strength and will make dreams a reality. Lately all I’ve been doing is dreaming and talking about my dreams but talking doesn’t make them come true.

I had an attitude shift about a week ago when a writer I respect posted this quote on

the list serve-

"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will." - Vince Lombardi

She posted the quote to show how one might get past “writerly ruts and not give up”. She planned to cut it out and post it on her plot board. Me I printed it and tacked it onto my vision board. The quote hit me hard because I think of myself as successful. I run a successful daycare and have had my writing published and I written several unpublished novel manuscripts. I have the strength and knowledge when it comes to creating and finishing a story but I realized I lacked the will to follow the manuscript to the end, that being publication. I have three manuscripts that I believe are publishable and I’ve been told they are by people who know the business.  My lack of will to follow through with agents has prevented my dream of publication from having the chance to come true.

The past week I began to work on my lack of will. I put me on the top of the To Do List; number one is to research agents for one hour and begin writing queries for the agents I think match my writing. I’m on Day 4 of research and I’ve found five agents now I’m onto writing the queries. I am determined to be as successful a writer as I am a business owner.

Until next time, live well now!

School's Out for Winter

It feels like the snow days will never end. My hopes were dashed at 6:04 am. Schools are now closed. When I went to bed last night they had a two hour delay. I was happy. My kids have gone to school exactly 1 day this month. They were supposed to go yesterday but the PTB decided the rural roads were too dangerous and we were supposed to get another couple of inches, which never materialized. We received a dusting. The funny (not really) part of this is our county officials don't seem to think this is going to impact our children's education. Eleven days out of the classroom is nothing to them because on the upside we'll be making up three of the days! Big DEAL! What about the other eight?

My question is why can't the county find an alternative. More than half the county appears to be ready for school, why not get them back and figure something else for those in the rural areas. Way back when I was a kid they rarely canceled school and if buses couldn't hit certain streets our parents took us to school. No yelling at me I get the whole ice and buses don't mix, my children ride the bus to school. School is not my children's babysitter, my kids actually like going to school and on several occasions have asked the same question of WHY school is out.

Oh well, my whine is over, now I need to pull lunch and an extra snack out of my magic hat because my day care is open the entire day again.

Until next time live well now.

The Sun Returns and Shoveling Resumes

The sun has returned and the DH and kids are out shoveling. Schools are already closing for the remainder of the week. Not my school district, well not yet anyway. I'm open for day care business, have been all week even though no children have been dropped off. I'll be up at 4:30 am tomorrow ready and waiting for my day care kids.

The sun shinning on my driveway. Shoveled clear to the pavement. Now where is the plow?

 

All the snow from our driveway.

Until next time, live well now.