Two years later...where am I?

OK. So tonight I got a swift kick in the twig and berries with the realization that I've had this blog for over two years and I'm only marginally ahead of where I was back then and nowhere near where I wanted to be with my scriptwriting by this point.

For starters...there's the glaring elephant in the corner that this blog has morphed into more of a journal of our family adventures than anything that has to do with writing. Uggg.

But I love my family. And the truth is, aside from work, it's where I put the majority of my free time because I love it. Maybe it's just part of the drill when you have little ones. I mean, it's not like a 6 and 3 year old are hiding out in their room all night listening to goth music and hating on their parents like I think they'll do ten years from now!

So for now I'll keep hanging out with my little ones, watching Spy Kids 2 for the four thousand'th time...and I'll take a little solace in those few days a month where everyone is off doing something else and it's just me and my laptop for an extended period of time!

But the truth is...I have been feeling the itch to write again lately. And not just to write, but to MAKE time to write. And that itch sometimes grows into a such a pester that it forces me to dig into the uncomfortable times, the early morning hours or the "write through my lunch break" times, to keep that juice a'flowin' and build a little momentum again.

"Inside" was my first script. I completed it and pitched it to a few execs. A rep for TNT said she thought it needed an adjustment through an overhaul of one of a major character. I agreed and a rewrite is about 60% completed.

"Like Brothers" was my second script. It, too, was completed and then found to have a flaw too fundamental to gloss over. In it's first form it got a read from Warner Brothers, and the review told me many things I already knew. Some good, some bad.

What's frustrating is when you feel like you are either A. Talented enough, B. Driven enough, or C. A combination of A. and B. and you know if you could dedicate your full efforts to something then you could succeed! But there's this little thing called a DAY JOB standing in the way.

But I started this blog in July 2006 with a post about Mike Rich, a talk-radio DJ here in the Portland, OR area that worked during the day and wrote at night only to craft a fantastic little script called "Finding Forrester" which lead to a number of other scripts and I'm sure the retirement from talk-radio.

I guess this is just a time for me to reflect on how quickly time passes and realize it isn't going to stop itself and wait for me to get on board! I gotta grab it by the ears and wrestle it into submission. And get a few more scripts done!!

Here's to the next two years and to being in a different spot...much different!

Score One for Lawn Owners Everywhere

I'm not usually a fan of killing animals, but there's one particular critter that causes me more grief than others. The lawn mole! So imagine my surprise the other day when Evan starts shouting for me to come outside cause there's "two of those black animals with brown hands." I was like "what is he talking about" so when I got out where he was imagine my surprise to see two moles either fighting or mating on top of the lawn. I hated to do it, but I love our lawn, so I told the kids to run inside and I went and got a shovel. By the time I got back the moles had separated and both were attempting to head back underground. In the middle of the day I couldn't lose my chance to rid myself of one of these pests that have tormented our nice green lawn. A few whaps later and one of the moles was dead.

I've never seen one before, so the kids and I took a close look. I had to give quite the explanation to the kids how we don't normally kill animals, but...

What can you do? Here is the mole.