Still here.

Y'all really are a nice group of folks, you know that? I know I've been absent here - thanks to all of you who have checked on me lately. As we enter the last month of 2011, all I can say is... it's been real.

My plate has been full to the point of overflowing, with kids in school, R back home and finding work as challenging as ever, and my own editing career picking up some speed. Between deployments and other extended family separations, the regular sort of stress and excitement raising three kids brings along, and some deeply personal struggles that are not the kind of thing I feel comfortable sharing on a public forum, the last year has been challenging in ways that I never could have anticipated. That said, I can finally tell you that I am fairly certain that the light at the end of the tunnel is not a train.

The last month has been the good kind of busy - all five of us spent a week in Texas with my sister, her husband, and their girls, and their growing bun-in-the-oven (I got to hear the baby's heartbeat - squeee!!!). We celebrated Thanksgiving with my dad and my brother and his wife, and both the food and the company were equally fabulous. Now we enter the race to Christmas - the weeks when time speeds up dramatically every year, it seems.

I finally made my editing business official (got my DBA and everything!), and have a finished manuscript for a book I've been working on for about two years now. Hopefully the book will be published this year - appendices, references, and indexes are looming challenges.  Seeing a "real" career start to develop has been exciting and a little scary - maintaining any kind of professional life is difficult for most military spouses, and I feel very fortunate for the opportunities I have in front of me.

The unexpected consequence of all of this is that I don't have as much energy leftover for blogging these days - I've had to cut back on my commitments all over the place, in order to make sure that there's enough left for the four very important people (and one very devoted dog) who live here with me. I'm also cultivating the lost art of self-care - boy, is that a tough one. I didn't realize quite how far behind I'd fallen on this one, and climbing out of that hole continues to be a rather monumental task.

So, while I have lots I want to share with you, realistic expectations mean that blogging will probably be more sporatic for awhile - maybe forever. Contrary to popular belief (and my own desperate wishes), I am not, in fact, Superwoman. I thank those of you who continue to check in - I promise I'll do my best to get things up for you to check out as often as I can manage (I've got at least half a dozen recipes for you! Stay tuned!).

xoxo

Me