Spicy. Sassy. Passionate.

So this weekend (2/5-2/8) is Write Your @ss Off Weekend. The idea is to put in a full eight hours of writing or writing activities (research, for instance.) Dave-O's four days off coincided perfectly with this event so I am finally getting some quality work done.

And just in time too! We head to Texas Children's Hospital on the 16th for Nyx's open heart surgery. I doubt I'll get much done while we're there. My number one focus is the kiddo so I plan to make good use of the next few days!

Midnight Craving, my first release with Samhain, is out today. Writingthis novella was so much fun. There's just something about sexyhalf-angels and tempting half-demons that revs my engine! Working withmy fabulous editor, Deborah Nemeth, to tighten the storyline and amp upthe plot was just as cool. I really learned a lot on this book.

I hope you'll enjoy the first installment in Jace and Isla's story! Can't wait to get the next one out to you!

To read more click here.

So it's been a while since I've updated. Life has been hectic but we seem to be hitting something of a smooth patch here. I'm hoping to have some time in the next week or so to update my website with the covers of my upcoming novellas and short stories. Here's a quick rundown of events over the last few months.

Dave and I welcomed Nyx into our lives on September 2, 2009. She weighed a whopping six pounds and five ounces and was the most beautiful baby I'd ever seen, even with that weird cottage cheese coating. We noticed her birth weight was a little on the low side for a 39 week baby but her two vessel cord explained some of it. She also seemed to take a little while to pink up and couldn't latch very well.

After Dave walked her over to the nursery, I was moved to a post-partum suite. Mom helped me settle in while Dave went out in search of grub since he'd been by my side since the moment my water broke until the kiddo was born some twenty hours later. While Dave was gone, I was visited by the neonatologist on staff who delivered life shattering news. Our baby's heart wasn't working properly. She couldn't oxygenate her blood and was slowly suffocating.

What followed was the longest night of my life. I'd had high blood pressure that last week of my pregnancy, high enough my OB was worried I'd have seizures, so I wasn't allowed to get in or out of bed much after delivering. Dave made multiple trips back and forth between the NICU and my room with updates. We had two neos and a host of nurses and med students in and out of my room as they worked to diagnose Nyx. Eventually they nailed it:  Tetralogy of Fallot.

What is ToF? Well it's four major defects in the heart:  a hole between the bottom chambers, a too narrow pulmonary artery, an aorta connected to both ventricles instead of just the left, and a thick wall of the right ventricle. Nyx's heart allows oxygenated blood to mix with unoxygenated blood and her pulmonary vessel simply can't pump enough blood to her lungs. She is a "Blue Baby."

Nyx spent nearly two weeks in our local NICU. We were able to bring her home once she stabilized but then all hell broke loose. She had Tet spell after Tet spell (periods of turning blue) and her cardiologist decided it was too risky to keep her home. We hauled ass to Houston for emergency heart surgery. She had a BT shunt placed on the morning of her fifteenth day of life. During her post-surgery talk review, we learned Nyx's pulmonary artery was less than 3 mm wide. She had an extra vessel branching off the left side of her heart. Her coronary artery was in the wrong place as well. One of her heart valves is "gnarly" and will need to be replaced. Yep. She has a truly unique ticker.

We had hoped her shunt would allow her five to six months of time to grow before she needs a full repair of her defects, a major open heart procedure. It's looking like that won't happen. We've noticed a definite blueing over the last week. She gets a bit winded while nursing and after crying too. She hasn't had a Tet spell again but I fear they're only weeks away. Fingers crossed we'll make it to the New Year before making another two or three week trip to Houston.

But, you know, even after all the drama associated with my sweet little munchkin's first few weeks of life, I wouldn't have it any other way. We waited so long for Nyx and love her just the way she is--good heart, bad heart, million dolllar medical bills and all. When we were on the cardiac unit at TCH, we became friendly with parents of tiny babies who weren't as lucky as Nyx. Every time I snoodle her close, I'm reminded of jus that fact and thank God she was just born with ToF and not something even worse.

And she really is the cutest little stinker! She is her daddy through and through. Reddish brown hair, orange eyebrows, and blue eyes. With my coffee black hair and dark brown eyes, I never thought I'd have such a fair-haired, light-eyed kiddo. Of course, I never thought I'd have a baby with a mullet either. Oh, that's right. Nyx's hair is growing in mullet style. I told Dave listening to his Hair Band playlists while driving me to and from prenatal appointments was going to scar this kiddo. And now I have a mullet baby! For shame!

If you're froggy, I kept fairly detailed entries during our time at the NICU and TCH at my personal blog. I also have links to pics, if you're interested.

Adventures of NICU Nyx:  Part One

Adventures of NICU Nyx:  Part Two

Adventures of NICU Nyx:  The Finale

Tales of TCH:  Part the First

Tales of TCH: Part the Second

Tales of TCH:  The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

Pics!

Oh, good God, am I swollen! It's, like, pitting edema bad. My blood pressure is still okay so my doc isn't overly concerned. I can no longer wear my size 10 Crocs (I wear a 7 1/2 when I'm not knocked up)and had to pick out a pair of man-sized flip flops from Old Navy. I want to burst into tears every time I look at my fat cankles and corn dog toes. Seriously. My toes look like those tiny corn dog bites you can pick up in the freezer section. Can you say sexy?

Also I think my mom is trying to kill me with all her shopping trips.She keeps telling me that walking is good for me and I keep telling her that walking would be much easier if I didn't have a watermelon pressed up against my hooha. Her response? Quit whining. Also, tonight, we made a run to Walmart and the grocery store and she hit every pot hole and speed bump she could find. I finally asked if she was trying to knock the baby loose. She said no but I'm not so sure...

On the baby front, I had no change in dilation this week but I was 50% effaced on Thursday. This kiddo is taking her sweet time. She still has a few days left until her eviction date so I'm not quite ready to pull out all the stops (evening primrose oil, red raspberry leaf tea, castor oil, red hot monkey sex...) We've agreed not to even discuss induction until 41 or so weeks unless there is a medical necessity. I could be looking at another 2 weeks of waddling and sporting the "smuggling a watermelon and two cantaloupes" look but whatever. It's all about thebaby. When she's ready, she'll let us know.

Oh, and I cut my hair. I hacked off 24 inches for Locks of Love and another 3 or 4 during the haircut. I'll post pics later. I'm really enjoying the new look. It was way overdue.

So for the last few weeks, my family has been struggling with the realities of the crappy economy. Recessions aren't kind to the oil and gas industry. Dad's worked for the same company for nearly thirty years. He's risen through the ranks and has established himself as an incredibly useful employee. Thankfully, he was offered a chance to keep his job rather than be laid off--but it comes with a price.

Starting tomorrow, Dad will now work out of Mexico. Of all the places they wanted to send him, this is the closest and makes the best use of his skill set. He'll live on the borderish in a hotel for a few weeks and then move into an apartment or town house until next spring. He and Mom will buy a house some time after that.

Mom will travel between E-town and Dad's new space every three weeks or so. My sister, Tricia, is still in high school and rather than drag her down to a new place, my parents have chosen to make sacrifices so she can graduate with her friends. Joey will take over for Mom while she's gone. It won't be easy but they're going to make it work.

I know it's silly but it's really upset me. I haven't lived with my parents in, what, seven years or so, but it's still hard to think that my daddy won't be in E-town when we go home. I don't like the thought of my dad being alone in Mexico or my mom on the road every three weeks. I hate that my parents won't get to see as much of the baby as they'd originally planned. I know they still plan to make as many trips up here as possible--and we hope to do the same--but it's just going to be more difficult. We're looking into web cams as a possible solution.

For the most part, both of our families are centered in the E-town area so we could take one trip and see everyone. If we planned well, we could even see Dave's far flung relatives who come into town for the holidays. Hopefully Dad will come home from Mexico for Christmas and such but who knows. At this point, the word on the grapevine is that the district Dad's taking over is in dire straights. It's one of the reasons he was asked to go down there. The man is a hard ass capable of whipping people into shape whether they like it or not.

So anywho. That's where we are right now as a family. It's bittersweet. New baby. New addresses. Changes all around.

Nope. No baby yet. I've had, like, twenty emails and texts over the weekend since I've gone off radar. LOL. It's nice to know people care!!!

Apparently I'm nesting and I'm not sure I like it. I freely admit that Dave does the bulk of the housework around here. Cooking and red hot marital relations are my contributions to the household. We clean bathrooms together but that's about it. I mean, I'll load the occasional dish into the dishwasher or unload it once in a while. I've even been known to wash a load of laundry if I'm completely out of jeans or tees or undies.

Over the last few days, though, I've gone insane. I was struck by this relentless urge to Pledge something, anything. So I did. I organized and decluttered my desk. I cleaned the bookshelves. I bought a new table cloth and curtains and curtain rods. I folded and stacked and restacked my cloth diaper stash. I just vacuumed and dusted the living room--and it's one o'clock in the morning! HELP!

My mommy is coming down on Tuesday! I get calls from her, Dad, Tricia,Joey, and Marcos at least once a day. It's odd to have my brothers asking about the state of my uterus. I'll be more relaxed when Mom gets here. She's done this, like, four times. I'm hoping she'll take some time to rest too. The last few weeks at Casa H have been hectic, especially now that we're an international household--but I'll blog more about that tomorrow. Oh, and Ama, my grandmother, assures me I won't deliver until the first week of September because the full moon arrives that week. I'm inclined to believe her. She's never been wrong about this sort of thing before, you know?

I did think I was going into labor the other morning before our pedi visit. I felt like yakking and had some hellacious contractions but the second we stepped into the pediatrician's waiting room everything stopped. Later, at Target, I had contractions again. Some of them bad enough I had to stop walking. I jokingly mentioned to Dave that dropping Zaphod on her head in the shampoo aisle of Target would make a really great blog post--and cement my status as super classy, lol.

Oh! Pedi visit went so well. Dr. S breastfed all of her kids and is super supportive of breastfeeding moms. She doesn't use those ridiculous weight charts that mandate such and such percentage of weight gain by this day or that day. She considers every baby to be individual. As long as Zaphod has the right amount of wet/poopie diapers and gains consistently, Dr. S won't even mention supplementation. She's also a believer in delayed vaccination. Zaphod will get DTAP (because pertussis is prevalent in this area,) HiB, and the polio vaccine and that's it. We'll add in the others as she gets older. I'm a smidge worried about the DTAP because my cousin's cutie, Landon, had a major reaction to it. Like stopped breathing. Yikes. So I'll probably have a mild panic attack when she gets that shot.

We finished the nursery and put a bassinet (Pack n Play, actually) in the bedroom. Bosley is not amused. He sniffs the bassinet and snorts on it. He seems to be coming to terms with the inevitable. We've stockpiled dog toys in the Harry Potter closet downstairs so we'll have things to give him when the baby gets here. "Look, Bosley, a baby! And a new fat duck!" Fingers crossed bribery works with dogs!

I've completed the last of my must-finish projects. I'm hoping to have time to write one more short story for a private invitation by an editor to an upcoming anthology. After that, I'll probably just work on the m/m novel I'm midway through at the moment. I'm finding it difficult to work because the fingers on my right hand have gone completely numb. Seriously, if I were pervy, I could give myself "The Stranger."

So Bosley has developed this totally amusing and slightly annoying habit of never allowing anyone else to have the last word. No, really. If we command him to stop barking at the fat cat outside or speak sharply to discipline him, he does this hilarious grumble, grumble ,bark, bark, grumble right back at us. I have no idea why he does this. He's at that teenage state of Great Dane development so I'm guessing he's reached his sassy age. It goes something like this.

Me: Quiet!

Bosley:  Bark!

Me:  No! Don't bark at Mama!

Bosley: Bark!

Me:  Look here, Sassyfrass! Don't talk back to me!

Bosley:  Grumble. Grumble. Bark.

And then he'll dramatically throw himself onto the floor and sigh loudly or snort at me.

Dave and I were struck by how much his behavior mirrors that of Dr. Van Helsing (aka Mel Brooks) in Dracula! Dead and Loving It! You know that scene where Van Helsing and Dracula are trying to get the last word? Yeah. It's like that.

"Foushta!"

*Baby update:  Had another visit today. I'm now 3 centimeters dilated and the baby is fully engaged. I'm still having a mix of Braxton-Hicks and holy-crap-that-effing-hurts contractions. Doc A estimates the baby won't make her debut for another week or so. My mommy is heading this way sometime next week.

Oh, and Dave is nesting. No really. He's cleaning carpets on Wednesday and changing linens. The man has lost his ever-lovin' mind. The extent of my nesting? Noticing the dust on the coffee table but being too damn tired to roll off the couch to do anything about it.

So we're just a day short of being 37 weeks. The baby is doing really well. Her cord problem doesn't seem to be causing any issues. She's a smidge small but that's okay. My amniotic fluid levels are awesome. She moves all day long and has a great heartbeat. We'll have her kidneys checked out a few times over the first year of her life to make sure they're okay but other than that everything is just fine. Huge relief!

This week I was lucky enough to be introduced to the wonders of prodromal labor. I started having lower backache, cramps and the occasional gnarly contraction on Monday. By my Wednesday appointment, I was nearly two centimeters dilated. The last few days, I've gone maybe twelve or so hours between contractions/cramping/backache. *TMI ALERT* (I lost part of my mucus plug today. Can you say icky? Why the hell don't the pregnancy books tell you about that lovely experience?)

Being in sort of labor but not is tiring but whatever. Dr. A is totally confident I'll have the no intervention labor I want but I'm keeping my mind open and accepting of any eventuality. Emergencies happen and I don't want to set myself up for disappointment. At this point, though, I'm thrilled my body is doing what it's supposed to--just not in the usual way. Most women go through all these labor changes over a few days and get it over with but not me apparently. But, hey, I've never done things normally. Why would my birthing experience be any different?

We attended our breastfeeding class the other day. Our instructor was totally fabulous. She also teaches WIC moms so she's not one of those lactation consultants who thinks you need to buy a super expensive pump and all kinds of gadgets. She involved all the husbands/partners in the class and even taught them how to provide privacy for a mom nursing in public with newspapers, hugs and smoochies, and the old standby blanket. Honestly, I think Dave took way more notes than I did. I am so glad he's so involved in this pregnancy. There's no way I could even attempt to tackle exclusive breastfeeding without his support.

Let's see. What else? Oh! Dave put together the stroller and car seat this afternoon. Bosley lost his ever-lovin' mind. You have not seen hilarious until you see a big ole Great Dane barking and snarling at astroller. Dave probably made it worse by chasing him around the living room with it. Bosley seems convinced the stroller is stamped with Satan's seal or something. I'm really looking forward to our first walk as a family.

We hit up Kroger's today for their super double coupon event. Mama got her save on, lol! I saved $150 in coupons and got $400 worth of groceries for a little over $200. Most of it was pantry stuff. We decided to stock up the pantry for the next few months. I got boxes o fKellogg's cereal for fifty cents a piece and free yogurt, cheese,Miracle Whip, mayo, ice cream, toothpaste and shaving cream. I paid less than a dollar for just about everything else in our basket including Charmin, Bounty, pasta and more.

I was so stoked to go through checkout with my massive stack ofcoupons. It was fun to see my kindred spirits working through the aisles and sifting through their coupon boxes. I mean, okay, I was the youngest couponer in that store by about three decades but whatever. I'm keeping the art of living lean alive, lol.

Whoa. So it's been a while since I blogged. I've been swamped. We drove halfway across Texas for our baby shower and then drove right back--all in the same weekend. Can you say exhausting? But it was worth it. It was so nice to see our families. Dave got to spend some time with Kati's kiddos and I got to spend some time with my crazy family. The shower was a blast too.

Once we were back in town, Dave went straight back to work. He's piling up PTO hours for paternity leave and we're trying to finish padding our savings account. We've done really, really well since learning we were pregnant. I mean, seriously, money is the last thing on my mind--and I'm so grateful for that. I really don't know how people juggle the stress of a new baby with the stress of finances. Can you say nightmare?

I had two new releases on back-to-back Fridays (Sparks from Cobblestone and Ultimate Prize from EC). I didn't hit nearly all the promo spots I wanted and Swiss-cheese-brained me forgot to reserve a banner spot on a couple of the review sites I like. Silly, self! Oh well. Advertising two weeks following a release is just as good. Right, lol?

I finished my novel targeted at Silhouette Desire and took the query plunge. I nearly barfed when I handed the envelope to Dave-O for the mailbox. I feel really settled and secure and confident when it comes to writing erotic romance and erotica, like I've finally hit my stride, but when it comes to category, I'm really nervous. I had the fabulous ladies and dudes at Romance Divas run my query and synopsis through the ringer. Fingers crossed!

I'll update on the baby and pregnancy tomorrow. Things are going really well and the umbilical cord scare we had turned out just fine. We'll have another ultrasound next week to take a peek at my amniotic fluid levels. If everything is cool, we'll just keep on keepin' on until Zaphod is ready to make her debut. If not, well, we'll cross that bridge if we get to it.

Anywho.  Here's the highlights from our few days in Eldorado.

1)  My dad has some swelling problems. (Heat, diabetes, heart stuff, huge-o stress at work) He couldn't find a pair of ankle socks to wear the morning he was getting ready to head out to drag race his beloved car so he took a pair of scissors and cut off a pair of tube socks at the ankle. I thought Dave was going to pass out he was laughing so hard. Mom? Yeah. She wasn't nearly as impressed.

2)  Mom and Dad's dog is an outside dog, for the most part. Bosley is an inside dog. Dad got a kick out of trying to stir up animosity between the two dogs. Here's a snippet of a convo I overheard.

Dad to Doofus:  Look at that! He's in the house, in the air conditioning, eating scrambled eggs Dorie made! What a rich bastard!

Then Dad proceeded to feed Doofus a hamburger left over from grilling the night before so who, exactly, is spoiled?

3)  Speaking of burgers. Avoid, like the effing plague, the DQ in Llano. We had the worst service ever. It was so bad I had to complain. They didn't have what we wanted so we had to change our order. We had to sit in the drive-thru for half an hour while cars backed up behind us. Dave was about to blow his stack when they finally brought our food. It was disgusting. Seriously. My burger was gray and icky. It also tasted like Windex. So yeah. Gross.

4)  On the way home, my iPod died so Dave plugged his in and forced me to sit through his musical choices for the rest of the drive. That particular slice of his playlist was country heavy. Garth Brooks, to be exact.

Me:  Do you remember those hideous Garth Brooks shirts? You know, the ones with blocks of color, like purple and black, or checkered patterns?

Dave, uneasily:  Yeah....

Me, guffawing:  OMG. You wore them, didn't you?!?!

Dave:  No comment.

It's times like that I enjoy the age difference the most. There is nothing funnier than knowing Dave tucked his black jeans into his white sneakers or rocked out to Garth Brooks while trying to pick up chicks with teased hair and The Claw bangs. He doesn't see the humor, of course, but it just slays me.

I've been thinking about pacing quite a bit. I just completed a 75000 word novel a week ago. I busted it out in one month of solid, no-holds-barred writing. I've set it aside for a bit while I tackle the list of projects on my Before the Baby Comes list. The next few in my writing queue are shorter works, some short stories for various calls and some in the 10-15K range.

Sitting down to write something short after wading through the various plot arcs of a novel is a bit of a change. Pacing is of the utmost importance. When you have 75-90K words of space, you can fit in just about every plot point you want. When you have a few thousand words, yeah, not so much. It's just an entirely different ball game. I've already scrapped two openings in as many days. That's always a wonderful feeling.

Seriously, though, I find the one thing that helps me pace a particular type of work is to immerse myself in stories of that length. I'm pulling out my erotica anthologies in a few minutes. I'll kick up my swollen feet (yay for pregnancy swelling!) and read through a few stories to get back in the swing of things. Wish me luck!