Category: Home Life

Saturday Night in the household

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I was supposed to meet up with a book club tonight to discuss my book. They read it and wanted to talk to me about it. But too many sick kids decimated their numbers and the event was rescheduled.

So here we are at home. After a family hot tub, I started drinking Wicked’s Baked Apple Cider. Then we started a puzzle. Then we started the Christmas Carols, which by the way we sing loudly and as off key as possible. My husband was complaining that the songs never have the emphasis, the passion, the drama that they should.

So every so often I say what about this one? And he has some complaint about it. Finally I tell him he’s a picky bastard. And he says…

Why do you think I was single until I met you?

Awww.

Hope you have someone at home who understands, embraces, and participates in your weird.

Fiendish Friday

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Today I am so stinking tired it’s not even funny. Why you ask? The explanation is a bit long so stay with me.

I don’t have TV. Seriously, no cable in this house. This confuses many house guests. But I prefer to get my TV via netflix. There are benefits to this, like no commercials. Like watching an episode when I chose, not when the media outlets deign I should watch, say NCIS.

There are also drawbacks, like having an entire season or twelve seasons at my finger tips, so to speak.

Last night I found How To Get Away With Murder. I was just looking for one episode, just a little something to try while I unwound before getting a good long night’s sleep which I desperately needed. Instead, I got sucked in. Episode after Episode, who killed her? Who killed him? Where’s the moral line in helping an obviously guilty client get out of jail free.

There is only one season on Netflix. I googled just enough this morning to see there is a second season out there. I can be patient. But in all honesty I will probably stay up too late tonight binge watching the rest of season one.

Ok so two nights of not enough sleep, how bad is that really? Except when Season two hits the netflix queue, I will start binge watching again. And I will go back and rewatch season one, then season two.

Now apply this to every show I like. That is a lot of nights of not enough sleep because I binge watch. LOL. I blame it on netflix and my kindle. See there’s a next episode button but if you don’t click that, the next episode starts in seven seconds anyway so if you are laying there in bed thinking I should really turn this off and go to sleep, boom another episode starts.

Do you have any shows that suck you in? Things you binge watch?

Just a slice of life

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I had to share this. I was awaken this morning by my son. The power went out last night and was out long enough to outlast the battery backup on my alarm clock. So Kiddo woke me and it went like this.

Kiddo: Good morning Mommy.

Me: Mumble mumble.

Kiddo: Daddy’s gone.

Me: Mumble, mumble.

Kiddo: Daddy’s gone and he didn’t take the packages.

Me: uh huh (pry open an eye and look out the sky light-see it’s practically still dark out there)

Kiddo: the packages you spent all day filling, he didn’t take them.

Me: (rolling over) is the dog here?

kiddo: um, no.

me: Daddy’s walking the dog.

Kiddo: oh. well since you’re awake now…..

Wednesday Writers Cafe

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Good evening my friends. It has been such an interesting week and in some ways a seriously frustrating one. Monday I rushed home from a play date because the Reindeer Firetruck was coming through our neighborhood and kiddo didn’t want to miss it. Yeah, we needn’t have rushed. It drove by our house at 915PM. Seriously? My kid has been in bed and asleep for over an hour. By the time he’s old enough to stay up late enough to see Santa on the Reindeer Firetruck he isn’t going to care. sigh

If you follow the news at all you might know that the PacNW is flooding right now. Never been so happy my house is on a ridge. I often complain about it because there is no taking the dog for a quick flat walk. Any direction you go from my house involves hills. Loving my hills right now.

Tuesday: stayed home as it rained cats, dogs, elephants, and porpoises. My son refused to leave the house which was possibly wise but that meant that I couldn’t get the ingredients I needed to bake cookies and bacon cheesy bread for family. So Tuesday night after the board meeting, I got elected to the board FYI, of the country club on my mountain neighborhood, (this should be ringing some bells), I drove down into town. Yep, it was flooded. And there was the usual selection of idiots who drove off the road into a gully. sigh. But despite all that, it was still more pleasant than taking my son when he doesn’t want to gIMG_20151209_100940o shopping.

Wednesday I baked. Here I am in all my glory of stripped apron, hair every which way, and yesterday’s make up still smeared about my eyes. Photo by my ever so cute son, so I apologize for the composition. LOL. Eventually we drove 20 miles away to a Scholastic Book Faire, where I was reminded it could always be worse than having sold only 25 copies of my book. And no this isn’t a wind up to having sold only 24 copies. I bought a number of full, 50K plus word novels, for 50 cents at this book faire. FIFTY CENTS. Think about that. You sweated out a novel, edited it, had it beta’d, edited some more, finally got an agent who got your book in front of an editor who liked it enough to offer on it. You were traditionally published. Bells and whistles, kudos to you. And your book did so bad it ended up at a Scholastic Book Faire for fifty cents a copy.

Tonight I am at Wednesday Writers Cafe, yeah babysitter! I have actually been adding words to my NanoNovel. Yeah me! Last year I didn’t even touch my NanoNovel til mid January. But this year I am ready to continue spinning my tale of intrigue. And it’s not even mid December. LOL.

They got their hands on the video. They are watching. They will find the murderer picking up a delivery of roofies. And that will give them probable cause to bring her in for questioning. Can’t wait, so I’ll get back to that now. TTFN

 

I’m getting too old for this sh…

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Today is definitely a day to curl up on the couch and watch Lethal Weapon.

But I won’t be doing that. I still have a house full of family tIMG_20151204_182405631hat want to go hiking at the summit.

Let’s back up a little. Friday night was the TGIO (Thank God It’s Over) Party for Nanowrimo. I baked two cakes and a myriad of cupcakes for the event. What can I say, I’m a little compulsive. But it is always reassuring when people rave over the homemade carrot spice cake with cream cheese frosting ( I like those ego strokes.) The party was fun, but I was really too tired to enjoy it fully and feeling a bit guilty. I sent the family, including the out of towners off to see Christmas lights without me.

Then Saturday…cook, bake, and cook some more because starting at 3 was our annual Sinterklaas party. I had 41 rsvp yes, and roughly 33 show up. That’s about average I find. But the party was seriously insane in that, we’re all too old to be frat party obnoxious, but we can still be so loud you almost have to shout to be heard. The kids were quiet in comparison.

So now all the family has been taken back to the airport. I’ve convinced the hubby that the house does not need to be cleaned before we relax. LOL.

Although at some point, I really need to figure out what …huh…it took me all day to write this post with all the interruptions and now I don’t know what I needed to figure out. LOL  – probably something about Christmas cards. wrinkles nose. Or maybe something about finding writing time so I can finish my nano novel from this year. I left our favorite detectives right at the good part, right when they got the set up to bring down the bad guy. Now they’re cooling their heels waiting for me to get off my butt and type some more.

This weekend I am going to my first author Q&A session where I am the author. Is that flipping cool or what? But my son is dying for me to come play a board game with him. How can I say no when he knows “for your taste, I think you’ll be yellow.” Smart kid. TTFN

Er….I forgot how to title things…

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This whole radio silence thing feels WEIRD. Like Nano ended and my life picked up at full speed and I just lost my blog by the side of the road. LOL.

So since Nano I have cleaned my house. Like the kind of cleaning you do when your son has a cat and you have cat allergic family members coming to stay with you…cause he does and I do. In fact my Father in Law arrived yesterday and my Sister in Law and family arrive today.

Why are they coming now? Because Saturday is Sinterklaas. It’s a Dutch Christmas time holiday where a jolly fat man leaves candy in your klompen. Grown ups move about from house to house eating and drinking special treats all evening long.

So that’s it, cleaning and preparing for a party. And in the moments I wasn’t doing that I was earning coins in the subway surfers game because my son fell in love with this little Japanese anime girl but you had to get 95K by last night midnight and my kiddo couldn’t do it. So he asked me to help. My husband thought I was crazy to do it. I probably was but…this morning when I gave my son my kindle and told him to load up subway surfers he started to cry. He was so overwhelmed. He didn’t think I would do it. Pretty damn cool to be a mom some days.

So what’s on the horizon?

Well, Family, Friends, big ass party (40 odd guests I think.)

Next weekend I am giving an author chat to a book club which read my book. Thank god it’s at a Tavern, I think much alcohol will be required so I don’t die on the spot.

Then I need to finish this year’s Nano novel because….drum roll….

Sheri J Kennedy and I are teaching a ten month long seminar at the North Bend library, third Saturday of each month, from 1030-noon, entitled Nano to Publish. The idea is to help people take their raw Nano novel and cook it up into something to be served to the reading public. So I need to have  a raw Nano novel to demonstrate my cooking on. LOL

What about the blog? um…huh…Well I missed my writers cafe update last night, cause I didn’t go…FIL here and all. And I think Friday’s writers cafe will be pretty not happening for me for a while. I enrolled the kiddo in a Leonardo DaVinci’s inventions class on Friday mornings through February. I think I’m going to have to wing it a little. I feel like the weekend workshops were not all that well received. But I plan to still blog about what I uncover while researching how to help people publish their stuff. And book reviews, book reviews will continue. What do you think about a movie or tv show review each week too?

How about we just agree you’ll show up to read and I’ll show up to write and we’ll see where it takes us….

 

Nano 2015 # 26 – Sort of

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Good evening on this Happy Turkey Day. The reality is, I never much liked Thanksgiving. I don’t really like turkey for starters. And when I was a kid it was all about football. Don’t get me wrong I like football about as much as the next guy, especially when you factor in the next guy is my Dutch husband who only watches soccer. LOL

But as I got older Thanksgiving meant one thing to me, Black Friday ads. I loved Black Friday shopping. Getting up before the crack of dawn to go buy presents. Coming out of a store with baskets full of goodies as the sun rose in the sky. Some years we would be at home and I would leave the hubby in line for the electronic gizmo of the year and go forage into a store, returning occasionally to find Starbucks had been delivering courtesy coffee and muffins. Other years we would stay at my in laws and go to their shopping district which was so snazzy that Target was way too down market to have people in it. It was surreal, employees at the end of every other aisle asking if they could help you find anything. Then we would go out to breakfast.

Either way after a nap we would decorate our house for Christmas. Tree, lights, ornaments. The whole nine yards. Then we would curl up with a copy of White Christmas and wrap every present we bought.

But now it’s all for shite. Black Friday is ruined by even Blacker Thursday night shopping. It’s just wrong. It’s brought the sport down to the level of the common man. Anyone can shop with a belly full of turkey, it’s getting up at 4AM after playing cards with your in laws til midnight that makes a true champion. (laughing) My husband’s employer doesn’t give Friday off. (Bastards) And White Christmas is ruined by bad memories. (Don’t ask.)

So what’s turkey day for this year…well we went for a three hour hike. Took a family hot tub. I made a ham. We watched the Wild Kratts Christmas special. And now my husband and son are currently trying to beat Bowser in his castle at the end of the new Super Mario brothers game while I try to write 22oo words before bed. All the Christmas shopping is done. (except for me, my husband is a dawdler) All the presents are wrapped. (see previous parenthetical statement) The house will be decorated on Saturday in between write ins. And this year post decorating the house I think I’ll watch Lethal Weapon as my Christmas movie of choice. It feels appropriate.

 

 

Tuesday, all my troubles seemed so far away…

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back when I was on that cruise, hitting yoga every day, three massages, a facial, ionithermie for those flappy bits….Kids camp for the kiddo. Time alone. Time with hubby alone. Someone else cooking and cleaning. Books to read. Sun to soak up. We took the kiddo snorkeling, boogie boarding, and tubing for the first time. He loved all three. We loved all three.

and then we came home to five new leaks in the roof of our house including one that was spewing out an electrical socket. Bleep, Bleep, Explicative, Bleep.

We so should have had the roof repaired while we were gone but the hubby was concerned about announcing our home would be empty to a bunch of strangers who would know where we live. As opposed to you all who don’t know where we live. LOL

so while the hubby works from home to deal with that today, I am back on the normal schedule of kiddo to coop, blog work, and grocery shopping.

Thinking back on that amazing vacation, I must say I actually stopped thinking about book sales and blog posts and my virtual book tour. I barely thought about Nano which is right around the corner. I gave a little time to the niggling little nightmare that maybe, just maybe, I don’t have another book percolating in my brain. oh god, did I really write that out loud?

I’ll even shout it.

WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO DO IF I DON’T HAVE ANOTHER BOOK IN ME?

gulp. ok, so I said it. It’s out there. And I have to wonder, do other people feel that way? Come on, tell me I’m not alone in this. Or tell me I’m a freak. I’m a big girl I can handle it. LOL

Ain’t that always the way….

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It has been the craziest week. Seriously.

Last weekend my girlfriend was here. I took her to the airport on Sunday and then went out to dinner with a book club who wants to do a Q&A with the author for my book. Then I went back to the airport to pick up my Father in Law who decided to pop by. LOL

I briefly considered taking a part time job as a personal chef but the kiddo was adamantly opposed. Given that I would need to take him with me, that was a deal breaker.

I finished the changes to my cover. Finished editing my proof. Uploaded all my changes. Jumping up and down.

Then I got to set up my royalty information.

It is so close. So close, I have butterflies constantly right now.

My postcard for marketing is about half done. Ok the front it done and I am happy with it. LOL. The back on the other hand….um let’s not talk about that.

I have four stops for my virtual book tour. I really want more. But beggars can’t be choosers right.

So today I am going out of town for the weekend, without my hubby and kiddo. And this morning my son woke up with a cold. Ain’t that always the way? LOL

Wednesday Writer’s Cafe – Denied

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I didn’t get to go play tonight. I had to attend a mandatory parent orientation meeting at his home school coop. 122 kids go there. Not bad for a little grass roots coop.

Anyway, where I am at….

My physical proof is on it’s way from Create Space. I am super excited for it to get here next Tuesday.

In the back of my head I know I need to be pulling all the elements together for my post cards but I just haven’t found the time. Everything the kiddo does for school outside the home, started this week and it has left me wore.

I have prepped my lecture for Saturday’s seminar, North Bend Library at 1030 AM. Topic: Nanowrimo success and how to pull that off.

Can I just circle back to my proof is on it’s way? My completed physical novel, that I wrote, is on it’s way. AGHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Ok sorry about that. Back to normal here. No, no, I’m not. My novel is coming, my novel is coming, my novel is coming. Three weeks and 2 days til launch.