Pots 'n Pens Posting!

Hey, I'm posting over at the Pots 'n Pens blog today about one of my fave, super easy chicken recipes that we end up eating whenever I'm in a writerly bunker (this time with revisions).

Go check it out!

The Small Victories

Happy day after St Patrick's Day! Also known (this year) as, Monday.

Speaking of St Patrick's, how did you guys celebrate? We had an almost all green breakfast at our house, with green pancakes, green eggs, and even some green milk. Once I got over the visual that made me want to yak, it was all pretty good.

Over this holiday weekend, I finished drafting on a project I've gone back and forth and sort of finished, then decided it wasn't done yet, etc etc. We'll dub this project the Carnival of Messes. Well I committed to someone that I would have it FINISHED, as far as first drafts go anyway, by the end of the weekend. And phew, I came in just under the buzzer. Literally, it was 11:59pm when I hit save and closed the file. So I didn't actually write The End, because, well, it's only a first draft and I know from experience it is so so far away from being truly done. But that's another blogpost.

The most important part of this story is that I finished this Carnival of Messes that never wanted to end. People around me always tell me to celebrate the small victories before I move on to the Next Big Project, in my case this will be Revisions v.Zillion on a different project. With as crazy of a business as publishing is, I know celebrating the small stuff should be done, but I too often am too busy and move on to the next thing.

Do you guys celebrate all your small victories? What do you do to celebrate?

Random Stuff Friday

1) It's been a while right? I've been spending lots of time on airplanes and really long car rides recently, so hopefully you didn't miss me too much while I was gone. Actually, I'm on a plane right NOW. It's also a little turbulent and I'm not diggin' the bumps right now. Makes it hard to type, fingers keep slipping to other keys.

2) I spent this week in the Baltimore area for a #dayjob training. And I swear one of our facilitators looked just like this:

Except wore pants and wasn't furry orange. It was ODD.

3) Are you a writer who cooks? Are you a cook who writes? Do you love food and books? Or maybe just food? If you fall into any of the above categories, have you checked out Pots 'n Pens? It's a fun blog about writing and food and writing about food. You can find all sorts of recipes that writers use to help get a little more time for wordage, there's author interviews with fave recipes, and did I mention I'm a contributor? Yeah ... head on over and check out the Easy Peasy Capellini recipe I shared this week, super easy and super YUM!

4) What are you guys reading this weekend? Anything good? I'm trying to decide if I want to reread something or if I want to read something new. I'm taking part in the Clockwork Prince Read Along that @MundieMoms is hosting, but I've been sporadic in keeping up since I didn't have the space to lug the big ol' fat book across the country with me. Other than that, I'm totally looking for recommendations!

5) I love naps. I think they even outrank nighttime sleep. And when you have time zones issues, they are even better! Like when you have to get up at 1am Utah time to catch a flight that gets you home at 10am Utah time, you've already been awake for 9 hours if you can't nap on the plane (for whatever reason). Yeah, so far I've been awake since 1am after only about 3 hours of sleep, a short 20 minute nap during takeoff, and now ... I'm really looking forward to getting home and crawling into my own bed for a real not-sitting-upright-nap.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Keeping Up and Turning Down

I am such a bad blogger.

Things have been busy with #dayjob and, well, with limited time to squeeze in work, family, and writing - like the for reals kind that go into manuscripts and stuff - along with trying to do the quicker, faster social networky things, my poor, poor blog has been suffering from some neglect. I've been doing my best to keep up with things all around me, but with that comes turning down a few things, including things on my own to do list.

That being said, I think I just have to arbitrarily give myself a pass here and maybe drop down to 1 to 2 days of blogging a week. Hopefully I can keep up with that. 

What have you had to do to make sure you've got enough time to do what you need to do?

Random Stuff Friday

1) The weather in Utah sucks right now. Between the inversion, aka pollution, trapped in the valley and the frozen rain, yeah, not so awesome living in Utah right now. It hurts to breathe.

2) That means lots of time indoors. Reading and writing, woohoo! But also trapping three kids inside and that basically voids out that woohoo. Boohoo.

3) Every time we drive past a Taco Bell the kidlets yell "Doritos Locos Tacos!" ... whoever named that was a marketing genius. And after so many months of this, 7yo and I finally caved and stopped by to try some. And they are everything their name screams! It's a taco wrapped in Doritos. And you can never go wrong with anything wrapped in a Dorito. Remember Doritos 3D? Yum! For reals.

4) You know what sucks? Traveling so much and being so tired that you can't even keep up with the shows you watch even though you only watch them online! Yeah, I technically "watch them at my convenience" but they're only available to stream for a certain number of days on the official websites and, uh, yeah, when you miss one, it's TERRIBLE!

5) Speaking of TV, Husband and I recently (like a few weeks ago) discovered Supernatural. And I have grown to appreciate just how delicious Dean Winchester is. Sam Winchester does this weird nostril flare thing and yeah. Totally not as delicious.

All right, peeps! Have a great weekend! Hope you have lots more fresh air than I do!

Never Enough Time

** I've been trying to post this for several days and very clearly, Blogger and I are not friends. If anyone has any other bloggy sites they prefer to this, I'd love to hear it!**

picture credit: CarSeatBlog.com

If you missed any of my tweets or FB posts, you'll have missed out on the fact that I spent 5 days on 5 different planes with stops in 4 time zones, 3 U.S. states, and 2 countries. It was CRAZY. I have to admit, there were a couple occassions when I woke up from a nap on a plane and couldn't remember where I was going. Ah, just another week on a #dayjobtrip.

Over the last year or so, my dayjob schedule has only grown more frantic, and the travel I've had to do more insane. And obviously if you're hanging out here with me, you know that dayjob is not my ONLY job. There's also the writing thing (well, duh), the family thing (of course), and I also sell some kick@$$ super environmentally friendly cleaning stuff on the side - because I totally have time to do that too (yeah, right!). . . If you're interested ... click here to check out my Norwex site!

To say I've got a lot on my plate is a bit of an understatement. I've got plenty of hectic-schedule to go around, what I don't (ever) have enough of, is time.

I've taken to writing wherever, whenever, however I can, though sometimes, especially after a schedule like last week, exhaustion takes over and I have to nap instead. It's hard to balance RL and writing life, and I know I'm not the only one who struggles with this.

So how do you do it? How do you solve the "never enough time" conundrum? Do you have a set time and space and a big giant DO NOT DISTURB sign at home? Have you resorted to heading over to the nearest coffee shop with some headphones to get it done?

Any and all tips are welcome, because, well, I've got several thousand words left to get on paper and L'Agent (im)patiently waiting on a finished ms. So ... uh, HELP!