Just a note: I’m not going to do a video/audio to go with this post today since I am due to go walking in an hour. I will try to break things up so you can scroll to the topics that interest you.

Summer is here, and this is the time of year I spend a good deal of time outdoors. I am still writing, but I’m not doing as much sitting at home that I tend to do while it’s cooler outside. My goal last year was to work my body up to being able to walk 3-5 miles at least three days a week. I want to keep that up this summer. I want to take care of my health because I’ve watched my parents die young. My mom was 48. My dad was in his 60s. While they died from smoking-related causes, they weren’t exactly the kind of people who ate healthy or exercised. I’ve seen them go through enough with doctors that I decided I want to spend my time as far from doctors and hospitals as possible.

This has also affected the way I eat. I used to eat out a lot. I’m not a big fan of cooking, but I have finally come across some recipes that are healthy and do not require a lot of work. (If anyone is interested in these, let me know, and I’ll make some blog posts about them.) My dad had high blood pressure. My mom had diabetes. I don’t want to end up with these issues, either. As of my last physical in September or October, I have a clean bill of health, and I’d like to keep it that way. I am doing the Healthy Keto plan. I’ve been doing it for about two years now. I have lost 40 pounds, but I lose weight slowly. I’m like a turtle. But I also don’t put on the weight fast, either, so that’s the trade-off. I still have another 40 pounds to go before I’m at my pre-pregnancy weight. I would love to get there, but if I never do, I can be okay with that as long as I continue to be healthy. I follow Dr. Eric’s Berg program. (I’m linking to his YouTube channel if you want to check it out.)

I’ve tried other methods, but his is the one that works for me. (I think there is no one-size-fits-all eating plan for everyone. We have different body types.) I feel a lot better than I did even when I was in my 30s. I feel like I’m in my late 20s. That is a big deal for someone who felt like she was 60 when she was 38. I still remember writing at the park with little energy, brain fog, and back pain. I didn’t start Dr. Eric Berg back then, but I did cut out a lot of sugars at that point. (I hate Starbucks withdrawals like you wouldn’t believe. I used to live on those drinks.) That got me to feeling like I should have been at 38. But when I started Dr. Eric Berg’s thing, I felt even better. (But I did have to seriously cut out sugar, and I remember going to the kitchen and seeking out sweets, esp. the ice cream. I wasn’t even hungry. I just wanted my next “fix”. The ice cream was the hardest habit to break. It took a month before I stopped with those cravings.) When they say you can get addicted to sugar, they are not joking.

So anyway, I do enough walking and cooking from scratch that it takes up a significant part of my time. Because of this, I don’t do as much writing or engagement online as I used to. Once in a while, I will get a question about when a new book will be ready, and I am very happy people care enough to want to read more books. I want to write more books. The reason I went through all of this rambling is to first of all say thank you for still reading my books. Truly, it means a lot to me. I also want to explain why my writing has slowed way down. It’s more than having been through burnout. I have come to realize it’s also about taking time to take care of my health in order to have the capacity to keep on writing. My goal is to be doing this for another 30 or so years.

I also want to make sure I spend time with my family. My husband and I still date, though he doesn’t get as excited about the walks as I do for these occasions. My kids are entering adulthood. The oldest is now 22. Then the others are stair steps. So it’s 22, 21, 20, 19. Now that they’re adults, I might as well give their names. I tried to protect them while they were minors just because you don’t know who is reading the blog posts. (My mom used to watch a lot of true stories about killers. That kind of thing makes you cautious about what you share, which is why I try not to give away anything personal.)

So anyway, Craig is the oldest. Eric is second. John (my deaf son who is just shy of autism) is 20. Adrian is the youngest. Craig loves video games, and I have discovered that some of these games are movies with a “choose your own adventure” angle to it. I really enjoy that, but my gaming skills suck. (We played one game together called “It Takes Two”, and he had to wait for me to finish my portion of the scene for 30 minutes or so. I remember he ended up scrolling on his phone for something to read while he waited for me to successfully pass my part of the game.) Also, if you want someone to die in some quick time event, I’m your girl for that because I have trouble remember where the correct button is for a certain action. I’ve gotten the hang of Mario Party (which I play with Craig and my husband, Tony), but the other games don’t come as easily to me. For the most part, I watch Craig play a game in order to watch the movie. That way, the characters end up alive. Anyway, he does have a full-time job, so when he is off, I try to do something with him.

Eric is the one I usually walk with. We do most of our walks in downtown Omaha. They have Gene Leahy Mall there, and it’s a nice part of the walk. We also go across the Bob Kerry Bridge. We did take a couple of walks through Dundee, and this is the area where the older homes are. I don’t know when they were constructed, but I like to imagine that Richard and Amanda Larson lived in one of them. (If you’ll recall, they were two characters from the Nebraska Series.) Richard was a construction worker who ended up with his own business, and he built a house specifically using her ideas. I like to play the “what kind of house did they live in” game. I also try to imagine what historic buildings in Omaha he might have done. This is all a part of the mind of a writer, and while it has no basis in reality, it is fun to imagine the characters doing something visible in real life. Anyway, I want to take advantage of this time with Eric. He’ll be going off to college in a couple of years, and then he wants to leave Nebraska. My father-in-law used to say stuff like, “I should have done this with my children when they were young.” I don’t want to look back and say that. Also, given the fact that my parents didn’t live that long, I want to get the most out of the days I do have. I had always wanted to spoil my nieces and nephews. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do that. I am hoping I can someday spoil my grandchildren. But in case I don’t get the chance, this is another reason why I put an emphasis on spending time with my children while they are still around.

John is the third child. He’s deaf. We had him tested for autism, and he’s right under on the threshold of being autistic. (Like a couple of points off.) I am limited in how much I can do with him. He mostly likes to be alone working on languages. He loves foreign languages and will devote hours a day to it. He does work at a shipping place, so he’s able to hold down a job. He can’t drive, though, so I am his taxi to and from work. That takes up 1.5 hours total of my time a day. I have tried to take him out to the zoo and other places, but the older he’s gotten, the less he’s able to do outside. So even though he doesn’t quality for being autistic, he does have stuff in common with autistic people. Like he is very rigid on a schedule, and he needs things done a specific way. I do what I can, but I have to do it within a limit.

Adrian is my youngest, and he’s usually gone most of the day. He has two jobs and is trying to get his own place with a roommate. Today he’s looking at appointments. I don’t see him much, but when he’s around, he talks a lot. And since he’s a talker, and I’m more of a listener, I get way more information than I want to know about him. Sometimes I have to tell him to censor himself a bit because as a mom, I don’t want to know EVERYTHING. (And if you’re a parent, I’m sure you can guess what “everything” is.) I do want my children to feel comfortable coming to me about whatever is on their minds, but there are even limits I have. So I just let him know that I get the idea, and I don’t need to know anything else. I mean, I’m not stupid. I realize how the culture is, but even I have my limits. He’s an adult. He has to make his own decisions. I respect that.

So anyway, I went on and on about the kids, and I didn’t say much about my husband, but I do make an effort to spend time with him and we date, as I mentioned earlier. He’s a good, stable guy. Kind of like the heroes I enjoy writing about. If you ever wondered why my romances are the way they are, it’s because my marriage has been stable. We don’t have extremes for ups or downs. It’s pretty much a day-in and day-out routine. I’m happy with it. I like stability. I like routine. I like predictability. I have read some romances where there’s a ton of drama, and that is not for me. I would have a heart attack on those crazy ups and downs. The soap opera life isn’t for me. We only knew each other for four months before getting married. Looking back, I realize that was pretty fast. It’s probably why my characters don’t take long to fall in love. I just knew he was the one early on, and I saw no reason to wait. I also didn’t want to live with him first. So we just got married with at the courthouse and have been together ever since. We’ll celebrate 25 years this July of being married. As an elderly woman told me when I was 24 years old, “Marriage lasts when you make a commitment to stick it out through good and bad times. You choose to make it last.” There’s a lot of truth in that. Marriage is not a romance novel. It’s a choice to stick it out. (Granted, there are times when you can’t, like in infidelity and abuse.) But for the most part, love is a choice you make. For better or worse. No matter what. A lot of those days will be mundane. There will be times you have to put effort into the romance. That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with stability. Stability is security, and love thrives best when someone is secure.

Alright, that’s it. I will discuss books I’m working on in my next post. This one went on way too long.