Thanksgiving Week Was A Bust

NOVEMBER 18^TH – SUNDAY

I managed to plow through another 300+ words in the break room at work tonight! Yes, it’s not terribly impressive to write 300 words in 15 minutes, but it’s something, and it’s faster than I have been writing lately. Actually, the characters sort of took over this time and I went in to an all-out word sprint! I actually was almost late getting back from break because of it. Maybe it was the basil pesto hummus I was eating. :-D

Anyway, I discovered two things about my characters. The first being that Connor has one heck of an anger problem. I’ll have to wrangle that in during the re-write. I mean, he’s allowed to have issues given his background, but I didn’t expect him to go off on the Guildmaster like he did – and he went off on poor Natalie too. Poor girl. Speaking of Natalie, I also discovered that I totally forgot a key component I wanted for her personality. Therefore, she’d probably react way different than she has been. Gah…. Whoops.

NOVEMBER 19^TH – MONDAY

I managed to finish off chapter 5! Actually, after last night’s word sprint I only needed another 100 words or so. Well, with all the Thanksgiving chaos of this week it’s good to know that my secondary goal of posting a new chapter every week is still going strong. I just wish I could keep up the weekly update momentum when I switch back over to my Hey Arnold story. It’s doubtful though since the Hey Arnold chapters are about 3x the size of the ones for this NaNo story. However, perhaps I can finally get in to that monthly update rhythm I always wanted to accomplish with this story.

Anyway, back to NaNo.

I chewed through another thousand-some words in the break room first thing this morning. I brought Hubby in to work an hour before my shift started, so I just stuck around and typed. Not only did I finish the most recent chapter – as I just stated – but I got a nice chunk of today’s writing done. Sadly, I still ended up about 500 words shy for the day. Just add them to the pile I guess.

See, I had people talking to me in the break room when I was on my actual break during my shift, so I didn’t get any writing done then. When I came home I discovered that Cyhyr and her boyfriend were finally visiting again! We haven’t seen them in like a month! So I hung out with them for a little while, Cyhyr Tumblred with me. Then, celestialTyrant showed up. We were supposed to all go out to eat, but since CT and Cyhyr’s boyfriend haven’t seen each other in ages they decided to play a game or two of Magic.

By the time all that chaos ended, Cyhyr and her boyfriend left to get food and head home, and CT was finally ready for us to eat it was past 9pm! I NEVER eat dinner that late! Plus, I had been hungry for over five hours, but kept avoiding eating anything because we were supposed to go out “any minute now”.

So CT insists we all pile in to his car as we say “screw it” to our original plans of hitting up the Chinese buffet and just go to Taco Bell. Then CT gets a flat. For the second time in about as many months he has a problem with one of his tires going flat due to a faulty valve stem. Plus the lugnuts are on too tight for anyone to loosen them enough for CT to put his donut on. Which means, in the cold, perhaps a 1/4mile from my house – which isn’t so bad except it’s a long steep hill leading back home – we now have to walk back to my house so we can drive to a local store, and buy an air compressor so CT can fill his tire enough to get him to an auto shop to get his tire fixed. We walked the few yards to the McDonald’s – because we were just too hungry at that point – bought our food, and then I noticed that I was going to be late getting back to watch Castle. This is the one show I NEVER miss a new airing! So instead of eating in the McDonald’s to warm up, we practically sprint back to the house so I can eat and watch my show.

Good thing CT was going to be crashing at our place until Wednesday anyway.

NOVEMBER 20^TH – TUESDAY

While Hubby and I were at work CT hit up my in-laws to help him get his car mended. So now he’s all set. He also knew how stressed I’ve been about how disastrous our house is, so he offered to help clean. I’m still incredibly embarrassed that anyone even HAD to offer, let alone actually following through with it. However, I’m super grateful for his help and the fact that he’d volunteer in the first place.

He did simple things while we were gone, like cleaning up all of the Magic cards still all over the table from the night before. Then, when I got home at about 1:00 I started to wash the massive pile of dishes – I’m not joking when I say almost every dish we own was in the sink – while I instructed CT on what other elements of the house needed to be organized.

We did end up hitting up that Chinese buffet after picking Hubby up from work at 5, but the rest of the day was cleaning some more. The only writing I accomplished was a little shy of 200 words during my break.

NOVEMBER 21^ST – WEDNESDAY

More massive cleaning and work. My hands are disasters from being in water all the time, so CT offered to finish off the last of the dishes while I finished organizing the stuff that he would have no clue where to put away – even I didn’t know where to put it.

We got the house actually looking presentable by the time the in-laws made it to the house. Go us! We had an…. interesting…. dinner. All-in-all it was a fantastic day. Not one for writing though.

NOVEMBER 22^ND – THURSDAY

Thanksgiving!

I went to work while Hubby and his mother cleaned up after last night’s dinner. Then Hubby did the packing. I got home, showered, ate, and then we sprinted out the door. Made it to my mom’s at about 8pm. We ate the left overs of the Thanksgiving dinner Mom and Sis made. We watched some TV as we bonded. And then we crashed.

Worse part is that I completely forgot to grab my laptop when I went in to work. I was going to just use some paper I left in the break room, but of course I also forgot my pen! *sigh* So much for writing even at work.

NOVEMBER 23^RD – FRIDAY

As predicted, I spent the entire day with my husband, mom, and sister. We hit up Walmart – not for Black Friday shopping, we just needed lights – and then we decorated the house. We cooked more food to add to yesterday’s leftovers and had a “proper” Thanksgiving dinner while watching a movie. I attempted to write, but every time I got distracted.

NOVEMBER 24^TH – SATURDAY

Couldn’t sleep too well. My old bed was too small for both of us. So at about 6:30 I gave up and just went in to the living room to write. I wanted to quickly catch up on these blog updates since I haven’t even taken the time to do that over the past few days. I then discovered that the word document that I use to periodically update throughout the week ended up virtually blank! Nothing I’ve written since Sunday was in the document! Sooooo my early morning writing turned in to re-writing everything you read up to this point. Awesome.
So instead of my morning being spent on NaNo it was spent on this blog update... whoops.
The rest of the day was spent at the family gathering, and so there was no writing done yet again.

NOVEMBER 25^TH – SUNDAY
Because of the mini-vacation we didn't need to wake up at 1am to drop Hubby off at work! Whoot! So I got to sleep, and pseudo sleep in. The whole family once again hung out while I finished up this post and updated my NaNo story. Plus now my sister is following us up and spending three days with us at our place before she starts up her 7-days-a-week job leading up to Christmas. So it's perfectly clear that I'm not getting much farther in my story, but it was a valiant effort I guess. Sure, the story won't even be getting started really, but perhaps I'll have one last chapter update next week.