What I did while the kids were in school today

The kids started school yesterday, so you'd think I'd be making sudden huge strides on the revisions to my novel until 2pm, when school gets out. Let's see what I accomplished:

Walked the dog (a mile).

Fed the kids breakfast.

Showered (not always easy to accomplish in the morning with kids underfoot).

Walked the kids to school.

Dropped off car to Midas for the brakes. (set us back $800! Ouch, ouch, ouch!)

Mailed a package to my sister.

Cleared off my desk.

Sent a query to a NYC theatre (for the Binge). (Good news--they requested a copy already!)

Worked with daughter's soccer coach (I'm the assistant coach) on the line-up for tomorrow’s game.

Called contractor.

Called doctor to try to set up appointment for son.

Answered and read a few e-mails (my in-box is under10).

Checked statcounter.com too many times. Bloglines, too. Read something about soccer drills for defense. (I'm trying to figure out how to explain things that I understand instinctively.)

Did laundry so daughter will have clean socks and shorts for tomorrow’s soccer game.

Took dog out again.

Brought in trash cans (from which I had to wash off maggots yesterday. Maggots really creep me out.)

Talked to Tracy on the phone.

Made myself lunch.

Talked to neighbor and gave her back her key (I was feeding her fish).

Got the dishes in the dishwasher and started running it.

Not a bad list for a morning and early afternoon. Ah, but there's an item missing. Writing. Didn't get squat done today. Wrote a speck in my journal, and put in all of ten-minutes into the rewrites. I had such big plans, but everything took longer than expected.

Surely I can do better next week. Right? Maybe I'll even start tomorrow (after the soccer game and shopping for school supplies). Right?

I'm very close to being done with this revision. I have about 30 pages to go (with a pretty decent rewrite of a short chapter), and then need to add a section (10-30 pages, which scare me to death). My deadline is Friday, September 21st, and then I'll get it out to some of my readers.

No one knows or cares about this deadline but me, really. But it'll motivate me anyway (I hope.) I actually find it pretty helpful to set internal deadlines, because without them, projects can drag on forever. And I'd definitely like to finish this enough to send out to agents by the end of the year (if not sooner). Guess I'd better get my ass in gear.