The RWA conference was draining and fun and long long hours on my feet. I tried my best to work business in with pleasure and did a fair job.

For some reason my phone calls to my cps and friends went screwy (or either they were avoiding me, lol) but I met them more in passing which was better than nothing. That’s my only regret–that I didn’t get to have face time with the friends I love most. So the only alternative is for us to get together at some small con later on so we can really rap.

I finally hunted down Sharon during the waning hours of the con, but I was so dead dog tired by then I was nearly incoherent. Meeting Michelle Diener from South Africa was a special treat. Wow, she’s one classy chick! I felt like a dwarf beside her. 🙂

It was so nice to meet up with Kat Martin again. I’ve loved her works forever, and we both share the same loves of the land and the west. A high point was meeting Linda Lael Miller, who hooked me with her works with her Orphan Train trilogy way back when. Linda did the blurb for my debut novel, which made it all the more sweeter to meet her.

I met old friends and make new ones. Luck was with me when I garnered two impromptu meets with agents who are reading my work now.

The Kensington party was great–again it’s nice to put faces to the names on the net. I’ve read so many of these authors–some are auto buys for me–some are new to the K family. It was also great to spend time with the editors outside of the work environment and talk about something besides books!

The RITA/Golden Heart was well done, and I congratulate the winners. A few of my friends who were up for awards didn’t win, but they will forever be winners to me.

I’ve posted pictures on my website, so take a look.

Now if I could just have a week to rest up–

A reporter called to interview me this week. Click here to read the piece. 🙂

First, the toilet nightmare is finally finished without too much aggravation. Not only was the supply to the crapper shot to shit, but the wax ring under the “throne” had deteriorated. Now it’s fixed, and hopefully I won’t scream or faint when I see the bill.

On another very happy note, I just finished the synopsis for my romantic suspense. My first reader read it and was hooked, which is a good sign. First reader is picky. 🙂

Once I finish editing the first three chapters of it, I can pop it off to the agents who’ve requested a look. That’ll be next week sometime, so I’ll make my promise of getting it to them before the National conference.

I’m in the basement when I hear the toilet flush on the first floor. As I don’t live alone, this is nothing unusal. Until I hear a steady trickle of water hitting the basement floor in the furnace room.

I rush in there, dreading what I’ll find. Water is on the floor. More water is dripping from the pipe leading to the toilet. This needs to be repaired ASAP. The only consolation here is that it’s just water.

So instead of getting to my writing this morning as I’m planned, I’m calling a plumber. Ugh.

“I don’t want to get old” has become a mantra of sorts for me and several of my close friends. We have elderly parents and caring for them has often tossed us headlong into the twilight zone. Well, it seems that way.

We really should dub ourselves the Queens of Frustration.

I’ve always thought is was great when I heard someone up in years still lived in their home, still was able to take care of their needs. Then I came to realize that their children took turns “watching out” for or taking the parents to doctor appointments., or being the bad guy that day or week or month. It seemed the right thing to do and it spread the shit out.

All my life I regretted that I hadn’t had siblings, and that is truer now more than ever. All the burden of caring for a parent, the frustrations that come when their mind plays trick on them, when they loose stuff and patience and blame it on the caregiver, when their bodies and minds fail them over simple things, sometimes feel like more than one person can bear.

Though one of my friends has siblings, they’re farther away, and since she’s closer–as in a five hour drive closer–she gets the brunt of it. She has two parents to deal with, and it weighs on her mind 24/7.

My other friend is like me, an only child. Right now, like me, her mother is going through some bizarre crap. And we are smack dab in the middle, with no easy way out. We get it all, every day.

We’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.

Yep, Peter Pan had it right. Take my advice. Don’t get old.