Wednesday Check-In, July 3rd

Weight:

Weight is up to an embarrassing 201.6 once again. Those trips to visit my dad really do me in. He buys donuts, which are my kryptonite, and every time I would offer to cook something healthy, he would say, “let’s go out to dinner.” Invariably, we would wind up at some Italian restaurant.

I don’t know what is keeping me from logging my food into MyFitnessPal again, but I am just going to have to start. Partially, I think that it’s been due to being away, and partially probably to all the activity of late. Not only is my younger son spending the summer with his grampa 1200 miles away, but my older son is going away for a total of nearly a month to two different, very intensive trainings. Add my trip to Chicago, with the return happening the first day of school, then top it off with the (exciting, but sad) news of my hubby’s promotion and transfer. The boys and I will stay in Florida for the teen’s final year of school while hubby will be living about halfway up the coast. Hubby’s promotion means that we also have to sell the house that we just bought last year, although we have to time that with me and the younger boy moving north to be with hubby. The house needs major cleaning and clearing out, ‘cause we are some serious pack-rats; but a cluttered house doesn’t show well. So, yeah, busy and stressed, and stress eating.

At any rate, I am back on the exercises. Gotta tell you, forty sit ups after two weeks of none was not easy. But I did them, and that’s what’s important. I also completed most of my usual calisthenics routine. The treadmill is back to one hour every other day. The fight to get back to what one friends calls “one-derland” is on.

Writing:

It’s nice that, sometimes when I screw up in one area, I shine in another. This is one of those times. So far this month, I have written 2592 words; since last week, I have written a total of 3905 words. All of those words have been in Quantum Kiss. One thing that’s helping is that I decided to join Camp NaNoWriMo, in which we are attempting to write a total of 50K words by July 31^st, beginning on July 1^st.

For this week, with the holiday, and the teen heading off to one training on Saturday, and hubby leaving out for a week on Monday, the writing is slow-going—I know, I know, not so slow if I’m churning out in one week what I have been doing in two weeks or a month. Our daily goal in Camp is 1613. The nice thing, and one I didn’t think I’d like, is that they assign you to a “cabin”, where you can check in with others and motivate each other. Our cabin is having a slow start, but that happens.

My goal is to finish Quantum Kiss this month and begin to really focus on Druid, my Western. A friend of mine even made me a sig and avi set, as well as a book “cover” to display on my Camp profile once I’ve finished Q.K.

Prompt: It’s 1776. You are a loyalist married to a rebel. Or vice versa. How do you feel about your mate? Are you worried for them? Hopeful that they’ll be killed?

Vocab: Loyalist: One who remained loyal to the British government during the American Revolution.

Wednesday Check In: A Day Late and 1200 Miles Away...

Weight:

I’ve tried to keep the food intake down this week, but I’ve been very naughty on the carb front. Between that and going out to dinner with hubby to Olive Garden, I wound up with a gain over last week. I’m back to 200.8. Not thrilled. Not that I did anything about it yesterday. Got up and had no time to exercise, as I had to catch a plane to Connecticut with my youngest son. He’s spending the summer with his grampa. We ate a very, very quick McSandwich for breakfast. Lunch/supper was at a very nice restaurant. I was hungry, so I had an appetizer of New England Clam Chowder. Ate a relatively healthy lunch of braised herb salmon and asparagus, with a small bit of smashed potatoes. Dessert was an issue. Lava cake and ice cream, split with my son. Oy vay! Connecticut’s gonna be hard.

On the plus side, despite the rain and chill keeping me from walking around the hilly neighborhood and the lack of exercise equipment at the house, I should be able to get over to the local YMCA. My dad said that they have a two week free trial that I can participate in. Failing that, the local gym has a 10 day free trial. I’m hoping the Y has a pool; although there is a town pool, it’s so far been cold and rainy and the town pool is outside.

The other thing going for me is that my dad is a diabetic. I know that sounds wrong, but what I mean is that there’s not a whole lot of sugary crap food around his house. Now if I can just get him to stop feeding my son and I like we’re starved and having a low-sugar attack, we’ll be fine.

Words:

At least I’ve gotten some words written this week. I got up a couple of mornings and knocked out some writing while waiting for the teen to get ready to leave for school. I also wrote one day in a notebook while I was at an amusement park with my son and his friend. With all of that, and despite getting ready for my trip to Connecticut, I still managed to pop out 1823 words. I was super-proud that all of the words were in my sci-fi romance instead of all over the place. Now, not all of it was in a direct timeline from point A to point B, but still…

These next couple of weeks will be a challenge to find writing time, as I am at my dad’s to help him clean out some of my mom’s stuff. Mom is in a nursing home and neither knows about nor wants (when she does know about) a good percentage of her things. She has resigned herself to being in the home and knows that she has no room for many of her things, most of which she has not even seen, let alone used, for several years.

There are also the numerous dusty items that are found when one has been living in the same home for dozens and dozens of years. I need to help Dad sort through a lot of that stuff while I'm here, and since he'll be working during the day for the next couple of weeks, it's pretty much on me. 

Vocab: Conflagrate: to be on fire.

Story idea: A dragon walks into a pub…

Wednesday Check-in: Long time no blog

Sorry about my absence, folks. I’ve been going through a bit of depression lately. I did not feel up to blogging, as all of my writing was being colored by negativity, and you all deserve better than Neggy Nelly. I won’t go into all the details, but my plate has been very, very full. I’m coming out of the other end of the tunnel now, and it feels so much lighter.

Shall we get right to it?

Weight:

I tend to be a stress eater. For the past weeks, I have barely, if at all, logged in to My Fitness Pal. Because of that, I did not keep track of how much and what I was eating, so my weight increased. Yesterday, I was back up to 200.0 pounds—that was when I decided that it was high time to get off the gravy boat and back on the treadmill, as it were. Luckily, I was forcing myself to continue some exercise during those dark weeks, otherwise, I’d likely have gained all of the weight back.

As of today, I am back down (or up, depending on your viewpoint) to 197.6. With less than three months to go until Chicon, I am beginning to feel the pinch. There is no healthy way that I can possibly get down to the 150s or 160s that I wanted to be at by then. However, there are still 11 weeks to go, so there is no reason why I can’t be in the low 180s, or perhaps the high 170s if I really push.

More water, more exercise, more veggies, more fruits and proteins, along with less carbs, should do the trick. No more night-time snacking, unless it’s on something like lettuce or watermelon—something that takes more calories to eat than you ingest during the process.

Writing:

I can’t really write when I’m depressed, either—or rather, I don’t like what I write at those points in my life, so I try not to. I was suffering a lot of migraines during my depression, which I wouldn’t think would be unusual, and writing with a migraine is no fun. Unable to think of what to write, I watched television at night instead, until late at night—not good, as I tend to snack when I watch TV.

I was so depressed that I was considering quitting RWA and even quitting writing altogether for a time. Luckily, I have good friends who, directly and indirectly, convinced me not to. I also received a couple of comments on my fan writing in various places, which helped a lot.

I’ve only just gotten back to actually writing in the past couple of days, but in that time, I’ve averaged just over 600 words each day, for a total of 1377 words. Not a lot, but a lot more than the previous weeks combined. There is a very slight possibility that I will make the Little Bites Challenge, but that will require averaging just over 2000 words per day for the next three days. Either way, I am happy to be back to writing.

~*~

Vocab word: Umbrage: to be upset, angry, or offended.

Story idea: Write 500 words minimum, extra credit for using the vocab word.

• Hilary is a grown woman, with a business of her own. Too bad her mother-in-law is coming to visit.

Wednesday Check-in

So this week’s check in has some positive news. First, in writing:

This week, I was able to get two of my six contest entries judged. If I can keep on that schedule, I’ll get them all done in time. Despite adding the judging to my already hectic RL, I was somehow able to knock out 2451 new words, including 148 words in a new erotic short. I was also able to keep up on my blog entries, as well as editing and adding some things to my WordPress blog. Last Wednesday evening, I participated in my first chat on Savvy Authors in months, and last Saturday was my RWA meeting. So lots of writing related stuff going on this week. Bear in mind that my word count does not reflect any of the blog writing. The blog writing adds another 2022, nearly doubling the word count; if you include this one, that count goes to 3095, making the total word count for the week (writing related, not including blog responses, ‘cause, let’s not get stupid, here) a whopping 5546.

Most of my writing was actually done in Word at the computer, but just the other day, my newly-employed teen, Mr. Big Bucks, went out and got the smart phone that we said he could get when he had a job. Since they were BOGO, I got mine finally, too, at long last entering the modern age. My phone is a Nokia, a Windows phone, and once I figure it out, I should be able to use Office right from the phone. That will come in handy for those days when I forget my notebook and wind up waiting for one of the kids. The cool thing is, worst case scenario, I can always text myself with a scene—the texting has voice recognition and I may see if there’s a way the Office app can have it, as well. Perhaps I can even find one of those roll-up wireless keyboards that might sync with it—that would be awesome!

At any rate, it’s good to be writing again, even if it’s not every day and even if some might consider those numbers minute. I know some people who are doing a 750 a day challenge, others who write thousands of words a day, either in a setting like Camp NaNo or just as a general rule. For me, with my current life craziness, I prefer the 250; if I go over, I can feel accomplished instead of constantly feeling depressed about not making the higher numbers.

Life may be settling down for a bit now (knock wood), as Mom was brought to her new home yesterday, and my father is nearly done spending down to meet the requirements of his Title 19. We’ll know more when he returns from visiting his dying BIL, an uncle who is dear to me despite my never having had the chance to meet him.

Prompt: You are torn from your own time into another (future or past). When and where are you? Tell us what happens.

Vocab: Temporal: Having to do with time.

Weight:

This has been a really bad week as far as keeping track has gone. I have gone for days at a time without logging in to MyFitnessPal or logging my exercise, but not my food. Hubby came home from his vacay Sunday night. With fudge. Luckily, most of it was nutty fudge and I prefer either plain or flavored (peanut butter, maple) fudge. Also, my Monthly Monster, who was absent for the past few months, returned first thing Monday morning (welcome home, honey!), bringing with her all the chocolate, sweets, pasta and bread cravings en masse. Rotten little bitch.

At any rate, I have kept up on the exercise, despite the exhaustion of too many late nights followed by too many early mornings; the only day I did not exercise that I should have was Saturday, when I decided to sleep in before my RWA meeting. I wanted to be awake for the meeting, plus I had to leave early to pick up one of my other “sons” at the train station and bring my own kid to work as well as picking him up after midnight. So I knew I was in for a long day—an extra hour of sleep didn’t seem like much to ask at that point.

So there is what greeted me on the scale this morning—not the lowest my weight has been; it’s been a super-struggle since I returned from Connecticut and all the stress of that situation. However, it is a two pound loss from last week. I think what I need to do is just hunker down for the next couple of weeks to break this high-190s barrier. So I will get my butt back to logging every morsel of food that passes into my mouth. I will begin adding to my calisthenics and upping the treadmill time. 

This morning, I spent a full hour on the treadmill, as well as logging extra calisthenics. I did all 40 of my sit-ups at once, without stopping. I got the butterfly kicks done in two sets of 20 instead of four sets of 10. I added five regular push-ups and fifteen easy push-ups. I added a set of butterfly leg stretches and bent knee forward bends to my single set of ten. I added an additional set of ten each of my weight lifting (two pound weights, no bench required). I added twenty jumping jacks that hubby would be most upset to have missed if he knew (he’s such a perve).

The cali routine as of today:

One set of 5 knee bent back stretches.

One set of 5 straight leg back stretches.

One set of 40 sit ups.

Two sets of 20 butterfly kicks.

Two sets of 10 side leg lifts.

Three sets each of 5 normal push-ups followed by 15 easy push-ups (so 5/15, 5/15, 5/15).

(Three diamond push-ups, just for shits and giggles & to see if I could.)

Two sets of 10 butterfly leg stretches.

Two sets of 10 bent leg forward stretches.

Three sets of 10 each: front curls, side raises, side to front curls (arm exercises, done with two pound weights).

One set of 20 windmills.

Two sets of 10 jumping jacks.

Five single sets of alternating child pose and cobra pose to stretch my back and cool down.

Wednesday Check-in

Hi all!

I know I’ve been absent for the past couple weeks. It has been a struggle for me to get back into the swing of things. The good news is, Mom goes to a home this week, and Dad is nearly done with the spend-down, which will help him qualify for Medicaid. My dad is not a rich man, but the government decrees that he has to spend half of his carefully squirreled away savings & investments or they won’t pay for my mom’s care. Weird, eh? This does relieve a lot of the stress that was giving me fits of writer’s block. While my stress still remains (who among us doesn’t have stress and can we trade lives for a few days?), my mind is beginning to clear of the cobwebs of worry for my parents. I know people who have written through the deaths of their parents and, like those women who can work full-time, cook gourmet meals, keep a clean house, and pursue a doctorate degree while raising happy, healthy children and keeping their mates satisfied, I just don’t get it. I applaud them, but I will never be one of those people. As my teen says, “Mom, you’re a worrier.” Worry leads to stress which leads to a lack of sleep which leads to a foggy brain. And weight gain.

For some reason, the picture is not loading, so I'll just tell you the number and add the picture later if it allows me to. I am up to 199.0 again.

Yup. I gained this week. I haven’t seen that number in a couple of months now. I can only blame the stressful past month so much on this one. In all honesty, I gained because I was not careful in my eating. I went back to old, bad habits, and didn’t track my eating so I could ignore the elephant in the room, no fat jokes against myself intended. I ate pasta like the world was ending tomorrow. I ate candy—stupid peanut butter cup Easter eggs. I ate a third of a loaf of French bread on my own. I ate often. I ate late at night. I ate from boredom in the few spates of time I had where I should have been writing or relaxing. Wrong choices, and lots of them, all contributed to my weight gain. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that I kept exercising, through it all. The other good news is that I can come back from this. I feel no need to throw out the baby with the bath water and toss my diet into the trash can. What I do feel is the need to re-set, to start over again. And this is something we can all easily do when it comes to this sort of thing. The past is the past, the future is not yet written; what I do now is what counts. So, I am going to heave myself back onto the wagon of healthier eating and let’s see if I can’t bring some more weight loss back to this blog next week.

As to writing, I have written a grand total of 25 words this month! Go, me! All right, not so great by any standards. I have re-set myself for the writing, as well, and a brand new Little Bites Challenge is now open for April. Those who wish to participate, the goal for the month is 7500 words, which is the 30 days of April multiplied by the 250 words per day. For me to catch up, I will need to write 725 words today, which is doable if I set my mind to it.

I now have received my (six!) twenty page each entries to judge for my local RWA's writing contest which must be completed by the end of the month (the 27^th to be exact). This definitely adds to my overflowing plate, but I am glad to do it.

At the moment, I am exhausted (it’s quarter past 10 in the morning and I’ve already been awake for longer than I slept last night), so I’m going to leave you with your prompt and vocab word and meander off for a 15 minute or so nap.

Prompt: Cinderella in Space. Re-tell the classic fairy tale in a sci-fi setting.

Vocab: Vacuum: A lack of air. (While not a very unusual word, it is often misspelled and is appropriate to the prompt.)

See you all soon!

Weekly Check-in

Weight:

No significant change this week, but there is at least a loss. As you all know, I've been under a great deal of stress lately, even more than usual, so I will take any loss of weight I can get.

I am starting to keep track of my sodium intake. Government standards still show an allowance of 2500mg, but most health sites say men and women of my age only need 1500 mg. Since stroke and heart disease run in my family and my blood pressure has been very high lately, I've been watching things. Most fresh fruits and veggies have little to no sodium. Meats and oats have a bit more. Most prepared foods--canned, jarred, and frozen--naturally have way too much sodium.

I have changed my exercise routine a bit, too. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I do a full calisthenics routine of about 20 minutes. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays I spend 40-45 minutes on the treadmill, walking until I've used up at least 300 calories. When things settle down a bit (my mom moves from assisted living to a nursing home on a permanent basis), I plan to join a yoga class in addition or find a pool and add swimming to my routine.

Words

The past two weeks have left me in no real mood to write; I've had very little time as it is, and when I have had time, my brain has been so full of what needs to be done yet, as well as guilt and angst, to allow any fiction in. Last Monday, though, I finally had time and a low enough stress level to think about Quantum Kiss, and managed to write 800 words. I've also been busily catching up on milestones for my local chapter of RWA and taking a workshop on judging so that I can properly judge future contest entries, as well as learn a little about becoming an entrant and what the judges look for. 

I don't think I'll be able to catch up on the Little Bites Challenge for March, but we'll see--the month's not over yet.

Vocab: Vanquish--to win over an enemy, particularly in battle. Usually a decisive & dominating win.

Prompt: You are a Saxon who's village is meeting up with Viking raiders for the first time. You can be a man, woman or child, in your village or watching from some vantage point.

(Can you tell I've been watching Vikings lately? LOL!)

Wednesday Check In: One-third of the Way There!

This week's post will be short and sweet.

Writing:

LBC total is 1158, shy of the 1750 for the week, but considering the week I've had, I'm amazed I got that much. As it is, this total still brings me to a grand total of 6464, which is only 536 words away from goal for the month. I may or may not make it, as I am heading out of town on a family emergency. The bulk of my writing was done in a notebook, so longhand, while waiting for my boys at various places, so I'm really glad I brought the notebook.

No prompt this week, due to lack of time (see the last sentence).

Weight:

Weight is awesome this week--well, it was until last night's Valentine's dinner at Olive Garden.

My weight before Olive Garden:

That's down a whole two pounds from last week. As of this morning, I'd blown that and was back up to 197.4, but still below 200, and that weight without exercise, as my ride to the airport is arriving at 6:30 this morning (will have arrived by the time I get this done, likely). Next week, I may not be home yet to check in on my scale, but I'll be careful of my calories and make sure I keep up my exercises this week. I won't have access to my treadmill, which I'll miss (that's my Netflix watching time, too, and Caprica's getting GOOD), but I will have access to snow and rolling hills. I'm tempted to head over to the Sleeping Giant State Park and see if I have an easier time of it hiking it than I did last summer with my boys.

Time to sign off and get this posted--my ride is here in 10 minutes and I have yet to brush my hair, change my shirt, finish my coffee and put on my make-up. In that order. 

Wednesday Check In

Words:

I kicked ass this week! I got so far ahead by getting up a bit early a few mornings and just writing. Good thing because my evenings were crazy. I was very happy with my word count this week, especially when you consider that was all in Quantum Kiss. I also managed to get all of the blogs written, even though last week’s Wednesday was late by a day and today’s is running late.

At any rate, total word count required for the LBC is 1750 and I got the year—yup, I wrote 2013 words this week in Q.K. That brings my total for the month up to 5346 out of a total of 7K that I’ll need by the end of the month. Now, the sad part is that I haven’t had the time/energy to write anything at all in the past two days, except my Monday blog; today’s blog is being hard pressed between work and kids and hubby who needs electric shock therapy (as in the man’s either frakkin’ nuts or he’s holding out the winning lottery ticket on me).

I’ve been reading a bit more this week, too. Christy Oleson’s “Her Scottish CEO” has been on my Kindle Cloud Reader while I dry my hair each morning, an erotic anthology titled, “Secrets” sits on the shelf by my throne, and I’ve had a couple of favorite fan fic authors post new stuff this week. Add that to the blogs I try to keep up on, and it’s been a busy reading/writing week.

Prompt: You find a Djinn. What happens?

Vocab word: diaphanous: filmy, sheer

Weight:

Wow! I am very happy to report this weight this week:

I was only planning on 197 point something, so the extra half a pound really fired me up. Mind, today is my reward day. If I make my weight, I don’t worry about calories today. I've been in a naughty celebratory mood today.

To mix things up a bit, hubby and I bought a steamer. We love fish and chicken (well, I love fish and chicken—lol) and the steamer is a nice, healthy way to cook both meats and veggies. Now to find some good steamer recipes. Hubby tries to spice up his food with hot spices. This week he made the mistake of trying a habanero pepper. His fingers stung for two days afterwards. I enjoy garlic and a bit of onion, but nothing too hot. At Tijuana Flats (a place I no longer frequent), I go for the wimpy sauces. I thought the steamer might be nice because my blood pressure was through the roof; of course, that could have been a product of the teen, who is my best helper and confidante one minute and out to kill me by acting stupid the next. Either way, it won’t kill me to eat healthier (I hope).  

On the exercise front, I want to save for either an elliptical or a stationary bike at home, to ease the pressure on my broken toes, which are not enjoying the cooler weather we’ve been having. I also told my teen that I really want to be able to be able to join the gym so I can use their pool once in a while. I’m getting awfully bored with my routine, although it’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination. I just want to get the weight gone so that I can bring it down to exercising three or four times a week instead of six.

I realize I'm kind of all over the place and I apologize. Today has been a "herding cats" kind of day and now it's an hour past my bedtime, but this post is so close to done and I don't want another "day after" check in post. 

Weekly Check In: A Day Late

Yesterday was a very stressful day in my home, despite good news early on. I got a phone call that brought bad news, news I was used to hearing even last year, but that came as a shock at this time. Everyone is all right, and it did not turn to tragedy, as it could have, but it did keep me from writing when added to all my other stresses in life that are happening right now. But enough about vague laments, on to the good news.

Words: 

I DID IT! I made the word count in the Little Bites Challenge, exceeding by 10% where I needed to be this morning. Yesterday’s day end count (so this morning’s) was supposed to be 3K; my count this week for Quantum Kiss is…3,333. Done by hosting/participating in a few sprints this week to make up for days when I was unable to find time to write in it at all. Not only that, I finally edited Story Prompt #2 and uploaded to my fictionpress account (I have yet to upload to the Wordpress account), as well as (obviously) completing my blog posts for the week.

All of the word count numbers were written yesterday; by the end of today, I need to be at 3,500, so I’m still sitting pretty. Hubby & I don’t go out for Valentine’s Day—too crowded everywhere—so I may get time to write later.

This week’s word count goal is to once more complete the LBC with words to spare. I’d also like to get my blogs written ahead of time, so this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.

Prompt: Love potion #9: You (or a character) have made/stumbled upon a supply. Do you/they use it? If so, on who? How do they react? What are the consequences? Set it whenever, wherever you want.

Vocab word: Buss—to kiss.

Challenge: Write 500 words based on the prompt and use the vocab word.

Weight: 

Yay, me! I exceeded my goal for the week, which was to be 199 point anything. I actually leveled out last week at 200.2 for about three days. I was practically starving and the scale wouldn’t budge. I decided to tweak my metabolism, and for two days, I ate close to the top of my calorie allowance. From the very first day, the scale moved down. I actually was 0.2 pounds less on Tuesday than my Wednesday weigh-in.

Kept the exercise the same, with Sunday off. In fact, hubby and I went out to breakfast Sunday morning, something we used to do every week, but have not done in months as we’ve been losing the weight. We stayed away from the buffet table, sticking with pre-portioned food, and asked about portions (how many eggs, for example). Pancakes and French toast were nowhere on our own personal menus. The breakfast wound up being late in the morning, since we slept in (our only day to really do so usually), and therefore was more of a brunch than a breakfast. We were so full, we didn’t need to eat again until supper time. The only exercise we did get that day was taking a walk down by the restaurant, which is at a fish camp and has a small petting zoo and rescue horses.

Now, next week’s goal is to be 197 point something, which may be difficult considering that Miss Monthly has just showed up, bringing cramps and cravings with her. In fact, I was so stressed yesterday that I wound up turning on the TV and vegging. I rarely just watch unplanned TV anymore—no time. It also lends itself to mindless munching, which I gave in to, very likely exceeding my calorie count for the day on undocumented calories. The other bad part about this time of month is that I really don’t feel like exercising. At all. All I want to do is curl up with the remote control and a half gallon of chocolate chocolate chip ice cream with a bag of pretzels for dipping; maybe some fettuccine alfredo with garlic cheese bread for supper, still curled up on the couch letting my brain rot.

Wednesday Check In

Words:

Not a banner week for the Quantum Kiss word count, although I did get over half—987 to be exact. If you count the blog entries for the past week, I’m over the 1750 weekly goal, but I’m not doing that, so…DUCK! Here come the excuses. 

I did well on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of last week. Saturday came and I went to my RWA meeting. Perfect time to write—yes? No. The meeting was very interesting and informative and made my teen green with envy. The theme was “What’s Your Heroine Packin’?” and there were pistols lined up, sans ammo, on a side table. To my teen, it looked like a smorgasbord to a starving man. Not that I took pictures. Not that I then texted those pictures to him. **whistles innocently** At any rate, side-stepping the issue of if I was a mean mom or not, the meeting ran late, as we are apparently a blood-thirsty little group and were utterly fascinated with the talk. We arrived back from lunch late and, unfortunately, left the gaff tape for our mouths in our cars. But I do only see these girls once a month and it’s nice to chat with someone who understands about your “little novel”. 

I did manage to write a bit on Saturday night and again on Sunday, but was busy putting together Monday’s blog, as well as writing an article that I hope will be accepted by my local RWA chapter’s monthly newsletter, an article on what I like to call the “Little Bites Challenge” (the girls in my group preferred the “Elephant Challenge” & you’ll soon see why. Excuses for Monday and Tuesday run the gamut from “busy” to “migraine”, so I won’t bore you with the details. But I would like to invite you all to join in the Little Bites Challenge. Here's the article, explaining the challenge.

Writing a novel sounds like such a wonderful idea; until you sit down to do it. Then you realize that writing a novel is actually a lot of work. You have to create people and breathe life into them; you have to create worlds, sometimes even new governments and social structures and planets and transportation systems. In a sense, you are playing God. And while God’s gig sounds like a hoot, any parent will tell you that kids take work, and most of us feel very parental emotions toward our characters. You are also creating a home for your “children” and homeowners will tell you that keeping a home chaos-free is also a full-time job. So how does one tackle such an enormous (and sometimes frustrating) new “family”? One day at a time. One moment at a time; crisis by crisis. As one of the girls in my local RWA explained it:

 Q: How do you eat an elephant? 

A: One bite at a time. 

Thus was born the Elephant Challenge. The Elephant Challenge is fairly simple. You write. Every day that you can, but averaging 250 words per day. Do you know how long it takes to write 250 words? Well, that varies from writer to writer, from muse to muse, and all depends on the writer’s ability to fend off their inner editor to make things “just so”. When my muse is sitting in my lap or hanging over my shoulder giving me encouragement, it can take me only about twenty minutes to type up 250 words (which is approximately one page, depending on font, size, and line spacing). When Miss Muse is on vacay, 250 words can be as painful as having a loose tooth removed the old-fashioned way. However, 250 words, when you say it, sounds so much smaller than EIGHTY THOUSAND, which seems to be the average size of a novel, based on popular consensus. Somewhere around the middle of this paragraph, I had 250 words written in this post. Took me about 15 minutes, despite arguing teen and pre-teen in the background. 

Want to participate? Awesome! The more, the merrier. All you do is sit down and write. BICHOK (Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard) as our chapter president says. I wrote 250 words last night longhand, because I was tired and when I’m tired, I tend to play on the internet until it’s time for bed, at least if my computer is on. You can write any way you want to, so long as it moved your novel forward. If you like, you can throw your blogs or articles in your count, but personally, since I am the self-proclaimed Queen of the Unfinished Manuscript, I am going to work on one of those, my sci-fi romance, Quantum Kiss. Currently, I am just over eighteen thousand words in. I am keeping track on an Excel spreadsheet I made up. There are other ways—some people just write their number on a calendar, others use word count trackers, like this one by Svenja Liv (insert link here), some use a small calendar and color in the date when they reach their goal.

Last but not least, you do not have to write 250 words every day—you can write 500 one day if you have a day when you can’t do any writing; the main thing is that you average 250 words/day. Comment here each week for encouragement and virtual cookies (no fat or calories, loaded with flavor!).

Obviously, I failed this week. But next week is another week.

Writing Prompt: You are the first English woman (or man) to see the shores of America. Describe the scene and your feelings.

Vocabulary word: apprehension--fear or anxiety, particularly of the future.

Challenge: Write 500 words on the prompt, using the vocabulary word.

Weight:

One place I did not fail is with the weight. This week’s scale:

This one was a tough battle the past couple of days, as I was naughty for most of last week and gained back a pound and a half. I have now added to my sit-ups and push-ups, as well as adding donkey kicks and butterfly stretches to the routine. Tuesday, I stayed in push-up position for a full minute (oh, I was shaking for the last 20 seconds or so, but I did it).

I’ve been thinking recently about how we measure weight loss. Of course, there is the mighty god, Scale, to whom I have paid homage every day for the past few months. There are measurements taken with a tape measure, and the recently popular BMI and BMR. But what’s been encouraging me is the fit of my clothes, the way I feel, and the comments people make. You saw the pic of the skort last week, the one that used to be tight on me. Now here’s my skinny jeans, the ones I used to not even be able to get over my hips:

Lying down last night, I ran my hands over my stomach and where it used to feel all mushy and blobby and just plain fat, now it felt flat. It is by no means gone yet, but it was nice to have it feel firm. Speaking of which, hubby said that my breasts are firmer and smaller, that he can see where I’m losing weight all over—that it shows in my face, my arms, my thighs, as well as my stomach and breasts. He’s not complaining about the smaller breasts—I have a long way to go to not be considered well endowed. Not only that, my youngest boy made a comment out of the blue yesterday that he was glad I was losing weight, that I was pretty before, but even prettier now.

When I first started losing this weight, I could not bend over to put on socks or shoes; I had to sit and pull my foot up to rest it on my opposite knee. I could not bend to dry my legs after my shower (well, I could but with difficulty). The first sit-ups and push-ups were only two or three, have a nice day (no reps). Each day I feel better and better, and am more interested in the food choices that I have—stir fry has become my friend, as has this wonderful new lunch product that I’ve found from Healthy Choice. Healthy Choice is the only brand of frozen “diet” dinners that I can stand the taste of, but for only 88 cents apiece, I am going to try some Michelina’s that I just found as well. The Healthy Choice lunch meals that I found are under $2 apiece at Wal-Mart. Here’s the one I had the other day for lunch:

Yum, right? That, with a small snack a couple hours later, kept me from having a rumbly tummy, and these sorts of meals are keeping my tummy from becoming even more rotund. I totally thank my Gateworld friends who encouraged me to buy tickets to Chicon, and Kavan Smith, as well, for being the catalyst (don’t want to look FAT in those once-in-a-lifetime photos), but every day that I practically walk out of my jeans, every day that I can bend to pick up something from the ground, every day that I can slip my arms around my wonderful hubby—those are what keep me going.

Wednesday Check In

Last Wednesday, by the time I went to bed, I had the flu, good and solid. For the next three days, I had no energy outside of that required to do the most basic things—running the few errands that could not be put off, washing dishes, that sort of thing. My brain could not even begin to build any fantasy worlds or scenes; in fact, I spent the whole time watching Battlestar Galactica and playing cards on the laptop when I wasn’t sleeping. Most foods tasted awful to me, so I wound up snacking and eating a lot of bread and pasta (the only things that didn’t make me want to hurl) rather than really eating properly. With that in mind, here are my reports for the week:

Words:

My muse has been coming to me in the middle of the night lately, bearing a notebook, a pen, and a flashlight.  Despite that, between Sunday and Monday nights and a bit of this morning, I was able to get in a total of 1088 for the week, which is just 662 shy of the weekly 1750 that is my 250/day fiction writing goal. All of those words were in Quantum Kiss, which is now up to a total of 15,489 words. I was able to add to the notes for that world, as well as getting started on character profiles; those numbers are not included in my word count.

I have discovered that I will need to have some sort of organization if I’m to write a novel, as opposed to my seat-of-the-pants writing with fan fiction, where everyone knows what most of the characters look like and how they act, and all I have is one or two original characters to put in. The character worksheets provided to members on Savvy Authors (see “My Hang-outs”) are a great way to do that. I can keep an online copy, saved to my Sky Drive, as well as a hard copy. The nice thing about the worksheets is that I am forced to think beyond the physical attributes to their quirks and what makes them tick.

As I mentioned last week, I’m going to stop putting in a weather section unless something totally newsworthy, like a hurricane or snow (which would be totally newsworthy in Orlando!) happens. Instead, I know some of you really liked having a writing prompt, so I’m going to include one writing prompt and one new word (new to me) each week. Sometimes, I may just put in a word or words that I am familiar with but that are not used anymore like they were in the olden days when I was growing up and dinosaurs still roamed the earth.  

Writing prompt: A woman wakes up in Heaven’s waiting room, but St. Peter is not who she thought he would be.

Now, what word should I start off with? So many to choose from! Back in the days when bookstores were aplenty and books were made of paper and not binary code, I used to enjoy vocabulary books. I know, I know—GEEK! Yup, and proud of it. The University of Chicago used to come out with these little pamphlets where you could test your knowledge of vocabulary, much as the Reader’s Digest does (did?).

Since I am a random person (which drives the orderly Virgo in me absolutely bonkers), I am going to choose one of my favorite words—gloaming. I love that word; it just sounds so mysterious. Gloaming. Know what it means? Go to the head of the class, you get ten extra minutes of recess. The gloaming is the time between full day and darkness, also known as twilight or dusk. Gloaming can be used to describe that time between dark and full light in the morning, but is more commonly used for the evening hours. The gloaming has often been associated with magic, as it is a transitional time of day, a time that is neither day nor night, a time when the veil between the worlds is at its weakest.

Challenge: Use the word “gloaming” in the writer’s prompt. Write at least 500 words.

Weight:

Well, boys and girls, as I mentioned above, I was down with the flu for three full days, not counting last Wednesday, when I was just “feeling blah”. I was also unable to exercise for five days in a row (didn’t want to push it on Sunday morning & on Monday, the air conditioning man had to stop by—yes, again, and yes, to fix something on our six month old air conditioning unit). Despite those challenges, and despite eating all those carbs this week, I managed to lose another full pound! I am now a nearly-svelte (shoulda used that word!) 204.8. The “skinny shorts” that were painful to even try to put on a month ago (couldn’t even get them over my hips) are currently residing comfortably on my body. I can move and I can breathe, and I don’t feel like I’m cheating on my husband by wearing them (think about it for a minute—oh, you got it! TMI? ). My goal, assuming there are no new bouts of the flu, is to be back into the 100s, even if it’s 199.8, by Valentine’s Day at the latest.

My calorie count was rather high yesterday and I did snack late last night (I was having late night chocolate cravings), so I spent an extra 20 minutes (on low speed—2.6) on the treadmill this morning; I was only able to do that because my older boy had to be to school early for inspection for his military class, but it was nice to be able to do. I have decided also to incorporate at least one “high calorie” day each week, where I am eating closer to the number of calories I need to for very slow weight loss. Hubby figured that out to be around 1573 calories, which is 70% of what I need to maintain my weight. Most days, I try to keep the calories to 1200-1299. See you all next week (come on, 203.anything)!

Wednesday Check In: Gaining and Losing and Staying the Same

Words:

Woo hoo! Whadya know? This writer actually can write. I didn’t get a whole lot done this week, but I did write. I left the RWA meeting early, with a headache that cleared later that evening. On Sunday, I sponsored a writing sprint with some of my Gateworld pals, during which I re-read what I had written so far in Quantum Kiss, which had been untouched since June. Monday, I was in another sprint on Gateworld, during which, now that I remembered what was going on, I was able to write just over 780 words. Last night, I was nauseous and so I only managed a little over 300 words. All said and done, between QK and the blogs, I have written right around 2800 words this week. Today, I am still fighting this stupid flu, but the plan is to continue writing a bit more this evening. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to the usual sprint time of 9 pm that I keep with my Gateworld pals. I am definitely glad to see some progress being made on Quantum Kiss. Mind, that story was supposed to be complete already, but best laid plans and all…

I’ve also suggested to my RWA group to continue a tradition they had of 250/day. Whether they decide to join me or not, that is my personal goal for this year.

Weight:

More woo hoo! I am now down to the stunning weight of 205.8, which is down 2 pounds from last week and around 13 pounds overall (the counter from MyFitnessPal is off because I started that when I was already down by a few pounds. I’ve been keeping my calorie count to around 1200 per day. I’m going to let that count go up to 1450 or so—I should still be able to lose weight, but I don’t want my body going into starvation mode or anything and leveling out. I’m already exercising as much as I want to. I doubt I will get that many calories today, as the flu is making me not hungry at all.

Weather:

Two days ago, it was nice enough to have the A/C off; now it’s back to being just on the edge of uncomfortable without it. Next week we’re supposed to get some rain at the end of the week. We need it so badly. I hope it rains every day—I know, I know, some different from last week lamenting the possibility of rain for the outdoor graduation. It is just so hot and so dry lately. Come summer (ie: now), I may be removing the weather portion of this check-in, since it stays pretty much the same from here on out—hot and (hopefully) rainy. I’ll only put this section in when something weird happens, like the all-night thunderstorm or the hurricane watch or whatever.