Please don’t tell

I have some really terrible news.  Roscoe ate Canada.  More on that later.

I am trying desperately to get my edits done under the deadline my editor has given me.  She sent me my manuscript with all the words highlighted that need to be reworded or removed entirely.  These are important words like “was”, “of”, “go”, “it”.  I’m here to tell you, “of” is the hardest.  I’ve been working night and day over this – and you people know me, that should read as “I’ve been working night and night over this”.  I haven’t been to bed before 2:00 one day in the last two weeks.  And don’t think I can sleep in either.  Kids must still go to school and I still have a job that prefers I attend.

My Honey has been very understanding.  I’m hard to live with right now.  If I’m not at the computer whimpering, then I’m staring off into space without the capacity to form sentences.  In a desperate attempt to make myself concentrate I’ve started listening to opera.  I can’t understand the words so it doesn’t distract me but the music pulls me away from the rest of the world.

Today was my day off.  The day I had planned to chain myself to the desk and finish if it killed me.  It’s 9:10.  There are still technically enough hours that the day might do me in.

The following are all the distractions I had to deal with today:

• *I had to go to a funeral.  And then the reception.  Where they were doing shots of tequila.  I did not partake.  I got My Honey to bring me home early to edit (hahahahaahahahahaha or screw around, whatever)
• *I decided I wanted a cup of tea.  Not just any tea, but the loose leaf tea.  I had to search everywhere to find the tea diffuser and then my special cup and electric cup warmer.  I heated up the water in the microwave but the darn diffuser wouldn’t fit into the cup.  Or the other cup.  Or the third one either.  Now I had to find the tea pot and start over with the water.  I went to plug in my electric cup warmer at my desk which meant I had to pull everything out from under it to get to the socket which meant…
• *I swept the floor in the office.
• *I cleaned and organized my desk.
• *I read and re-read Julia Quinn’s interview when she returned it to me today.  It’s really good.  I’m going to post it on Thursday in anticipation of the Tucson Festival of Books.
• *I played with the dog, which is good because he might be dead by tomorrow.  More on that later.
• *I started the laundry.
• *I texted Ava and Isabella at least a hundred times today.
• *I ate three pieces of cake.  Three.  Lemon cake.  It was glorious.
• *I googled Canada.  More on that later.
• *I wrote a bio at the request of my publisher that was really bad because I can no longer string more than six words together and have them make sense, so Isabella fixed it for me.
• *I tried really hard not to laugh in exhausted hysteria when Sassy dragged her brother into the office to tattle that he had just peed in the cat bowl.  Yes, you read that correctly.  The Bandit peed in the cat bowl.  When his father asked him why, he said he had to go really, really, really bad.  Apparently walking the other twelve feet to the bathroom was out of the question.  I do not understand that boy.  (later he asked me if he could have any “round money” because he couldn’t think of the word coins)
• *I worked on creating an outfit to dress Sassy up as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Person.  More on that later.

So, this is later.

For Sassy’s project on Canada, she and her father have been working very hard on her “float”.  It’s a giant shoe box that they turned upside down and decorated.  It looked awesome I must say.  They spent several days making paper mache mountains.  Today they painted the mountain brown and snowy, then added felt grass and water, mossy bushes and trees, and Canadian animals.  Sassy drew a Canadian sky line for the side of the box.  It looked awesome.

Really awesome, until we were getting everyone ready for bed and Roscoe ate it.  There were tears and yelps and considerable yelling.

The kids are in bed sound asleep.  Roscoe is outside pouting.  My Honey is making a new paper mache mountain.  And me, what am I doing?  I’m doing my editing silly.  Just like I’m supposed to be doing.  Right?