I’m Still Here, I Promise

I know it’s been like a month since I’ve posted. Time has gotten away from me, been super busy with preparing for the arrival of our first little one. June 16th is coming up quickly–although I’ll technically be full term (or 37 weeks) May 26th. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind him coming then–or even a little earlier. I’m ready to meet my little one and get my body back 😛

Anyway, how’s life with everyone? I’m trying to catch up on blogs but it’s been difficult 🙂

Baby Shower!

It’s been some time since I posted and this is non-writing related. But I wanted to post some pics from the wonderful baby shower my sister, mom and aunt threw for me this past weekend.

Some of the yummy cupcakes sis and Mom made

Homemade puzzles for the little one. Mom and Mom-in-Law drew these

Aunt gave me TONS of books for the little one. Yay for reading!

It was tons of fun and the games were a blast! I have two more showers still, both the same weekend (in three weeks) so it’s going to be a busy, busy time for me organizing all the baby stuff and writing out thank you cards. I will try to keep updating every so often and still keep up on reading and commenting on other blogs. That’s pretty much it. Hoping everyone is doing well!

Merry Christmas! And Other Things

First off, wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! I’m heading up to my parents’ house for the holiday, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to write while there. Of course, I haven’t been writing much on here lately…apologies for that. I don’t have much going on in my life right now that’s blog worthy.

I do hope to get back to at least a semi-normal blog pattern come 2011. I need to pick up my writing again too–that’s kind of fallen away for the time being but I do hope to get back up and start again. If I don’t this book will always remain unfinished…plus like everyone (family, friends and co-workers) keep asking me when it’s going to be done, so I can’t keep coming up with excuses forever!

EDIT: Just found this wonderful contest over at the The Ruby Slippered Sisterhood blog.  They’re having a Winter Writing Festival, which will sort of be like a mini-NaNo, only YOU set the goal. You get a point each day if you reached your goal, whatever that is. It’s starts on January 10th and they’re going to setup a sister site for participants to share and talk about their writing goals. This is what I needed. 🙂

Anyway I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and I hope to be back again blogging come 2011. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Time

I can’t believe how quickly the days are going by! I didn’t even realize it’s been so long since I’ve updated…

Sad to say, I did not finish NaNo. I got about 10K written: 4K on my first attempt/project and then another 6K on the same book I’ve been working on for what seems like forever. On that topic, I can’t help but admit there are times I just don’t want to continue with that story. It doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere. But I know everyone would protest and yell at me if I “trunked” it so I won’t. Yet 😛

Anyway, I really have nothing else to say. I don’t want to elaborate too much on baby happenings just because I don’t want this to turn into a “mommy blog” 🙂 I’ll mention the important things–like the fact baby’s doing good as of last week’s appointment. The nausea is still there but not as strong. That’s pretty much it. 🙂 I hope everyone else is doing well too! I’ve gotta play catch-up on everyone’s blog…

Life is Made of Awesome

September’s here, the weather’s getting cooler and my favorite season is rapidly approaching: Awesome.

Got my Avon order in today and it’s like Christmas everytime a package comes, especially when there’s fun nail polish colors.  🙂

Vacation to Disney World is rapidly approaching, anxious to have a break from work and just relax. Also, really looking forward to acting like a kid again and forgetting adult responsibilities for a week. How great is that?

New shows are coming on TV soon. I don’t watch much but it’s nice to have something to look forward to on certain evenings, instead of trying to fill my time watching old episodes of King of the Hill (which is still epically funny, no matter how many times I watch it).

Life is good. 🙂

Another Post of Non-Interestingness

Yes, I made that last word up.  Adding “-ness” onto a lot of words makes life much more fun. 🙂

Besides that, I really have nothing else to say. I just thought I should post since it’s been over a week since the last one and I didn’t want you, my faithful readers (if there are any left…) to think I fell off the face of the earth. Although I’ve certainly felt like I have on some days.

I’ve been so busy writing articles as well as being so flippin tired from work every day that I just want to come home and avoid spending more than ten minutes looking at a computer screen. So instead, I plop on the couch and watch movies from my instant Netflix queue, via the Wii. (I’ve watched some pretty awesome BBC mini-series the last week; I believe they are my weakness).

I did manage to get a chapter edited but only because I’m getting critiqued tomorrow. See, it takes knowing that it’s due somewhere before I actually write the silly thing.

And that, folks, pretty much sums up my super awesome and exciting life as of late.

Lack of Posts Explained

Sorry about the lack of posts. I really haven’t had much to write about and I’ve been doing pretty poorly with my miniNano goal. It’s like the desire to write has temporarily disappeared. I say temporarily because I know it will come back (as I’m searching for it now :P). It’s not writer’s block, but more like writer-is-going-through-a-period-of-self-doubt syndrome. It must be something weird I’m going through as I’ve even lost some of my appetite. I will be fine but I had to take a bit of a step back. Hard to explain, although I’m sure most of you who are writers understand.

What Makes You Weird?

I was listening to Air1 (my favorite radio station) and every Thursday they have a segment where people call in and say what makes them “crazy” or weird. You know, those little things that most people would raise an eyebrow at.

I have more than a few quirks. Here are some of them:

1. I love walking through old cemeteries. Maybe it has to do with my passion for history and genealogy, but I can’t stop thinking about the people buried beneath those old, worn markers and wonder what their lives were like. Perhaps that’s also the connection to my storytelling side too, always thinking about the lives these now unknown people led. They’re someone’s ancestors too…they started down a path that determined the lives of their descendants. So yeah…whenever I see an old family cemetery in the middle of a field somewhere I have to fight the urge to pull over and go and look at the graves.
2. I talk to myself. A lot. Especially in the car. I have full conversations, mostly about what’s happening in my stories and such. This is something I’ve done ALL my life. My parents said I would often go and talk to myself in my room. Not an imaginary friend, just myself. 😛
3. I wear a robe and slippers everytime I’m in the house. It doesn’t matter if I have on a turtleneck and jeans already. Even in the summertime, when it’s warm out, I have to wear them. I’m constantly cold (as my ice cold hands now are evidence of that) and I can’t function without the robe and slippers or at least a fleece blanket.
4. Despite the fact I’m constantly cold, I will eat ice cream year round. That may not be too surprising, but you’d think if I was always cold, and in the dead of winter I wouldn’t want to eat it. But that’s not the case 😛
5. I am pretty sure if there was an award for being scatterbrained, I’d win it. I misplace everything. I don’t try to do it; it just…happens. My key chain even says it better: “I finally got it all together but I forgot where I put it.”

I probably have a few more I just have to think about it for a little while. Do you have any strange quirks or habits?

Christmas, A Wedding and Getting Sick

This post is really just an incoherent mess, but much of the last week was really busy and I’m still trying to get my thoughts straight.

Christmas Eve and Christmas were nice–my parents-in-law and my husband surprised me with a mini laptop.

This one, in beautiful ruby red, to be specific:

I now know why hubby asked the question weeks ago: “Which color do you like: red, black, white or blue?”

The sweetest part of this was he spent hours cleaning off the software it came with and installing Windows, as well as spending a great deal of time meticulously searching for backgrounds that would be nice on the computer 🙂 AND he sacrificed his Christmas present from his parents in order to get this for me.

Because of that sacrifice his parents in turn surprised him with an amazing office chair. The look on his face when they pushed that box out of the back room and said it was for him was priceless.

Anyway, Christmas came and went with his extended family (I get to see my parents and sister this Saturday, hopefully) and then we prepared for my 19-year-old sis-in-law’s wedding on Sunday. It went well, especially considering it was planned in six weeks! It was a nice time and hopefully she and hubby had fun on their mini-honeymoon.

Unfortunately, from about 4 am Sunday night until, well…now, I’ve been sick and recovering from a nasty stomach bug. I paid homage to the Porcelain King running to the “throne” room emptying the contents of my stomach every ten minutes for about 3 hours. Ah, yes Monday morning was pleasant. It’s been two years since the last time I threw up and I’m one of those who will fight it with every last breath because of how violently it affects me. I was unable to fight it this time 😦 A number of our family members caught it too–both my parents-in-law, one of Phil’s uncles, his cousin and his aunt. Someone at the wedding probably had it (thinking his one cousin) and passed it from there.

Anyway, Phil stayed home from work to take care of me (what a great hubby! :)) and I tossed and turned on the couch all day with a steadily rising fever–I think it hit around 103 near 10 that evening–the highest fever I’ve had probably in the last ten years. Yesterday I spent recooperating and trying to eat, although I only managed to eat a few handfuls of dry Cheerios and some applesauce. I had a small bowl of cereal this morning, which still isn’t settling the greatest, but meh, at least I’m able to keep it down.

This is why I loathe getting sick like this–it takes me forever to recover and be able to eat normally again. Oh well; at least I only ever get sick like this every 2-4 years or more.

However, it’s definitely looking like I won’t hit my goal on Jan. 1st. Stupid illness. But I am trying to play catch up today as much as I can.

It’s Official: I’m a Slacker

Yeah, this is what I've felt like lately.

I don’t know if it’s the burnout from NaNo in November, the cold weather and the fact that sunlight disappears around 5 in the afternoon, the stress of the Christmas season or a combination of all of the above. But I’ve got little desire to do anything.

All I want to do is be lazy and sit around. I don’t want to go Christmas shopping–in fact, I’m dreading it with every fiber of my being–I don’t want to cook or do any chores (which explains the unfolded laundry…for a week), and as much as I want to write, every time I open up Word, I get no farther than a paragraph before I’m tired of it.

I know I need to work past my slacker nature, which I’ve determined is a major personality flaw of mine. But it’s so hard…

How do you break yourself of any sort of slacker tendencies? Do you struggle with it as much as I do?

(Don’t forget to enter my contest. So far, I’ve only gotten three comments as of this post. If I don’t receive any more on the previous entry, I’ll just assume people aren’t interested…and I surely hope that’s not the case! )