Surviving Another Week 6

Yessirree, ladies and gent (okay, there's two of you...) I have survived the dreaded nadir of school suckage known as week six. For those of you who are new, my theory is this: Any major life change from having a baby to starting a new job to, yes, going back to school, takes six weeks of adjustment.

And week six will suck, suck large, and suck hard, and not in that nice, tingly way that we see between some of my characters either. This is suckage in the area of the sphincter of the third demon south of hell.

The good news is, when you know it's coming, you can identify the causes and adjust.

Example?

When little Bone Daddy falls asleep in the car on the way home from dropping his brother off at karate--just let him sleep. His first grade teacher has a very cool homework policy, and she will understand.

When Ladybug is still running around in circles at ten o'clock, give in and spank her. (Not hard--just enough to startle her out of that 'I must move so I don't sleep' hamster wheel she's so good at hopping on.) She'll cry for thirty seconds and fall asleep, and the crying you could live without, but the sleep is necessary for Ladybugs and grouchy mommies alike.

When your teenager is sobbing at the table because he's taking his 'scold them out of love' Health Education homework WAAAAYYYY too seriously, tell him that his Health Education was written for total losers and not for stellar, outstanding kids like him. Refrain from mentioning the dirty table and the state of his room just this once.

Don't peel Chicken like a grape when you discover that she's accidentally sold a book you've been waiting two years to read to the book store, because she thought it was one you had two of, but it's not.

When Ladybug grabs your hand when you're in the middle of blogging to make you lay down and watch Batman with her, and you don't want to because you know you'll just fall asleep? Go. You can always blog tomorrow.

Which is what I did, and week six was exhausting but not traumatic. Yaa-heee....

Oh-- one more thing? No matter how bad your finances, no matter how sad your affairs, no matter WHAT the odds are that you'll have to give up publishing the two books you think really rock in order to finance Christmas... CELEBRATE when you sell another story to Dreamspinner Press. Look for If I Must by Amy Lane, coming in the Dreamspinner Press Advent Calendar this Christmas season. The check wasn't big enough to ease the financial woes, but the ego boost made me not care quite as much.