Like so many others, I’ve been finding it more and more difficult to balance all the balls I have in the air at any one time: work, church, community, family, friends, writing, reading, crafting, golfing, etc…not necessarily in that order. It’s a hectic fast-paced world we live in and we are all, including children, wearing ourselves out.

I’ve been trying a number of ways to control my time. Some work better than others. Just saying no would seem the most logical solution, but for me that’s not so easy. I generally try not to put myself in a position where I’ll be asked to do something I don’t particularly want to do, but when they find me anyways, I inevitably say yes. Why? I don’t know. I tell myself if I don’t do it no one will, but we all know that’s not true. There’s always someone who will step forward, if they look hard enough, although it’s often the same person. I just generally find it difficult to say no. And then there are the times when, sadly, I have to say no when I really want to say yes.

Most of the things I’m involved with I do by choice. The problem is, I “choose” too many things. So the question became, how to balance them all so nothing is forgotten or late and I’m still left with “me time”. While some people will tell you anything done purely for your own pleasure is selfish, I’d argue it’s healthy. We all need “me time” for relaxation, reflection, to recharge, to be happy.

Back in March I started keeping a list journal. Every day I have a to-do list and I check things off as I complete them. By assigning each task to a day I find I don’t forget to do something until the last minute. There are times I am so busy I don’t get a chance to do things until last minute, but it’s not because I forgot. For example, this week’s blog. You’ll be reading this tomorrow. I don’t normally like to wait until the day before. My list journal has helped me tremendously. However, it hasn’t proven to be enough. My chores are getting done, but my pleasures can still be difficult to fit in.

The next logical step was to evaluate my responsibilities and decide which, if any, could go. That decision came easier than I expected. As of August 31^st I will be retired. My day job was part-time and I took it to get out of the house and meet people. The writer’s life is generally a solitary one. I like my job, I like the people I work with and will miss them, but I treasure other things more. (No offense meant if any of you are reading this.) So it’s time. It’s time to free up more time to write, to pursue my dream of becoming a published novelist. I want to spend more time with my parents, be free to visit my children, go to the cabin, be with my husband, travel.

What do you do to balance your life? Have you had to give up anything? Or are you one of those people seriously out of balance? Maybe you even thrive on that wild pace. Share your ideas in the comments section and who knows; maybe you’ll help someone else out there searching for a more balanced life.

Up North is not just a direction. It’s an experience. It’s an attitude. If you come from the mid-west, I’d say most particularly Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Michigan, you know what I mean.

Up North is where you go hunting, fishing, camping, ATV’ing. (Yes! That’s a word.) Up North is where your cabin is located. Up North is where you go to have fun and get away from it all.

When I was growing up, Up North meant going to visit our grandparents. Now it’s where we have our family cabin. While we’re not far from “civilization” it can feel that way when we’re staying close to home. We don’t have internet service and our cell service is so spotty we have to have a landline in case of emergency. We do, however, have DISH TV. Without it, my husband and I would actually have to talk to each other. That’s a little too primitive for us. One of us might be tempted to bury the other out in the woods before our vacation was through. Just kidding!

When he’s not in the woods, my husband spends hours working on jigsaw puzzles. This trip he finally got brave and opened the one my mother gave him for Christmas a couple years back…all candy canes! He’s going to be working on that one for a while. Me, I like to work on my cross-stitch. We both spend a lot of time reading, and I, of course, write.

We have a favorite bar and grill just down the road from us. If you’re ever in the Laona/Cavour, Wisconsin area, check out Mudslingers on Hwy 8. My husband’s a fan of the one-pound slinger burger. I tease him that it’s basically a meatloaf on a split loaf of bread.

Yes, Up North does have its down side. In the summer we battle mosquitoes, deer and horse flies, and, of course, wood ticks. That’s what bug spray is for. But there are also the animals, wildflowers, and beautiful colored leaves in the fall. There’s the complete silence…most times. Holiday weekends like this one do tend to bring out the ATV’ers (yes, also a word), but they drive by onto the logging road and leave us alone.

We just returned from our 4^th of July trip to the cabin. The bugs were actually more moderate than some years, but definitely made their presence known. We stocked-up at the local winery. We had ice cream in town. We played a round of golf at the local course. It was one of my worst, but as they say, even a bad round of golf is better than a good day at the office. The big disappointment, though, was learning the fireworks are scheduled for the 8th so we’ll miss them this year. There’s always next year!

Celebrating the 4^th of July with fireworks goes back to John Adams, 1777, and the first anniversary of our freedom as a nation. But John Adams did not want the anniversary of our independence to be held on July 4^th. He believed we should celebrate on July 2^nd.

On June 7, 1776, the Continental Congress met at the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia where Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a motion calling for independence. There was a heated debate and a vote was postponed. A five-man committee was appointed to draft a formal statement justifying the break with Great Britain: Thomas Jefferson (Virginia), John Adams (Massachusetts), Roger Sherman (Connecticut), Benjamin Franklin (Pennsylvania), and Robert R Livingston (New York).

The vote was held on July 2^nd and was near-unanimous in favor of independence. New York originally abstained but later voted in favor. That same day John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that July 2^nd “will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival” and would include “Pomp and Parade…Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other.”

The Declaration of Independence, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, was signed on July 4^th, 1776. Even though the actual vote for independence was held on the 2^nd, from that day forward July 4^th became known as the birthday of an independent America. John Adams would refuse all invitations to celebrate on the 4^th.

It had been a tradition in the colonies to hold annual celebrations of the king’s birth, celebrations that included ringing bells, bonfires, processions and speeches. However, in the summer of 1776 the celebration of the king’s birth changed to a mock funeral for King George III to symbolize the death of his hold over the colonies. The first of many annual celebrations of our independence was held on July 4, 1777. In 1778, George Washington ordered double rations of rum for all his soldiers and in 1781 Massachusetts became the first state to make July 4^th an official state holiday.

Celebrations gradually spread to many of the large cities and after the War of 1812, when we again faced Great Britain in battle, celebrations became even more widespread. In 1870 the US Congress made the day a federal holiday, and in 1941 it was expanded to be a paid holiday for federal employees.

But no matter where it was celebrated, the 4^th of July has always included lots of noise, food and drink, and, whenever possible, fireworks. As a child I loved sparklers. A metal stick coated with a burning substance that, when lit, shot off white sparks and made a sizzling noise until it burned itself out at the bottom…much too soon. Our town’s fireworks were always held the Sunday after the 4^th as a way to close-out the Firemen’s Picnic, an annual carnival to raise money for the local volunteer fire department. Every town had one. You could go to a different one almost every weekend, if you wanted.

This year my husband and I will be celebrating at our cabin. Last year Laona’s fireworks were better than almost any we’d ever seen, with the exception of the year we were in Washington DC. All the small northern communities in the area pooled their resources and the display went on far longer than any other. I’m hoping they’ll out do themselves this year.

(Historical facts from history.com.)

We are in the heart of wedding season: beautiful brides and handsome grooms, lots of champagne and delicious cake, flowers, music and dancing. Each one is a celebration, a new beginning bright with promise.

Yes, I know, weddings are held all year round, but June has long been the traditional month to be wed. Do you know why June is such a popular month?

June is named for the ancient Roman Goddess Juno, daughter of Saturn, sister & wife of Jupiter, mother of Mars and Vulcan. Juno is the protector of women, most particularly in marriage and child bearing. It is considered good luck for a woman to be married in June. My own wedding was 38 years ago this month.

Last Saturday our nephew Josh married his love, Kellie. It was a beautiful day for an outdoor wedding, even when the rain started during the dinner. (Everything was held under cover. You only got wet if you wanted to…and some wanted to as the evening progressed.) With wildflowers and twinkle lights for decoration, they said their vows.

When did our children grow up? It seems only yesterday we were bringing them home from the hospital to show off to proud grandparents. It seems only yesterday we were seeing them off to school, watching them play sports, looking the other way when they took our car out alone for the first time…and now they’re marrying and having children of their own.

Congratulations Josh and Kellie!

May you have as many happy years together as your uncle and I have shared.

I’m a bookworm. I love books. I’ve always loved books. Since before I could read the words by myself, I’ve been enthralled by the realization that entire worlds existed between those covers; places I’d never been and people I didn’t know until that very moment lived on those pages. All I had to do was open the cover, read the words, and I’d be transported.

Then I started taking it one step further; I began writing the stories myself. I’d already been making up stories in my head for years, so it seemed the next logical step to want to put them to paper.

When people call me and others like me bookworms, they intend it to be something negative; or, at the very least, as a way of turning us into the butt of their jokes. They feel there’s something wrong with us for occasionally preferring a good book over the company of others. We’re nerds, eggheads, weirdoes…bookworms! Quite to the contrary, I think those who can enjoy the company of a good book from time to time are more well-rounded than those who are limited to the present moment of their own reality. The imagination is a truly marvelous thing.

Real bookworms, though, are indeed a negative creature. Despite this name we’ve given them, what we call bookworms are not worms at all. Actual book-boring insects are uncommon. There are a couple of moths who like to nibble at cloth bindings. There are several species of beetles that enjoy a nice leather to chew on. Some beetles will burrow through wood and paper, if the paper is near the wood. But a true book-eating insect would be the book or paper louse. Under 1mm in size, soft-bodied and wingless, they feed on microscopic molds and other organic matter that grows on ill-maintained paper. Their damage is most often found in very old books, treasures that have not been properly handled or stored and have fallen victim to moisture and the oils we carry on our skin. This is why old, rare, manuscripts are stored under special climate-controlled conditions, are handled very rarely, and then only by experts wearing gloves.

Books are always there when I need something to take me away from a bad day. Books are always there when I’m looking for a little adventure that won’t actually break my body into several pieces or land me in jail. Books are always there to transport me to somewhere, anywhere, that isn’t here. Books calm me when I’m frightened, and frighten me when I’m in the mood for a good scare. I can be anyone, go anywhere, with a good book.

If you’re anywhere near St Croix Falls, WI, this weekend, or Taylors Falls, MN, stop on by because today is the start of the annual Wannigan Days celebration. There will be races, craft sales, lots of food and beer, a cake walk, music on the overlook, and two parades – one in St Croix Falls at 6pm Saturday night, followed by a second in Taylors Falls at 7pm. The fireworks are scheduled to start at 10pm Saturday night in St Croix Falls. And this is only a taste of all the fun that awaits visitors to our beautiful river town this weekend at our 59^th River Spirit Celebration. (Check out http://www.wannigandays.com.)

But, what is a wannigan, you may ask. It’s a Native American word meaning “house that walks on water”. And that’s what it is, a shanty built on a raft. It dates back to the lumber era. The wannigan followed the men (called river drivers, river hogs, river pigs, catty men, river rats, river jacks) as they rode the cut logs downriver to the mills after the spring thaw. The wannigan carried supplies, equipment, and maybe most important of all to these hard working men, the cook and the food. This was their floating kitchen and kept them fed and strong for the long, grueling, and very dangerous trip ahead. And before you picture lovely picnic lunches on shore when the men got a much-deserved mid-day rest, they ate while they worked. (As so many of us do today, except sitting at a desk.) They used what was called a river pig nose bag, a tin lunch bucket generally strapped to their back, so they could eat while continuing to direct their logs to the saw mills downriver.

Many men lost their lives on those spring log drives. It was easy to lose your footing and slip beneath the surface, where they would be quickly covered over by tons of fast moving logs, and either drown or be crushed…or both. Have you ever been to a log-rolling competition? Or perhaps watched one on television? Imagine doing that while moving from one log to another down a river moving fast from spring snow melt. The ones who fell off weren’t in for a dunking and some good-hearted ribbing from their friends. It’s why the job paid so well and many men were willing to do it.

The cry “log jam” brought townspeople running to view the spectacle; but, chances were great that some of the men would die before it was over. Our stretch of the St Croix River was particularly prone to log jams as the rush of logs from the wide river to the north suddenly reached our narrowed passage where the water cuts through high cliffs of traprock. The result was a complete stop, causing logs to be thrust up and over each other so violently that men could be thrown to their death. The logs would be packed solid up to 70 feet deep in places, pushing the bottom of the jam to the river bottom, and as much as 30 or 40 feet above. These jams extended for miles and could hold up a lumber delivery for months as the river drivers worked to unravel the puzzle and free them one by one. The most spectacular jams happened here in 1865, 1877, 1883, and 1886. The last one was the largest of all and involved an estimated 150 million feet of lumber. On April 8, 1865, the Taylors Falls Reporter announced “river blocked by 20,000,000 ft of lumber” – “log excitement prevailed”. *

So, if you can, come and join us as we celebrate our proud lumber history at Wannigan Days this weekend. We’re supposed to have perfect weather; and I promise you’ll never experience a more beautiful part of our State. At least, that’s my opinion. Come and visit, form your own opinion. You won’t be sorry.

*  Log jam information from “St Croix Tales and Trails” by Rosemarie Vezina Braatz.

Summer is here. Gone are the long, dark, cold nights of winter; gone are the temperamental fits of spring where one day you feel the warm sun on your face and the next it’s snowing…again. We’ve watched all the usual harbingers that one after the other promised us the seasons were changing. We saw the first robins and heard the return of the song birds at dawn. Little spring peeper frogs heralded in chorus the coming of spring. The family of goslings is back in residence by the pond down the road. May begins with our yard filled with violets and ends with the forest floor covered in a blanket of white trilliums. And, at the end of the day I hear the click, click, click of the June bugs hitting the windows, attracted by the light.

I wrote the following as a tribute to the fat bugs that seem to want nothing more than to join me. It originally appeared in the Summer 2013 issue of Creative Wisconsin, a publication of the Wisconsin Writers Association.

June Bugs
By Jane Yunker

June bugs hurl fat bodies
against my bedroom windows
attracted by the light of my reading lamp
shells click and thump against glass
wings buzz desperation.

Do they want to read over my shoulder
or are they just afraid of the dark?

For some, Memorial Day means a long weekend off work or school. It’s the beginning of summer and is celebrated with picnics, BBQ’s, and weekends at the cabin and/or the lake. While this is all well and good, let’s not forget the real purpose of Memorial Day.

It is a day to remember all those who died defending our freedoms.

Perhaps your town has a parade or a ceremony at the local cemetery to honor those in the community who died in service to their country. Perhaps your parents or grandparents forced you to go as a child and you hated it because it was boring and you just didn’t understand why they felt it was so important. Life was good and you probably didn’t personally know anyone who died in battle. But now we are at war, undeclared but a war nonetheless. A war with no foreseeable end and every day families are touched by the knowledge that someone they know isn’t coming home.

Remember them, the fallen and the fighting. Honor them.

Thank them with your presence, your thoughts, your prayers.

This weekend is WisRWA’s annual conference in Green Bay and I’m scheduled to pitch “Mary Bishop” to two different agents on Saturday morning. Am I nervous? Absolutely! Will I walk in there smiling, shake her hand, and act like this is the most natural thing in the world for me to do? I’ll try. I’ve done this once before with Entangled editor Candace Havens and hopefully these two ladies will be as nice and understanding as Candace was. I suspect they will be, based on their online pictures. Yes, I did some research in preparation for meeting them. That’s an important first step, after reserving my ten-minute time slots. I no longer have that scary picture in my head of a Meryl Streep-type character; you know, like the fashion magazine editor she played in “The Devil Wears Prada”. <involuntary shiver>

I’ve also written several different length pitches to study. First, the elevator pitch. That’s a one-liner summoning up the entire book that, yes, I could pitch in the time it takes for an elevator ride…should I ever find myself riding in an elevator with an editor or agent at a conference and she/he says, “So, tell me about your book.”

“Mary Bishop”: A war that divided a nation, a woman fighting for her life, and the two men who promised to love her forever.

“The Healing Heart” (should they ask what I’m working on now): A pandemic that almost takes her life opens Alice’s eyes to new opportunities and her heart to the possibility of a new love.

Are you intrigued? Good! (I’m assuming you answered with a resounding yes.) I hope they are, too. Intrigued enough to ask all sorts of questions that lead to a request for a partial or full manuscript.

I’ve also written a short sentence and question pitch, and a short descriptive paragraph for each. Think what you’d read on the back cover to entice you to buy the book.

Going to conferences, getting the chance to meet other writers, both successful and newbies, as well as the chance to talk with editors and agents, really fires up my desire to write. And, it’s nice to be around other people who understand when I say I hear voices in my head without shying away and suggesting I see a doctor and consider medication.

Hopefully I’ll return on Sunday with at least one, maybe even two, requests to read more.

This is going to be a short post this week. I’m going on vacation, leaving after work on Wednesday and returning late on Sunday, and I have much to get done before I leave because I’ll only be back four days before I have to leave for a conference. Some people might suggest if it’s going to be this busy and stressful to get ready to go on vacation, perhaps it’s not a good time for me to go on a vacation, even a short one. Part of me would agree; a very small part of me. You see, vacations are important, even short ones, and besides, if you’re waiting for the perfect time to go on a vacation you will never get to go. Vacations allow us to clear our minds of all the clutter that builds during our everyday lives. Vacations allow us to forget, even if only temporarily, all the things others need from us and concentrate on what we need from ourselves. People who take regular vacations are happier and healthier.

In this rush-around-always-be-doing-two-things-at-once world we live in there will always be something else you should be doing. But you know what? It will probably still be there when you get back and you can do it then, and if it’s not still there and someone else has done it for you, even better. I do have a few things that need to be done before I leave, deadline things, and I’ll do those. Then it’s off to Vegas where my sister and I will sit in the sun with our over-priced fruity drinks during the day, and roam the casinos with our over-priced fruity drinks at night. And in between we will no doubt do a little shopping. You find the best shoes in Vegas! By the time you read this I should be on my way to being well-rested…and hopefully a little richer. That’s the plan.

I can’t wait!!