From sea to shining sea…or something like that

My husband and I spent most of December out in sunny Arizona. It was my first trip to the much-warmer-than-PA state and we reveled in being able to sit out on the patio in short sleeves and sunglasses and get some vitamin D back into our sun-starved systems.

Okay, a bit of an exaggeration. PA does have sunshine in the winter. Most of the winter, it’s too cold to be out in it very long, but we do have it and it streams through my windows where I’m running my space heater to simulate summer and keep my toes from fussing. Right now we have a good 8 inches of snow or there about.

We didn’t go southwest for the weather. We went to welcome our first grandbaby into the world.

There’s something about being a grandparent that nothing else can touch. I can’t say it’s better than being a mom. It isn’t. I don’t have the 2 am feedings and such, so there is that, and I do like my uninterrupted sleep. But we had to leave baby back in AZ with his parents. That was hard. I did it to my mom, too. There’s something about those soldiers that will make you leave your beloved family and move across the country, or out of the country. Back when I did it, we didn’t have texting and cell phone pictures and social media and internet live video. Back when I had my first baby overseas, phone calls were horribly expensive and therefore very limited.

We live in easier times. At least in some ways.

Anyway, it’s been a very long time since I stopped writing for nearly a whole month. To be honest, it’s been at least ten years. Did I need the break? Maybe. Not sure about that. I did need the family time, though, the new baby time. And I stole plenty of it. Baby grandson slept in my arm or on my shoulder fairly often. Nothing better than that, or even equal to that, other than your own doing the same. Yes, we believe in holding babies a lot. A LOT. It makes them feel secure. At that age, if they can’t see or hear you, they don’t know you still exist. What a very scary concept to be so little and so helpless and to think you might be all on your own!

And when that baby comes to visit Grandma and Grandpa several months down the road, he will remember us and the complete and total infatuated love we gave him from his first days.

So on the writing note: I’m working on Rehearsal 5 while #4 waits for comments from my beta readers and editors. I still plan to put the second Ella M. Kaye book out in February, although I gave up a month of work on it and will have to hustle. I have paintings done for a hardcover version of Stanley, and thoughts for a second children’s book. I’m fully back to work. And maybe I didn’t need the break, but it didn’t hurt anything, either.

If you’re interested in my Arizona photos (scenery – won’t publicly post my grandbaby although he’s just as cute as heck!), I have the best of them on Pinterest HERE.

And if you want to see what the next Ella M. Kaye book will be about, you can visit its story board HERE.

I will be getting a newsletter out and updating my site. Soon, I think. Right now, I’m intensely checking back in with my characters. Guess I did miss them.