Mad Monday

What a crazy week! I lived through the holidays, but I’m still fighting a cold/virus/deadly thing. I think I’m going to have to break down and go see the Dr. because it’s not getting any better. *sigh*

Still, we had fun going to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving. I ate way too much pie (my favorite part of the feast). The kids spent the night with Grandma and Grandpa (except K who wasn’t feeling well). Hubby and I brought K home and I ended up sleeping in the living room on the futon with her. Can you say, “ouch?”

Yeah, it didn’t help with my cold/virus/deadly thing since the futon is positioned under the window and it needs caulked something fierce because it was burr burr freezey cold!

The next morning, K and I drove back to my parents’ house (she was feeling better). K spent the day playing and having a great time while my sisters and I made cheese balls. Mmmm. Another of my favorite holiday things.

We have our own recipes so there were several batches made. I brought home seven cheese balls and there are only two left today. Yeah, my family likes themselves some cheese balls! Okay, I admit, I ate two of them all by myself with some Wheat Thins.

Anyway, between all the bustle of Thanksgiving and kids’ school programs and sickness and all that fun stuff, I still managed to get some writing done.

Yep, I passed my 70,000 mark, but I’m not done with the rewrite yet. I’m close . . . oh so close though. Pretty much all the new stuff is done and all that’s left is to rewrite the ending chapters of the book. They’ll stay pretty much the same as they were in the previous version except they’ll be changed from third to first person.

The changes will be minor (I hope) so it should go quickly here at the end. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. *grin*

Anyway, I’ve almost reached my Nano goal as well. I should reach 50,000 tomorrow.

So, how was your holiday? Have lots of fun? Eat too much? Leave a comment and tell me about it!

Write on.

The Madness of Monday

I didn’t update on Friday so I’m here today.

I haven’t had a Monday like this in a long time (thank goodness).

Last week, I had sick kids from Tuesday thru Saturday. On Saturday, I was unlucky enough to catch the virus so I spent my weekend feeling miserable and trying to catch up on all the writing I missed.

I’m still a bit under the weather (though I’m feeling a bit better). I didn’t catch up on the writing I needed to do (falling behind on the Nano front), but I was able to get some writing done.

Yes, that says 85% . . . but the problem is I’m not close to the end of the story. I’m afraid I’m going to have to make a new goal (more than 70,000 . . . but I’m not sure how much more).

Still, I’ve come a long way in the last few weeks and I’m happy.

Anyway, back to my crazy, mad Monday.

I didn’t sleep well and woke up late. This meant a mad scramble as I tried to get the kids off to school. They ended up being tardy.

I made it to ceramics class, but the lasagna pan I’d finished on Friday didn’t quite survive the car-ride. One of the handles broke off. This made me sad. There was no way to repair it. I thought about throwing it into the recycle bucket, but then had a better idea. Just break off the other handle and the rest of the pan was still usable. I figured a lasagna pan without handles could still work (though I might get my oven mitts dirty when I remove the pan from the oven).

So, after breaking off the other handle and scraping away the excess dried clay, I started a new project. A small bowl on the pottery wheel. After the small bowl, I moved on to a much larger bowl in the pottery wheel. I was thrilled with the results . . . and then my teacher suggested I use a stretched out spring to texture the bottom (to cut it off the pottery wheel bat). It sounded like a good idea to me so I made a trip to the hardware store and bought a couple of springs.

I cut the pot, but now we’re worried that the spring may have been too high and the bottom ended up too thin and might crack as it dries. The bowl was BEAUTIFUL (I used two different colors of clay) and I’m going to be so sad if it cracks.

Then I came home, ate a quick lunch, got a little writing done, then had to go pick up kids from school. By then, my head was pounding and my nose stuffy again. I got the younger kids, brought them home, went back to pick up the oldest from high school, took some Motrin for my headache, then took oldest son to Teen Court so he could be tried by a jury of his peers for the accident he had back in August.

That was about an hour of waiting around for about ten minutes of “court” and sentencing. He’s got 28 hours of community service and two jury duty assignments for Teen Court.

Now I’m exhausted and am going to crawl into bed for some much needed sleep . . . I hope I can get some!

Write on . . . or sleep on . . . or whatever. =)

TGIF

Okay, it’s Friday again and that means it’s time for a blog post.

As most of you know, I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short, or Nano for even shorter). I’ve also been working on finishing up my rewrite of my YA novel so I can send it back out into the world.

Since I didn’t get the novel finished sooner, I’m using Nano to complete the novel. Don’t worry, I’m only using words I wrote after Oct. 31 for my Nano count. So, Since Nov. 1, I’ve managed to add another 6,462 to my novel.

I was at the kids’ school all morning dealing with volunteer and PTO stuff so I haven’t done any writing today. This means the word count is expected to rise . . . at least a little bit . . . at some point in the day.

My overall progress on the rewrite looks like this:

It seems I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel . . . it’s small, but it’s there and getting bigger each day. YAY!

Once I get my YA rewrite finished, I’ll be working on a new YA project I’m calling “Behold the Dead” in order to get the rest of my 50,000 Nano word count. Yeah, I’m assuming the YA rewrite won’t end up being an epic novel that needs another 44,000 words to finish. ;-)

So, how’s everyone doing on their Nano progress? Don’t lie now because some of you are my buddies on the Nano site and I can check up on you. =)

For those who aren’t doing Nano, why aren’t you?

Now I must get busy with the rewrite before I have to go get kids from school.

Write on.