Jennifer Apodaca's Blog, page 118

Happy New Year!!!

I’ve missed you all! Can you all believe it’s 2018?? Pretty amazing, yeah? I want to wish you all a year filled with courageous choices and joyous moments!

A quick roundup–we had a great Christmas and New Years, now we’ve left the holidays behind and have jumped headfirst into baby shower planning for our grandson (OMG it’s so much fun!!), a small outpatient medical procedure for my neck, and the wedding of another of our nieces. It’s going to be another busy month.  And I’m making time to write each day for as many days a week as I can manage. I don’t want to talk about my physical stuff, I just want to go back to writing and finally finish The Savaged Illusions Trilogy, then onto Wing Slayer Hunters. Even if the most I can do is an hour a day, I’m doing it!

How were your holidays? And what are your hopes for 2018?

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays & Happy New Year!

**Note that this I’m putting the blog on hiatus until Monday January 1st. 

To all my friends and fans!

Wishing you all the Love and Magic of the Holiday Season, and a Very Happy New Year!

For myself, my biggest joys of the year are:

A grand child on the way
Middle Son and his girlfriend becoming engaged.
Adopting our sweet shelter girl, Maggie May
Wizard, our three sons and their girls (who are daughters to us!)
And all of you for understanding, maybe at times better than I did, that this year I simply hit a wall both physically and emotionally on my books. And believing that I will be back next year with the final book in the Savaged Illusions series, and I’ll write more books in the Wing Slayer Hunter series. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Please take care, be safe and come back here on Monday January 1st!

 

Wednesday Worthy & Sale on The Baby Bargain!

Happy Wednesday. First let’s take care of business: The digital version of The Baby Bargain is on sale for 99¢! If you like hot tortured Marine heroes, and have a weakness for secret baby and second chance romances, I think you’ll enjoy The Baby Bargain! You can grab your copy here:

Amazon Kindle /  B&N /  iBooks /  Kobo / Google Play

Now here’s our Wednesday Worthy Candidate (taken from https://www.crowdrise.com/o/en/campaign/the-little-red-dog/alexandramason,)

So what do you think? Is he worthy?

P.S. My soon to be daughter-in-law is raising money for the rescue she works with, Little Red Dog Rescue, and they are trying to win Newman’s Own Foundation $500,000 Holiday Challenge to help even more animals! If you can help, even a $10.00 donation makes a difference. Or you can help by spreading the word on social media. Thank you! Here is the link  https://www.crowdrise.com/o/en/campaign/the-little-red-dog/alexandramason

Weekend Roundup

Every year, my sister-in-law hosts an amazing Apodaca Holiday Party. It’s always a blast! But I was feeling a bit off, which I attributed to the usual holiday stress most of us are feeling and the dry windy weather. By the time we got home Saturday night, I had an ugly sore throat. Yesterday it hung around, trying to decide if it wants to stay or go. Who knows, it could just be allergies.  (Let me live in Denial City, I like it here!)

In other news, Maggie did her first over-nighter at her doggie daycare/boarding. She seemed fine, happy to come home but not anxious or stressed. She’s come a long ways in a few short months. But the interesting part, is the woman who runs the facility, Emily is a true dog and animal lover. So much so that she has three PET SQUIRRELS. Like totally domesticated pet squirrels. She brought one of them out of their cage (which kept out the reach of the dogs) to meet me. She put him on the desk and he came right over to me and nuzzled my hand like a cat or bunny might do. He was a sweetheart!

And on the holiday front, I only have a handful of gifts left to buy, and may even pull off Christmas! Even if I get sick, I think I can do it.

Once I’m done, come hell or high water, I’m going to get back to SAVAGED DEVOTION. Maggie has promised to help

So how was your weekend?

Friday Five

It’s been pretty danged busy trying to pull off Christmas. I’ve been either shopping, doing other errands, baking or washing endless dishes from baking. I also missed answering comments on Wednesday’s blog, but I read them all :- ) Okay here’s my random five from my week.

I’ve made 12 loaves each of of pumpkin & zucchini bread.  I’ve also made one batch of tea cakes, and a quadruple batch of Mocha Cookies (recipe link here).
I couldn’t have done any of this without getting the shots in my neck and shoulders from the pain doctor last week. (These were local type shots, not the epidural shot in January that will be done in a surgery center.) They reduced my pain enough to keep going. Nights still stuck, but it would be a lot worse without those trigger point injections so I’m grateful.
I had set aside 1 loaf of each kind of bread as our “tester” loaf to make sure the bread is decent tasting. Unfortunately, I accidently cut into 2 zucchini loaves, instead of 1 zucchini and 1 pumpkin.  That means I screwed up labeling somewhere. I’ll straighten that out tomorrow. It’s not critical, but so annoying. Wizard volunteered to “eat my mistake” because he’s awesome like that.
 I’m about 2/3s or a bit more finished shopping, but it’s not enough! A couple people I’m unsure what to get them but we’ll get it figured out. Thankfully Wizard helps a lot, and we always manage to get it all done.
Tomorrow is the big Apodaca Family Christmas and that will be fun! But it’ll be a miracle if I can find anything in my closet to wear…that still fits. However if that’s the biggest problem I have to worry about, then I don’t have much to complain about

That’s my Friday Five. Now it’s your turn to share yours! Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Wednesday Worthy

Here’s our candidate who is obviously in the holiday spirit!

So what do you think, is he worthy?

Weekend Roundup

Another super busy weekend. Friday I saw the new pain doctor and really liked her. The takeaway from that long visit is that she did several (NINE!!) trigger point shots that day. Those are for the muscles pain and they helped. For the nerve pain, she wants to try an epidural. They already schedule that for mid-January assuming my insurance approves it. The one thing I really liked was both she and her assistant were the first ones to tell me that the ringing in my ears may be related. That’s actually a relief.

The fun part of the weekend was Nursery Assembly Day! I didn’t get any good pictures, but Special K has a jungle theme with really cute trees, monkeys, and other animal decals that we put on the walls. It looks adorable! I can’t wait to be a grandma

Maggie went to her first doggy day care on Saturday and seemed to do well. Next weekend we’ll try the overnight boarding there. Our sons are finding this all hilarious. I keep trying to explain, but then I hear myself saying it out loud and yeah, it’s funny that we’re doing all this for a dog. On the upside, it’s going to be nice to have a place to leave her if we’re going to be gone for eight hours, overnight or traveling.

So that’s the quick version of my weekend. How was yours?

 

 

Friday Five

**Sorry for the late post, I set the wrong time when I scheduled the blog last night.**

That whooshing sound is another week flying by, and once again it’s time for Friday Five! Here are five random things about my week.

Today I see the new pain specialist and hopefully he or she will keep going with the pain shots.
Southern California is on fire. I’ve lost track of how many are burning and it’s heartbreaking to see people losing their homes, businesses, and animals.  Wizard and I have been lucky so far with no fires close to us, but I’m heartbroken and worried about all the people in the paths of the flames or the smoke. The fire crews are exhausted, and the work treacherous. Police and other agencies are coordinating evacuations, volunteers are arranging and running shelters, and the media is running around asking victims how it feels to watch your home burn down.
Here’s a picture that shows why Wizard and I are so vigilant about fires–this is where I was hiking with Maggie yesterday in the hills behind our house. It wouldn’t take more than a spark to send the whole area up in flames. We walked from our house, telling you how close it is.  Just to balance things out, here’s a pretty view shot of the lake that made the climb worth it:
Trying to get a handle on Christmas is taking up all my time as usual. I love the holiday, but my energy is limited right now which sucks time from any hope of writing. It will improve though, so I’m trying not to let it get to me.
 Tomorrow we’re going to CPA Boy and Special K’s, along with our other two sons and their fiances, for a “Nursery Assembly Day” to help them get the baby’s room ready. They are so cute! The baby isn’t due until late March, but since CPA boy will be going into his busy season right after Christmas, and they wanted to get it all done now so they’ll be all set. It’s going to be fun!

Now it’s your turn to share your Friday Five. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Wednesday Worthy

It’s hump day and time to evaluation our Wednesday Worthy Candidate! If you happen to like full beards, this one is for you:

So what do you think, is he worthy?

Weekend Roundup & A Monday Rant

This was probably the last calm weekend before the new year. It was wonderful! Friday I had coffee with Biker Witch. Saturday Wizard and I checked out a doggy daycare and boarding facility for the second time and like it for Maggie. We’re going to try it next Saturday and see how she does. (I know you’re all laughing at us!)

Wizard put up the outside Christmas light and I’m ready to put up the tree this week. I’m might actually be getting into the holiday spirit

Sunday I had the whole day to work, and finally tackled the scene that’s been tangling me up in knots. I’m accepting that it’s never going to be perfect, but I got the bones down. I’ll edit it today and move on.

Now for the ranty portion of today’s blog. I read something over the weekend about romance writers and how “nobody understands what’s it like to be a writer…”

I call bullshit.

Sorry to all my beloved writer friends out there, but I call bullshit, and I’m calling it on myself too. These last months have sucked out my ability to write. Pain, family illnesses, endless stress…

And that’s bullshit too.

Yes writing is hard. It’s supposed to be hard. But you know what else is hard? Doing almost any job. Work is hard. Commitment is hard. Sometimes pushing through is the hardest thing. But writing is also a gift, a chance to tell the story of people living in our heads and hearts, and share it with readers who care about them almost as much as we too. That’s a gift, and if we wanted it bad enough, we find the time and will to do it.

So don’t tell me no one understands. Just do it. If there’s anything you love, go do it. Don’t wait for permission or the perfect time.

As you can see, this article I read (okay I stopped reading soon after that line about how no one, not even her husband or mother understands). It’s like I told my kid when they were in their junior and senior year of high school, and looking toward their futures. If you want it, then go out and find a way to make it happen. Don’t wait around for your dad or me to wave our magic wand (or pull out our wallets) to make it happen for you. And for sure, don’t let us stand in your way if our vision for your life is not your vision. If you want it, if you believe or a certain college or career path is right for you, then go make it happen yourself. Believe me, if you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way.

And all three of our boys did that.

And so am I. Sure the road can be bumpy, it’ll have set backs and sometimes it doesn’t turn out exactly the way we planned or hoped. But I don’t let “no one understands my art or passion” excuse or cop out ever stand in my way.

Do you???

This concludes the ranty portion of my blog. So how was your weekend?