I thought this month would NEVER GET HERE! 

I finished my Halloween quilt (I need to post pictures!) I didn't finish my book. But I finished a pivotal scene today. My BIGGEST problem is that it's a series, and it's concurrent with the first book in the series, so the timelines are REALLY challenging. I'll never do that again.

This week:

1) Do my BEST to finish this book
2) Work on adding books to Books + Main
3) Write a BookBub recommendation
4) update my mailing list
5) Work on a FB ad
6) Change the cover on Something to Talk About
7) Work on Halloween quilt #3
8) List some stuff on Etsy and eBay

Oh yes. So many distractions! 

So. I finished the baby quilt and gifted it today. I am ALMOST finished with my first bed-sized quilt. It wasn't MEANT to be for the bed, but I added a border and, well...

I'll post pictures when I'm done. 

Plus my mom and I learned how to make pillowcases an easy way, so we've been doing those, too.

So the writing has fallen off. BAD! BAD! And as you noticed, I skipped a week of blogging ALREADY. 

This week I WILL BE BETTER!

1) Finish revisions on book 2.
2) Upload it and book 3 for preorder.
3) Start Book 4.

4) Add books to Books + Main
5) change cover on STTA
6) Check out some other promo opportunities

7) Finish big quilt
8) Work on some more pillowcases on craft day
9) make enchiladas to take to craft day

9) Do grades
10) set goal for the school year (yes, 6 weeks in, lol) IDK, it's my last year. What goals are left?

Okay, so....I got sick this week. Allergies into a sinus infection, and I missed a day and a half of work on an already short week. I was feeling a little better today, but of course spent most of it on the couch. And not doing anything productive, either. Playing Candy Crush and looking at FB. It also rained a ton this week, so that didn't help. 

So I'm behind on my writing goals, and I didn't do as much for promo as I wanted to.

This week:
1) Finish revisions on Avalon Hearts.
2) Work on revisions on Avalon Forever.
3) Add Cascada books to Books + Main
4) Change cover on Something to Talk About
5) Make 2 Canva ads
6) Make 2 FB ads
7) finish baby quilt for cousin
8) Start a Halloween hexagon quilt
9) Cook at home more--did not eat healthy when I was sick!
10) Mayyyyyybe start cross stitching again. I played too much Candy Crush this week!

I'm going to try to start blogging again, and usually Sundays will be my goals for the week.

But this week I want to talk about teaching. 

I plan for this to be my last year. It's my 30th year teaching, and our district doesn't exactly that their loyal veteran teachers well. Just last week, they put a music teacher WHO HAS NEVER BEEN IN THE CLASSROOM in her 38 years into a fifth grade classroom at another school. Crazy. So I don't want that to happen to me. I'm heading out after this year.

And most of my friends are gone. I'm the oldest teacher with the most experience on campus. I'm 52. That's crazy to me.

Our school shirts this year are concert shirts, and I want the back of mine to say "Farewell Tour" and list the names of the campuses where I've taught. 

It's been kind of weird in the two weeks we've been back. Last year I had a LOT of discipline problems, and I would have said then that the kids were pushing me out. This year, not so much. I'm actually having fun with the kids, which makes me sad, a little. I'm even able to have choir for 3rd, 4th and 5th, though our opportunities for performance are limited by the lack of funds. I'll be sad not to see some of these kids grow up. I've  taught music 8 years this go-round, so most of my 5th graders I've known since PreK. And I'm thinking to myself, when I see PreK, I won't know them when they're old enough to play games, sing in choir, that kind of thing.

And this week, I was deleting pins from my Pinterest boards, ideas that I've done and will never do again, or ideas I just won't get to. I have about 22 more music lessons per grade level, 9 art lessons. I just won't get to everything I've saved over the years. (I don't have a curriculum. I have standards, and I have to find my own ways to teach them. Yay, Pinterest!) I texted my friend Cindi, who retired two years ago, and told her how bittersweet it was, and she said she felt the same when she was cleaning out her files. 

So you might hear more than you want as I make my countdown to retirement, and to life as a full-time writer!