Hello friends! Time for another dose of A Day in the Life! Today I’m happy to welcome Jaycee Weaver to the blog 🙂 She’s a coffee drinker just like me and write sweet romance stories. Plus, as you’ll see from her post, she is a hoot! I’m thinking that maybe her and I should spend a day together, laughing, drinking coffee, and having fun! Make sure you check her out on social media (links provided at the end!!).

 

 

A Day in the Life of Jaycee Weaver

 

This is so exciting! Thank you for having me. This should probably be titled A Day in the Life of a Totally Distracted Woman or something, but my name will just have to do! That’s the story of my life, really. I am so totally NOT a routine person, never have been.

As I type, my three daughters are laughing hysterically at YouTube videos of funny dog sounds. Our tortured shih tzu (his opinion, I assure you he’s spoiled rotten), Oscar, is thoroughly confused by the strange noises being emitted from the computer screen. Meanwhile, I’m torn between watching French bulldogs sing and insisting they turn it off and do their homework so I can finish this and still have time to make dinner.

 

←    How can you not be distracted by this?!

 

 

 

 

He definitely looks tortured, doesn’t he?  →

 

 

 

 

Today, dinner won. That’s not always the case. There are far too many days I get sucked into a book (darn you, Kindle Unlimited subscription!) or surfing Facebook and Instagram (the pretty pictures and funny memes! Being “social” without having to leave the couch!) and I’m racing to throw something together before I hear the garage announce Hubby’s arrival.

 

 

Fajitas with homemade tortillas are a favorite around here…even though tortillas take a long time to cook for five hungry people. Not something I tend to do on a weeknight. I love to cook, though, and inventing healthful meals on the fly is a particular skill of mine. And baking. Lordy, I love baking. 

 

 

 

Those ones à are Green Chile Salted Caramel cupcakes. And yes, they were delicious.  →

 

 

After dinner, it’s back to homework (we have a fifth, seventh, and eighth grader, people! I die!) while I clean the counters and let Hubby do the dishes. We spend the rest of the evening most days tag teaming homework and cleanup assists until bedtime. He wakes up crazy early and I’m a night owl, so I typically lose myself in a book for a couple hours. Or until the device slams into my face and busts my lip open…not that that’s ever actually happened or anything, right?!

 

I’ll spend my day substitute teaching or writing. By writing, I actually mean fighting distraction again. You know, open the laptop…check my phone while it’s loading for notifications, then clear those little red bubbles…scroll my feeds and—ooh! A bookstagram!—open Word, making a note to look into other apps…get lost researching those until I decide it’s too much work to figure out right then…go back three chapters and refresh my memory of what I wrote last time and get sucked into editing. Write a hundred words or so and realize it’s been too long since I last posted anything, so get on Canva and create a couple of graphics and memes, then create a few posts with the intention to schedule them. I intend to write a thousand words and just hit my groove at five hundred when my “pick up Lu!” alarm sounds. Save! Save! Back up to the thumb drive! Hurry! Of course, this pic is where I’d rather be writing. (I keep a journal for writing on-the-go until I can get on of those Surface Pro tiny little bundles of electronic awesomeness.)

 

 

Race to the elementary school and back home to let the dog out (whoops! Did I let him out all day? Bad dog mom!) and let her grab a snack before the “pick up the big girls!” alarm rings. Then she and I haul tail across town to their STEM charter school and home again in pre-rush hour traffic, while we converse about awesomely random things and they dish about the latest tween drama. After that it’s back to dinner prep and all the other evening fun. And it’s not even basketball season yet (no, you did not just hear me whimper…I hope…).

Are you exhausted yet?

That’s probably why I read so much. It’s a great escape, isn’t it? I used to read mainly mysteries and realistic fiction, but for the past few years (hello, thirties!) I’ve been devouring mainly contemporary Christian romance with a fair number or romantic suspense thrown in for good measure. I do occasionally pick up a clean mainstream story, but I read so much that I’ve felt a conviction to read more things that uplift and maintain my focus better.

And that’s the crux of things, isn’t it? The Totally Distracted Woman finding focus and balance? Yeah. That. Amid all the chaos and lack of routine around here, focus is what I most need. It’s what my spirit and my sanity crave, and the one thing I totally stink at. But the way I figure it, my overactive brain keeps creativity flowing the way Niagara Falls does all that water. Sure, it means I don’t have a lot of time for my plethora of hobbies (now my brain is hearing Three Amigos) like landscape and floral photography, singing with the worship band, crafting and sewing, sketching, scrapbooking, or even substitute teaching all that regularly. But it does mean that whatever I throw myself into at any given moment does have my full focus for as long as I can give it. I’ve learned to let go of my former-perfectionist expectations and enjoy all the moments that come. That same creativity and focus mean I can write three or four books at once, even though it takes me three times longer to do it. It makes things a little less predictable, and sometimes more fun.

 

 

I’d love to share my first two books with you, What Could Be and Whatever Comes Our Way. Book three in that series is on track for next spring, and I’m currently developing a series of romantic novellas related to the fictional church Grace Springs Fellowship. The first in that collection will be Adrift, coming in October.

 

I’d love to have an opportunity to get to know you better! Please give me a shout over on Facebook on my Author page (or just become my friend. Friends are awesome.), @jayceeweaver on Instagram, @weaverjaycee on Twitter, or @weaversgrrrl on Pinterest. You can also check out my ramblings on my website, www.jayceeweaver.com. I look forward to meeting you if we haven’t had the chance yet!