So Good At This Romance Thing

I had decided to abandon Kriv's grand epic about Cutter. At least, for now. It's been a very disorienting month, with me going to the other store once a week. That had me so turned around, and Hubby was exhausted as well, so we cancelled D&D this week, which helped ease the self-appointed pressure to have the epic written. Of course, this also means I in fact do NOT have anything new to share with you fine folks today. I also only have two completed project options for Writing Group tonight: my Christmas exchange story The Great Debate or my Plagg-centric story Forever in Darkness.

To be fair, though, I do still have a backlog of most of my Fruits Basket stories that I could also read if I wished.

Let's get more into my week, though. As I mentioned, going to the other store, while an easy enough drive and job, is quite disorienting. To counter the extended commute to work, I have to wake up about an hour earlier than normal. Last Wednesday, however, I ended up blanking on which store I needed to work at, and woke up about 15minutes before I was supposed to head out the door! I didn't have anyone's cell numbers either, so I couldn't warn them about my being late. It all worked out in the end, but still: disorienting. Then, yesterday, I completely blanked on what day of the week it was, and woke up an hour EARLY, expecting to drive out to the other store. Hubby groggily asked me why I was getting up so soon, and only then did I realize it was Monday, not Wednesday. Again: disorienting. Having that Friday, Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday stretch off last week also threw me, because then I only had this past Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at my normal store before having another day off. The work week felt so short.

Tomorrow is my last day at that other store, though. February's schedule is back to my normal Monday through Thursday routine, with the usual "work Saturdays, and alternate Fridays and Sundays" set-up. I can get back into Zumba too. Also, this Sunday is the Superbowl, so no more football on Sundays, which opens that up for the next seven months or so. It will be nice to be back in a normal and predictable routine. I hope it will help clear my head and straighten me out.

What helped a touch this past week was being able to just spend a day with Hubby. As I mentioned last week, we went to a double-movie date. It wasn't a theater-created event so much as "we drove all this way out here; might as well make a day of it" sort of thing. We had a lovely brunch at home, then headed out to the theater.

We finally got around to watching the final Star Wars movie The Rise of Skywalker. I'm not the biggest Star Wars fan, so I'm not ENTIRELY sure why it's getting such hate? I mean, there IS something in particular during the climax that I was bummed about, and kind of wished a certain fantheory was proven correct instead. Also, I wish Disney was brave enough to allow Poe and Finn to be a canon couple. I saw a Tumblr post commenting about a headcanon/AU where both Rey and Poe were dating Finn, but only had a sort of rivalry bromance between the two of them where they mostly tolerate the other for Finn's sake. Watching the movie as if that dynamic were canon made everything so much better! Either way, I did enjoy the movie, warts and all.

The next movie Hubby wanted to see was Jojo Rabbit, but that didn't start for a little over two hours after Star Wars ended. So we walked the mall and found a gaming store. We were lost in there for about an hour as one of the employees - or son of an employee, I was a bit lost as to his relation to the store - just chatted Hubby up about role play games, the different gaming nights the store hosted, and the board games the store sold. I kinda felt like we were cheating on our local gaming store simply by listening to this guy and wishing we lived closer to that mall so we could actually make it to some of the gaming nights. Maybe one day when we have off....

Next was dinner, and back to the movies for Jojo Rabbit. It was funny, it was sweet, and it was heartbreaking. My only real qualm was that I felt Jojo's story wasn't QUITE finished, mostly because we had no definitive answer as to where his father was: Jojo swore that his father was a great war hero that was coming home once WWII concluded, however some characters implied that his father was actually dead, and others stated he had gone AWOL from the war, and others still swore he had rebelled and was with the Allied Forces. Hubby was fine not knowing, because Jojo's main story had ended when the movie did. I wish we had a more precise bit of knowledge about the kid's father though. All-in-all, while I enjoyed Star Wars, I think I liked Jojo more. Both movies were stellar choices by Hubby.

Also, the theater we went to was one that had those new plush power reclining seats, so that was fun to relax in while pseudo-snuggling Hubby during the movies. It would be better if we could have moved the armrest from between us, but close enough, I guess.

Having a day with JUST me and Hubby, and being able to re-connect was great, didn't stop us from still being exhausted on Thursday, though. I also had stomach issues on Thursday, so it was probably for the best that we had cancelled D&D. Instead, I tried re-focusing on the Lukanette Secret Admirer Valentine's day exchange instead.

I won't go into details on the prompt I decided on because, on the off chance my recipient is reading this, I don't want to give away that I'm their Secret Admirer or what prompt I decided on. It required some researching though, to help inspire me. That's more-or-less what I did Thursday and Friday. Saturday was a busy day at work, and then Anime Night. I was a bit bummed in myself that, earlier in the week, I had purposefully picked out a red shirt and black pants to wear on Saturday in honor of Lunar New Year, and yet, on Saturday, I completely dropped the ball and wore a blue-striped shirt and gray pants instead. We also didn't re-watch any Fruits Basket or other Chinese zodiac-themed shows; we had too many other on-going shows that we watched. Still, it was an enjoyable Anime Night; as usual.

Sunday, during my day off, I was mindlessly trying to catch up on everything I had missed on Tumblr all week long. Once again, I waved the white flag before I was fully caught up, so those other posts are now forever lost to time. HOWEVER, before I did wave that white flag, there was one post in particular that managed to actually kick me OFF of Tumblr.

CaptainMalcolmReynolds - formerly ChubbyUnicornMama, aka LivreVer on Tumblr - had tagged me in one of those tag-games on Tumblr: you do an activity, and then tag others to do the same; yes, very much like a chain-letter of yore. The tag-game this go around was the Last Line game.

The "rule" of the game was "share the last line of your WIP, and then tag as many people as there are words in that line." I actually didn't have any WIPs, unless I went to my terribly non-linear draft of One and the Same. I had needed to actually start writing my Lukanette story. I had a few potential scenes, but I hadn't figured out the full plot yet. I kept putting it off until I had it figured out, but I was running out of time. Being tagged in that game was the push I needed. It reminded me to "just write; figure it out later." The story would figure itself out, and I could go back and edit, right?

Weeeeellllllllll......

I did write. Finally. I cranked out over 1500 words before stopping and posting my last line for the tag game. I'm kind of liking the world I'm building and the character development I'm forming. The only real hiccup? I was at like 1536 words, and Marinette had yet to show up in the story. My LUKANETTE story. My Luka AND MARINETTE relationship story.

I didn't actually NEED Marinette in a romance story involving her, right?

I went back to the story Sunday night to try to edit down my intro so it didn't seem so ridiculous... and failed miserably. Not only didn't I find much fat to cut, but I also continued the plot. I'm not up to 1955 words... and STILL no Marinette yet.

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She's getting there, I promise. The prompt just seemed more Luka-centric; it was arguably Luka's story. So Luka is the main character, and Marinette is the love interest. I have to build it up as Luka's story first, don't I?

I'm going to be another wreck, I think, when I finally publish this story. Writing gifts for people I don't know is so rough, man! I never know if it's something they'll enjoy. I hope they do. Hard to say, though, when two out of my last three writing gifts didn't get any sort of acknowledgement from the recipient. I still got love from others, though, so there's that.

I just need to figure out an actual plot for this thing. Maybe I'll read my start to this story tonight, and see if anyone has any hints on where to go with it?

I need to re-focus. We are now in the Year of the Rat; my Chinese zodiac year. As ChibiSunnie said: "Maybe being year of the rat means this will be your year and it'll give you extra positive vibes and energy to help you accomplish all of your goals!"

I hope so, Chibi, I hope so. Life has calmed down since my crazy December, but it's still, as I said repetitively above, very disorienting. I hope February brings me back to center. I need to really focus on getting this Secret Admirer story done this week. Next Thursday, February 6th, is the start of the LoveSquare Fluff Week, so my Secret Admirer story should be polished and ready to post before that starts.

Fluff Week will be like the Kyoru Week I participated in for Fruits Basket this past fall. The name of the game is to write a new LoveSquare fluffy story each day of the week - 6th through 13th - using the different daily prompts. I should probably attempt to brainstorm those as well. I MEANT to be brainstorming since I saw the event in December, but that didn't happen.

There SHOULD be a lot of writing going down the next few weeks. I probably won't have anything to share next Tuesday, because I have to wait until the 13th to publish my Secret Admirer exchange story, but I SHOULD have 5 of my LoveSquare shorts done by my post on the 11th. So, there's that to look forward to.

My "trial month" is nearly done. Time to really hunker down and get serious about my writing again.

Until next week, my friends.

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