A Time For Everything

Sonshine is at MEPS today.

MEPS is the acronym for Military Entrance Processing Command. He was loaded onto a bus last night with a handful of other students from his school and taken to a Dallas hotel (to stay overnight)(yikes). Today they'll undergo a physical exam along with some other assessments. In addition, I believe he'll be able to choose his field of training, which last I heard is going to be helicopter maintenance. Ultimately he wants to pilot a helicopter, but he has to have a college degree for that, so he's gonna become a mechanic/gunner and then take classes to earn his degree, then cross train into helicopter pilot training.


That's the plan. We'll see how it goes.

Meantime, it's all becoming so very real for me. He's gone to MEPS for crying out loud. Although, he'll probably be around for another month or two until slots open up in his field of training. But still.

Sonshine and his activities and his presence (meaning primarily the noise he makes on every level) has been the soundtrack of my life for the last four plus years. And soon that familiar, comfortable background noise will be gone. It's going to be strange and sad and disconcerting.


Last night, with him gone, was an appetizer to my life in a few months...it was really quite strange.

What's a momma to do?

Sonshine was on a mission the other day: to fashion a sling shot. He'd found a Y-shaped branch and he was off to the races. First he had to make holes in the arms of the Y in order to attach the elastic. That slowed him down since we didn't have any drill bits at home, so Wednesday he asked if I would find some at the office and take them home. Which I did.

Only to discover we didn't have the right type of something in the drill he was using to hold the drill bit securely. I'm not sure how he solved that problem, but at some point, he discovered another. His branch was mostly dead/dry rotted and it crumbled.

So he had to find a new one. Up the oak tree he went. After he'd found one that met his approval, he needed to fire-bake it. Or so he said. To make it stronger I think was his purpose. So he gathered up some large rocks, made a fire pit, and started a fire.


Anyway, he finally finished his sling-shot:



I grinned and chuckled through the whole series of events because I love to see him in "little boy" mode. Not really little little boy mode per se, but not just sitting on his butt playing xBox. It was fun to watch him and be involved in the process, too.

My baby is growing up, but occasionally he returns to childhood, and I love it.

I really miss my kids being little. Life was easier and mush less complicated.

Obviously, we can't go back, but if you could, how far back would you like to go?

...sometimes still a little boy.

My Sonshine turned sixteen last December. It's an interesting age. Anyway, I was collecting towels off the clothesline yesterday when I spotted a feather lying in the grass. It was almost an ordinary little feather, maybe three inches long and only a quarter inch at its widest, but it was yellow on the end. I have no idea what type of bird it might belong to.

So I picked it up and called to Sonshine. I showed him and he thought it was cool--for being a bird feather an all--and then he took it and went into his room and stashed in the container containing the rest of his feather collection. That really tickled me, both that he still has his collection and that he knew where it was.

I have I told you lately how much I love my Sonshine?

And it was beautiful weather this weekend. As mentioned, I utilized my clothes line. I love towels and sheets that have been line-dried. I even did a little writing outside, sitting in the sun, soaking up some vitamins D and E. I had to use pen and paper as it's too bright to see the laptop screen, but that's okay too. It was helpful to do that.

Speaking of writing, I barely eeked out last week's word goal, but I did make it with 32 extra words. Yesterday was the start of the new week, requiring a word count of 1K. But I didn't make it. I'm at the point in my manuscript where I have few new scenes left to write, a few decisions to make, and a lot of revising. I'm at 18.8K out of the 25 I'm shooting for.

That's still a lot of new words you say.

True. It is, but many of those words are going to be needed during the revision process where I'll be layering in emotions and internal narrative--the things I usually gloss over during the first pass. I've even begun cutting words and phrases that sound nice, but don't really add a lot to the story. Which means I'm now losing word count too. Argh!! But I'll need those words in the serious revision stage.

I wrote 1700+ words last week summarizing my story. It really was very helpful in pin-pointing a couple of problem areas and the turning points for my heroine. Now I have to get to those revisions, fixing the problems and smoothing out the rough edges. Culling the useless words, adding the important ones.

The next step, I think, is to print out the manuscript and read it hard copy. Mark the pages with notes--like where the heroine's turning points are and what they need to encompass. Reading hard copy also helps you find misspellings and missing words. When I read aloud, I can catch any flow issues.

I have my work cut out for me. Better get to it--

Have a good week.

What's a mom to do when she has to start buying her baby pants based on waist size and inseam length?

I didn't think I'd be quite so melancholy about my baby growing up, and by the time he gets through high school and onto college or the military, I may just be ready to let him go or kick him out.

But right now, it's hard some days to look at him and see the young man he's morphing into and not the sweet-cheeked toddler he once was. He hasn't cut the apron strings quite yet, for which I'm grateful. And my favorite words out of his mouth in just that sweet tone are, "Yes, momma." He's still willing to hug me in front of his friends, so we have a bit of time yet...

What makes you wistful to remember?