we made it, we’re home, and it feels so nice.

a little road weary, and far behind in our nanowrimo challenge…

but i got to do some reading finished 3 books, and picked up the illustrated encyclopedia of arthurian legends. it’s purty, and we got it at a used shop for only 12 bucks, and it seems new.



yes heidi, i think it’s the one you have. isn’t it dreamy?

Harry potter this weekend!

we made it, only 9.5 hours, and our little neon r/t loves the open road.

I was really afraid we’d have a hard go of it. But we had a nice drive, it was a beautiful day, and we got along just fine.

Great grandma looked beautiful, lying in her light pink casket in her nightgown (what she wanted, a nightgown to make her look like she just went to sleep). I’m sad, but it was time, before the cancer gave her any more pain, and she was 93.

her casket is white and gold and has roses on the outside. very pretty.

Marietta is beautiful, more beautiful in the spring, but still nice.

the funeral is at 10 tommorrow.

We are very tired. and very behind in the novel writing. I’m still around 14000 words, and tonight i drew instead of wrote. it’s also an hour later here… We’ll see if we have some time tommorrow. Just a few days of concentrated writing, right?

I’m glad Carlo is here with me. It’s also nice to share a hotel room with my bro, I don’t see him enough…

Update from eau claire.

We’re going to attempt the 10 hour drive to ohio and back on monday. I know it won’t be easy, but at least we are together.

Family here was thankful that I came, to support them in their time of need. Got to spend more time with husband’s mother, and family.

I chose the way of family for these days, and I don’t regret that choice.

I’m glad I’m here.

I was able, somehow, to write about 1200 words last night, not as many as i would have liked, but my mind could not stablize enough to figure things out…

---

I am sad, and tired, heartsick, and emotionally exhausted.

I can’t make him come with me to go to my great grandmothers funeral, but, i’m a little hurt that he won’t come. I know it’s impractical, and illogical to drive 10 hours there on monday, and 10 hours back on wed. But it’s the only way we can be together for both funerals. and now it seems we’ll be apart for both.

I don’t think it’s wrong for me to want to be with my love, when my heart hurts, and the casket is just paces away. being alone makes it seem so much worse.

In my mind, this shouldn’t have to be a discussion.

I just want to go home and curl up in bed right now.

Carlo’s great grandmother died this last weekend.

My great grandmother died today.

Is it not enough to have one funeral to go to, much less 2 in 5 days?

The travel logistics make it even tougher… one funeral in eau claire, where we were booked for a family weekend of tree decorating and pre thanksgiving thanksgiving.

The other is 10 hours away, either florida or ohio, i’m not sure where. prolly ohio, where my great grandfather was buried, just last year.

this is hard. I barely knew her, she’s been ill for so long, great grandpa took care of her for so long, we never thought he’d die before she.

and now, I have no clue if I can go, with work and all, and even if I do, if my husband will be with me.

and oh, if I go, I’ll need him.

I made 10032 words last night!

I’m one 5th done with my novel! yahoo!
*races around*

Tired though, stayed up late to write it… I could have gotten done earlier but I got distracted by the Buffy musical, which really really rocked. GO SPIKE.

and… I finished a book, The Club Dumas Which was actually pretty interesting. Had me thinking about it when I wasn’t reading it.

So, I actually got started writing around 9:30, and was going to stop around 9000, but by the time I looked up I was near 9200, and I wanted to get to 9500, and when I got there, I was like, hey, just a few more words till 10k!!!

Anyway, I made min quota for last night, though I’m about 2000 behind for my personal goal of 2000 a day. But that’s not so bad.

We’ll see how far we’ll get this weekend, up north with family, there might be a funeral, a christmas tree decorating and an early thanksgiving. whew! we might have to get up early and write. We’re doing too well to get far behind.

Its amazing the things you can finish when you turn off the tv.

Wow, I wrote about 2500 words yesterday, My word count is up to 7520, still not quite at the 8000 I wanted to be yesterday, but less than 500 behind. I’m sure I can squeeze an extra 500 in tonight. If I do, that means I’ll be hitting the 10k! woo, exciting.

I’ve found that when it gets really late, and I’m really tired, I can only get about 500 words in before I conk out, unless I’m sure I can sleep in the next morning.

I went to the Nanowrimo Madison kickoff meeting at JT Whitneys. It was fun, I met Morgan and Sharon and Michelle, and we laughed a lot, talked about a variety of things, and giggled over the snobby waiter, who refused to pay attention to our dining needs.

Michelle was one of the wrimos who took the challenge the first year, and know Chris Baty, the guy who’s running the whole deal. It was really cool to hear the different ideas from each of us, each of us going in completely different directions. We’re planning on a wrap up party around the beginning of December, no hard plans yet. But everyone who took the challenge, whether you make the end goal or not is invited.

---

I didn’t get any more writing done tonight, did these for the Nanowrimo T-shirt contest:

Whoo! I passed the 5000 mark last night, I was a bit worried, because I only got about 500 words on friday, bringing my total then to about 2700. I just got in the zone I guess last night, and wrote till about 1:20 or so.

Friday night we went to Monster’s Inc with Ace and Jess It was sooo good. I’d had a tough couple days at work, and this movie wiped all the frustration away. It was genuinly fun, and creative, and the graphics were astounding. The trailers in no way do this movie justice. GO SEE IT!

Saturday we went over to Jaz’s to game, took us a while to get started, because my husband was supposed to run the game, but he’s been sick and has practically lost his voice. That’s no good for a GM. We all had a relaxing afternoon, talking about gaming, and dynamics and what we like in a good role playing game. We took a trip to westfield comics, where I picked up three more Gloomcookie comics, and the first I feel sick comic, which has a really cute style, and had me giggling quite a bit.

We did get to play a fun pick up V&V game, courtesy of Tony and the group worked really well together, plus Jon as Thorn was soo in the groove! It was a lot of fun.

And then, well, I came home and wrote lots! yah! I made the minimum for yesterday night, (min was 5001) though I wanted to be at 6000, that’s ok though, that means I only have to play makeup with 1000 words today, plus, the 2000 I want to write today.

And I’ll be meeting with other Wrimos at JT Whitneys today around 3 or so, so that should be fun, and perhaps I’ll get a bit more written, in good company, woo!

I feel so accomplished! Plus, I’ve decided I’m going to do crunches every night this month, I’ve done that before, years ago, and I know I start to see a difference even after 2 weeks! I figure, I can spend 2 hours writing a day, >10min of crunches will not kill me. Plus, I’ve done them so far every day this month. It’s so nice to wake up everyday with a little bit more accomplished. Makes me feel like the evenings weren’t wasted or anything!

My main character met Bringwel the bear last night, so did I.

Halloween! I dressed up in my ren gear, and black wig at work! woo, one of the few to dress up. Everyone loves my costume, someone even said I looked good with black hair. I even brought my sword to show off, and lots of people thought that it was pretty awesome. I should take some pics of it, and put them up for people to see here.
I went with the conservative breasts at work. I didn’t ‘fluff’ them up as much as the ren people tell me to. Still looks pretty scandalous for my workplace I suppose, but not as crazy cleavy as I usually wear them in the outfit.

heh. Breasts as fashion accessories

They brought in kindergarten/daycare kids to trick or treat, they were so cute. Little tigers and witches and pirates. One little girl was so timid and just held out her bag, I asked her, ‘What do you say?’ and she squeaked out a tiny ‘Please’, it was far to hard to say no to her that I just plopped the sucker in her bag. You can’t punish a child for saying please, heh. So cute. I love Halloween.!!

I brought brain Jell-O to work, I was also going to bring witches fingers, but ran out of time/patience when I had to let the dough rise for an hour. It was late, and I was getting far too tired to poach and cook doughy fingers. But oh, you should have seen me Halloween night, trying to poach dough that wouldn’t shape itself into fingers, me, standing over a pan full of hot water and giggling like I do when I watch ‘Whose line is it anyway”. It was just the most absurd thing, thanks Martha, what were you thinking! I got fed up and just used the dough to make rolls. They tasted kinda pretzely, and yummy, with a hint of almonds.

Then I got the other witch finger recipe off the internet. Those were so much easier to whip together, and just needed a bit of time in the fridge for chilling the dough. They required no boiling poaching madness, and shaped much easier into fingers and knuckles. The almond finger nails were also very amusing, I added red decorating gel underneath them to help them stick on the cooked cookies, and they looked bloody, hee. So much better than the first recipe.

That’s all we had to eat, Halloween night, spooky malformed pretzely rolls, and witches fingers. We ate those, drank milk and played Alone in the Dark for dreamcast. ooh spooky…

I wish Halloween lasted longer. I just kinda ran out of energy to do anything more. I hit the sack around 9:30, exhausted, readying myself for yesterday, the start of NaNoWriMo.

---

2210 words last night! I’m so excited. It felt so nice to wake up this morning, knowing I had accomplished something last night. So far I can fit about 1000 words in an hour.

I wrote in the bedroom, with a lit candle, plenty of light, and music after I straightened up a bit, made the bed, shoved the laundry into distinct piles, and replaced a bulb in one of the lamps.

It’s so nice, I don’t have time to think about the enormity of it all, I just have to sit down and write about 2000 words a night.

The mini tape recorder is handy, just a few remembered thoughts let me hook into an idea and flesh it out, for several paragraphs.
I have three files so far, one for names, one for story ideas, and one for the novel.

Thrilling, indeed.

any hopes of getting any writing done today were blasted by the fact that we had to delete my desktop profile and get me a new one, to the tune of an hour and a half, sigh.



well, there’s always more dictation and lots of typing tonight



I don’t feel so hot. and it’s not the writing thing. hoping to bypass the sickness that my husband and my family had this week.