My weekly post is up at The Midnight Hour. It’s about critiques, and how to take one–and how NOT to take one. Enjoy.

Turkey Day finished with nobody sick, screaming, or crying. Well, the Princess has a cold, but that was a pre-existing condition. All the food I prepared was edible–brioche caramel sticky buns, ham, baked mashed potatoes (they taste better if you bake them THEN mash them), stuffing, asparagus and haricots verts (the Muffin cooked those, thank God), mixed-starter bread (which came out wonderfully well), and apple pie that I baked yesterday. All things were edible and everyone ate loads. I dosed myself with wine and the Bailey’s lasted the whole day (there’s still a little bit left over.) No holiday is truly complete without Bailey’s, says I. And of course the kids were able to watch a bunch of Looney Tunes, which made their day.

Today the house is quiet. I have copyedits to bash at and some yardwork to do, and if I get both reasonably done I will reward myself with a film later today. Rewards are necessary things, I think. Life cannot be all work, work, work.

Incidentally, I’ve been lucky enough to have the same copyeditor for most of the Valentine books and now the first Kismet book. I really, really love my copyeditor, because s/he seems to learn my style and idiosyncrasies, and take them into account. It is a Good Thing.

It just occurred to me this morning that the Little Prince has been toilet-trained for quite some time. I remember when he was as long as my arm and completely helpless. Now he wants to do everything “Bah MahSELF, Mahm!” It is truly amazing. It seems like only yesterday he could barely even get his thumb to his mouth, and yet now his favorite things include running through the house, somersaulting on the bed, and scurrying in when I fill up the sink to wash dishes. “I do it FOR you, Mummy!” he crows, and proceeds to get everything but the dishes soaking wet.

*sigh* They grow so fast. And the toilet-training for both of them went so smoothly; I wonder if I’m lucky or if the fact that we just didn’t worry so much about it and let the kids discover in their own due time had something to do with it. Kids WANT to learn and to be “grown-up”, one merely has to facilitate and they will do all the hard work.

Well, mostly.

Anyway, back into the wilds of copyedits, where my fabulous copyeditor has hacked a path through overgrown prose and fact-checked the thickets. Bless his/her heart.

Catch you later, Readers…

This entry was posted on Friday, November 23rd, 2007 at 1:06 pm and is filed under Real Life, Writing, Deep Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.