Everything's Okay at 20k

Once again I found myself lowering my total NaNoWriMo word-count. It has come to rest for the rest of the month at 20 000 words, because my month has been too busy for my original word counts of 25k and 30k.

Honestly, I'm a little disappointed that I wasn't going to make it to 30k. But I understand also that my family needs me and my brain can't stay focused enough to go the whole way. I'm a slow writer, and sometimes pressure doesn't work.

I'm going to skip Camp NaNo in July so that I can focus on other things. I need to get ready for college, and that means saving any money I can. I also need to focus on losing weight so that I can enter in to college without having to worry about how I look all that hard - and by then I should have THM down pat.

Writing may slow so that I can find time to read (I need to finish The Reluctant Duchess before May 1st so that I may review it and send the review off to Bethany House Publishers). I have so many novels in my To Be Read pile that it's ridiculous! And I didn't a request a novel for review in May because none of the novels they presented to me were of any interest to me. So May is open for whatever novel I choose to read.

I need to finish reading the last book in The Dragons of Starlight novel series by Brian Davis so I can move on. I have several ebooks I would like to crack open, such as The Secret of Pembrooke Park or The Dancing Master by Julie Klassen, or A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan, or Cinder by Marissa Meyer.

I should also crack open The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Hobbit, or Murder on the Orient Express so I can review another classic for the Back to the Classics 2016 Reading Challenge I'm in.

There's so much I want to do, but so little time, lol!

Well, I better get back to writing. I've got laundry to fold and change over as well.

P.S. Maybe I should devote time to learning German and French on top of all this...

Winter Shinanigans - Slip'n'Slide

So, this afternoon, I decided to walk down to the dollar store while I waited for my mother’s hair to be done at the hairdresser. My mother needed a few things from the dollar store, and I knew that it was going to take a while, because Mom needed her hair cut, coloured, and styled.

It’s only a couple of blocks between the hairdresser and our local Dollarama, so I set out, glad that I had decided to wear my sneakers even though snow was sticking to the balls of my shoes. There’s a street, a parkinglot, an alley, and another parkinglot I have to walk across before I can reach the store.
I set out, confidant I would get there gracefully and compitantly and within a reasonable amount of time. But I hit trouble once I reached the boundaries between the alley and the last parkinglot.

This parkinglot runs up beside the Dollarama and serves to be the dollar store’s parkinglot. There is only one way to get into this parkinglot on foot if you don’t want to risk walking on the side of the road and go the long way around because there’s a metal pole fence that runs the parimeter of the parkinglot. The entrance to this parkinglot is barely wide enough to drive a super-duty pick-up truck through.

When I reach this entrance with its empty sign holder (it was probably a grocery store in the past), a pick-up truck backs out of its parking space within the parklinglot. And to my right a jeep pulls off the road and onto the alley Im standing in. Now I’m holding up two vehicles, which are waiting for me to get out of the way.

I look down at the entrance way, remembering that this parkinglot is notorious for having pool-sized potholes in the summer (though I don’t know why, but it being unpaved and covered in gravel may have something to do with it). I note that there are two potholes sitting side-by-side.

I realize I have to make a decision, and fast. The pothole on the left is a massive crater, and coated with black ice, giving it the appearance of a pit that leads to oblivion. Or death. And I can’t go around it because the little bit of snow between it and the fence is too narrow for my feet, and its the same before the little bit of ground between the potholes.

Now, the pothole on the right was just as wide as the one on the left but not as deep and was covered in snow, not ice. And the ledge between it and the fence on its right was big enough for my feet, so I decided to pass through there.

But as soon as I stepped on that ledge, it was like I was standing on a finely polished skating rink, and I began to slip. I’m pretty sure that the show I gave the passengers and drivers of the two vehicles turned out to be something like this:

I was so embarressed! But then I started to smile after I walked into the store. Yay, for winter shinanigans! lol!
(Didn't go down, though. Never slipped like that in my life.)

Guilt

Have you ever encountered one of those moments where you realized you've realized that you have made a terrible mistake?

I have. I experienced this less than hour ago when I stepped into a gas station and attempted to purchase a Google Play card and found that I had already depleted most of the money I had earned while Christmas shopping in the city. I didnt realize that they couldn't take the card back when my debit card declined the purchase.

Now the woman behind the counter had to pay for a card she probably can't use! I'm asking myself over and over about wht I had to go and try and buy that card. I can inlt pray for forgiveness and that the woman knows someone who can use the card!

I felt I had to write this down in order to get this off my chest. I feel like such a horrible person. What would you do if you were in my situation, where you have no cash, no credit card, and only a debit card that doesn't have enough money on it?

College Contemplations

The day before yesterday, I finally entered in to that moment in life where you realize you're on the cusp of freedom and the only thing standing between you and that freedom is the fact that you need to get a job to save for the move and life you'll enter into once you leave home.

Yes, I've finally gotten excited about college.

I began to research how the college I've chosen is run, and found out that, until I'm 22, I'd be forced to live on residence and share a room with a total stranger (at least, until I got to know them, then they wouldn't be a total stranger, lol).

I was okay with it, a little excited about it, and I had found the most awesome little mini-fridge that I could have in the dorm. I'd need the fridge, since the way I eat is really different from how most people around me and my family eat, and in the residence "guide book" it said I could have a fridge in case I "didn't want to get up for breakfast in the cafeteria". It sounded so interesting, and fun, even though I knew that I wouldn't be happy in the long run because I wouldn't be able to have as much as privacy as I want.

But then, last night, I realized one thing: the only pets the dorms would allow us to have is a fish in a tiny aquarium. That means that I wouldn't be able to bring Pebbles, even if I netted a private dorm for medical reasons.

I can't do that! Pebbles is my baby! She'd probably be ruined forever if I left her for the majority of two years! Two years is 14 years in the way a cat's body ages. If I left her behind with my parents, it'd be like I came back to vist relatives for short bursts every few years. To Pebbles it would be years between visits instead of weeks.

When I left to go visit family in BC back in 2012, I was gone for only just over a week, but Pebbles sat at my door and cried for most of the time I was gone. It broke my heart.

But since I can live off-campus with my grandmother as my "legal guardian", I bring Pebbles. I'm pretty sure Grandma is going to do just fine there, she'll probably make plenty of friends and my aunt, uncle, and cousin only live a few hours north.

I'm so excited!

Victorian-Era, Here I Come!

 

Yesterday, I decided to sign up for a book reading challenge that runs from the beginning of January 2016 to the end of December 2016. It's set up like bingo, and I have to cross off five boxes in a row if I want to "win", so to speak.

 

I won't win anything but the satisfaction of reading more books in what has to be one of my favourite genres ever. I have at least two books that fit the bill - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Refining Fire by Tracie Peterson - which would allow me to stamp out "British Male Author" or "Mystery, Suspense, Sensation" and either "American Female Author" or "Book About Courtship or Marriage" on the chart.

 

Also, if you finish a book before January, you can review it and put it in the que for January 1st so it can still count (it says so in the rules). If you don't believe me, check out the sign up post for it on Becky's Book Reviews here! (http://blbooks.blogspot.ca/)

 

I'll be doing that with Ruby by Lauraine Snelling, a book I really am not enjoying all that much (it's also keeping me from reading Star Trek: From History's Shadow by Dayton Ward, lol).

 

I can't wait to start reading again! :D

Will I Ever Stop Running?

It's halfway through the month of November and I'm still desperately rushing to keep up the wordcount-you-should-have. I've just been so busy, life hasn't been easy. And my inspiration for the novel I decided to write this month has all but dried up.

What can I do? Well, I've decided to star rewriting By Diadem's Light between when I write bits for The Infinity Machine. I'm not going to let that Years Won/Done dot for this year stay blue this year. I want it to be purple! lol