The last day of July hurtles into focus as I prepare for mini-break #4: single-mommying 3 kids for 3 days. Will be intriguing to see how I fit in writing time. I’m thinking between breakfast and the day’s planned outing, all outings culminating in, of course, the beach, where it is impossible to write or revise due to wave-beauty and making sure children don’t get sucked out to sea by undertows or attacked in shallows by great white sharks (I stand in the shallows while children swim, beach bucket in hand, ready to bonk anything with a dorsal fin on the snout, hard—unless, of course, fin is on a dolphin). Other newsy bits:

1. Ditching riding instructor as have realized he a) doesn’t like having students who will never, in his lifetime, be competing, and/or b) simply has no social skills–although excellent texting skills while giving my lesson—and is not to be faulted, but I am a paying customer, thus—the fault is mine? I will miss Leroy (horse). I wish I could take him away from this scorching Chatsworth summer and to a new life by the ocean (because if I could afford him, it means we’d be living by the ocean at last).

2. Worrying obsessively am morphing into Walter Mitty.

3. About to start marketing the adult novel. Summer is almost over, you know—another blink and it will be gone—even though we valley dwellers will certainly be experiencing heatwaves from now until January 2014.  Time to—oh, it’s just time.

Yours in writing strength and perseverance and iced coffee for breakfast while standing in a cold shower ruminating madly on personal goals,

PB.

Simmer down now.