Distraction

Today was a distracted day.  I finished writing through the end of chapter 5 in book two, but it took me literally all day.  I woke up late and made my daughter eggs because she looked cute and asked me with huge puppy dog eyes.

And then I sat down with very good intentions and listened to my husband's phone calls for a couple of hours while I stared at the same paragraph over and over and willed it to make sense in my head.  He has a very loud and penetrating phone voice that I can hear from clear out in the yard, bless his heart.  And then my darling daughter came in and asked for a bath - which means that she wet her pants.  So I gave her a bath.

 Then I realized I was hungry and went to the kitchen for carrots and hummus and tea while Jane bathed.  After my snack, I thought I should start dinner.  So I made a stew and garlic bread.  Then I sat down again and actually wrote a few pages.  Tea is magic juice, folks.  The toddler bathed for a long while, and my husband mowed grass.  A lawnmower is kind of a nice thing to hear in the background while you write.

But if you recognize this rodent, you'll gather how the rest of the day went.  In between dressing my toddler and getting her food and listening to her questions and her reports on what the cat was doing and how her tummy felt and what her poop looked like and listening to my husband's afternoon phone calls (my other kids have "borrowed" and "lost" my earbuds, which means I will not see them again in this world), I managed to obsess over the fate of one character and force an end to the chapter.  I will probably rewrite it later.

And though my very strong natural inclination is to smack my head repeatedly for giving in to the distractions around me and accomplishing much less today than I should have done, I am giving myself a congratulations sticker.  There are eight pages (seven and a half if we're picky) in the world now that did not exist this morning.  And eight pages are a lot more than I write on the days when I throw my hands up and let the distractions win entirely.  One day, I'll look back on my distractions and laugh.

Or write.