Thursday, November 13, 2008

Second Verse, Same as the First

7:27am--you know, I feel strongly motivated to do this again today. I won't say "led", because I don't think its the same thing at all. But I think I'm working out a few things about my self and about my daily life, and writing my time log is helping me on that. Granted, I haven't gone into any deep philosophical thoughts, but I'm working my way there, oh yes, I am. My recommendation to any blog reader that happens by is to just skip this posts of self discovery and come back when, I hope, I cut to the chase.

Got up this morning slightly before 6 when I thought I heard Toa calling for me. Sweetling had been up at 12:20...cause we heard her little voice over the new monitor the Jedi got for her room. (The Jedi is worried that Sweetling will get sick in the middle of the night and need us, and we won't hear her call from downstairs.) Plus, before that, I had had a really, really disturbing dream. So, not a lot of sleep, but up at 6. Toa was out cold of course, but if I went back to sleep, I'd oversleep and be late for co-op. Instead, I got my shower early so I wouldn't be competing wiht mama for shower time.

I picked up "Simplify your Space" again. I'm going to give that a whirl. More later.

I surfed blogs I've been neglecting and hope to have time to really read and leave comments later.

And I despise the "later" theme that seems to run through much of my intentions.

I have three or four emails from friends tha I need to respond to "later."
I have housework to get to "later".
I have decorating ideas that I'd like to try "later".
I have clothes that I want to shop for "later."
I have yardwork that didn't get done in the fall cause everyday I would just have to do it "later."
And now NaNo has been put in the "later" folder as well.
See the pattern?

7:38 Enough of the pity party. I'm hungry and I'm going to make breakfast and sit down with my devotions. Need to get Sweetling up by 8.

7:45 I didn't make breakfast or sit down with devotions. I went to the understairs storage and pulled out a candle holder a secret pall gave me several years ago. The votive candles sit behind painted metal letters which spell autumn and are decorated with pumpkins and apples and gourds and a scarecrow. Its sitting at one end of my kitchen table. Of course Sweetlings King Boo is sitting beside it.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Where does the time go?

7:22 am--wake up, pull on robe, pull poor mangled crumpled clean clothes out of basket+spread on bed, boot up computer, go potty +walk past second laundry basket of clothes, try to chase Mama into the shower for the day so that I can get my shower too, drink a glass of water

7:33am--start post. need a running record of my daily time to convince myself that I'm not crazy. To do list includes:
--fold or hang and put away three baskets of clean laundry
--get shower
--have breakfast and devotions
--do dishes throughout the day
--clean bathroom
--sweep kitchen floor
--put away yesterday's groceries
--do a day's worth of schooling with each of two children in half a day's time
--have lunch
--call around to find who's giving flu shots on Friday
--clip and file coupons
--enter receipts into my excel worksheet
--go to CVS, Walgreens, Biggs
--pick up Pinky if she has a ride home from church tonight
--email BA about not being in children's church tonight
--put away cvs, walgreens, biggs groceries
--post about why I'm not doing the NaNoWriMo this year
--give Toa of Boy a bath
--get apple and caramel snack ready for Toa of Boy to take to church
--make dinner
--leave at 5pm to go to a presentation about dyslexia 50 min away in Miamisburg
--come home
--get packed for co-op
--enter two weeks worth of Sweetling's attendance logs in the on-line school
--get nightsnack for kids when they get home
--help kids get their backpacks and lunchboxes packed for coop
--get Toa of Boy tucked into bed
--get adoption letter for Irish ready to put in tomorrow's mail
--get Sweetling tucked into bed
--finish laundry

7:42 am--am told by mother that we are out of toilett paper. had plenty when i used it ten minutes ago. hop on grocery game to see if cvs or walgreens has a deal on t.p. Wonder if Scott was the brand that I got on sale a couple of months ago that everyone hated. put it on the cvs list anyway. i think we go through a roll a day. it didn't used to be that way. i have my suspects.

7:48--mamma still isn't in the shower. go put away a load of laundry.

8:04--one load down. three more to go. I miscounted earlier. head upstairs to clip and sort the coupons that are all over the kitchen table. mama just started the shower.

8:33--heading to shower. coupons are still on kitchen table, but I found the ones I needed for today's shopping. discover that both of the two bras that I own are still wet. take everything out of dryer, put one bra back in. go hang up what I pulled out while bra is drying. Mama asks if she can invite her Saturday night women's Bible study over. I say sure, but not this Saturday, cause this saturday we're housing two members of the Anderson University String Ensemble.

8:44-some of my jammies were damp too. I spread them out on the bed to air dry during the day. stole hangers from the jedi's closet cause my hangers were hopelessly tangled. I hear a child awake and about upstairs. taking my wet bra out of the dryer and heading to the shower anyway.

9:17--out of the shower. lotioned (all except the itchy spot in the middle of my back.) dressed. hair dried. was supposed to start school at 9am. will do make-up later when I (ha ha) have more time. starving. making breakfast for Toa of Boy. will make breakfast for me and start school with Sweetling while I eat. Sweetling is sitting at the table right now eating her breakfast and reading her devotions. will edit to update this list through the day.

9:39--waiting for sweetling to come down for school. made peanut butter and banana sandwich for Toa of Boy's breakfast. loaded dirty dishes into dishwasher, put in detergent, remembered to turn on (major victory there). make my breakfast. wondered how toa of boy got peanut butter in the hair on the back of his head. helped him feed his crusts to the birds. cleaning Toa's letter tiles, sight word cards, wooden 3d solid shapes, poetry book, dragon boat, webkinz, and foam airplane off school desk.

9:42--sweetling's here.

10:11--Sweetling took away my teacher pencil when I tried to make my algebra explanation sung to the wonderpets theme song. Toa of Boy is here for school now. I bet he won't let me sing either.

11:04 Toa of Boy thinks kisses and chicken dance are not part of school. Where are these children getting these absurd ideas?

11:28 Toa of Boy just finished phonics and is going potty. I'm left wondering, will this phonics program do him good in the long run? Sweetling just picked up reading on her own. Should I have used a more whole language program with Toa's reading? He's doing great with the phonics. He's reading short, controlled sentences like "The cat is at the mat," and "The bat is fat." Will that eventually translate into a literate individual with a love for books?

11:46 Sam has yellow skin and a red hat, according to illustrator Toa. We don't know why he sat and sat. Toa of Boy said Sam wasn't in trouble. His mat is red too. Sam is a theme in red and yellow. On the last page, someone came along and painted Sam orange.

11:52 Toa of Boy is finished with school for the morning. He wants to do history after lunch. I need to check on Sweetling's progress. She's upstairs writing sentences about the Puritans right now. We need to check her algebra problems and read geography together before lunch. After lunch, she needs to make a comparison chart for comp, do a vocab lesson, and in theory, take a unit assessment for literature over the greek myths. This involves a short essay. I'm not sure if the essay is getting done today. I think I'll clean the bathroom, put away a bag of groceries, and clean the kitchen counters while she finishes her sentences.

12:38 Sweetling is finished with her sentences. I cleaned the kitchen, cleaned the bathroom, swept the kitchen floor, emailed ba, did makeup, clipped more coupons. Lunch time. Sweetling and I are going to take a working lunch. Sweetling doesn't know this yet.

1:26 yummy lunch of an eggroll and potato wedges. Toa of Boy had grilled cheese and grapes. Sweetling had pb+j and grapes. I'm having milk and a chocolate chocolate chip muffin while Sweetling does some algebra corrections. During lunch Sweetling and I studied a map of the fall line of the us eastern coast and how differences in the width of the coastal plain effected the lives of the settlers and the economics of the different regions.

2:10 Wanted to leave at 2 for the stores. Sweetling is finishing up her composition chart. Toa of Boy did handwriting (letter F) and history (found and colored Italy on the map and painted Italy's flag). Entering receipts into excel while waiting for Sweetling. Also had Toa clean squished grape off floor and red watercolor off wall. Threatened him with a loss of Wii until saturday the next time he whined about not wanting to go to the stores today.

5;20 Just finished making dinner. Not making a 50 minute drive tonight. I'll get a book on dyslexia from the library.

5:39 Nearly 10 hours since I got up this morning. Now my to do list looks like this:
--put away leftovers and clean up kitchen
--unload and reload dishes
--fold or hang and put away three baskets of clean laundry
--put away groceries from 3 different stores
--call about flu shots for friday, if anything is still open
--clip and file coupons
--have hot chocolate and devotions
--have sweetling finish her chart for comp after church
--post about why I'm not doing the NaNoWriMo this year
--get packed for co-op
--enter two weeks worth of Sweetling's attendance logs in the on-line school
--get nightsnack for kids when they get home
--help kids get their backpacks and lunchboxes packed for coop
--get Toa of Boy tucked into bed
--get adoption letter for Irish ready to put in tomorrow's mail
--get Sweetling tucked into bed
--have hot chocolate and devotions

I'm not sure there's a whole lot of difference between the two lists. Toa of Boy never got a bath today. I'm playing hookey from church tonight.

6:45 Family just walked out the door to church. Prior to that, the Jedi, who hates to be late, raced 1 cup and 4 time trials on mariokart, went downstairs and did something on his computer, then expected the kids to be out the door in two minutes. Plus he has to walk them up to children's church and preschool church and drop off snack for preschool church. I don't think he was taking the kid factor into his equation of it taking 'only 14 minutes' to drive to church. In the meantime, all my groceries are away, my dishwasher has been unloaded and reloaded, the leftovers are away, and the pans are soaking. AND I sat down and watched the jedi's race. Going to have hot chocolate and do the devotions that I never had time for this morning. And call about flu shots. I think I'll do that while the Jedi is gone so he doesn't know I didn't do that on Monday.

7:15 I just got off the phone with the last pharmacy. No lie. I called three places and was on the phone for 30 minutes. making hot chocolate and sitting down now. If I can have the laundry put away and be packed for co-op before family gets back, I'll be happy. Oh, and Sweetlings attendence.

7:30 i'm rather ashamed to admit that my devotions only took 15 minutes. So, why couldn't I have spent 15 minutes on them earlier in the day? I was thinking I needed at least half an hour of uninterrupted time.
He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers
harm.

--Prov 13:20

8:11 pm --I put on Celtic Christian Spirit and got all the laundry folded and put away. So lift your voice, its the year of jubilee-- (well, technically, Toa's laundry and Jedi's laundry isn't put away, but they are both in charge of putting them away. I folded them. Sweetling only has a couple pairs of socks, a turtleneck, and a sweater, so it didn't really bear mentioning....but i could tell you were wondering.) More evidence that I should have been a hippy came forth. Cause flowers bloom where love is green.

8:40pm--*nearly* finished updating Sweetling's attendence. Discovered she didn't mark down one, not one, start or start time for her subjects for the day. Trying to reverse engineer her day based on my blog posts.

8:44--did that. but now I still can't update her day, cause she isn't finished with her comp chart and I want to add that time in. In the meantime, I'm packing Toa and I up for co-op.

8:46--family's home :)

9:09--tucked Toa into bed. realized afterwards that we hadn't packed his lunchbox for the morning. that will suxers in the morning. may as well go for broke and not pack any lunchboxes. Going to make a second cup of hot chocolate and watch ghosthunters with the jedi.

10:20 going to bed. will pack lunchboxes and sweetlings backpack tomorrow.

Monday, November 03, 2008

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.

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Wrong Story

I thought, I really did, that my story was going to be about a young woman journeying west as a mail-order bride. Instead, I think my story is about the young woman. I think journeying west is only a chapter or so of the story. I'm writing pages of exposition that really are a story in their own right. Boo and hoo. What do I do? Keep writing expository style? Stop? Back up? Grrrr. Grrrrr. Grrr. Get the expository stuff out of my system?

Grrr. Grrr. Grrr.

I hate expository writing. Its boring. Well, my expository writing is boring. Its like a poorly written textbook that I'm having to wade through before I can get to the story. Grrr. Grrrrrrrrr. GRRRRRRRRRR.

I have a brownie upstairs on the kitchen counter. Brownie, you are mine.

Saturday, November 01, 2008

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.