5 Things I've learned so far on my winter vacation...

1. I really, really don't like my job that much. Amazing how a couple weeks off work can demonstrate how tedious and truly irrelevant my work really is. Depressing.
2. It's possible not to have a huge fight with my husband on Christmas. Over the past few years we have had one huge, knock-down, drag-out fight at some point over the Christmas festivities. It's really kind of inevitable given that over the course of 72-hours we attend over 4 family functions, survive an hour of church usually spent wrangling children and getting dirty looks from fellow parishioners, and on top of all that, we're usually completely sleep deprived because one or both children have some nasty illness that keeps them up all night. Usually we end up fighting about something ridiculously stupid, the kind of fight where you can't even remember exactly why it started, but for whatever reason you're willing to say hateful things to ensure that you destroy your opponent/spouse. Last year's round memorably ended in Ken screaming "Way to go, you just ruined Christmas!" Good times. Anyways, this year we actually made it through December 23-26 completely fight-free. Trust me when I say, this is a true Christmas miracle.
3. Writing is hard. We have officially started book #2, and it's really, really scary to stare at a blank MS word document and realize that we have to somehow fill it with 60 - 70,000 words. There's that little voice taunting me in the back of my head asking, "Do you really think you can do this again?" But we've started and we ARE doing it again. So, what do you think, are we completely crazy or just tenacious? Feel free to opine away in the comments.
4. Our new book is GOOD. Well, not to sound totally cocky or anything, and I realize that I'm totally getting ahead of myself, but I have to say that this book is going to be unbelievable. We decided to go with our mystery idea and at this point we've roughly laid out our plot, sketched out our main characters and we're just beginning our uber detailed outline. I can't wait to see how it all plays out once we really start writing because the concept is pretty fun and twisty. I'm dying to post the first couple paragraphs we've written on here, but I don't want to give too much away. Maybe we'll post some excerpts once we're further in.
5. I really miss tv. There's absolutely nothing on tv right now, although I should probably be grateful because based on this winter television premier schedule, watching tv is going to be like a part-time job for me come January. I actually have no idea how I'm going to balance work, writing and my tv addiction. I seriously might not have time to sleep.