My Western Sky

NaNoWriMo--no, it's not some obnoxious Aggie yell. It stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it's an actual THING  with a Facebook page and a hashtag .  In the month of November, writers stop talking about that novel and actually start writing it. A whole novel. In a month. The hardcore NaNoWriMos follow a crazy calendar that will word count them to a 50,000 word novel by the end of November. And I'm going to DO THIS. I'm ALL IN. Seriously. This. Is. Happening. Well, sort of. Because I like my family, my job, and my sleep, I don't think I can commit to this count craziness. Not yet. But I am embracing the idea behind NaNoWriMo, which is this:  And so that's what I intend to do. In January, I used this blog to make the shaky whisper of a confession that I am finally writing "THE BOOK." It started to take shape over the spring, mostly living inside my head, and this summer it morphed into a novel that actually lives on my computer. ...

You need to know this about Jason and me: We consider ourselves the guardians of our daughters' childhood innocence, and as their parents, we take this job seriously. Before you roll your eyes and mentally ship us off to Crazy Town, let me clarify: We aren't THOSE kind of parents that place our kids in a bubble of bliss; our girls don't think the world is all rainbows and roses (even though that's what they like to draw). They know that bad things happen, but the key is that WE are the ones to tell them about the bad things; we try to act as the buffer to soften the blow of reality. Our main tactic is to filter their intake of media. We are strict about what they watch on TV (no news or "adult" shows when they are in the room), the movies that they see (only G and PG), and the songs that they listen to. Now before you think I'm some kind of Parent Cop that polices the lives of my kids, let me just be real; this is all a struggle, and we are FAR from perfec...