Cold Nose, Warm Heart

It wasn't supposed to get out of the teens today, and I don't think it did. I only left to go to dinner with my sweetie and the boys for anniversary number three. It was a fairly low-key celebration, but we had a nice leisurely morning and a nice dinner.

He wrote and recorded a song for me on the sly over the past week or so, I guess, and played it this morning then printed the lyrics so that I would have a copy. I've never had an entire song (music and lyrics) written for me before, and he's never written a song specifically for anyone before, so it was extra special.

Today is three years. They have been among the best, most at ease, most productive of my life, and the relationship has had a great deal to do with that assessment. He is caring and supportive and creative with a sense of humor at least as off the wall as mine. We complement one another in many ways, and I'd shout it from the rooftops for anyone who asked. And he is willing to take dancing lessons with me.

Our first ballroom class went well, we both enjoyed it and the teacher is a big part of why. She is funny and adept at getting her students to understand what it is that she wants us to do. She is southern, so she refers to all of the men by the formal versions of their first names (Her excuse). She has a ton of energy and is animated and brimming with anecdotes to illustrate her points.

We learned the foxtrot the other night, all but the twirl, I think. We did pretty well, just some minor tweaking here and there when she saw that he was afraid of stepping on me. I need to dance more.

Not much writing over the past few days, or not on any coherent project, anyway. The second assignment for Only A Novel should be out tomorrow, I'll do that when I get it. I've been thinking about where my nano needs to go, and doing random semi-essays, but not much else.

I'm reading Writing The Breakout Novel, by Donald Maass. It's good, he makes a lot of sense. I'm going to read it the whole way through before trying to jump into anything with it. Using his method is only one possible reason for reading it, though. He's going to be at the conference I want to attend this spring, so I want to have some familiarity, just in case. Not that I'll actually speak to him at the conference, I know myself better than that.