Posted by 
Ami-chan on October 30, 2008
I haven’t mentioned much about it on here so far, but I’ve talked about it quite a bit on livejournal. In two days National Novel Writer’s Month begins. This is a month, where a variety of people from all walks of life pledge to write 50′000 words thus completing or getting a really good start on a novel of any genre they see fit.
This means that you have to write at least 1667 words per day in order to complete your goal. I’ve participated in this since 2004, but have only “won” once in 2006. Last year my novel writing exploits were cut tragically short because with pending eviction I dropped writing in favor of finding a place for us to live. I may be crazy but I’m not THAT crazy.
This year I’m once again planning on burning my fingers to nubs rattling them across the keyboard in order to finish my work. I have plans and mappings and an understanding. I’m just hoping that come November 1st I can actually narrow down my starting point so that things will flow seemlessly (ha!) through and I can complete the novel on time.
Of course, I have a two year old to contend with, but given our mortgage will be wending it’s way to State Farm head offices tomorrow we shouldn’t have any problems with housing that will affect my ability to write.
We shall see how things go! Best of luck to fellow crazies writers as November begins!
Posted by Ami-chan on October 29, 2008
Of the new layout?
Please let me know if anything is broken. My preliminary tests don’t show anything, but I don’t always think to check everything (like comments pages).
Posted by Ami-chan on
It’s a rough time of year for me. I often have freak outs around November/December time due to history. This is actually the tenth anniversary of some thing pretty hideous (or it will be on Friday). I do try to enjoy Samhain though because it IS my favorite holiday, and turning a negative into a positive is much better than sitting around twitching and moping and making everyone else miserable.
There’s a lot of, frankly, crap going on right now. I found out that while I can technically see my therapist before January in order to do so I have to come up with a good chunk of money that we really don’t have. I still owe $100 on the bill, and so I have to pay $50 more before they’ll let me make an appointment, and then at the appointment I have to pay the $70 fee there, and another $25 off the remaining balance…so…somehow I don’t see that happening, especially as I just found out that our emergency credit card is over the limit so rather than the normal $125 of which I usually try to pay $150 payment we actually owe them about $257 or $267 on the 11th. Thankfully both hubbie and I next get paid on the 7th…and he should have some overtime (I hope) given the PD is trying to not do over time so much any more.
But Samhain is a time for spring cleaning. I’ve got several things I keep meaning and meaning to put up on eBay because I never use them, old Playstation games which in some cases are collectibles now, and a whole batch of books that Mum gave me to sell and that were left by the house’s former owner, we don’t have the bookshelves to keep them, nor do we really want to given we have more than enough books ourselves as it is, so I need to stop procrastinating on that and get them listed, that might help us out somewhat (hopefully) and we’ll really start to get rid of any residual bad mojo from the house’s former owner. It’s not like I didn’t cleanse the place when we moved in, but Samhain is a great time to do more cleansings because of all the energy of the day and also the fact that other people some times can’t help but track negativity into your house.
I’m also going to spring clean the blog and give it a new look. I do love this picture but the layout itself is dark, and so I think I’m going to brighten it up a bit, but still use the picture in some capacity, as it is gorgeous, and I don’t want to get rid of Dusk Fire’s work, just change things around a bit. Death does signify new doors and new opportunities. Plus I really MISS having a three column layout.
Anyway, on with the day. Up, up and away!
Posted by Ami-chan on October 28, 2008
One of the things that I’m not keen on about having a house is that we’re responsible for all the repairs now. It was nice when we were living at the apartment complexes to be able to just call someone up if something wasn’t working properly or needed fixing and have them come and do it and not have to pay them. Now we can still just call someone up but we have to pay them, or we have to work out how to do it ourselves.
Since we’ve moved in both toilets have acted up. Thankfully we have some friends who are versed in maintenance and have helped us fix the toilets, and the leaky sink, because while I generally know my way around a computer, plumbing is not something I’m familiar with.
Painting I can handle, it’s just managing to do it without the munchkin trying to be “helpful” and painting is fun, but there are other tasks, which aren’t so fun. Our next task is to clean out the gutters, which are acting like they haven’t been cleaned out in a few years…which is possible given the house was empty before we bought it, and we haven’t cleaned the gutters yet and we’ve been here 10 months…on the upside it’s actually a repair where we shouldn’t need to buy anything. We don’t need industrial clamps, and I bought a ladder while we were building the shed, so that we could put the roof on. Phew!
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Posted by Ami-chan on
I just went outside to take the trash to the curb and it feels freezing outside! I know whenever I talk to relatives “back home” (in England) they have a tendency to disbelieve that it could get cold in Florida but it does. This morning is a case in point. While it’s not cold compared to how the weather gets in England, and we don’t have any frost at the moment (it is a possibility) it is cold enough to give me goosebumps and make my hands do that burning thing that your limbs some times do when they get too cold.
The munchkin was very angry with me because I wouldn’t let him help me take the trash out, but he’s refused to get dressed so far this morning and so I didn’t want him outside in just a diaper. If we’re going to go on our walk this morning I’m going to layer us both up. It is nice to have the cooler weather coming, but it’s a total system shock to go from 80 to 40 in one day.
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Posted by Ami-chan on October 26, 2008
This week my Self Portrait Sunday is not as clear as it probably usually is, because I snapped it with my cell phone while my son and I were out for a walk yesterday.
But we were having fun and I was snapping a shot of my room mate’s cat that was following us on our walk and thought I would snap one of me too, being all out and about, and actually fairly chipper before 9 a.m. which is unusual for me.
We had a busy day yesterday we went out and about with my Mum running various errands to CVS, Target and Walmart as well as going out to eat at Chili’s. It’s been a while since I’ve been there, and their portions are HUGE. There was enough for me to eat, and bring back to my husband as well.
Well, enough from me for right now I’m going to hop on over and see what everyone else is doing, on time for once.
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Posted by Ami-chan on October 24, 2008
I miss a lot of things. I miss being able to buy groceries for less than $200 a week. I went yesterday to get a few refill items and it cost $96. It’s ridiculous. I’m filling out an application for food stamps right now. I hate doing it; but I’m willing to because we need to eat, and at this rate groceries are costing us more than electricity, and that’s saying a lot given our electricity bill is over $200 now, because it’s gone up $12 in the past month just for fuel rate increase.
I remember this time last year I was thinking about luxuries. I was planning on signing us up for the wine of the month club, and we had Netflix, and were looking at getting other things, now it’s just trying to survive from month to month.
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Posted by Ami-chan on
My son has started playing pretend and it has to be one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. He’ll come up to me and declare he’s a puppy and bark and yap and pant and then he’ll be a cat and meow and purr and nuzzle me. Although the licking thing…that’s a bit creepy some times.
He pretends that soda bottles are baseball bats and smacks balloons around the house.
He likes to be cows and planes and “space cars” as he calls it.
Although he does seem to think that he should be allowed to eat cat food. I keep trying to explain to him that just because he’s playing at being a cat doesn’t mean he has to eat cat food. I think he’s finally getting it after he actually ate a piece the other night while my husband was putting laundry in and nearly choked.
This morning he’s decided he’s “Super Why” and is flying across the couches. I think this new phase is interesting to say the least. He consistently manages to surprise me.
Posted by Ami-chan on
I can’t believe I didn’t post about this the other day, but on Wednesday afternoon my husband and I went to the early voting station near our house and turned in our votes for the November 4th election. It was only the third day of early voting in our area but apparently I was number 536 to vote! Which is amazing to me.
I was also surprised to see how chipper everyone at the voting office was, all the workers were joking around. They even took my stuff from me and helped me fill it out given the munchkin didn’t want to wait outside but didn’t want to play or do anything but sit in my lap and complain. Our original plan had been that my husband would vote and then he would take the munchkin and I would go in and vote, but munchkin wanted to see hubbie so I was standing in the doorway, and then asked if I could fill out my first paperwork while I was waiting so that I could get done fairly quickly.
Anyway, the workers brought me a chair and set me up and took my paperwork and brought me my ballot and then suggested they put a chair over by one of the security screens and I could sit and vote with the munchkin still snuggled up in my lap, so, hey, that works, right?
They gave him an “I Voted!” sticker too which helped to improve his mood. I told him he would understand more about the importance of what just went on when he was older, I mean heck it took me until I was in my twenties to really get the whole thing.
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It’s NaNo time again
5.9
5
6.8
9.1
