Happy New Year!

Old man 2012 is about to rest his weary old head while mother nature is in contractions ready to bring forth the baby of 2013. Another year down. 2012 has been filled with all sorts of stresses and joys. My parents divorced this year after 33 years of marriage. Suddenly though not unexpectedly I became the rock of my family taking on the responsibilities of 3 households. It has been….stressful. But at the end of the day I am glad that the charade of marriage is over. The grievances and grudges they have been carrying all these years are released. Now if I could only get some forward movement on getting rid of their house I could release some of the stress I am carrying. 3 households is a lot to juggle and skilled as I am at keeping the balls in the air I would like to let some of them fall. I ended a long term relationship. It was very hard. I have tried many times in the past only to pussy out at the last minute or to accept her back but this year I drew the line in the sand. No more. And I am sticking to it. I feel free in a way I have not in a long, long time. Now I can look forward to entering into new relationship(s) unencumbered by bullshit drama! YAY for drama-free zones! This year was big for my daughter as well. She has been harboring a love of geology for the past several years. She can and will talk to you about the metamorphic process for hours. I find it as boring as..well…a pile of rocks but to her it is fascinating so I do everything I can to encourage it. This year for our family vacation we went to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. It was delightful. Ok, that is a lie. It was miserable. We must have offended Thor because it rained like he had a personal vendetta against us all night every night we camped. Which meant my husband and I stayed up all night keeping the water off the roof. Everything was wet. However come morning the skies cleared and the day turned out to be beautiful (if not a bit stifling). My purpose in going camping at the cave was to do something my daughter would enjoy. What happened was that she discovered a career path. She talked to every single ranger we encountered. Every one of them was more than happy to chat about rocks and minerals to her hearts content. A couple even took her off trail. I don’t know which one it was that suggested she might want to become a Park Ranger but I would like to shake his/her hand. It lit a fire in her imagination and for the first time I saw how this obsession could become a career. And for that I am both thankful and excited. I had set a goal for myself to finish my book this year. Unfortunatly I am not going to meet that goal. I did get more than halfway through before I decided that, given the current political situation in Egypt I would have to rewrite a large portion of it. I have worked hard to make the story as accurate and believable (for the subject matter) as I possibly can and I just could not include the current state of civil unrest in my story and make it believable. So back to the board on that. However I have already started the rewrites and I am pleased that the ideas are coming fast and freely, which makes me very happy. I presented a class at a convention for the first time. It went very well and I got lots of great feedback. I was honored and delighted to be a part of it and I am hoping to have more opportunities to present in the future. But enough about the past. The future is staring me right in the face. This coming year should be another fun filled ride. I don’t believe in resolutions however I do believe in ideas. So my 2013 ideas go a little something like this: I will get back to my exercise program religiously. This every once in a while stuff is bullshit and I am over it. So back to the 2011 schedule. I can already feel my muscles thanking me.  I will work on completing my novel. Hopefully you will be getting it for Christmas next year. Fingers crossed. I WILL get out to Portland and see my favorite people in the world. I WILL! I will try to write some of my non-novel ideas down and finish up a lot of the writing projects that are half finished. I would like to start posting more to my blog. Perhaps even bring back Sunday Smut. I miss writing Smut. I will NOT go crazy from having a pre-teen daughter. I WILL NOT!!!! I will both kinky camp and family camp this summer. I will visit the inlaws and even try to have a good time. Above all I will remember that I am a beautiful, intelligent, vivacious woman. I hope you have a wonderful New Year! HUGS! Lana