Where the heck did 2018 go? And how is it the third month of 2019 already? I’ve gotten so slack with my writing, but I have a ton of excuses. I’m tired, and life changes. BTW, I love the country song by that same name. But I digress. This is about why I’ve let my writing (and reading) slide for so long.

First, the good news. My oldest daughter who spent the last three years in Mississippi and the nine years before that has finally moved back to NC. They’re still getting settled so they are temporarily staying at my house and my younger daughter’s house. More good news: I get to see both my granddaughters every Friday. The bad news, is that once upon a time, that was my all day writing day. So, I’m distracted by granddaughters, ages one and four who are the light of my life.

I could write in the mornings before work or in the evenings after work, but my husband recently retired. That’s good. Right? Well, sort of. He’s always home. ALWAYS. I enjoy spending time with him, but I miss my home alone days and evenings.

The bad news? It was a medical retirement as he was recently diagnosed with a metatstatic carcinoid tumor. The cancer apparently started in the small bowel but went undetected for a long time so this slow growing cancer has now spread to his liver and is no longer curable. But…it is treatable. We pray he’ll be around another ten to twenty years, but in the meantime, we’re living.

There are so many cancer survivor stories, including my own, as I am an eleven year breast cancer survivor. There are also stories of people who’ve lost their lives to cancer, but you just don’t hear that many stories of people living with cancer. My husband is now one of those stories. He is now living with metastatic cancer, but he is living.

We are living.

In April, we’re going to a resort in Hendersonville, NC to spend a long weekend in the mountains. We’re going to see some of the 250 waterfalls in Brevard, NC and we’re going to spend at least one day touring Biltmore Estates in NC, as neither my husband nor I have ever been. Then in June, we’re spending a week at the beach.

We need to book these trips before the bills start pouring in as the Sandostatin injection my husband now gets every month to keep the cancer at bay and prevent his liver from failing costs about $35,000 per injection. As of now, we don’t know how much of that cost insurance will pay.Not that it matters. We can’t afford it, so it might as well be $1,000,000.00. But we’ll make monthly payments forever if we have too. Life goes on. Right? And I have started a new book, I just don’t know when I’ll finish it.

However, I have found time to read two books recently and posted reviews on Good Reads.

One was Sandra Sookoo’s  The Lady’s Chocolatier

A quick, fun read. The heroine, Evangeline, doesn’t want a husband, especially not her former fiance who seemed no different than every other man out to control women. The hero, Jasper, is a more Beta than Alpha but definitely heroic. He is a true gentleman who never tried to seduce Evangeline when they were engaged, believing all women wanted to wait until their wedding night, but was he too much of a gentleman?

Evangeline definitely wanted passion, but she was afraid passion would lead to losing control, so on the night Jasper proposed, she fled, moving away to go into business with her aunt selling undergarments, but a chance encounter with Jasper leads her to second guess everything she believed about marriage, love, and Jasper, who is no longer the perfect gentleman, and yet, he still treats her with more respect than any man she’s ever met.

Love and chocolate are a delicious combination.

I also read the first book in Andris Bear’s new series: Enter the Witch

A good witch, a sexy mechanic, and a lazy cat make for a good start to a promising series. Spoiler alert: this first book ends in a cliff hanger, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from reading the story, as the cliff hanger is actually the start of the next book in the series and not an abrupt ending that doesn’t finish the current story.

Truly a fun read, and I look forward to reading the next book in this series.