Honestly

This is where the pretty pictures of a lovely Christmas at home are supposed to go, then a joke about how hard it is to update my blog when I'm typing on my new iPad (thank you so much, mom and dad!) and there's a beagle on my foot, but it's been a long couple of weeks. No, screw that, it's been a long couple of months.

Starting in August, I began working at the Busch Gardens costume shop, a local theme park. The job is more fun and less stressful than CW but those extra hours, combined with going home in September, continuing ghost storytelling tours and managing a Christmas program in December meant that I haven't worked less than 60 hours a week since then. The two weeks around Thanksgiving I worked so much that I doubled my paycheck from CW. The three remaining work days of the week afterwe got home from our Wisconsin Christmas I got six hours of sleep each night because I had to work at night.

Why am I saying these things? So all my loyal readers will understand exactly what I've been up against these past months and why I've neglected my blog. I know I'm supposed to feel grateful to have a job, much less three or four, depending on how you look at it, but I just can't do it any more. I twisted my shoulder in my sleep last month, and I'm convinced that overexertion due to my job contributed to it. I've gained 30 pounds in the past two years, but with limited time to eat right and exercise, my knees are starting to creak ominously. It's not that I am being whiny and saying I can't keep up this pace--clearly I can--but that I just can't physically or mentally do this anymore.

What the alternative is, I don't know. It seems like a good time to consider and calculate, since I have no evening jobs during the month of January. It's a new year, time to make a new start. I'd like to leave the dishes pile up because I'm busy writing, not because I'm working. I'd like to go see some movies, not just watch the trailers and miss the feature. And I really want to sit quietly by the window and read, with no other claims on my time. I've already made plans to go to Harry Potter world at Universal later this month...yay, a real vacation! Yet, I'm already living in dread of March, when hay making time comes again. I need to plan now to avoid that madness.

I hope everyone who reads this is happy and healthy and doing exactly what their hearts desire. I love you all and think about you all constantly, even if I don't call you and tell you enough. You are all so important to me...2012 is going to be good!