How are things going with you? I've had three visits with my 91 year-old mother in the past week. She lives with my sister, who is out of town, so I'm on call for things like grocery shopping.

My mom is a reminder that we all keep changing as we get older. She listens more than she used to. She is more open than she was in the past. And she is more interested in me than she used to be.

Because truth be told, I’m the younger kid who went off and did her own thing, and she’s never really connected to what that was. She was always very focused on my older sister, and there’s really been no space for me in her life.

Parenting is funny. You don’t know what you’re doing until you’ve done it.

Lest you think that I’m bitter or angry, far from it. I think I’m really lucky that she was too preoccupied with other things to get super involved with my life. She disagreed with and disapproved of most of my choices, at the time that I made them. One of the things she was most upset about (besides my marrying my husband, with whom I’ve had nearly 33 good years of marriage so far!) was my decision to stay at home with my four children. My sister has been a paragon of hard-working career mom, so both of them thought I was insane and told me so.

My choices turned out really, really well for me. REALLY well. It hasn’t been fun knowing that my mom and sister thought I was being a complete idiot, but I knew I was doing the right thing for my household. With my husband traveling all the time and with my kids’ academic abilities and athletic talents I knew that there needed to be a full-time adult manager of the household, and that person was me. It’s not a path I think most people should follow—it was just the path that made sense for us.

So I’ve kind of been spared because I haven’t gotten much attention from that quarter, and my mom is actually realizing now that my decisions were pretty good. And the fact that she shares this opinion with me is a stark change from the past.

I’ve changed over the years, too. I’m more tolerant, more relaxed. But sometimes I’m anxious about things like trying to get more writing done and trying to dispose of a LOT of leftover homeschool clutter. I think I’m more anxious now than I was when I was younger. We’re all a work in progress, though. Maybe by the time I’m 91 I’ll have a clean, decluttered home and dozens of books published?

Oh, my goodness, people. I completely forgot about uploading that excerpt of Ever Your Affectionate to my blog! I’ve just done so much driving and running around this week, it’s been really challenging to find the chunks of time I need to quietly get my writing tasks done. As soon as I send this out I’ll get that excerpt out, promise! Enjoy!

I really like where I’ve gone with this story, although some of you may find it…different?

You know what, the world is different now compared to a couple of years ago. Do you not agree?

My first two novels were written a long time ago. I was much younger and I think I felt different things, and I felt them differently. I don’t think I would write those books today, even though I occasionally pick them up, thumb through the pages, and remember acutely how it felt to be me in those days.

The thing about novels is that you’re invited into someone’s personal space for the duration of the story. It’s so different from a movie or a play, where you are treated to a collaboration. I’m very jealous of the people who work in film or theater, because I’m not good at collaboration. I get very shy and self-conscious about my thoughts, and I don’t think I express them well when people are watching.

But when I write my novels I am being honest and truly myself, because I only write scenes that make sense. One scene leads to another leads to another, in a chain that feels logical to me. The people in my books are doing things that make sense in my head, and they’re doing those things because they are the people I know they are. It’s like you and I are having coffee and I’m explaining this dramatic thing that happened to people I know really well. I’m giving you context and justification and predictions…because I’m who I am with the experience I have on the planet.

The caveat is that you’re getting me as I was when I wrote those books. That’s one reason why I like working in public so much. I like publishing excerpts and early drafts because I personally love watching creative people at work. You get to actually watch the thing being made, and you'll understand why it turned out the way it did. But I won’t be that person who wrote those things after a few years have gone by. I’m that person right now. So if you’re curious, then you need to be on the ride with me now.

Thank you for your patience with me, I swear my project for this year is to figure out how to write and publish faster! By the time you get this newsletter I’ll have an excerpt up on the blog for you.

I went on a Brene Brown binge a couple of years ago. I bought all her books. I watched her Netflix special. I watched several of her interviews on YouTube. I heard her interviewed on podcasts and then subscribed to her own then-new podcast.

And then COVID hit and I kinda burned out on her. I didn’t want to hear about being vulnerable, and I started to wonder, really wonder if she could possibly understand anyone’s pain besides her own.

Yikes, that’s a mean, judgy comment from me. Not good.

But she’s a researcher and an academic, and I think COVID made me question the tidy methodology that researchers of all kinds employ. Just because you collect data, does that make your opinions better?

So I’m back on the Brene train now with her new HBO series. To be honest, I wasn’t going to watch it, but I needed some background noise this week. The house has been very quiet with my husband gone and I just wanted to hear voices talking, so I turned on HBO and there she was.

Folks, it’s really good. And what can I say, I just LIKE her. Here’s the trailer.​

And for those of you without HBO, here’s a 15-minute interview with Dr. Brown that gives a great sum-up.

I love her statement that you really can’t understand what someone is feeling unless you ask and are willing to believe what they say. I also love how she says that precise language to describe our feelings is the key. That really appeals to the writer in me! One of her opening assertions is that the artists among us know how to express the subtleties between different emotions. Truth!

The other thing I started binge-watching is the Twilightmovies! I’m probably opening up a can of worms here, haha. People love or hate these movies. I watched the first one years ago after reading the books and enjoyed the movie far more than the books! It’s beautifully shot, and some of the banter is funny (the script is mostly terrible, but the books are mostly terribly written also, even though the story is engaging). The second movie is pretty good, too. I watched the third and fourth one this week. Well, “watched” is an overstatement, I had it on as background noise. But the third movie was okay-ish. The fourth movie was kind of terrible, too much CGI and digital effects. I’ll probably turn on movie number five later this week. I'm not linking any previews or trailers here because...spoilers. But all five are available on Hulu right now, and I believe Hulu is still a free service if you agree to watch ads.

I’m curious about whether any of you are Twilight fans, either the books or the movies. Do you agree that the writing in the books is not that great? Have I stepped on any toes by suggesting otherwise? (oops, sorry!) I recently saw Kristen Stewart in Spencer and she was pretty amazing, so I’m an open-minded gal when it comes to the acting in the films. I tend to blame a lot of movie problems on bad scripts. What do you think?

I’ve discovered this week that Linus literally knows what time I get up in the morning. He is waiting in exactly the same spot when I come downstairs every day (and this is AFTER he's been fed, because we have an automatic feeder, so he's not waiting for food, he's waiting for ME). My family thinks it’s cute. I’m slightly horrified. I didn’t want an emotionally co-dependent cat! Here he is glaring down at me because I'm sitting in a chair (trying to edit!) and this is as close as he can get to me. Argh!