What's on my mind and to-do lists?

Today I'm feeling a little fuzzy-brained. I'm doped up on painkillers for, well, you know. I'm a woman and this happens every month or so. 

So I thought I'd write a list of some of the things that are running across my to-do-list at present:

• We have two sleeps till we go camping again. It's going to be cold. Single digits at night. The boys are excited. I'm excited! Things are piling up in our kitchen and entrance in preparation.
• Big picture thinking about the magazine. I've just had a Skype meeting with the Managing Editor. We did some dreaming, some thinking about the bigger picture than getting the next edition out. It wasn't easy, but I think we have a few ideas that we can begin to work on.
• We're organising a Tokyo based Writer's Retreat next April (like the one we ran earlier this month). Interested?
• Writing a Style Guide for the magazine, I wrote a whole post on it here. This is an ongoing project that gets pushed to the background (like my sorting our photos). I'm ahead on editing at present, so I've pulled this Style Guide out again. It is tricky because we're trying to accommodate writers from both an American English background and ones from a Commonwealth background, like myself.
• My finger nail has mostly come off (first injured on 14th September). It used to look like this. But now I have only half a fingernail. I'm not putting a photo because it has grossed out all my boys and my husband (who refuses to look at it). I'm happy because it isn't painful and I don't have to wear a Bandaid as I've been doing for more than a month.
• I just received my second paid writing publication in the mail in print form. A meditation with The Upper Room. Nice to hold it in my hand almost two years after I submitted it.
• Pulling together Christmas presents for our family in Australia and my husband and kids. A combination of shopping we've done over the last few months and some more recent internet shopping. And of course the compilation DVD of the year — fun to remember all those things we've done that we managed to capture on video. No longer the boys crawling on the lounge room floor. But videos of birthday and Christmas celebrations as well as camping, piano recitals, athletics meets. Fun to watch again and compile for family and friends.
• Thinking about trying out skiing during our holidays in the week before Christmas (I've never snow skiied before, only water and grass). Thinking I might show the boys some "learning to ski" Youtube videos.
• Yesterday I submitted an article to our denominational magazine based on this post I wrote over a year ago. I'm happy with it and am hoping to get it published in another magazine too. Need to change a few of the Australian language in it, though (like "how're you going?").
• Oh, and dinner tonight. Nachos to finally use up the salsa we were given back in June.

But now I have two of the boys home it is piano practise and homework.