I lost both my grandmothers this year, my dad’s mom in March and my mom’s mom in August. Our finances are still wobbly, due to expensive vehicle repairs and Geoffrey having to change jobs (plus not getting paid for nearly 3 months of reserve drill), but we’ve tightened our belts and should be more monetarily stable within a few months. I’ve been to the doctor more this year than usual, and that didn’t help finances either, between the increased co-pays and a very expensive EKG. It’s almost a good thing that tendinitis in my elbow has cut down my crocheting to less than 2 hours a day anymore, because I can’t afford that much yarn!

Just about the only major good news I’ve gotten this year (besides my youngest graduating high school, yay!) is that I’ve lost some weight, 13 pounds in 6 weeks (which isn’t too shabby considering that I’m not entirely sticking to the diet… *sigh*). Plus Geoffrey just got signed up with a reserves command that will apparently be taking him all over the country for drill weekends, which is exciting for him (sounds exhausting & aggravating to me, but then flying triggers my migraines and aggravates other health problems). And Lyse, having graduated with her LPN nursing degree (with very high scores) in July, has been accepted for an RN program that starts in December, which is also kick-ass news.

Oh, and I learned to spin! After dinking around with it a little bit off and on for years but never quite figuring it out, I finally learned — and kept practicing until I got fairly good at it. I’ve made some pretty sweet yarn, and even crocheted a shawl made entirely of yarn that I spun myself! Next challenge: graduating from spinning plain wool by adding angora & other luxury fibers, and learning to spin “slippery” fibers like silk! In a year or two, I may even treat myself to a spinning wheel…

I’m getting really excited about the gardening experiments I’ll be trying over the next several months — hopefully a community garden plot will come through, and I’m going to try winter-sowing whether I get that plot or just have to suffer along with my little bit of earth. At least the vetch I sowed for a cover crop is sprouting!

This weekend I hope to experiment with candy making! It should be fun… or at least educational and entertaining. Two delicious words: whiskey fudge.

I briefly considered (because I am an idiot) doing NaNoWriMo this year, but recovered just enough of my sanity to realize what A Very Bad Idea that would have been. It just sucks because utterly awesome first lines pop into my head, and then the little demon in my head with delusions of literary ability starts wheedling at me, “Give it another shot, go on, it’ll be fun!” No. No, it won’t. It wasn’t even fun the year I “won” and finished my 52,000-word monstrosity of a truly terrible novel, much less the 3 years when I failed miserably. I wanted to discover that I was an amazing fiction author… but you know what they say — “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.” Guess I will have to settle for blogging.

It’s officially December, which means two things: no more NaNoWriMo (I’m kinda sad to see it go, really), and the birthday of the Imperial Princess of Cute — happy birthday, Mari!!!

Other than that, I hate December. The “holiday season” (and its attendant conspicuous consumerism) does not inspire within me thoughts of peace on Earth & goodwill toward mankind, but rather extremely gory & violent homicidal fantasies. The weather is crappy and the traffic is ugly, which encourages one to stay indoors, but then again…the weather is crappy and the traffic is ugly, so any day you have to leave your domicile is pretty much a bad day!

The demonspawn are going to the Panic! At The Disco concert tonight, so I get to be the Mom Taxi…whee, or something. At least they provide me with a steady source of entertainment — although I absolutely cannot understand why an 18-year-old feels the need to confirm that she can still fit inside the dryer.

Oh, that’s right, I remember now — it’s just another example of what I’ve been saying for years now, that “eighteenandstupid” is one word!

Once upon a time I wanted to be a novelist. Now I can say that I am (an unpublished amateur novelist who has written exactly one novel, anyway). So here’s what I learned from winning NaNoWriMo:

• Writing an outline for at least the first half of your planned novel is a good idea — I didn’t outline for my prior NaNoWriMo attempts, and I didn’t win my prior attempts, but I did both this year.
• Caffeine really IS the ultimate writer’s friend.
• Procrastination is your worst enemy. If you can force yourself to actually buckle down and write, it comes along. Even if it’s not pretty, it’s wordcount.
• Don’t share your novel-in-progress with anyone — unless you’re entirely certain their reaction will be one that won’t bother you. Maybe not even then.
• Build up a fat cushion of wordcount in the first week (or several days), and then take an entire day off from writing (but only one day!). Repeat as needed.
• Don’t get too ambitious. “The first draft of anything is shitty.”–Ernest Hemingway
• Don’t be hard on yourself. If — ultimately! — it’s not fun, perhaps you should re-think why you’re putting yourself through it.

Perhaps the most important thing I learned was that I have no business writing fiction, at least not past the “very short story” length. After 30-some-odd years of believing that I could tell interesting stories, and if I just had enough self-discipline to write some of them down then maybe I could actually be a real writer (and maybe even get paid for it!), I finally accept that it’s a belief which is totally unfounded in reality. I know this because I forced myself to have the self-discipline to write down an interesting story, and guess what? It’s not. And it’s not the story’s fault, either.

But what surprises me is that realizing I’m actually bad at novel-writing doesn’t hurt as much as I worried that it might. It’s been much less distressing than most of the occasions when I’ve had an illusion shattered. Maybe it’s because I worked really hard to discover the truth…which is always better than illusion.

It’s been a really fun crazy-making but entertaining month. I’m very glad I did it — and possibly the best part was getting to enjoy my beloved Geoffrey’s really terrific novel!

They say the third time’s the charm, and apparently this was true for me when it came to NaNoWriMo. Shortly before midnight last (Tuesday) night, I got my final wordcount (52,004) validated — I won!!! I’m on the winners page!

I wrote a novel. Cool.

Crap, now that I no longer have to obsess over wordcount, what the hell am I gonna do?

My beloved Geoffrey has won NaNoWriMo!!! I am so incredibly proud of him! *happy bounces*

I’m almost there, can damned near taste it…and hopefully will finish no later than the 29th. (My wordcount is past 48K, but my best estimate is that it’ll take around 5K to wrap up the novel and type “The End.” And I don’t want to validate my wordcount until I’ve done that!!!)

Over three hours spent in the laundromat on Monday, with fourteen loads of laundry washed, dried, and folded — after I wrote 3,500 words on my novel (before 10 am, no less!) — pretty well wiped me out for the rest of the day. But I rewarded myself for all that work with a gorgeous pewter wind chime I found at the curio shop next door to the laundromat (I love wind chimes and have at least 6 of them thus far, and most of my neighbors probably hate me for it).

There was a smidgen of snow on the ground briefly around 6 pm, but happily it went away very quickly. Snow in Portland, in November, is a serious WTF?! And scientists say we’ve got global warming and we’re all gonna die of planetary heat waves and drought? (Of course, some other scientists say that the global warming is the only reason the planet hasn’t entered into the next ice age which is theoretically overdue.) Mm-kay, whatever.

Geoffrey won NaNoWriMo!!! Yay!!!

I love it when fun stuff happens in my NaNoWriMo novel — especially fun stuff I hadn’t even planned until a few minutes before I wrote it! (I am taking revenge on my characters for them not turning out exactly as I’d planned. Mwa ha ha!)

My wordcount stands just shy of 47K, I still need to wrap up the loose ends of the plot (and at least 3 sub-plots), I’ve managed to get all but 2 of the 18 planned cameo appearances written into the story (the ones I have left to write are, amusingly, me & Geoffrey), and I have just under 4 days to finish!!! Well, theoretically I can finish it anytime, as long as I hit a wordcount of 50K by 11:59pm on Nov. 30th. But I want it done by then, so I can type “The End” and not think about it anymore.

In the meanwhile, I have laundry to do — and with a broken washing machine, that means I’ll be going to the laundromat for the first time in 10 years. Scary. At least I can do all 12 or 15 loads of laundry at once. *sigh*

Yup, it’s Monday.

I was discussing NaNoWriMo with my demonspawn the other day, and saying how I was so excited because I was pretty sure I’ll win it this time — finally! The conversation went something like (if not exactly like) this…

Anxiety: So what do you win?
Me: Uh, nothing.
Anxiety: What?! You don’t get anything?
Me: Well, you get a graphic that says, “NaNoWriMo Winner.”
Anxiety: Isn’t there some kind of grand prize, like money?
Me: Nope.
Anxiety: Or some kind of contest, for like most interesting novel?
Me: Nope.
Anxiety: There’s no prize?!
Me: You got it.
Anxiety: Then why do you do it?!
Me: Why do people climb mountains?
Anxiety: I don’t know!
Me: They don’t get a prize, or a trophy, or money. All they get is a picture of themselves freezing their asses off, on top of some stupid mountain.
Anxiety: So why do you do it?!
Me: So you can say you did it.

Later, while I was thinking about this, it occurred to me that teenagers do some of the most inane & ridiculous stuff, and when they are asked why they did it, their answer is “I don’t know.” So I’m rather failing to see why this is so difficult for her to understand.

Then again, I still don’t understand why people climb mountains.

Geoffrey and I have spent the entire month of November encouraging one another a lot, and trying to both be generous with computer access so neither of us feels as though we’re hoarding precious writing time. We’re both in the mid-40K range, so this seems to have worked really well! However, there are a few differences between our NaNoWriMo adventure-in-progress…

He writes more steadily than I do! His daily word count stays pretty close to 2K, whereas mine jumps all over the place in a “feast or famine” fashion; on any given day, I’m as likely to write 4K as I am to write less than a thousand words. He’s had only 1 day this month of zero wordcount, while I’ve had 7 (so far).

He has more sex scenes (maybe this is a guy thing?). And his sex scenes are quite playful, with his characters having fun like frolicking puppies rolling around together. Mine are “Intense with a capital I,” and serious consequences hang in the balance.

His segues are much smoother than mine, and he doesn’t get caught up in the (boring) details like I do. Unless it’s germane to the plot, he doesn’t bother overly much with details — and this makes his novel read much more evenly, smoothly, and at a nicer pace than mine.

He’s writing a Scary Story that’s actually quite eerie, I’m just writing some crappy fantasy novel that doesn’t even have much of a fantasy aspect to it (yeah, there’s a curse/geas on one of the main characters, and a witch with otherworldly powers shows up at one point, but those are extremely minor plot points).

In my opinion, his novel is salable and mine just isn’t. (Hell, mine is just barely readable.) I’m really proud of him! I have such a kick-ass boyfriend. *perky grin*

Here is an excerpt from my chat with my beloved Geoffrey tonight…

Lil: well, we have the proverbial good news and bad news
Lil: the good news is, I got the washing machine taken apart and I can see a belt
Lil: the bad news is, there is no indication of where the belt goes, and I have not been able to locate it on any of the “fixing your washer” sites on the Internet
Lil: so, although I’m positive a belt is the problem, since the “fixing your washer” sites all say it is, based on the symptoms
Lil: I have no idea where the belt is supposed to go or what it connects to…
Lil: therefore, we’re looking at probably getting someone out to look at it, or trying to find a cheap replacement
Geoffrey: Wheee.
Geoffrey: I can take a peek myself.
Lil: I am filthy and tired and the washing machine is in pieces
Geoffrey: Maybe I’ll have a little luck in discerning what does what.
Lil: and I don’t feel like writing but I’ve already taken off most of 2 days
Geoffrey: Me too.
Lil: and no Battlestar Galactica on tv tonight, so that’s extra sucky
Lil: I’m going to put the door back on the bathroom, shut it, and ignore the washing machine’s existence for a while
Geoffrey: Okie dokie.

So, with the exception of a date tomorrow night with my secondary boyfriend, I am going to be anti-social for at least this weekend. Some people have one of those days, I have one of those lives…

I got nothing written on my NaNoWriMo novel yesterday, not because it was Thanksgiving, but because I was horridly unwell. Eh, I’ll just have to catch up over this weekend, although I’m still on pace because I wrote so much on Wednesday.

We got an invite to Thanksgiving at Geoffrey’s parents’ house just a few days ago, and since Jenn had to cancel her Refugee Thanksgiving dinner (that she’s done for years, for everyone she knows who has no family in the area), and Geoffrey’s mom was getting antsy about how long it had been since we visited, we headed out to Sherwood. (Yes, the town has an annual Robin Hood festival. Scary, isn’t it?)

Geoffrey’s nephew Dylan is at the mind-bogglingly cute stage; his first birthday is next weekend. And he does love having his picture taken! Here’s Dylan with his mom (Geoffrey’s sister):

Lyse got into the act, as well…Dylan is such a flirt:

And, of course, my beloved Geoffrey (looking much more comfortable than the first time he held Dylan):

I spent the drive home trying not to think about my upset tummy (it was upset before we ate, so I know it wasn’t the food), and when we got home, I was feeling sick enough to think that a kick in the gut from a Clydesdale would be more comfortable. I crashed out on the loveseat for a couple hours (you know you’re sick when you curl up on a piece of furniture that’s at least 2 feet shorter than you are because the thought of moving location is untenable). Then I crocheted for about 8 hours, more or less, while watching OnDemand movies. Lyse had never seen Guarding Tess, and it’s a sentimental favorite of mine. (Nicholas Cage = Eye Candy)

Must run errands…I’ll write NaNo later…