Goals check for the week of September 9

I am writing this late Sunday night because I have a number of things to do Monday that will keep me out of the house pretty much all day until I have to pick up the kids from school.  It's not a good way to start a week, especially if I want it to be a productive week, but hopefully I can make up for it on Tuesday and Wednesday.

This past week was middling -- a little less productive on my novel than last week, but the horses got more attention, which is probably where my noveling time went.

1. Novels: I worked on my novel 3 days out of 7 -- one day I spent about 4 hours on research and writing a new scene, which balances out the day that I only got about 30 minutes done.  I need to get past this new scene that I'm writing so that I can get to work on revisions that I've already marked, but the new scene is slow work.

2. Blogs and websites: No progress here.

3. Other writing projects: No progress here.

4. Books: I've been picking away at Les Miz again, but I'll have to set it aside once again to read our book club's selection for September.  I've made some more progress, though, at least, and I'm about two-thirds of the way done with it now (up from just over halfway).

5. Horses: The horses got some attention in the past week at least.  I rode Panama on Tuesday to see whether chiro had made a difference in the way he moves under saddle (and it had: see Panama's first chiro). My trainer rode Rondo Thursday morning as I was still recovering from not feeling well Wednesday evening, and then I rode Panama a little bit Thursday afternoon while V. had her lesson on Rondo.  We both rode again on Friday -- her on Rondo, me on Panama -- and then I met friends out at the barn on Saturday and we traded off between Panama and Rondo.  (To see a couple of really good pictures of me with my boys, scroll to the bottom of this post: Pony playtime with friends!)

So the horses got plenty of attention this past week, and my novel only suffered a little for it.  And honestly, it would have gotten more attention, too, if it hadn't been for all the time I put into cleaning my desk, filing, and going through emails over the weekend.  I had started these things a couple of weeks ago, back when I had some time off, but I left off when Michael and I both went back to work.  This weekend I made a major dent in the filing, the piles on my desk, and my email organization -- but of course it kept me from my novel, and even after all that, there is still a lot to be done!