Today's coffee is Starbuck's Christmas blend, which my son gave my husband and I for Christmas.  Of course, I've added lots of creamer (which I can't stop doing).  The thought of which makes me think of New Year's resolutions.

Every year I've tried to make a New Year's resolution, but have failed in my attempts to follow it.  This year I've decided to forgo a resolution for a better solution.  I made a promise to myself three months ago that I would walk more, and I've kept that promise with the help of my walking buddy.  I had thought I would wait and make this promise on New Year's, but I decided that I would do it right away instead of waiting.

I have always said: I'll start on Monday or I'll start at the beginning of the month, or I'll start with the New Year.  This thinking has never worked in the past, so I've decided I would not make any promises for the future.  Instead, I wake up each morning and think today I'm going to walk, eat right, and tackle this and that. It's amazing how liberating it is not to have the dark cloud of a resolution or promise looming over your head.  I believe this new way of thinking will actually work.  Cause if I mess up one day, there's always the next day for me to do better, instead of waiting a whole year for a new resolution.

Here's to everyone's success for the new day.  That's it.  Slurp!

Coffee doesn't taste so good today.  I'm not sure how to write today, I guess just from my heart.  Yesterday, a friend of my son's died from an overdose.  Just last summer another one had succumbed to drugs as well.  I think of these boys in younger days--running around and riding skateboards--fresh faced, awkward, and shorter than me.  How fast they had grown taller than me into young men--not even twenty yet.  Why did they get hooked on drugs?  One I could see, with his family broken, but the other had everything, a perfect family, so it did seem.


I hugged my son as he cried into my shoulder, thankful for how close we are.  I'm proud of the man he's become and how sensitive he is.  He said when his friend started doing heroine that he had distanced himself from him, but he had just seen him last Saturday and the boy had said he was staying away from the stuff.  I think he felt guilty for it.  My eighteen year old, with so much sorrow laden on his shoulders, straightened himself and told me he was going to go see his friend's family and friends, and then he was going to his class because he had a final.  I squeezed him once more and let him go.


There comes a time when a mother has to let her child go--into the scary dark world--each second spent worrying if he will stay safe and make the right choices.  We have done our jobs, provided a nest and the wings for our dear ones to fly away.  May they soar to heights that we could not and may they make the world a better place.  I send a prayer out to all the mothers whose nests are empty that their children are safe, and a special one for those mothers who have lost a child, may God's love fill your empty nests with peace and love.

Okay, seriously, it's like twelve degrees out this morning, and I'm not leaving the house, so I'm having a home brewed cup of Starbuck's coffee with French vanilla creamer. It actually snowed yesterday in Albuquerque. I love and miss the snow, I would have run out and rolled around in it, but I didn't want to puncture my butt with cactus needles. Ah, missed opportunities . . .

So this made me think, what's the temperature in your book? Do you even address it? Hum? There's so much to bring to life in novels that I think I'll take a looksy at mine and see if my characters are cold, hot, or whatever. I know it rains a lot in my book, well, they are in Boston, after all. But do my characters feel the rain, smell what the wetness causes, or do I simply mention it? I fear the latter, so off I go to check it out, again. 

Okay, I'm back and I think I'm good. Anyway, my favorite books make me feel like I'm in the environment the characters are in, I'm in their heads, thinking what they think. Heck, I'm even tasting the coffee they drink. With that said, I guess that's it. Slurp!