I have that song in my head by Enya – don’t know why.  That reminds me, I need to charge my mp3 player for my trip tomorrow.  My son is also charging his AND he is bringing his laptop so that will be good.  I doubt he’ll get a wireless signal out in the country of my sister’s house but he can get one probably most of the way there.

Bennie has been driving me nuts.  I let him inside and he whines to go out – put him out and he stands at the door whining to come in…I obviously am not understanding what it is he wants.  I think he likes the idea of outside until he goes out and finds it is wet, then he wants to come back in.  I don’t want to walk them – the worms will be out again.

I’m trying to load things up for tomorrow.  It is 35 outside so I could even put the pies out in the car and they’d stay cold enough but I won’t.  I’m putting a big note on the door so I won’t walk off and forget them.  I’m suppose to take the tv and dvd player down so the boys have something to watch while the adults visit – I forgot how heavy that damn tv was.  Man I love my flat screen – even if it is smaller than my son’s.  It sure is sharp and beautiful.

Was planning on starting Christmas cards yet tonight – plus I need to finish rearranging furniture but will not mess with that since it is so late – don’t want to wake my neighbors.  Besides, I really think my patience is all used up for tonight and moving furniture is usually something that tests it when it is fully charged.  I almost always hurt my toes even though I’m wearing shoes.  Should have gased the car today – didn’t even thing about it.

When did banks stop providing envelopes at their night drop and outside ATM? That was very annoying.  I had something to deposit and had no envelope – I finally wrote my account number on the check and dumped it in the night drop – irritates me.

Have to be up by 8:30am to be on the road around 9:30 to make it to my sisters by Noon.  Will have to pick up my son and we will have to stop to get coffee somewhere and gas…preferrably at the same place to save stops.  Think I might walk the dogs and go to bed…all the rest of this stuff is going to be here waiting for me when I get home tomorrow evening.  Man, I’m exhausted.

On a cool note, my train does go around the tree, disappearing behind the presents to re-emerge on the other side.  It plays Christmas music if I want it to – I love it but I must say, it wrecks a lot! I imagine because of the carpet.  I love having a full size tree again too – it is lovely.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, world.  May each day be full of love and health!

Oh yeah, I’m actually looking better on my NaNo – think I’m about even with what I should have for today. 

My sister informed me that I’ve been home all day and haven’t written a new post so here it goes:

I have been rearranging furniture to make room for the Christmas tree, presents, and train on the floor in front of the window.  It has not been easy and my lower back is really hurting.  I am going to shower and run into town because I have to go to Target and who knows, maybe my son and I will go get soup but then again, we are spending all day together tomorrow so he might not want to.  Doesn’t matter to me cuz I’m going to get the gate I need at Target to keep the dogs away from the tree and then come home to put it up tonight.  I’m anxious and this weather makes it seem like a good time.

I still have more furniture to move but am ready for a break from that.  The dogs are in the kennel but not happy about it however, with everything I had to move, things that weren’t dog friendly had to be put down on the floor.  Last thing I need is for Bennie to chew up my new tennis shoes or one of the presents…I just can’t trust him.

Am going to drive down to my sister’s house tomorrow for Thanksgiving.  We are excited about going down there – she is a great cook.  We will visit awhile then head home about 3pm to try to get back before it gets too dark.  Headlights bother my eyes so I’d probably end up with a migraine if I had to travel a long distance with lights glaring in my face.

Last week the weather was really great on my days off – took the dogs to the dog park twice.  Looks like that might have been the last hurrah for the year – bummer. 

Received a short note from my friend in Florida – she is doing pretty good and hopes to be back to work in February.  She is undergoing chemo for liver cancer.  She said the chemo wipes her out for days.  Hope she gets better soon so we can go on a singles cruise to pick up some guys…what happens on a cruise ship, stays on a cruise ship. 

Well, I need to get moving to get some stuff done.  Sorry sis, most of this I already wrote to you in an email so I’m sure you won’t be too thrilled to read my post but don’t have much else to say.  I am about 4,000 words behind on Nano…plan on being up later typing on it.  It is going to be some feat though if I make it to 50,000 by the deadline. 

Have I ever mentioned that I do not like worms? I hate them.  They are slimy, slithery things that make me want to gag.  I prefer snakes to worms any day of the week – snakes may slither but they generally aren’t slimy.   

Nothing ruins my walks with the dogs like worms.  I can’t relax and enjoy the walk at all which makes me more aggravated with the dogs who, obviously, don’t deserve it.  It isn’t their fault our path is littered with slobbery gross squirmy things that make me want to vomit.  I get back and I’m afraid to take off my boots for fear I will find something plastered to the bottom that I have no desire to see – I’d rather have dog shit on my boot then dead worms.  Seriously.

I don’t know when this acute aversion to worms began.  When I was a child, I would go fishing with my grandpa (yes, I was a tomboy) and never flinched at winding one of those gross things on my hook – or doing my sisters hooks either when they thought it was yucky.

Several times my brother-in-law’s dad would put a stake in the ground and electrify it which served to bring the creepy crawlies squirming out of the ground.  He would give me a jar or can and I’d scoop the worms up for him without worrying about gloves.  I dissected a worm in biology class and barely gagged at all.

But now if I see the things I want to run back inside and forget walking the dogs.  Who cares if they potty on the floor? Isn’t that preferrable to walking out among the worms.  You are wondering, no doubt, what brings the worms out on some nights and not others – or perhaps you know already because you use to fish – it is the rain.  Any time it starts to rain the worms come sprinting out of the grass to seek higher ground which, as it so happens, is usually the sidewalk.  I try to step around their slimy bodies but it is hard when there is a cluster. 

On the dark, unlit sidewalks it is hard to tell the difference between a worm and a twig so I have to avoid both which is quite the challenge.  I won’t wear my good tennis shoes outside in the rain because of the worms.  I have been out walking on a cloudy day and had it start raining – those slimy little bastards would spring out like a plethora of canned crazy string into my path, daring me to find a way around them…insidious little bastards.

I am fortunate to have a friend who can always make me laugh.  We can get together and in minutes be laughing so hard people think we are a little kooky.  We can laugh at very simple things and can change a blue day to a sunny one in a blink of an eye.  Even if we are only chatting on Facebook, we can make each other giggle like school girls. 

There is an acquaintance though that has the exact opposite effect.  She walks in the room and all the joy dries up quicker than the intake of a breath.  Everyone grows quiet, no one appears to be thrilled she has arrived and barely raises their heads to acknowledge that she is there.  She is a very negative person.

My first friend can be negative too.  We have “venting” days where we bitch about the less comical people in our lives but no matter how angry we are at the start of the venting, we are laughing by the end of it.  I have seen her angry enough to spit nails but then reins herself in and is fine again.  I don’t think anyone has seen me angry in a very long time.  It isn’t a pretty picture.

Well, I’ve spent hours typing and working on my story.  As of a few minutes ago, I am still almost 4,000 words behind BUT I am more confident I can catch up now.  The story is moving a little bit faster again but still has such a long way to go.  Part of me wishes it was done already because I’m sick of it.  I’ve never stayed this long with only one story since I wrote Siren’s Song over six years ago.  Usually I write on one until I’m bored and then go to another one – which is probably one reason I don’t have any finished or near to being finished.

The story is so very rough and unsophisticated – no way it could ever be ready to publish without major rewrites from beginning to end.  However, that wasn’t really my intention when I decided to do NaNo for the first time.  Of course it would have been great to have a story that just wrote itself like Siren’s Song did but the challenge I issued to myself was to actually get the words in and meet the deadline.  I have never had a deadline before or a set number of words – I must admit that the number of words makes me stressed but it isn’t a bad stress necessarily.  It is more feeling like I need to write and sometimes I just don’t feel like writing a damn thing. 

This contest has been good for me and hopefully will help my writing career…if I ever actually have a writing career.  I do think the writing part is looking better after this exercise but am still skeptical about the publishing part as a whole.  My first love is Siren’s Song – I suppose because it is the first full length novel I’ve ever completed.  People who have read it believe that it is publishable but I don’t know.  It would be mind-boggling to even try to figure out how to begin pursuing publishing.  I know that sounds lame but it is true.  I’ve been going through the writer’s market and the literary agent books – it is not easy to figure out what the jumping off point should be.

Where my writing is concerned, I’m too much like my mother I guess.  She never thought her writing was good enough to publish either though many of us disagreed.  I would love to have her story published – it would require a ghost writer who could follow her simple style so the reader wouldn’t see where Mom’s writing ended and the ghost writer’s began.  Not too many people want to be a ghost writer who doesn’t get any of the credit.  I would finish Mom’s book but I don’t think I could – it is a western and I honestly don’t have the interest in that genre to do hers justice.  Still, wish someone would as it would be awesome to see her name on a published book posthumously. 

Well, anyway, I need to go walk the dogs and then get to bed.  It is 12:30am and will be 1am before I can actually relax in bed so need to get moving.  Tomorrow is going to be a stressful day of training.  Training isn’t bad if the trainee and myself are alone in dispatch but tensions rise as more people get added to the mix.  Ugh.  My trainee is doing really well though so that is a big plus.

I have more like 7,000 words to get done – hope to get most of that done later today before another days worth gets added in.  I have 31,083 words so far so am firmly past the halfway mark.  Course, I’m way past the halfway mark on time too.  My goal is to be done on the 27th so I can relax the last three days of the month.  However, I’m off on the 30th so could do some then and get it submitted.  I want to have it submitted no later than noon on the 30th.  I did check this evening to make sure that the NaNo counter and my Word program both count the same so there wouldn’t be any surprises at the last minute.

There is no way the story will be over at 50,000 words.  I have finally accepted that matter.  One of my writing buddies is up in the 60,000 word mark – well past the 50,000 required words.  She advised she was nowhere near done either so I don’t feel bad that mine will end up being about 85,000 words by the time it is complete.

I didn’t want to rush into the story but now it is feeling like it is moving too slowly so I need ot pick up the pace some.  I haven’t even had the two main characters kiss yet…something one of my friends thinks is nuts.  I am working up toward a “first kiss” scene but won’t get it written tonight.  I just killed off the woman’s best friend so that should bring her and the main male character closer together.  LOL

I bit my lip earlier and it keeps bleeding.  It is swollen and hurts anytime I lick my lips.  I know, how could I bite my lip so hard? I don’t know – was out walking the dogs, Bennie jerked on the leash and I must have been chewing on my lower lip which is a bad habit I have.  Anyway, I bit down on it so hard that I dropped Bennie’s leash – luckily he is a good doggie and waited for me rather than taking off like Baxter would do. 

I had a delicious turkey dinner when I got home last night, curtsy of the landlords.  I have had a stomach ache since then though so wonder if it was something I ate.  Thought it would be over by now though it if was something I ate but guess not.  I ate when I got home tonight and my stomach began acting up again right away.  Arg – I refuse to get sick.

So here I worked to get up to today’s deadline words for NaNo and was really impressed with my word count…until the clock flipped over to the new day and the word count went up again.  Now I am way behind again – I was about 4,000 words behind so now I’m 5800 again.  It is still better than the 9,000 I was behind but I’d rather be ahead of the game instead of behind.

My story is a difficult one to write – I’ve never tried this genre before and it is harder than I thought it would be.  I almost changed stories shortly after I started to one I was more comfortable with but decided to pursue something difficult for the practice.  I’m afraid the story will pretty much be crap though when I am done – it isn’t near as good as I had hoped it would be.  Maybe I will challenge myself to this kind of thing every month – it has kept me writing semi-regularly, even when I haven’t felt like it.

I promised myself I’d be back in bed by 1am so I need to wrap this up and start writing again.  Who knows, maybe I can get another 1,000 words or so done before then. 

It is almost midnight – way past my bedtime.  I have to be up in 5.5 hours to go work a hellish 12 hour shift.  I don’t look forward to it at all.  Sunday I work another 12 with just my trainee – that will be very interesting.  I wonder if she works tomorrow too? We will have to have her step meeting tomorrow instead of Sunday since I found out my cohort is taking Sunday off.

I don’t know who will take my trainee on the days I’ve requested off – I know it is bad of me to take time off when I have a trainee but it is necessary.  Ugh.  I have such a headache.

Have been writing but am still almost 10,000 words behind.  I have felt like writing tonight but I have to go to bed now so I can’t keep going.  I’m going to take my laptop to work tomorrow just in case we get a quiet moment so I can write.  Plus I will get off at 7pm so maybe I’ll go get soup at Panera and work on my story there.

My younger sister invited my son and myself to her house for Thanksgiving as we didn’t have any major plans.  Plus she has a table for me so I want to pick it up.  I so can’t wait until my apartment is in order.  I really could use some nice art but oh well.  Still, her giving me that table and two chairs leaves me with just a dresser and headboard left to get.  I also want a library table but that will wait till Spring since I need the space right now for other things.  I’m going to get everything all situated right in time to move elsewhere.  Oh what joy.

That is why my coworker is taking off Sunday – they have someone subletting their apartment so they have to be out by Tuesday and they don’t have a new apartment yet so they are scrambling.  I’m sure they will find something by then.  How awful to have to rush so much to get moved though.  I hope I have at least a couple weeks when I decide to move.

Well, anyway, I need to go to bed.  Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Today I  took the dogs to the dog park.  It was a very nice day outside, the sun is shining and it is in the fifties.  Both dogs had a nice time and ran until they drop.

I have some errands to run today, want to get some Christmas ornaments and maybe stop for supper with my son before he goes to work.  I have to get home early so I can be in bed by 10pm as I have to work in the morning.  It is the last home football game so going to be very messy.

I’m debating taking my laptop in with me as I might get an opprotunity to write later but I’m not sure.  This speech recognition thing is getting very tough but I still like the idea of it so am not giving up yet. 

My jade plant sure is enjoying the sunshine.

Well, it is 2 am and I should be in bed.  I was watching Christmas movies earlier while putting together my train set – that was fun.  It took a bit to get the track all snapped together but once I did the whole thing worked like a charm.  Neither dog knew what to make of it.

Have a lot to get done tomorrow and next week.  I was going to write more but I am just too tired.