Dear Diary: School Vacation Week

The kids are home this week, which clearly changes the writing dynamic. One of them sleeps until noon and the other is up earlier, but he's good about entertaining himself when I'm working. So I'm trying to get some writing done in the AM and then hang with them (as much as teenagers wish to "hang" with their mother) in the afternoons. Tomorrow, we're heading to NYC for a few days for college tours at NYU and Fordham for my daughter, the artsy-theater-musical type. While we're there, we also plan to tour the 911 memorial, which both my kids wanted to do, and go skating at Rockefeller Center, which my hockey-playing boy wants to do. He also asked if we could score some tickets to a Knicks game so he could see their new sensation Jeremy Lin play. I laughed. Hard. As if! I'd like to see Wicked while we're there if we can fit that in. We'll see! My husband HATES NYC, so it's a great time to go with just the kids since he is working this week.

Some of you have asked how our new dog Louie (also known as Screwy Louie when he is being crazy and just LOUIS when he's misbehaving) is fitting in. Well, it's like he's always been here. He fits in perfectly with all of us. He and Brandy get along great. They love to wrestle and play and then they collapse for a nap before starting the whole process over again. We have an invisible fence in our yard, which is the only kind of fence we could possibly have since our yard is really weird. The invisible fence gives them the full run of the place, and Louie is now fully trained on the fence and knows his limits. It makes life a lot easier when we can send them out to play in the yard when they are getting too wild inside. Brandy really seems to like him, but even she has her limits. On the first night we let him sleep outside the crate, it was like she told him, "I don't mind having you around here, but don't get any ideas about sleeping with us." That first night, he got in bed with Jake and has slept there every night since. Jake loves having Louie snuggled up to him. He says, "Let's go to bed, Louie," and off they go. The only bad part is when Louie uses Jake's belly as a springboard when he bounds out of bed in the morning. Ooof! He's a cute little dude, and already love him.

Next on my mind is the season finale of Downton Abbey. WHOA! Did you see it? That last five minutes made my foolish heart go pitter patter. My friend and fellow Downton addict, Julie, sent me this link to a blog that deconstructs each episode. It's pretty comical reading and the author is, like me, a HUGE fan of Maggie Smith's dowager countess, who in my humble opinion, steals every scene she is in. I agree with the blog's critique of some of the second season's bigger failings, but even with the glitches (Robert's "thing" with the maid? UGH!), it's still riveting TV. I've even got Dan watching it, and he agrees that Maggie Smith is hysterical.

On the writing front, I made great progress on Duchess by Deception this weekend. It's coming right along. I'll be spending more time on that today along with Fatal Attack, which is also continuing along. There won't be much writing getting done while we're in NYC, so I'll hit it hard again next weekend.

I'll be back on Saturday to report in on our trip. Wish me well! Three days in NYC with two teenagers! Pray for my sanity! :-)