Pound Cake, Pages, and Jackson is here!!!!!

Everyone, take a moment to scream with Fannie, her grandson Jackson is here!!!!! A week old, she told us in her comment yesterday. Well done, grandma. Newborns are the best snugglers...sigh...

Off to the grocery in a few minutes. Running errands on Saturday is not recommend for over-scheduled authors who have comments due next week on her July story (The Prodigal's Return, in case you didn't catch me gushing in my comments last night), and three chapters of her Feb. '07 story (The Perfect Daughter) due the following week. But, alas, a chocolate sour cream pound cake has been promised for the pot-luck dinner we're going to Sunday night, and I need to get it done today (just in case it doesn't come out, as home made pound cakes are want to do every third or fourth one I make for reasons never clear to me, and I need time for Plan B). Always have a Plan B--that's the Busy Girl's Code.

Oh, and there's my husband's weekend chore of pulling old boards off the side of the house and replacing them (what makes me think I'll get roped into that one before he's through?), and my son's wanting to go to the four-hour Yu Gi oH! tournament at the mall all afternoon (that'll be my baby, too, but at least I can take the laptop along and write while he duals).

So, the question of the day is the ever-inspiring, How do we as wives and mothers (and busy women, those of us not chained to--that is, not blessedly bound to--our families) fit in our pages (or whatever your personal priority is) in the midst of the pound cakes and other adventures constantly pulling us away?

My secret weapon is announcing my daily goals before anyone else is awake enough to get theirs out. I actually have daily page output and other deadline-based things planned out weeks in advance when I have as much going on as I do. Everyone knows what I have to get done. Not that that means I'm off the hook for the other wife and mom stuff, but treating my work as real business deadlines kind of shifts the conversation toward working everyone else's stuff around mine, rather than the other way around. I work at home--work. It's a valuable perspective.

I love being a wife and mom. I love baking pound cake. I love going to pot lucks and meeting the neighbors. But, I have to get my work done first--work that gets put off too often during the week as I'm carpooling and volunteering in the school and dealing with day-to-day stuff everyone else gets to leave behind when they walk out the door in the morning.

So, put the pages first (whatever you pages turn out to be), and announce your priorities as often as it takes until they become everyone else's as well. This morning, my son knows to leave mommy to her writing if he wants to go to his Yu Gi oH! tournament--isn't that a lovely thing? Now if my husband could just manage to get up and down the ladder without needing me to hand him something...I think I'll send the ten-year-old out to help for a while ;O)

How do you busy ladies manage to get your pages done????? This is a timely qestion for us all, since on Monday we'll be chatting about the harried stay-at-home mom who used to slay demons (and might just have to again) in Julie Kenner's Carpe Demon. Talk about a woman balancing a full plate and priorities no one around her even knows about. Sheesh...maybe I should stop complaining ;O)

Congrats again Fannie. Thanks again, everyone, for finding me over here and keeping me company as I pouted at the nasty spammers yesterday. You're the best!!!

Off for some pre-pound-cake shoping!