1.) WordPress updated to version 4.0. I haven’t found anything significantly FUBAR’d…yet. I’m sure I’ll find it soon enough. Because there is always something. (And I still haven’t figured out how to fix the formatting of the “now playing” line since WP FUBAR’d that.)
2.) This morning as the neighbors were loading into the car to go to school, I noticed the mother speaking at a human volume with a pleasant tone. Then I realized there was an extra person getting in the car with them. Lady, you need to have company to impress at all times so I (and the rest of the damn city) don’t have to listen to you SCREAMING at your kids.
3.) I’ve been asked to bake a cake for a four-year-old’s birthday party with two days notice. In all my kitchen experiments, a successful cake is not on the list of Hey it worked! So…right then.
4.) Somebody I went to school with followed me on Instagram…I…what? Hi? (Yes I do kind of hate myself for having an Instagram account.)
5.) The same band keeps favorite-ing my weekly Last.fm stat tweets that auto-post to Twitter. They seem to really like the fact that I really like Andy Grammer. Also…I’m assuming it’s some sort of ploy to get me to listen to their music. (It worked. I did. It’s not bad.) I’m suddenly having myspace flashbacks.
6.) Apparently 40,000 words is a cursed number when it comes to writing.
I get to that point in a story that’s going well and…
I stare at the blinking cursor and produce exactly zero.
The idea well hath run dry.
Head.
Desk.
So I go back and read through what I’ve written. I fix typos and cull the borderline psychotic volume of commas. I love some of it, I hate more of it, and am on the fence about most of it. I write side story and back story and what-if future story, none of which has any actual bearing on the current story. And then I start poking around in different project folders and that generally doesn’t end well.
Or I just keep rereading the current project hoping the words will somehow magically manifest on the page.
This writing thing is the love of my life and the bane of my existence both at the same time.
Hallie watched Emery sound asleep on the couch, her mind reeling. When she’d left the house in the morning, she knew her life would be forever changed by the time she got home. It had been building for months—or really since she was nineteen—and as the day inched ever closer, the magnitude of the situation grew increasingly more overwhelming. It was terrifying and exhilarating and exactly what she (and Ryan) had been hoping for, for so many heartbreaking years.
She was a mother.
Ryan was a father.
Emery was their son.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t share their DNA or that he was mere weeks from his sixteenth birthday. Today he officially became their son. Today they officially became parents. Today they officially became a family of three.
In truth, they had been a family since the first day they’d brought Emery home. They might not have fully realized it at the time, but in hindsight it was easy to see. Hallie and Ryan had each had an almost visceral reaction to meeting the teenager. There was something distinctly different about him from any of the other children they’d taken into their home and it had nothing to do with his age. It hadn’t taken them long to completely fall in love with him and realize that he was the one—destined to be theirs.
And now he actually was theirs.
Officially.
Legally.
Forever.
As she watched him sleep, tears slipped down her cheeks, grateful and elated and relieved. She wanted to wake him up and cuddle him and tell him how happy she was and how much she loved him. And while she knew he wouldn’t resist the gesture, she also knew it would be better to let him sleep. He needed it. They’d had several late nights in a row with the stress and anxiety over their court date keeping him awake and sick. Now that they were on the other side, it had all caught up to him. They had barely been home long enough for him to get his Wild hoodie and his mouse before he was dead asleep on the couch. She would let him rest for now. She could smother him with hugs and kisses and I-love-yous later.
She looked down at the phone in her hand and the picture on screen she’d taken minutes before of Emery sleeping. She attached it to the waiting message and hit send to the prepared list of family and friends who were anxiously waiting to celebrate with them.
Emerson James Hale Kincaide—officially ours forever. <3
7.) And then I go back to compulsively listening to O.A.R.
(O.A.R. — Place to Hide)
Still want to canoodle with Marc Roberge. Or Chris Culos. Or…the whole band.
(Not all at the same time. Individually. Cripes.)
8.) Also Andy Grammer.
(Both the compulsive listening and the canoodling.)
(Andy Grammer — Holding Out)
Only AG can write a song with a reference to p0rn and loud-neighbor-disrupting-sex and make it sound adorable.
Seriously.
—
 |
Caroline the Wrecking Ball O.A.R. |