A Little Cheese with My Whine

So, apparently this shall become my major source of venting during NaNo, and Eyes to the Hills will be where I'm actually productive. That said, feel free to skip this particular pity party.

We got up today and needed to be in Columbus by eleven. Mondays are usually a jammie day for us, because none of us can get our act together on Monday morning, so we just do school in our jammies rather than frustrate ourselves and not get school started till eleven. (No, sadly, I'm not exagerating. For some reason the act of getting changed from jammies to clothes delays our school start time by two hours. Einstein himself probably couldn't figure out why.) So this morning, we not only have to *gasp* put on actual clothes, but we need to pack snacks, grab books and such for the car ride, gather library books to drop off cause they are due today, print out maps from google, pull copies of files from the International Adoption Center for Toa of Boy, and get out the door in time to make the drive to Columbus, park the car, and get into the Columbus main library third floor meeting room by eleven. It went as smoothly as any rational being could have predicted. Sweetling, who does not hurry well, was in tears three separate times before we headed out the door. (Oh, and we needed to stop by the bank for money for parking).

We got out the door at 9:25. It takes 1 hour and 50 minutes to make the drive, according to the Tom-tom, not including the parking and such. You do the math. Miraculously, we were only 15 minutes late, and I called ahead to let her know we were running behind. (oops, minor detail missed, see what happens when the exposition gets skipped?) We were meeting with an OHVA (Ohio Virtual Academy) ESL (English as a Second Language) speciallist to have Toa's speech evaluated so that we could plug him into some speech therapy, hopefully. Now, those of you who know of these things are wondering, why ESL if its a speech problem? Because we can't get him plugged into speech therapy until they have evaluated his language to see if its an ESL issue.

Anyway, columbus, fifteen minutes late. We send Toa in, who is delighted to meed the specialist since her first name is the same as his Tia's first name. (Tia and Toa are similar, but not the same. Tia is Spanish for aunt. If it weren't midnight I'd link that to the relevent blog entry.) she said they would be about an hour, so Sweetling and I found a nice window with a table nearby and an all important outlet for my laptop. An hour, i should be able to crank out some progress, right? Less than an hour goes by before my cell phone rings to let me know Toa is all finished. I have 600 words. 1400 shy of my personal goal for the day.

We collect Toa, chat with the teacher, get in the elevator, go down. Go back up, go back to the meeting room, retreive Toa's webkinz, go back to the elevator.

The lunch plan is Wendy's. Sadly, they've closed the original Wendy's, which was our traditional lunch haunt for several Columbus trips centered around adoption paper work, but that's ok, because I have googled another wendy's that should be easy to get to. Google maps tells me seven minutes from the library. Have you heard the phrase, said in jest "Can't get there from here?" That completely discribed our miserable efforts to get to this Wendy's. Thirty or forty minutes later, we've finally broken free of the fruitless patterns of one ways, no turns between 7am and 6pm intersections, construction, dead ends, etc....and have found our way into the german village. Which turned out to be a really interesing side trip. I think I can definitely use some of those images for my nano novel. (And no, I don't care if nano novel *is* redundant. Its all part of silencing the inner editor. Notice the lack of caring about spelling errors as well).

We reach Wendy's, and despite the 12-hr decongestant I took that morning, my nose is both completely congested AND is dripping nonstop. How it can do both i don't know, but it was. What I really, really wanted was a couple of tylenol and a blanket. But we sat outside on this little patio area not far from the german village and had a nice lunch.

COSI was next, and was amazingly easy to get to. We got to travel on Marconi street, which I first misread as 'maccaroni' street. Sweetling corrected me of course, saying "Well, it makes more sense that they would name a street after Marconi, after all, he invented the radio." Of course. how did that slip my mind? we pull into cosi's parking lot, which isn't packed but has a fair number of cars. we luck out and get a spot up front. there are several spots up front actually, but we're getting there later in the afternoon, so i figure those were left open by the morning birds who left for naptime. We store the laptop out of sight in the cargo hold, and head up to the doors. Sweetling is so pumped and is busy explaining to Toa of Boy that no, cosi didn't have animals like the zoo. It was a museum. No, it didn't have a slide like the children's museum, it was a science museum. "It have planets?" asks Toa.

We get to the main entrance. I pull on a door, but it doesn't open. Well, it must be a slower day for them, and they don't have all twelve sets of doors unlocked. I try a different door. Nothing. On the third door I notice hours. Mon + Tues: closed.

I think I'll skip the shocked blank stare, the tears of the girl, the incessent why's of the boy, the immediate email to the Jedi (like he's going to fix this whole situation from Cincy). We head back to the van. I tell the man in the parking booth our sob story. He doesn't charge us. We go down a little side street and end up in the parking lot of the Spaghetti Warehouse. I thought, perhaps I can use my phone to hop online and find something else to do, so that the afternoon isn't a complete bust. My phone takes forever to load any webpage. Toa of Boy has to go potty. Sweetling lays down in the back sleep and seems to be silently crying herself to sleep. I feel like crap in general. "How about," I suggest, "we just head back home and hit the library and get a movie?"

So that's what we did. By the time we got home, I had spent four hours driving, I didn't feel well, I had a sink of dirty dishes waiting for me, and 1400 words to write. and a movie to watch with the kids (we swapped out the movie in favor of marioparty wii). At that point, I was seriously considering having a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater swoop in and eat all my nano characters. or just throwing in the towel. But a cup of hot chocolate and some cinnamon toast, some mythbusters and some ghosthunters, and I'm a little past 5,000 words. Not quite as far as I want to be, but enough to keep me in the game.

I think i'll take the calendar function off, though. I couldn't log on to update in a timely fashion saturday or sunday, and I don't like the red squares staring at me. They're discouraging.

Oh, and I'm supposed to write a skit for the fall womens' retreat this weekend.