I'm leaving this afternoon for a trip across the southwestern desert to go to a family reunion. I'll be going in a motor home with my 3 kids, my parents and my aunt. I'm looking forward to this in the same way I look forward to oral surgery, food poisoning and scrubbing a refrigerator.
But you gotta do what you gotta do. I actually like the desert and look forward to sightseeing. I hope my kids enjoy it as well. I'm sure they will be too busy fighting and annoying everyone to truly appreciate it.
We are leaving this afternoon (I think) and I've only packed one thing: my books. What a tough decision. I wanted a nice variety. But it was the most important thing I could think of. I'm also bringing my laptop. The motel I'll be staying at in Utah has high speed internet, so I won't be totally lost. I'm hoping to get some writing done as well. My mom bought a laptop at Christmas time so I told I would work with her on using some of the features.
The biggest part of my trip I'm not looking forward to is the separation from my hubby. He isn't going because he has to go to Ohio next week. He'll be gone before we get back. I wouldn't feel so bad if he was going to be home when we get back, but we get home Monday and he leaves Sunday. He won't be back until next Wednesday. Not very long, really. But I can count on two hands how many nights we've been separated...and still have fingers to spare. We have been married almost 12 years and have never spent more than 2 nights apart. I thought this might be a nice break, but now I'm really dreading it. How could another person become so vital to me? We are each other's world. We don't do separate vacations. He doesn't do camping trips with the guys. I don't do girls' weekends in Palm Springs. We are content to be together. I can't imagine going on a separate vacation. However, I do think I will go to Dallas next year for conference. I'm not that bad.
But being the kind of gal that makes lemonade from lemons, I think these emotions will be great to use in my writing. It will help when I'm trying to write a scene where the heroine is being dragged away as the hero is about to be executed for a crime he didn't commit. Or when the hero watches helplessly as the heroine's life is sucked out of her by a demon. Yeah, those are far more extreme than what I'm going to experience, but that is the beauty of writing: taking everyday emotions and blowing them up to epic proportions. Its giving the reader something they can identify with and pumping it up, making it bigger and giving the reader a thrill.
Well, I'm going to start packing the rest of the boring stuff, you know, like clothes and toiletries. Maybe I should look for the suitcases. And the valium.
