My mother died on September 3, 2009, the day after the Girl celebrated her 20th birthday. It’s been about 6 weeks since she died, and you know, most of the time, I’m doing okay…sort of.

I go about my daily life and things go along the way they did before 3 September. Beloved and the Girl head to LSU every morning and the Boy goes to school, I have dinners to prepare and laundry to do and my books to write, and the sun shines.

But it doesn’t. Not really.

We’ve had some on-going issues. My van died before I got home from the week of funerals and stress and food that started on Labor Day. The van is over 10 years old and it’s time for it to just be donated somewhere. Due to our family’s situation, we want to donate it to Kidney Cars.

Well, it has turned out to be a major hassle. Between trying to figure out Kidney Cars’ rules and get all the forms filled out and notarized, it’s taken forever. Then today we found out that while I did have the title to fill out the forms online, the title Beloved took with him today was for a different car.

The Girl went to the ER with some minor digestive issues. She’s okay but I was freaked out last night waiting for Beloved to bring her home.

The Boy still has some behavioral issues and while I called his psychologist last week, she hasn’t called me back to talk about a pharmaceutical option. I’ll have to call a pediatrician tomorrow.

I have some peridonital issues I can’t even think about dealing with yet,

Probably if I were in a different frame of mind, these things wouldn’t seem so huge.

A friend of mind brought me flowers and food a week or so ago. Her mother works with the bereavement ministry at our church, so she brought me a couple of pamphlets from there. I guess I thought that since I was home and dealing with my every day life, I was okay.

I need to be gentle with myself and realize that it’s going to be some time, a long time, before I’m not still grieving. It’s only been about 6 weeks.

Tomorrow I’m flying up to Akron, Ohio, with my father-in-law. We’re renting a truck to drive some of Mom’s furniture and other stuff like that. Maybe that’s why my heart is so broken today. I really don’t want to deal with this.

Yes, in a mercenary, selfish, way I want her sewing stuff and I want the furniture and paintings, but more than that, I wish she were still here to use them and I wouldn’t have to do this.

I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to go up there, although my brother and his wife live there and I love them and want to see them again, but you know what? I saw them last month and it was hard.

Okay, enough of this. I need to try to focus on something else.

Thanks for listening!

Current book – writing: Sword & Illusion
Number of chapters declared DONE – Sixteen
Number of chapters waiting for Beloved’s final read – Two
Chapter working on – None as I’m far enough ahead with totally new stuff that I don’t want to move on until he’s read what’s waitng
Current book – reading – Death’s Daughter by Amber Benson Amber was an actress on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which, of course, as everyone knows is one of my favorites, given that Joss created and wrote it. Anyway, I just recently realized that Amber was also a writer, so I decided to read this book. I’ll let you know what I think. So far, I like it, and for the FTC, let me say I got it from the library (I probably owe a fine on it, too) so I’m not shilling for her!

As you can see from the above I’m ahead of Beloved in the editing of Sword & Illusion, so I’m trying to find a way to keep writing without actually starting something new.

“Why?” you ask.

Well, the truth is I have so many books already started and two of them I finished years ago but never sent them out because I know they need fixing.

The problem is that I’ve never been good at editing myself, and I don’t know anyone I can ask to read a whole book and comment on it for me.

I’ve picked the oldest one, a marriage of convenience story called For the Love of Ivy, and I’m attempting to edit it. This is a contemporary romance. It probably won’t be an inspirational, though. It will be written under Nancy S. Brandt’s name. I know when I started it I went back and forth as to whether it would be an inspirational or not, but I think this one will just be a traditional sweet romance. We’ll see what the characters think once I dig into it.

I’m the kind of writer who has to just get the whole book written before I do any editing so I know where I’m headed. So, I know this is a rough draft and I have to chisel out the story from the junk that’s here.

It’s an old book, so I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff I need to totally re-do and I’m a better writer than when I did this so I need to polish and try not to cringe as I read this stuff.

Any other writers out there understand what I’m saying? I’m going to go through the whole thing and try to find if there are any nuggets of gold I can rebuild the story around.

I’m determined to get this book done!

On another note, I’m challenging myself to try to write 2000 words a day, although with editing, a full chapter (approx. 20 pages) edited is considered for my purposes as 2000 words.