Sleep deprivation – Suddenly they all died. The end.

IMG_20131229_185204 The day four assignment for Writing 101 was to write about a loss. I’ve had a lot of loss in my life, from my parents and grandparents to my first marriage and more. Loss is part of life, though not necessarily the most fun part. And sometimes, what we gain more than makes up for what we’ve lost.

Take sleep, for instance. I have children, therefore I do not sleep. Or to be more precise, I no longer sleep as much as I would like.

I no longer have my evenings and weekends to myself, because I’m taking care of little people and shuttling slightly bigger little people to sports practices and piano lessons and birthday parties and all those other fun things that kids like to do.

185305_10150254569193575_7730199_n I no longer have the luxury of privacy, because Cricket and Thumper believe me to be their servant, created solely to give them whatever they want five minutes ago. Apparently when I became a mother, I also became a clairvoyant genie. Who knew?

Despite the sleep deprivation and the loss of my privacy, I wouldn’t trade my kids for anything. I’ve gained so much by knowing them, watching them learn and grow and question, and I love them all so very, very much.

If there’s anything in life more precious than the love of a child, I have yet to discover it. And I’m not sure I want to.

After a weekend spent mostly offline, I have finally almost caught up with everything that happened online over the weekend. I still have a ton of reading to catch up on, but other than that, I think I’ve managed to update myself on all things social. Maybe.

Zzzz.

I seem to be suffering from some serious sleep deprivation, though, as I can barely keep my eyes open. I barricaded myself in my room over the weekend with the a/c, my writing supplies, no internet, and plenty of caffeine so that I could get some work done on The Lokana Chronicles. My wonderful Seymour kindly took care of Cricket and Thumper and left me alone for the better part of 48 hours, but sadly, I didn’t accomplish nearly as much as I wanted. I made lots of progress, I just didn’t meet my goal, which was admittedly steep.

But! I feel like the progress I did make will vastly improve the story and it really felt wonderful to be writing again. Aside from blogging, I haven’t done much writing lately and I’ve missed it. It was mentally exhausting trying to figure out how to flesh out my story without making it seem like I was just throwing in a lot of filler, but the results are worth it, in my humble opinion (at least, I hope so).

And now, I must be getting back to the grindstone. My posts may be a bit more sporadic over the next couple of weeks; between revising The Lokana Chronicles and preparing for our next family camping adventure (coming this weekend to a campground near you!), I will be offline quite a bit for the next little while. But don’t worry – I’ll make sure to fill you in on all the adventures we have, as I’m sure there will be plenty!

Have a great week!