by Charlene Teglia | Apr 25, 2005 | Uncategorized
Yesterday was the last getting ready business for the new arrival. Sure, a term pregnancy is 40 weeks, but guess how many actually are “term”? Just in case our shows up early, we are now ready. Also, I got tired enough walking up one side of Walmart and down the other at this stage. Do I want to do that in another month? Hahahahaha!
(Yes, I know Walmart is evil, but they also have the best prices on baby gear and the Walmart in Sequim is a lot closer than the mall in Silverdale. When you live in a small town, you consider how far you want to drive to go shopping.)
Anyway, I can now put the getting-ready checklist out of my mind and focus on other things between now and the Big Day. Things like Dangerous Games releasing on Wednesay and Ellora’s Cavemen Legendary Tails 2 releasing June 21. And the fact that I haven’t turned in the sequel to Love and Rockets yet. Today I need to get my laptop synched with the desktop so I can work on it when I can’t sit at my desk any longer.
Happy Monday to all! And for those already at the RT convention, have a blast.
by Charlene Teglia | Apr 25, 2005 | Uncategorized
It’s very easy to fall for the idea that the important things in life can wait. You want to write a book, but you’ll have time for that later, when the kids are in school or when they leave home. You want to have kids, but you’re busy getting your career established and there’ll be plenty of time for that later.
I’ll just stop there because two examples are more than enough. The children example’s a good starting point. My husband and I are luckier than we knew because we met in our 30s. He’s younger and we wanted a family, so we didn’t wait to start trying. And that’s a good thing, because I didn’t know how rapidly fertility starts to decline after the late 20s. I did know it could take two years from the time we started trying and since I was 34 then I didn’t want to put it off. I also knew the odds of complications started to go up after age 35 and the older I was the less energy I’d have to get up at 2:00 a.m. to take care of a baby.
Luckily, we had our daughter when I was 35 and at 37 we discovered we were expecting our second (and last) child. If we had waited even a couple of years the story could have a very different ending. One child instead of two, or none at all. Time moves on and at some point it takes your choices with it.
Which is the point of today’s blog. Not making a choice is a choice in itself. Time goes on and the longer it does, the fewer choices you may have left. Whatever’s important to you in life, don’t believe that you’ll always have time to get to it.
If you want to write, don’t wait. Start today! Sure, you can always learn more craft. Sure, you can always learn more about the business. And honestly, I can attest to the difficulty of writing with pre-school age children in the house, but it’s not impossible.
What else do you really want to do in life? Go back to school? Start today. Time’s going to go on no matter what you do. It might take ten years to finish your degree part-time, but that ten years is going to pass anyway. What you choose today can determine where you are in the future. Exactly where you are today, or that much closer to your goals, it’s a choice.
Likewise, don’t think that because you didn’t do something at 20, or 30, or 40, or 50, that it’s too late and you’ll just have to go without for the rest of your life. You have the rest of your life, so start today!
by Charlene Teglia | Apr 24, 2005 | Uncategorized
No writing today; we had some things to do to get ready for Baby 2.0. And we made a family day of it. My little girl is growing up so fast. Every day she knows new words and can do something for the first time. Today’s word is cookie, a very important addition to any vocabulary. And her new skill is climbing up and sliding down the slide.
Want to see our snapshot in time? Picture me, standing at the bottom of the slide, arms outstretched. “Come on! I’ll catch you!” Picture her dad, up at the top of the slide with her, showing her how to use the handrail that’s just the right height for her and that the stairs are solid to stand on even though she can see the ground through them. She’s scared at first, but she quickly gains confidence. Dad helps her onto the slide the first time. She slides towards me, saying “wheee!” I catch her. She laughs. I help her back to the stairs, and she climbs up all by herself, seats herself on the slide with no help, and slides down again. And again. All three of us grinning in delight because this is a perfect moment in a perfect day.
“This is one of those idyllic moments,” I told Pat. “The kind people imagine when they imagine a family, playing at the park with the sun shining.” The two of us are giddy that the people in the idyllic picture are us, and that the child who terrified us all through a complicated pregnancy is the strong, agile toddler who can get up to the top of the slide all by herself.
We have lots of snapshots from the past few years. We’re always making more. But there have been whole days that went by in a blur, too busy to slow down and look at and memorize a moment. Today we slowed down and looked and twenty years from now we’ll remember the first time Alex learned to slide down a slide.
Life is a miracle. I want to take the time every day to remember that. Because it’s going past whether we slow down and notice or not. If we notice, if we pay very close attention, those snapshots in time stay with us forever.
by Charlene Teglia | Apr 23, 2005 | Uncategorized
My amazing husband has fixed my laptop. It had a run-in with the toddler. The screen went dark. My world went dark. But since I was brilliant enough to marry a renaissance man, all was not lost. It required taking the thing apart down to the last screw to isolate the broken part, which cost…$5.00. This is a miracle, because there are smaller parts in the iBook that cost $100 and more. Part was ordered, arrived, and last night husband reassembled iBook instead of playing Counter Strike. That’s a true sacrifice for a geek.
And now it works! It’s a thing of beauty! And if my dh had not been able to do this, the iBook would be scrap because the cost of repairs (hours of labor to take it totally apart and put it all back together) would have meant buying a new one. And since that’s not in the budget, I would be tragically sans laptop. Which matters right now, because I’m reaching the stage where sitting with my legs propped up using a lap desk is about all that’s comfortable for any length of time.
If you’re wondering why I call him a renaissance man, it’s because Mac repair is just one thing in his bag of tricks. He can do CAD. He can fix any kind of computer or network. He programs and does beautiful design work, including this website. Some his CSS designs can be found on CSS Zen Garden. He can build a Harley, change oil, repair engines, do anything involving “some assembly” for small children (yeah, some assembly required, like “you better have worked for Boeing in the past or you’re screwed”) and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. He draws and paints, his photography is everywhere. One of his current projects is designing the house we want to build in the future. Yes, up to code and to scale. 3D rendering, in fact.
He’s a total stud polymath. I am so lucky. And with the help of iBook, my productivity is about to go up exponentially.
In totally unrelated news, Jaynie attempted to post a thank you for Dangerous Games, which she now has in her clutches, but the blog spam killer shot her down. If this happens to you, sorry! Use the contact form on the site instead.
by Charlene Teglia | Apr 22, 2005 | Uncategorized
Click the columnist button to read my thoughts on alpha heroes in erotic romance!
As a funny side-note, it struck me just this morning that Dangerous Games features of all things, a geek alpha! Most nerd romance heroes are the sensitive types, at least the ones I’ve run across so far.
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