As my sister so kindly pointed out, I’ve fallen a bit behind on the blog posts lately. And that’s after cutting my weekly commitment by half. I still mostly blame schoolwork, but that’s really just my temporary excuse. Give me a week, and I’ll be able to blame NaNoWriMo for a full month.

After that…well, I’ll have to make something up. I’m going to spend all of November making somethings up (50-190 thousand somethings, to be precise), so how hard could that be?

Honestly, this summer was crazy and fall is looking worse. I have no idea how I’m going to handle November with everything on my plate. And if those words sound familiar, then you were probably reading my blog around this time last year.

That’s…well, that’s a different blog. This time last year, I didn’t have Unstressed Syllables to worry about. I also didn’t have a rigorous publication schedule looming, marketing demands for my newly published book, a burgeoning arthouse to build, coursework for a master’s degree, or a growing clamor from my fans for more books in their hands.

That last one I’m not complaining about.

Actually, I’m not complaining about any of it. That list makes me incredibly proud of everything I’ve done over the last year, and excited about everything I plan to do in the next. It certainly keeps me busy, though.

Last Friday, I realized with a start that it was nearly November, and that I had two big homework assignments coming due, and that I hadn’t yet written any blog posts for this week. Luckily, I was looking forward to a weekend which meant some free time (right?), so I sat down to figure out my schedule.

• Saturday morning, I needed to do some shopping for Sunday’s plans (see below). I was also supposed to take AB along with me. No problem.
• Saturday afternoon, I needed to help Trish pack the car for her afternoon plans (she had a scrapbooking party to attend from 3 PM to midnight). I also needed to watch the kids for several hours before the babysitter was available.
• Saturday evening, while the kids were at the babysitter’s, I needed to watch the OU game, find myself some dinner, and get a lot of reading done for my homework assignment.
• Saturday night, nine-ish, I needed to pick the kids up from the babysitter’s, get them ready for bed and put to sleep, and then finish the OU game and get more reading done.
• Sunday morning, I needed to wake up in time to make it to church. (Just made it.)
• Sunday afternoon, I got to spend time with Carlos and Julie, in town visiting, and needed (during that visit) to get us all caught up to speed on each other’s ongoing projects.
• Sunday evening, I needed to host a huge party for all of our current Consortium members. There were a lot of people working together (whether they knew it or not), and mostly through me as an intermediary, and this was our first chance to get everyone in the same room and put faces with names. (It was a huge success.)
• Sunday night…well, the party lasted late. And then I went to bed.
• Monday morning, I needed to go to work and get a lot of stuff ready for a little leave of absence. (Didn’t end up happening.)
• Monday afternoon, I needed to meet with Shawn and some of his in-laws for a drive down to Dallas.
• Monday evening, I needed to wait in line at the unbelievably awesome new Dallas Cowboys stadium, because we somehow got there an hour too early. I got a picture of me standing under the Landry statue, though, so that’s something.
• Monday night, I needed to watch the Cowboys snatch victory from defeat, trounce a division opponent, and launch their meteoric rise toward their most phenomenal football season in my lifetime. (Didn’t end up happening.)
• Monday late, late, late night, I needed to get some more reading done for my homework project on the drive home.
• Tuesday morning, I needed to wake up early (in spite of the late, late, late night), and go to work.
• Tuesday afternoon, I needed to put together a short report on the book I’d just barely finished reading for class, meet Toby for our regular weekly lunch/program development meeting, and then attend class at OU, before driving back to work for another two hours.
• Tuesday evening, I needed to watch the kids while Trish went to book club.
• Tuesday night, I needed to sleep like you would not believe.

And, surprisingly enough, I got most of that done. Forgot to work in the blog post, and I hated seeing Romo broken on the field, but it’s still a pretty impressive scene list.

Oh yeah. Scene lists. Let’s get to that.