So since I don’t have much else to report, I thought I would post my own “8 Things Meme” after reading Calistro’s, on her blog Writing About Writing. So here goes…

8 Things I look forward to

1. Hanging out with my dad this holiday weekend and grilling food with my new grill.

2. Finishing my book.

3. Seeing the Terminator movie.

4. Going to Europe.

5. Being skinnier.

6. Finish knitting Mike’s socks.

7. Eating Mexican food on Friday nights.

8. Cuddling with my cats.

8 Things I did yesterday

1. Met up with my college friends for dinner at the Cherry Cricket.

2. Watched the Nuggets beat the Lakers!

3. Sent my sister another chapter of my book to read.

4. Made up a quiz about myself and posted it Facebook, after doing a quiz about my sister.

5. Fell asleep before midnight.

6. Got the bottom of pants wet from walking in the rain.

7. Ventured into celebrity gossip land for just a few minutes and then backed out.

8. Made someone a strawberry and banana parfait.

8 Things I wish I could do

1. Go on vacation next week.

2. Buy a house.

3. Get a whole new wardrobe.

4. Be tidier.

5. See my out-of-state friends.

6. Run the Bolder Boulder.

7. Relive my college years.

8. Juggle.

8 Shows I watch

1. Heroes

2. Lost

3. Days Of Our Lives

4. How I Met Your Mother

5. Seinfeld

6. House Hunters

7. Saturday Night Live

8. The Daily Show and Colbert Report

If you’d like to do this meme too – just steal it!

I didn’t get up at dawn, but I didn’t need to. Instead, I woke up around 8:15 fully rested. I took a hot shower and put on my yoga clothes. I meandered downstairs and found my favorite Yoga DVD. I blew off the dust it had collected and followed an almost nude Rodney Yee as he stretched his way into the day.

I sort of wish Rodney Yee tucked me in at night. He's got such a soothing voice.

Seeing him in his little bikini bottom made me think about Never-Nudes, and during my downward dog I chuckled, which didn’t do much to relax my belly toward the earth.

After floor time with the cats, which is essentially what my yoga turned out to be, I went right toward the fruit. Yesterday at the grocery store I bought every fruit imaginable so I could get some variety all week. To start things off, I opted for melon. That along with an English Muffin and I had quite a tasty breakfast. Sadly, I didn’t read anything while eating, but I did listen to music, so that should count for some sort of cultural calories.

I'm a melon girl.

Breakfast, check. Coffee, check. I was then ready to write. In my two-bedroom townhouse, I don’t have a home office, but I do have a cute little desk with a rather comfortable chair. So I planted myself at it and started the writing process. For three hours I worked on my book, reviewing and writing. I managed somehow to stay off of Twitter and Facebook, and got a lot done.

The corner office.

Before I knew it, my stomach grumbled and it was time for lunch. Fortunately, I had purchased some of the ingredients required for the grilled chicken salad of my dream day. I put it all together and it was better than I had expected it to be.

Chicken from the pre-marinaded Archer Farms selection at Target.

Then it was back to work. I started doing some major outlining of my novel with a program called StoryMill. It’s this software that helps you outline, organize scenes, keep characters lists, location descriptions, etc. I’ve only recently started using it for those purposes. I might end up buying it.

StoryMill in action.

I spent a little time on the couch listening to music and trying to dream up what would happen next in my story and that was pleasant. There may have been a little singing, but only the cats could tell you for sure. And that’s pretty much how my first day went.

Sadly, there was no cute café, writers group, or secret forest path. But there will be a book and bath in my evening.

Tomorrow — I’m using the first half of my day to run some errands, pay bills, and do some cleaning. Then I’ll be back on the computer. So tune in tomorrow and I’ll show you just how that turned out too.

May 7, 2006

Some promises are hard to keep, especially the ones that should have never been made in the first place. But I find that the most difficult promises to keep are then ones that start with, “I will never again…” because repeating past behavior is hard to resist in particular situations. Lately I’ve been thinking about how breaking promises can turn out to be a good thing. It can be the best thing that ever happened to someone when she dives right back into a behavior that she once promised herself she would never repeat again. And that’s what I’m exploring in my WIP. Renata is constantly making promises to herself that she cannot keep, because she shouldn’t be making such ridiculous promises in the first place. Why limit the heart? Why limit your experiences just because the first time around it brought you to utter hurt and total failure? Resistance should be futile when someone like Renata is much too hard on herself.

So the moral of this blog post is that ideally promises should be made and kept only when it’s right, which is admittedly easier said than done, and that we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves when we don’t get it right. I should have never promised to be with my ex-husband forever when I knew that we weren’t really meant for each other, but it happened and I should give myself a break about it. I shouldn’t promise myself that I will never get married again, because there’s no telling what’s in store for me. And Renata…she too will break a lot of promises to herself when she meets Ryan, and it will be the best thing that ever happened to her.

Here’s one promise that I don’t mind making publicly and that I plan on keeping. I promise that I will finish my novel and share it with whoever wishes to read it.