Oh Happiness! Holidays Coming!

I love Thanksgiving. I love Christmas. In fact, I pretty much love the entire stretch between the 29th of October and the 2nd of January.

I used to be a purist. Before Halloween (but not before Labor Day) you are supposed to have ghosts, graveyards in front yards, and the turmoil of figuring out what you are going to dress up as. Me, I don't do ugly. On purpose at least. I think Halloween is about celebrating a part of you that you don't usually let the rest of the world see. Or just have a little fun. So I've been a belly-dancer, a mime (big mistake, I did that for a party once), a medieval princess, a pirate, an earthquake survivor (my one foray into the ugly)and a cat to name a few. When I became a mom I expanded to family themes which included a pumpkin patch and a Host of Angels.

After Halloween you are allowed to start decorating for Thanksgiving. Everything becomes golds and oranges and browns with Indian corn and pictures of turkeys. I don't actually like turkey but I love ham so every year I make it for Thanksgiving dinner with the extended family. Nitrate free so it tastes good. It is now known as the "ham that Dad F" likes. One year we hit on the fact that I make a "sloppy spinach" - canned spinach with an ungodly amount of butter in it - that the kids like too. So every year I wait for my cooking orders and then I figure out the logistics. And every year I pretty much know I'm buying a ham and canned spinach and then working what little cooking magic I have in my fingers.

This year my brother and sister-in-law are hosting. They happen to own my parents old house, a big rambling brick split level that the father of an ex-boyfriend of mine used to refer to as a "the mansion." So it will fit us all very nicely and my sister-in-law, whom I often refer to as a sister of my heart, is a magnificent hostess. Oh, and I bet there will be WINE!!!

But the day after Thanksgiving, THAT is the day I wait for starting sometime in March or April. THAT is the day the decorations come out and get put up. THAT is the day I begin my Christmas shopping, often with my one sister online at the same time and our fingers sing-songing back and forth between the websites we are surfing and the chat session we have open between us.

I will stop at absolutely nothing to make my home look and smell like Christmas. I will have Christmas cards bought and ready to be addressed - even though I'm likely never to finish getting them sent.

I know that one of the gifts my family (extended) has given me is that we never celebrate Christmas all together on the 25th of December. Instead we pick a different day and we end up have TWO Christmases. My step-children, when they discovered this, thought they'd died and gone to heaven. So already they are asking "When is the F Christmas this year?" and I will have an answer for them on Thanksgiving day. I will also know which sibling I will be buying for this year because, oh glory how lucky am I, the family is just too BIG to buy for everyone.

Do you know how wonderful it is to be part of a family that is so big? It is amazing!!! It is a gift!!! Because not only are we a big family, we are only a little bit dysfunctional all things considered. But no one is in jail and no one is dead and that means everything else is just peanut butter.

So I am itching to start my Christmas shopping now. But I will wait. Oh, and here is where I need to give a shoutout to my sisters:

ISO and LilSis: I need Christmas shopping ideas for my niece and nephews. You know where to find me. Oh, and LilSis...I need a shipping address. :)

And finally, we got our very first snowflakes today. YAY!!!!

I'm dreaming of a White Christmas.

NL

Work and NaNoWriMo

I brought work home with me this weekend.

It was two little presentations and usually I like the creative process of presentations. But, apparently, not on weekends.

I'd sit down to work on my novelette and the Presentation Nag would sit on my shoulder whispering in my ear. So I'd pull up the presentations and work on them. Fiddle fiddle fiddle.

Oh, but the Presentation Nag's cousin the NaNoWriMo Nag would then hop up on the other shoulder and remind me that I was very naughty because I wasn't feeling well on Friday and so I didn't write and then I didn't get around to it yesterday because I had mom stuff to do.

So today I plopped on the couch and worked on the presentations. Then I sent one over to Chris because frankly, he needed to make up the hours and I didn't because I have plenty of sick leave to accommodate my recent sickliness on account of the fact that I hardly ever get sickly and use my sick leave.

So he worked on it a bit while I blathered on in my novelette. Then he sent it back to me and I worked more than I'd hoped to have to on finishing it.

Finally, I finished it good enough and went back to "If You Get Stuck, Write Porn" which is the title of my book which, as it turns out, Bink has read the first half of and apparently likes enough to print and have her mother read. Although she says there is not enough porn in it. I'm sure she'll appreciate tonight's chapter, which has to do with incontinence and kegels.

So as of this post I am at 30,057 words - which is about 3,000 words ahead of where I have to be and about 5,000 words behind where I want to be. And I am annoyed at the job that actually PAYS me because, get this, I'm not as far ahead as I want to be on this crazy novel thing I've decided to do for no money whatsoever.

Sigh.

I'll be up early tomorrow, writing. Oh, and I've stopped a week early the twice daily dosage of Prilosec the doc put me on to heal my bleeding stomach because I've just spent the last week walking around with what feels like a big stone in my stomach which I am convinced is undigested food and, of course, I watch entirely too much House and so I am sure it is probably creating the human equivalent of a huge hairball.

The great big "carrying a rock around in my stomach" feeling has gone away but not, apparently, my food aversions - and this is why I nearly ran screaming from the couch when Chris came into the living room with his tuna fish (which, according to my ex-husband is redundant) but of course I couldn't because I was being weighed down by my writing responsibilities and those two nags on my shoulders.

I enjoyed taking a quick break to answer some interview questions sent to me by my sister. So Sis, if you're reading this, thank you thank you thank you for the excuse to take a break. That was the best part of the evening. Except, of course, for writing the following in my novelette.

"This is why, when you’ve managed to hold a volume of urine that, if you were plumbed for it, would allow you to write War and Peace in the snow, you have no dignity left as you run mad for the hills to your bathroom yelling “Get the hell out of my way. I need to pee like a racehorse!”

By the way, if you’ve ever seen a racehorse pee it’s enough to put any man to shame in half a dozen ways. But horses cannot give foot massages so men are safe."

Oh, and Dad, if you are reading this...sorry for the image. But you deserve it for all the times you've talked about "parent sex."

NL

20,000 Words and Truckin'

And thus concludes the first day of the second week of NaNoWriMo.

This week started off beautifully. I was a little late to the starting gate, not getting my first word written until well into Saturday evening. Sunday wasn't much better but I still managed to start my work week with a about a 1,000 extra words in the bank.

Monday I set the alarm, got up and then wandered around on Facebook and Weight Watchers before knuckling under and producing a single written word. Whoops!

Tuesday, now much wiser, I got up and wandered to the couch where I whipped out a cool 2,000 words without even breaking a sweat. I'd hit on a formuala - I could talk about my travels!

Wednesday I put the laptop down with only 800 words written but still feeling okay about things. It had been an early morning with me needing to get my daughter off to school and so writing time was cut short for good reason. No sweat, I still had two more days and the WEEKEND! Goal, 25,000 words by COB Sunday night.

Two in the morning on Thursday morning I was hanging my head over the toilet vomiting up, wait for it, blood.

Shit.

This went on for 6 hours with me forcing everything out of my stomach every 15-20 minutes like clockwork. When it finally ended I was an exhausted wreck who wanted nothing more than to never ever see food again and to sleep for the next eight weeks.

Chris called the doctor. The doctor called me and ordered me to the emergency room.

Double shit.

Despite their attempts to admit me, I resisted with my newly intravenously provided willpower which had done much to rehyrdate me. I made promises and we went home.

Obviously there was no writing on Thursday.

Still exhausted on Friday my word count of 8,900 remained exactly where I'd left it on Wednesday. Things were not looking good.

Feeling better over the weekend, we now tackled several things that needed doing, to include getting the SMELL out of the apartment (you vomit for six hours straight and see if it doesn't leave a stink.)

But last night I opened up the laptop and began work in earnest again. Despite being pulled slightly off track today by a 3 hour phone call from a friend I hadn't spoken to in 25 years (we had a LOT to catch up on) I was still whipping the words out.

So here I am, Sunday night, at 20,000 words written...leaving me a solid 4,700 word buffer. Just in case I talked my way out of the hospital just a bit too soon!

And here is a shout-out to all the NaNoWriMo folks fighting their way through their own personal battles just for the ability to say "I Won!"

NL

I Have a New President

While I did not vote for Barack Obama, the results of yesterday's presidential election still please me greatly. I'm not sure whether it was hearing Charlie Gibson's voice choke as he announced the win on behalf of ABC or if, more likely, it was seeing the various members of the black community respond with sheer unadulterated joy.

I have long treasured the roles several African American's have played in my life. From my 4th grade teacher Mrs. Johnson, who was the most grace-filled, dignified, and loving teacher I'd ever (and have ever) had to my friend Deborah Johnson, who is still this curious mix of petite energy and serenity who handles the English language with a tongue that curls delightfully around every word and a voice that purrs down one's spine, these are two women who represent the profound blessings my African American friends have brought to my world and they are joined by countless others.

I wanted a better first African American President for them and in that category I put men like Michael Steele and Colin Powell. But I also understand and take extraordinary pride in an American democracy that allows us to move a groundswell of voices and changing ideas. This is *my* America and I love it with every fiber of my being.

I wish I could say that I viewed all of last night's events with the same warmth and peace as I view the election of President-Elect Barack Obama. But I don't.

While John McCain's concession speech, which included the statement "He was my opponent, now he is my President" showed the commitment to the ideals of this country that made me support him, and while Barack Obama's acceptance speech demonstrated that he is a man of quiet and respectful dignity who did not delight in his opponent's defeat, the same cannot be said of many of the other Democrats who won major elections last night.

In North Carolina Elizabeth Dole, a woman I have respected for decades, gave a concession speech to Kay Hagan that demonstrated the strength, grace, and love I expect from a woman who has the deepest commitment to our democratic principles. She offered her unwavering support and prayers to the state's incoming senator. A Southern woman does not offer prayers mockingly. Prayer is the most powerful gift they have to give and it is never given out of anything but love.

When Kay Hagan offered her acceptance speech she began with a rooster's crow of joy over defeating Elizabeth Dole which did not end with a "we won" but went on for nearly a minute of nothing more than "ha, ha, we took it from her." I was horrified. Who was this woman who believed in such unsporting behavior?

Democrat after democrat failed to recognize the worthiness of his or her opponent. When Mark Warner, a man I had previously respected, joined in the same sort of "hail hail the gang's all here" without a single gracious word to or about his opponent, I could do no more than sit there in disbelief.

Many of President-Elect Obama's supporters have hailed him as being a man of grace and good manners, a man who will close the gap of partisan-ship that has resulted in a country which includes many women in my demographic (one of the few demographics not to have given the majority to Obama) that went to the polls yesterday feeling as if they were between a rock and a hard place. I'd argued that he was a man likely to be under the control of the Senate and the House, given the nature of the democrats superdelegate process. Now I am praying to God that Obama's supporters are right. Because at this point in time I think we have an even bigger problem brewing, one that makes the term "ugly American" even more appropriate.

Today I will be watching to see if "both sides of the aisle" treat last night's historic election with the grace and dignity it deserves - and it deserves much. And I am encouraging President-Elect Barack Obama, along with Senator's Hillary Clinton and John McCain, to take the lead as examples of American graciousness, dignity, hard work, and collaboration.

Oh, and let's keep an eye on some of these women we're electing - because when it comes time for 52% of the population to actually be represented by a President, we don't want it to be someone like Kay Hagan.

Just a Word of Warning

November 1st is the start of National Novel Writers Month, affectionately known as NaNoWriMo, or NaNo for short.

For reasons I believe have largely to do with being fairly confined to the couch/bedroom over the past week I've been antsy and a little bored. All I really need to get into mischief.

So when someone threw out information on a Weight Watchers Message Board about this annual event I was surely not in my right mind.

I signed up.

50,000 words in 30 days.

They advise at http://www.nanowrimo.org/ (a site that currently has a high crashibility factor so if it doesn't work for you keep trying) that authors just write. That they no go back and edit their work.

You can start with an outline, which I might have had I decided more than a hour before the event was to begin to actually do this, but you must write all of your prose fresh.

50,000 words in 30 days averages out to about 1700 words a day. No sweat. I thought. At my first 1400 yesterday I was thinking "what the heck have I gotten myself into?" and then it dawned on me...just write.

I hit my 10 percent mark this morning. It has become blatently obvious to me, however, that if I'm going to pay attention to this then a few things are going to suffer.

Noticing Life may be one of them.

So consider yourself warned.

Oh, and by the way, my "novel" starts out:

“It’s not about sex. It’s about feeling desired. As if, at that very moment in time, you and only you are his entire focus.”

I shared that on the NaNo Thread for the General Daily Thread board on Weightwatchers.com to which the response was "when you get stuck, write porn."

NL