Today I have a day off from the day job. I treasure each one and celebrate by sleeping in. I’m a night owl. In fact, I’m probably sleeping even as this post goes live through the miracle of WordPress.

My plan is to sleep in, then get up and do some writing. Shay and Jeffrey await. Tonight, I’ll go to a friend’s to watch a movie and be mauled by her dog. Should be fun.

What do you do when you have a day off?

Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope it’s fantastic for you. Don’t forget, it’s a great day to read a sexy love story, so I hope you’ll try one.

In the meantime, enjoy this video about one of my favorite TV couples: Michael and Nikita from La Femme Nikita.

Trying to get work and life in balance is the most difficult thing.
–Trevor Nunn

Have you figured out the balance thing? I’m still working on it. Here’s how my average day goes.

8:00: Wake up. Drag myself out of bed.
8:30: Head to work.
9:00-6:00: Spend the day writing and editing.
6:30: Come home and collapse for a bit.
8:00: Start writing, this time for fun.

There’s variation, of course. Sometimes I hang out with a friend after work. On those days, the writing starts around 10:00, if at all. Plus, I still need to figure out where exercise fits in.

Anyone who writes knows that making time for it is a delicate balance. Some days I don’t feel like writing, and I write anyway. Other days I take a break. I’m getting better at letting myself take those breaks without letting the guilt seep in.

Lately it’s been difficult to concentrate. Story ideas are swirling around in my head even though I have plenty to write already. One in particular is nudging me, and I’m writing down notes so I can have them when I’m ready to dig in.

Every day is a balancing act.

I cancelled my gym membership last week. Ever since I moved, it was just too difficult to get back there. I loved it when I could, though. My favorite features were the indoor track and the swimming pool. But since I haven’t been in months, I figured I could use the monthly $22 fee for something I could actually use.

Still, I have fond memories of this gym.

Now I just exercise at home. There’s no indoor track or swimming pool, but I have my cardio dance DVDs.

Where do you go to exercise?

Friends are wonderful.

A friend of mine gave me a cool present—a kit that lets me plug in my CD player to the tape deck in my car. Now I can listen to CDs on my car stereo. It’s definitely the best gift I’ve received this year.

The same friend called me last week when I took a day off work. “Did you take a nap?” she asked. I said no. I’d tried, but I just tossed and turned and couldn’t get to sleep.

“Have you tried an Unsolved Mysteries nap?” {A nap where I curl up on the couch, turn on Unsolved Mysteries, and sleep.}

“No,” I replied.

“You should.”

When I got off the phone, I went to the living room, turned on Unsolved Mysteries. And was asleep within ten minutes.

Thanks, Heidi.

January has been a tough month. My birthday passed smoothly enough, but I’ve apparently decided to do some post-birthday life evaluation. I haven’t figured out how to give that evaluation a positive result. No, that’s when I let Ms. Negativity out to play.

Plus, I’m grieving. Heath Ledger’s death hit me hard, even though I don’t think I’ve seen any of his movies. I think it’s horribly sad for anyone to die so young. From what I know, he was wonderfully talented. And he leaves behind a two-year-old daughter . . .

Another man I don’t actually know died over the weekend. He lived a long life, and I think he would say it was a good one. And, really, isn’t that all that anyone can hope for? His death wasn’t really unexpected, but I’m still affected by it.

Eventually I’ll get past it all. For now, though, I’ll let myself grieve. And be glad that tomorrow is a new month. I’m ready for it.

Remember my post about pets? Well, I’ve adopted one . . . from a distance.

Meet Clover. She’s a black-footed ferret from the Black-Footed Ferret Adoption Program. How I heard about her is a long story . . .

Cassie Edwards has been writing romance longer than I’ve been reading it. I’ve always seen her books in stores–I even read a few back when I first started reading romance. They weren’t to my taste, but every time I saw her books after that I felt a tug of nostalgia. Not for the books themselves, but because she’s a familiar name.

For that reason, it made me horribly sad to see that sections of her writing so closely matched passages in a variety of non-fiction and fiction. When you compare the passages, it seems like a clear case of plagiarism.

You wouldn’t expect a story like this to have a positive result, but something positive came out of it. Romance readers learned about the near extinction of the black-footed ferret. Nora Roberts even kicked off a fundraiser for the ferrets.

So that’s how I got involved–I adopted a ferret. Clover will be well taken care of by the people at Prairie Wildlife Research. And I got to contribute to an endangered species.

Now I want one of these . . .

I don’t typically think of myself as a pet person. When I was very little, we had a dog, but I don’t remember it. Later we had a cat, and I discovered I was allergic to them. I liked cats–they are elegant, self-sufficient, and mysterious, but the allergy thing kept me from having one. But we never got another pet after that cat disappeared. Later, when I could have my own pet, I got a beta fish and was devastated when it died a couple of years later.

Having a dog never occurred to me. Dogs were the mean, barking creatures in the neighborhood that would pester me on my way home. And they weren’t elegant like cats. They would bark, drool, and jump. For a long time, I thought dogs were just . . . well, the complete opposite of appealing.

Now I see the appeal.

It helps to have a friend with a dog. This dog, Zoe, is definitely a jumper and a licker, but it’s actually kind of sweet.

Then there are the puppies. Lieutenant and Major are the supercute puppies my niece got for Christmas. They were so tiny on Christmas Eve, and they are growing up fast.

Lieutenant

Major

I did my best to resist Zoe, but I can’t resist the three of these adorable dogs. So I’m a convert . . . from a distance. I’m a little allergic to dogs, too, so I doubt I would get one. But I’ll enjoy these.

I don’t like New Year’s resolutions because I think any time of year is a good one to make goals. I do have a few goals this year, though.

• Lose enough weight by July to wear my beige dress to this year’s Romance Writers of America conference awards ceremony. That will require dropping one (maybe two) dress sizes, which I think is doable by then.
• Make this the year of decluttering. I’m going to sort through things, create files, and get more organized. Slow and steady is the key.
• Finish my two mostly written stories in the next two months. I’ll reevaluate what to do next then.

What are your goals? And what are your best tips for staying motivated?

I was cleaning out my fridge recently, and bent down to make sure I got everything on the bottom shelves. When I turned, I realized something I’d never noticed before–a narrow shelf at the bottom of the door of the fridge.

Huh.

I’ve lived in my house for more than three years, and I’ve had the same fridge the entire time. And it took this long to discover I now have a convenient place for my water bottles.

Writing is a little like this. I work on a story, have a pretty good idea of where it’s going. Then I discover something about one of the characters or an element of the story that surprises me. I’m learning a lot about Jeffrey as I work on his story this week. With each story, one of the characters comes through more clearly than the other. In this case, I know Shay better, so I’ve been actively working to understand Jeffrey. It’s a slow and steady process, more fun than cleaning out the fridge.

I hope the results will be wonderful.