Photo Friday: Success!

Only one photo today; well, six of a similar nature. 

Final word count at validation is 50,160. The story needs heavy editing, a middle, and an end. It'll likely wind up around 25-40K by the time I finish.

Triple W Check In for Wednesday

Words

Current word count, as seen from the widget, is just over 45K. NaNo ends this Friday, leaving me only 5K to go in the next three days. After that, I plan to try to keep to a schedule of at least 500-1K per day.  I’ll continue working on my NaNo book, as most of what I’ve written is unusable, but was written in an effort to keep the word count high. It’s still story, but I don’t think some of it will belong to this story, necessarily. I plan to finish the NaNo book by the end of December.

One good thing about NaNo, regardless of if I “win” or not, is that this story has decided to become a series and I’ve gotten a few other series ideas—one from the story I was originally going to write, one from the story I put in my NaNo profile (but am not writing), one from hubby, and about two or three others that my muse is sending my way for love and attention. Still trying to come up with a name for the series/the current book. May wind up having a contest for help with that. As to word count on the books, it appears as though each story of the series is going to wind up close to 25K each.

Weight

Overall starting weight was around mid 216 (pounds, not kilos O_O). I’ve gotten as low as 212.4 and messed it up. As of this morning, I am down to 213.4 again. I stopped exercising last week, with the kids at home and Thanksgiving cooking and cleaning and decorating. Oh my. So long as this sort of trend doesn’t continue over the next few vacations, I’ll be good.

I’ve brought my weight loss goals up to 1.5 pounds per week from 1 pound per week. Starting back this week to exercising, I am doing 5 minutes of warm-up calisthenics (I got up to five regular push-ups this morning from zero just a month ago); I also do sit ups, “girl” push-ups, flutter kicks, stretches and use small weights to try to keep from having the flappy arms. I’ve increased my treadmill time from 20 minutes to 25 minutes of variable speeds. On a sad note, I will have to find a body of water to chuck my iPod into; luckily, being in Florida, that’s not hard to find. The fool thing only lasted eight minutes this morning. Eight! Unfortunately, I do not have funds for a new one at this time.

Weather

Nice cool weather today—60s and mid-70s. Was cool enough to actually open the windows up last week, at least until Saturday; had to cut on the A/C for the past three days. It’s actually chilly enough right now with the windows open to think about closing them—despite wearing jeans and having my socks on. Time to snuggle up with a blanket and a cup of hot cocoa.

A friend in Canada is expecting up to 11 inches of snow. I miss my snow in the winter, believe me, but that’s a bit much for my taste. But it did spark a story idea… 

Mysterious Monday: The Power of Names

As a young child, I once asked my parents to buy me one of those name plaques at a tourist attraction—you know the ones, that have not only your name on them, but the meaning as well. I came to find out that my name had a Gaelic origin (which pleased me well, as I was über proud of my Irish heritage); it meant small waterfall or a pool of water in a glen. Even before I found this out, I always loved the peace I felt in little glens of this sort.

I read a lot as a child, and in those days, I was overly fond of Irish myths and legends. I found it interesting that, according to myths, a person could have power over a supernatural creature if they knew the creature’s true name. Irish, Welsh, and Scottish myths abounded with tales of this sort.

And so, when I began writing my own stories at the tender age of ten, I was very careful of what names I chose for my characters. Before I could even consider having babies, I had tons of baby name books. My own childrens’ names were chosen very carefully—both have strong middle names and my first-born’s name means, “powerful king”; the youngest’s name means, “gift from God” (although I didn’t think God was the sort to give prank gifts before my Little Bear came along--J).

To this day, I cannot start a story unless I have chosen the names of my hero and heroine. Thank goodness for the internet!

One of my heroes is named Hart—his parents are traditionalists, of German descent. He is well aware of, and has heard, all the jokes and double entendre of his name. His name means “strong” or “brave”, but I also named him this because of the ties to British myth that are in my story. In fact, a white hart represented the otherworld in English myths and since he travels to a parallel universe—or “other world”—I thought the name apropos.

The heroes of my Nephalim book are named Gadri-el and Azazel. According to Wikipedia (I know, great source material, Lynne), Gadreel was the fallen angel who taught men about warfare. My Gadri-el is a general in his army. There is some controversy over this “fact”, with Azazel being the other militant candidate. My Gadri-el and Azazel are half brothers; Azazel serves as a captain in the Nephalim army.

So tell me about you—do you know the meaning of your name? Is it something that even interests you? What care do you take in naming the things in your life—your pets, your children, your characters?

Photo Friday--My First World Problem

As you all know from previous posts, griping about the reasons I am unable to keep up on my word count for NaNo, we were given the gift of a vacation condo stay for the week from one of my clients. It is quite pretty, but is only about 20 minutes away--close enough that you're tempted to run home for forgotten items that you "need", but far enough (and $3 in tolls each way) that it's cheaper to either do without or just buy locally (at the "inflated for tourists" prices). We thought about doing Thanksgiving dinner there, but in the end, decided that:

A) It's our first year in our new home. We'd like to have it here.
B) It would be a pain to have to make sure we had everything there--proper pans, spices, etc, as well as the main courses.

Next year, if she gives us the place again, we might, although that will be the teen's last year with us before he takes off for the Army and basic training. At any rate, what we had to suffer through:

The dining room, which looks toward the living room and the screened-in porch.

The jacuzzi in the master bedroom. 

The king-sized bed in the master bedroom. 

The 12 year-old in the spare bedroom (two full-sized beds). 

We fed bagels to ducks. 

There were fountains.

There was a pool, but I never got to it. I made dinner one night while hubby brought the pre-teen down and another day, the teen brought his brother so I could try to get some work done. So there you have it--our "problem". No weeping for me, now (even if I AM behind by over 5K words with no hope of a catch-up any time soon). :P

The Triple W Check In

Just a quick check-in today, as I have spent most of the day preparing for Thanksgiving, cleaning our stuff out of the vacation condo, and cleaning the house, as well as trying to get caught up on NaNo word count.

First off, words:

I'm behind in NaNo, thanks to all the usual busyness of the season, plus a client who likes to give us her timeshare for a week at this time of year (yes, I know, woe is me). Unfortunately, it's only 20 minutes from our home, which really doesn't make for a vacation. All the back and forth movement between the timeshare condo and our house as we try to keep up on work before the holiday has left me even further behind in everything. Didn't think that was possible, to be honest...

At any rate, current word count is 32,534; today's par for NaNo is 35K. Now, I did write nearly 4K words yesterday to try to catch up--that's how I got to the current word count. 

Last night, hubby and I went out to dinner to celebrate not only his birthday, but our 19th wedding anniversary; tonight, we are going out for the annual "Thanksgiving" dinner with a group of car enthusiasts that we are friends with. Tomorrow, I'll be making the Thanksgiving dinner, but we don't eat until after 4, so I'm hoping I will have time then and/or Friday. Saturday, I may be working and/or conducting a yard sale at a flea market. Sunday, I have to make sure the kids are ready to go back to school (homework completed, bags packed, have clean clothes). Those days will be out for catch-up word counts; in fact, I'll be lucky to make the 1667. 

On a positive note, the story is coalescing into something more than it was, the characters making themselves known, and something that is resembling an outline is forming in the fog of my brain. LOL

Weight:

Let's not discuss this, shall we? Suffice to say, the pounds that I lost in Connecticut have found their way back to me in Florida. Guess I should've hidden better.

Weather:

The days have been hovering in the 70s, a bit warmer than I'd like, but the nights are going down into the 50s. Not cold enough to have to wear sweaters and boots, but chilly enough that I can. When I can, I do. I love sweaters and boots. 

See you all at next week's check-in. Have a great week!

Mysterious Monday: Thanksgiving Traditions

This is not the usual sort of article I’ll be putting in my blogs for Mysterious Monday, but I wanted to give a nod to one of my favorite national holidays.

I grew up in the New England area of the United States. New England was near to bursting with the traditions of the holiday that had started on its grounds. We would decorate with sheaves of dead corn stalks and cornucopia and Indian corn and gourds of various sizes and colors, along with, of course, the many decorations I had made in school.

We would spend days getting ready for the “feast”, whether it was held at our house or the home of a relative. At our house, my dad was the cook. He would get up while it was still dark outside and prep the turkey—pulling out the giblets and setting them aside for the base to his homemade gravy, stuffing the inside with the bread stuffing he had made up the day before, and rubbing the skin with oil and herbs until it shone like the hide of a horse in a show. He would place the turkey in the big roasting pan, which was only used for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and place it carefully in the oven.

When I was old enough, I helped him in this mysterious task of prepping the festive dinner. Once we had the turkey in the oven, it was time to peel the potatoes, make the dough for the rolls, and start chopping the squash.

Once everything was prepared, and the dishes we had used to that point were washed and put away, it was time to set the table with the good china. Dad would take it down and place it on the table for me and I would carefully separate it—one plate in the center of each setting, a dinner napkin folded into a triangle placed to the left of the plate, the dinner and dessert forks laying on top of the napkin, knife and spoon on the right, an etched glass on the right above the plate. I loved setting the table that everyone would be eating at; somehow, for this holiday, it seemed different from all the other days that I had to set it.

With dinner cooking and the table set, I was allowed to go outside to play. Outside, in those early days in New Hampshire, the wind would howl and sometimes snow would fall, dancing merrily on the wind currents. I would bundle up in my longjohns, jeans, boots, a button-up cowboy shirt under a sweater, and a jacket, mittens, scarf and cap; then, it was outside to run and jump in the leaves or taste the snow as it fell to earth.

After an hour or so, I would come back inside, having had my little adventures, and Mom would have hot cocoa ready for me. The almost painful feeling of that heat enveloping me as I came in the door is still one of my favorite memories of cold weather. I would remove all of my outdoor clothes and slip on a pair of fuzzy slippers (I still love fuzzy pink or purple slippers to this day), then sit at the table while I slowly thawed out, the warmth of the cocoa on my insides and the drowsy, yummy heat of the kitchen on my outsides meeting somewhere in the middle to meld into a very contented little girl.

The smells of cinnamon from Mom’s pumpkin and squash pies would combine with the scents of cooking vegetables and—when Dad opened the oven to baste the turkey—the mouth-watering scent of a roasting bird and baking bread, to drive my poor stomach nearly insane with wanting to eat.  Soon—but not soon enough—Dad would take the turkey from the oven and place it on the carving board. Mom and I would wait for those first few cuts and “sneak” some of the meat, still hot on the bird; for his part, Dad would turn his back on the “thief” and pretend to be shocked to find a piece of meat missing. Mom always said the best turkey was the bits we snuck while my dad’s back was turned.

After dinner, we would rest our poor bellies for a bit, then put away the food. We washed the dishes as a team, singing as we worked to make the chore seem lighter. If the weather was not too horrible, we would take a walk after that, to “make room” for the pies, which were still to come. Pie with whipped cream, and coffee or tea, rounded off the meal of the day and we would all wind up in various states of tryptophan-induced drowsiness while the football game played in the background on the TV.

I miss those wonderful days—the ones spent with just my parents and the later ones, when we would have Thanksgiving with my grandparents and my aunts, uncles and cousins in Connecticut. Every year, I hope and pray that our Thanksgiving in Florida will be a chilly one to recapture some of that flavor of the old days up north. It’s not quite Thanksgiving day, but it is currently 59ºF and my youngest son has just presented me with a “hand turkey” drawing that he made last night when he couldn’t sleep. The mystery of holiday traditions continues. 

Devil or Angel?

So last August, my parents got a new kitten, after their old cat passed away a month or two before. We all thought it was a lovely idea. My mother, who has Alzheimer's and is a virtual shut in (not "virtual" as in she's on the computer all day, virtual as in, the only time she gets out of the house is when my dad makes her get out & go with him someplace), loved the new cat. Until she came to the (literally) painful conclusion that kittens are very different creatures from cats. 

The as-of-then-unnamed kitten would claw and scratch and bite her; the kitten was just being playful, but my mother, with her disease, was even more traumatized by the attacks than a healthy person would be. She wanted to keep the kitten, though, because sometimes, the kitten was such a doll. In fact, my son named her "Kisses" because she also has this habit of kissing the person whose arms she is in.

I just came back from a visit to my parents' house and the kitten has grown into a small cat. Now, she looks like this:

Sure, she still looks all sweet and innocent, but when she's closed in her room at night, she sleeps until around 3:00 a.m.--as in 0300, as in one hour after the bars close, two and a half hours before my usual rising time. When she wakes, she proceeds to yowl as though her little kitty heart were breaking. I was tempted to reach down her throat and remove it after day three, just to see if it was indeed broken. Tempted. She is still fine, PETA. She also claws, scratches, and pulls at the door to the bedroom, shaking the door on its frame and making a general racket. If you let her out at this point, she proceeds to run about the house, breaking things.

My parents are old. They have neither time nor patience for what is, in reality, a child who needs not only love, but discipline. They have all the love in the world to give, but Kisses is out of control and they do not have the skills at this point in their lives, especially with Mom's disease and me living 1200 miles away with my own growing family, to take proper care of her. 

My father now has an ad up at his job and he is hoping to find Kisses a new home before the end of the year. At that point, they might--stress the might--go to a shelter and rescue an older, more settled cat; one who can be the companion my mom is looking for, but not the Hellion that a young cat naturally is. As I was looking at the pictures of Kisses this morning, preparing to write this blog, a song by my mom's favorite singer kept running through my head. With that in mind, here's some of the lyrics, feel free to find it on YouTube or somewhere--Elvis Presley's "Devil in Disguise". It suits our little Kisses, that's certain.

"You look like an angel
Walk like an angel
Talk like an angel
But I got wise
You're the devil in disguise"

(And yes, I do know the title of the blog is the title of another song from that era by Bobby Vee. Pardon me while I pull up my support bra and put my teeth in.)