This is my first Liebster Award so thank you Anonymously Hal!!! I love reading your blog. Make sure you all go check it out!

Rules

1. Thank the blogger(s) who nominated you.
2. Share 11 facts about yourself.
3. Answer the 11 questions the blogger(s) asked you.
4. Nominate 11 bloggers and make them happy!
5. Make up to 11 questions and ask them to your nominees.
6. Notify your 11 nominees.

11 facts about me

1. I’m polyamorous, and have been for more than a decade.
2. I was poly before I knew what “poly” was.
3. I was bisexual even before that.
4. I’ve been writing erotic fiction since I was “too young” to write erotic fiction.
5. I started out as a switch, then I was a sub, and now I’m a switch again.
6. My favorite color is blue.
7. I’m short.
8. I work way better with a deadline.
9. I am about 99% extrovert.
10. Writing is my most favorite passion.
11. The only thing I do entirely for myself is write.

11 Questions from Anonymously Hal:

1. What is your favorite food? Pizza! Greasy and meaty!
2. What country are you from? The USA, I’m kind of ashamed to say. Not super proud of my country lately.
3. What’s your favorite movies? Romantic Comedies are my favorite. Guaranteed Happy Endings. Serendipity might be my favorite.
4. If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be? I would be healthier.
5. What is your profession? I’m a writer! Actually, I have a day job, but that’s not as exciting.
6. Biggest regret in life? I don’t really do regrets because everything that’s happened to me has shaped who I am. But, if there were one: I would have come to the realization that the most important thing in life are people and relationships and left some of that emotional baggage further in the past.
7. Favorite word? Fuck.
8. Why do you follow my blog? Your quick poems often cut right to the core. I love how deep they can be!
9. Whose your role model? My mom. Stubborn, but determined. Always.
10. If you were an ice cream flavor what would you be? Vanilla Bean. I know, boring, but classic. And sometimes, it has just a hint of something extra special.
11. Do you believe in an afterlife? I do. I’d like to believe it’s like The Good Place.

My nominees are: Growing Up Walls, Uniquely Maladjusted But Fun, Marquessa Matthews, What Sandra Thinks, Writing is Communication, Buttontapper, Meg Sorick

My 11 questions for my nominees:

1. What is your favorite color?
2. What is one food you can’t live without?
3. Would you rather have someone cook or clean for you?
4. What is your favorite thing about blogging?
5. What is one song you could listen to on repeat for a week?
6. What is one movie you have watched over and over again?
7. What is your favorite cartoon?
8. What is one story you tell everyone you meet?
9. What is one thing you look for when picking a novel to read?
10. What came first, the chicken or the egg?
11. What is your favorite vacation destination?

Lately, I have been obsessed with the song If We Were Vampires by Jason Isbell covered by Chester See. This might be the saddest song I have ever heard. And those of you who know me, know that I don’t do SAD. Real life is serious and sad. So when I consume media (movies, books, television, music) I want it to be happy. I think I’ve only ever written one novel with a sad ending and it was a choose your own adventure ending. (Seriously, if you choose not to save the lost puppy, you deserve a sad ending.)

So the fact that this song has been on repeat for me for weeks is remarkable. So what makes it so poignant? Mortality has been on my mind a lot. With the sudden death of a family member almost a year ago, I have definitely focused a lot more on valuing the time I have, and spending it on what really matters. Friends. Family. Relationships. Experiences.

Those dishes can wait another day. That expensive piece of furniture can wait in favor of a trip with my husband.

This has dovetailed nicely with the TV show The Good Place which wrapped up recently. Without spoiling it, I will say that it forces the viewer to take a long hard look at their lives in a similar way to If We Were Vampires. If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it, and the podcast: The Good Place The Podcast. And as Marc Evan Jackson ends his podcasts, comment below with something good in the world. And then, go do something good.

Marquessa Matthews over at marquessamatthews.com wrote a great blog post asking what ONE THING will you leave behind in 2019?

I noticed that a lot of people around me had a pretty terrible year. I won’t say that my 2019 was all good, but the good definitely outweighed the bad. I’m excited to step into 2020, but there are a lot of things I am taking forward with me from 2019.

But when I turn that on its head and ask myself what I want to leave behind, the answer is clear to me: I want to leave behind my determination to be perfect.

No one is perfect. My favorite writers have typos in their work, even with professional editors. As I re-read some of my favorite novels, I notice inconsistencies in small details. And it doesn’t make me love the novel or the author any less. If anything, it makes me love them more to see that they are human just like me.

So, in 2020, I hope to be less perfect, and publish more. And definitely write more, since my goal is 1,000,000 words in 2020! (Does anyone want to join me on that? My friend Nicki is. In fact, it was her idea. And I am so excited!)

No matter how good (or bad) your 2019 was, here’s hoping 2020 is even better!

Tonight, my husband said I love you without those three words. After a grueling day that ended with multiple meltdowns (from me and our child), I sat down to do bills. He came up behind me and said, “Do you need a beating?” I looked up at him in surprise and he said, “I know when you get stressed, sometimes you need that release.”

And damn if he isn’t right.

After I wrote my post on August 9th, two of my friends messaged me privately to ask what a “little” is. They hadn’t heard the term before and were waiting for the sentence to end. Such as, “she started to show some signs of being a little _________, too.” Fill in the blank: person, brat, what!?

So here I am to share what (little) knowledge I have of littles. I looked at urbandictionary, (a crap shoot for sure), but I found that their definition was pretty good:

“A little is someone that likes to act younger then they really are. It’s kind of like having an alter ego that’s much younger then yourself. Most littles don’t act little 24/7, but when they do slip into their younger alter ego it’s called slipping into headspace.”

They go on to define the age range as 0-8, which made me wonder: What about people who identify older than that? It turns out there’s a term for that, too! It’s, unsurprisingly, “middle.” Some places seem to define middles as 12-15, but others go as young as 9 (which fits with the “little” definition above).

In any case, it may seem weird to think about, but the key to remember about any of this topic is that it is…

always between consenting adults. Always.

So while it may seem odd to think of adults pretending to be, or acting as, children, we all know they are still adults. They look like them and act like them when they are out of the bedroom. I mean, we don’t think that someone who likes nipple clamps wears them all the time, do we? 😉

As I stated in my previous post on the 9th, I don’t have really any experience with it. None myself, and very little in my readings, but it is something many people are into. I’m not sure if I have enough background knowledge to take a fictional character that way, but maybe someday!

And if you want more information from people better informed than I am, I would encourage you to look around. The internet is chock full of information… both reliable and not. So tread carefully!

Yesterday, I Tweeted:

I have a new author plan: Write all the words and then when I’m rich and my kids are grown, pay someone to edit and publish them. #amediting #mostlykidding #semiserious

I have been following the Writing Is Communication Blog for a long time now thanks to the A to Z Blog Challenge (which is coming up again! You should sign up for it!).

For the month of March, Shari Marshall from Writing is Communication has offered for her readers to share things they are thankful for. Yesterday, she suggested listing moments you were ecstatic.

I hate to steal some of hers, but they are so true!
1) The night my husband proposed. I wasn’t expecting it at all, but there was the ring. And here it sits on my finger more than 10 years later. I am so excited to celebrate 10 years together this summer.
2) The day we got married. It was such a stellar day. From start to finish. The issues we had (because of course there were issues) were funny, and at the end of it, I had a great time sharing my love with all my family and friends.
3) The day my daughter was born. She was so perfect and precious. She tried our patience a short while later and continues to do so to this day, but that’s kids, eh?
4) The day I got my dream job. I was offered a job doing exactly what I wanted right out of college. I celebrate 11 years there this year, and I’m so grateful that they took a chance on me.
5) The day my first novel was published. It was so cool to see the sales go! Meager, yes, but still!

For as long as I can remember, I have been making a big deal about Valentine’s Day. I remember when I was 16, I spent Valentine’s Day with my boyfriend and three of my single friends. We all went out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. I don’t remember what my justification was at the time, but now I have words to put to it.

There is not enough love in the world.

Valentine’s Day is a great day to make an effort to celebrate with those we love. I get gifts for my kids, we make Valentine’s Day themed food, and we exchange cards. It’s silly sometimes, but we love it. And one of my kids who is grown still talks about the year we wrote things we love about the kids and taped them to their bedroom doors (one a day for two weeks). And… I might not have had the heart (heh) to take them down. It’s been three years.

So, go out and spread the love every day, but especially this day. And tell me, what’s your relationship with Valentine’s Day?

It’s nice when there are weekends without a lot of plans. I always think I am going to get sooooo much done. Unfortunately, that’s not the reality of my life. I did get a lot done, and I bought a cute new dress!

My kitchen is significantly cleaner than it was. My phone pictures have been cleared off, and I have several new books to read (both digital and paper).

My husband and I have had some quality kid-free time together, but I was not feeling kinky. That may be why I’m having trouble going back to writing my novel, too. I don’t suspect my disinterest will last long though. It rarely does.

I accidentally took a hiatus from my blog. Whoops. I didn’t mean to. November was crazy, but I had prepared for it and pre-scheduled my posts so I just had to fill in word counts and details. And then I knew December would be awful, but now we’re halfway through January and I haven’t posted…

But now I’m back!

I need to get back into regular writing again, but I wrote a lot of words in November! Good ones, mostly. I have to do some editing and publishing, but I also think I wrote the first novel where a sequel speaks to me. It’s begging to be written. But I need to figure out what the hell I actually wrote in the first one in November. So, that’s what I’m working on right now. (Well not *right now*. I’m writing this blog post *right now*. But when I’m done with this post, I’m going to do something related to that project. I promise.

Oh wait… after I delete a lot of the 860 emails in my inbox I haven’t looked at. Whoops. (And I am the 0 new read email type of person!)

Thanks for hanging in there with me! ❤