deadline, oh beautiful deadline

It’s been a whirlwind around here. D has been rebuilding our garage with his dad and brother, transforming it from a run-down shed (what a neighbor boy accurately called it once) into a real garage with electricity and a garage door and a ceiling actually high enough for a garage door opener. They have been sweating it out in the back yard for over a week now, and I’ve been spending long afternoons with the girls, grilling hamburgers and watching them jump in the pool, splashing water on each other until their laughter transforms into whining and crying and hair-pulling.

I have also been writing and revising and writing and revising in my one-and-a-half hours each morning, trying to finish the memoir by September 1. (I realize that I’ve moved my deadline. Cut me some slack.)

The good news is that I finally feel like I’m moving the book forward. I’m past those hard middle chapters and I can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel. Don’t get me wrong; I still have pages and pages to write, but for the first time I feel as though finishing it is a real possibility. I’m getting close. Which is why it’s frustrating that I don’t have more time to work on it right now.

But maybe it’s better this way. I’m out the door to the coffee shop as soon as I wake up, and each morning I’m excited to dive back into the narrative. Maybe the fact that I need to write 65 (or 70?) pages in the next three weeks is exactly the kind of fire under my a** I needed.

Hello, fire. Meet my a**.