March 4th Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

I got to sleep in a little today because they are doing HSPA testing for the high school juniors, so the other three grades get to go in three hours late. I was pleasantly surprised my internal clock allowed me to do this, I’m not usually so lucky. I did wake up at my normal time, but then I rolled over and went right back to sleep. This may seem boring to all of you, but I’m excited. That was the first time, in I don’t know how many years, I got seven hours of sleep in a row.

Lys is still running a fever and still feeling miserable. She’s taking antibiotics as well as Motrin every six hours. I just gave her her fourth dose, so hopefully she will start feeling a little better by the end of the day. She has been good about drinking even though her throat is really sore, and last night she even ate a bowl of oatmeal. I was worried about her taking the antibiotics without having any food in her stomach, but it doesn’t look like I’ll need to worry too much. After I bring Dani for Dunkin’ Donuts (she’s been begging for days, so I relented) and then drop her off at school, I’ll make Lys some eggs. They should be soft enough that they don’t hurt her throat and heavy enough to pad her stomach from the meds.

Today I will continue gathering everything together for my taxes, and hopefully by tomorrow I will be organized enough to put the information down on the proper forms. Although I had everything written down in my appointment book, what I really should have done from the get-go was have a monthly income and expense report. It’s taking a bit of time to get everything set up properly, but if I do it correctly now, and enter everything on a monthly basis from now on, future years will be a breeze.

As a writer you need to wear so many hats, and so many things take time away from actually being able to write. Obviously you need to be a writer, but you also need to be a marketing agent, a PR specialist, a social media guru, an editor, an accountant, an event coordinator, a research analyst, a public speaker (oh, I forgot to tell you, I have a speaking engagement next Tuesday…yikes!), and I’m sure several other things I’m forgetting to mention or haven’t come across quite yet. This past year has been a learning experience to say the least. There have been high points and low point, and I have stumbled a few times, but I am learning. Thankfully, there have been other Indie authors out there willing to lend their support and advice. I cannot imagine what kind of disasters I would have gotten myself into if I had to do this completely on my own.

Okay, I need to go get lunches made and get my hubby out the door. I hope y’all have a phenomenal day, and happy writing!

Your Last Challenge was:

Oh, that will never work…

Science projects. I hate science projects! I hated them while I was in school. I hated them when I had to help my oldest two children with theirs, and I still hate them now while I’m helping my youngest child with hers. We’ve had to build ecosystems, volcanoes, apparatus to keep an egg from breaking when dropped from great heights, and mousetrap race cars. As if those weren’t challenging enough, now we need to build a roller coaster – with a loop, none the less. Are you kidding me? Are we in high school or engineering graduate school? To top it off, it needs to be made from scratch, no prefabricated pieces, and it needs to be made small enough to be able to be transported. Good grief!

After days of sketching and scrapping the sketches because we realized the designs would never work, we came up with a simple design; one which simply used gravity and centripetal force to make it work. Now all that was left was to transfer what was on paper to an actual working model and to pray it would actually preform the way we had planned.

Thank GOD, this roller coaster project was one the kids had to do in class and not as a take home project, because I seriously doubt I would have been able to help with this one, and I am positive we would not have been able to build it in the two weeks allotted. It does amaze me at how much more difficult projects have become since I was in school. The stuff they are now learning in junior and senior high, we weren’t learning until we got to college.

Your Next Challenge is:

(I’m going to step WAY out of my comfort zone here) Your challenge is to write a poem – silly or serious, rhyming or not – the choice is yours

You have 10 minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.