'Tis the night before Valentine's Day and this romance author is trying her best to get into the romance mood and figure out what to write on her blog. 
Nestled beside me on the bed is a dog and a cat and who knows where the other two cats are hiding...once I shooed them out of the bag of treats by my bed they are having nothing to do with me!  That's okay though...I'm not wanting to share my bed with 4-4 legged fur balls right now.
I have to say, something really intrigues me about Victorian style Valentine cards.  They are a far cry and much better than the modern hearts and flowers one can find on the greeting card racks.  These Victorian designs are so intricate and for lack of a better word...ROMANTIC...
Now mind you, I wouldn't have wanted to live back in the days of long skirts and petticoats and corsets bound so tight a woman couldn't breathe or put back a good meal.  And heaven help me if I had to sit on a stiff sofa and fan myself and flutter my eyelashes at some slick haired suitor.  I'm more of a blue jeans, sweater, and throw back a nice Blue Moon beer on the sofa (or a bottle of champagne) so I don't think I could have survived the Victorian era.
So...you ask...what does a romance author want or do on Valentine's Day?  Well, I've had my share of them and they have ranged from romantic dinners to sitting home by myself reading a romance novel.  Or writing one.  As far as want...I'm a simple sort of girl...give me a nice card (it can be homemade) and a bottle of Korbel Brut and bring me a sandwich from McDonald's and I'll be fine.  I've had some pretty memorable gifts over the years but the one that sticks out the most is the last year my father was alive.  He took me to lunch and realized my current boyfriend hadn't bothered to send me flowers so before the day was over, I had a dozen red roses from him and my children sitting on my desk. And of course, not to be outdone by my father the boyfriend sent me a dozen red roses as well.  Two dozen red roses on my desk by the end of the day!  To give the boyfriend some credit, I will have to admit he made me a handmade card one time and it was absolutely the cutest thing ever! Again, something from the heart is always more treasured than anything like diamonds, rubies, or emeralds...but any one of those would be nice too!
Tomorrow night will likely be a late one at work since I took a vacation day today to take care of the things that cannot be done on the weekend.  I'm sure my voice mail is full and I probably have about a hundred emails piled up in the office.  On the way home, I will grab a bottle of Korbel (I wish I could find them in individual serving size 4-packs like I used to be able to get when I lived in Indianapolis) and a take out dinner from Cracker Barrel and come home and treat myself to a bubble bath before trying to write a few thousand words in my latest work in process and then hitting the sheets. 
I hope all of you have a wonderful Valentine's Day and you get your heart warmed by flowers, balloons, chocolates, a romantic dinner for two, diamonds, lingerie, or whatever your heart may desire!! 

I'm one of those people who overthink and overanalyze...but never plan for changes.  In fact, I'm so change averse that sometimes the slightest ripple ends up turning into a tidal wave for me.  Funny, it took me all these years to realize I was creating my own turmoil most of the time. 

I woke up this Sunday morning and the light bulb went on.  Like a burst of sunshine through the clouds.  We only have so much time allotted to us and that time wasn't intended to spend most of it worrying about what tomorrow was going to bring or how we could go back and change what happened in the past to get a different result.  And that is what I was doing and have been doing almost every day.  Enough already!  I wasn't getting anything else done.  No stories was going from my head to my computer keyboard.  No craft projects were getting finished.  Seriously.  What did I do today?  Play stupid games on my smart phone?  Pretty much.  And I wasn't doing anything that I enjoyed doing.  STOP Teresa! 

So, now the change averse person is going to have to make changes.  I think of all the little sayings...Today is a gift, that's why it's called the present.  You can't control every situation but you can control your attitude toward the situation.  We get so focused on the destination that we don't enjoy the journey.  Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing.  But for a change averse person...the best one I can think of is...how do you eat an elephant?  And that my friends is how I'm going to manage this huge change for me.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm going to plan on writing more books but instead of writing them in hopes of making a lot of money and retiring, I'm going to write them for the pure enjoyment of telling a story.  If they sell, great.  If they don't, the story still gets told.  I'm going to plan on being around tomorrow, but if I'm not at least people will remember I had a smile on my face today.  I'm going to plan on a lot of things but instead of stressing over them, I'm going to enjoy them and go with the flow.

What are you going to enjoy today?  Which flowers are you going to stop and smell along this journey of life?  What are you going to do to make YOU happy.  What are you going to do with the present you have been given?  I'd like to hear from you so leave a comment or drop me a line at teresa.keefer.author@hotmail.com