Humble Pie

The first of what I'm sure will be many pieces of humble pie has just been served up to me, courtesy of NaNo.

It's surprising really, how completely double-minded I was (and still am) about this undertaking. On the one hand, I need to convince myself I can absolutely do this, or I won't try at all. Thus the thought that one hundred pages wasn't too difficult. On the other hand, I was up from 12:30 to 3am Thursday night/Friday morning, too nervous and worried to sleep because the undertaking just seemed so grand.

And yet, despite the sleepless night, I really had myself convinced that I might be able to pull off four to five thousand words today. After all, I told myself, I had an extra tae kwon do class in the middle of the day, and I have friends coming over tonight for game, but didn't that still leave a lot of empty Saturday hours? If I could do 4800 words, that would be three days worth of writing. I'll be out of town next weekend, so getting three days worth of writing done would really, really keep me from getting behind. (And if I get behind, it will just be all over. Time to throw in the towel.)

I sat down a little after ten this morning. I was terrified of starting. I managed to get 1772 words out in about an hour. Then it was time to go change for Tae Kwon Do. Now its 3:20. I'm so tired I can't spell "wasn't". I'm beginning to think that I'm not going to have 50,000 words in me. Ever. 50,000 words is a butt-load of words.

What was I thinking?

I'm going to take a nap. I'd really like to get another 1600 words out before this evening. But I know I'm too tired to be productive right now.

Oh, and, guess what? The dryer has been busted for nearly four weeks. It busted on Sunday. On Monday I scheduled a repair. The earliest they could come was Friday. So, on the first Friday, the repair man came. He didn't have the right component. It needed to be ordered. It was supposed to be mailed to my house. He would come back on Friday to fix the dryer. I went to the laundrymat on Sunday.

By the second Friday, the part hadn't arrived. We had to reschedule for the next Friday. (The part finally came at 4:30pm that Friday.) I went to the laundry mat that Sunday, again.

So yesterday, the repair man was back. He said it was fixed. He tested it. He said everything is shutting off just fine. He was wrong. Everything is not shutting off. The heating element stays on after the dryer is turned off. We unplugged the dryer. Tomorrow I get to go to the...guess where...laundrymat. And Monday I get to call for a repair. Its like the dryer twilight zone over here.

ok, nap. for sure nap.