Why does February always suck?

So hey, it’s February, and so therefore we have the Plague.  David has this on again off again stomach virus at least one day every week since the end of January.   Ben & Nick have been coughing, but seem okay for the most part. Greg has been snotty & feverish and coughing for a solid week now.  I got a sinus infection three weeks ago, spent two weeks literally writhing in pain before that started dying off, and am now living in the land of Am I Sick or Not?  (Which means one day of feeling good & productive followed by one day of deathly-sinus-headache followed by one day of chills/fever/but otherwise fine followed by one day of sore throat/sinus pain).  Greg and I have missed all our MOPS stuff & coffee dates & play dates.  It’s making me cranky.

I’ve pretty much watched every movie in the house that is safe to watch in front of Greg and am now starting to watch things like Pretty Woman and wonder why,oh,why anyone thought a movie about a prostitute was acceptable for young people to watch.  As a kid watching it, it was AWESOME, but as a mom watching it, I’m thinking about things like Vivienne getting tetanus from getting scratched on the fence and what kind of horrible germs are in that toilet that she just plunged her hand into and whoa, all the dirt!  Yeah.  I watched Legend & Total Recall last week (after kid hours) and was amazed at all the gore.  My brain, it is exploding.  I shouldn’t be allowed movies in this state.  No, no, no.

In other news, we’ve been on a science kick around the house.  David had to do a research paper & model & report on a natural disaster and he, naturally, chose a meteor shower.  So we did that.  We also made a tsunami, because a meteor strike in water can cause that.  Then we made a tornado in a jar.  One of the other class mom’s is a biologist of some sort & she brought a bunch of chemicals up to school & did a demonstration, so David wanted to know what kind of chemicals he had access to at home, so we tried to figure that out & then figure out what kind of experiments we could do from here without buying anything special.

Ben’s started doing math at school.  He got a 100 on his first paper (BEST IN CLASS, MAMA!!!) and has ever since been making his own math problems to work after school.  He’s also been learning about coins and passed that mania on to Greg, who has been playing pirate or shopkeeper, whichever one takes his fancy as long as he gets to count the money.  Ben’s been trying to teach him that each coin “costs” a different amount, but Greg just counts number of coins.  It’s very funny to watch them argue about it.

I finally got my writing notebook back in the mail, so worked on that a bit yesterday.  Progress notes to be posted at dreamwidth.

Nick is obsessed with the Olympics, which has been fun, I guess.  He’s the kind of person that will watch any event, so if the Olympics is on at any point, he turns the TV on.  I, on the other hand, am mainly just interested in the figure skating (so I went to bed way early last night).

I guess February doesn’t completely suck.  I just wish we all would get better finally.

more novel fun

Still having issues with novel course joy.  I can see that further ahead I’ll have almost too much to do in one week, but right now there doesn’t seem to be enough, so I’ve been reading ahead each day and am up to the week five assignment now, which has me working on my setting.  I know that my first setting is going to be real world stuff & they won’t be there long, so I’m not obsessing over that portion, but am obsessing over the place that the kids will travel to, which is hard to plan for because, well, I haven’t written it yet.  I’m not good with this whole planning thing.  On the other hand, I’m not good at finishing complete novels either, so this all about the learning, right?
*sigh*

In other news, have managed to convince two other people to sign up for the course just by being excited about it.  That’s good.  Real life accountability weighs more than just nebulous online person accountability sometimes.  I can’t just quit writing if there are people that can come to my door and sit on my couch & stare at me until I write.  And  they would do that, too.  It would be unnerving.  I’d have to write something, if only to get them off my couch.  😉

  • Current Mood:  amused

Thoughts in 140 characters

  1. Happy Binary Palindrome Day!! (01-11-10)
  2. Typing up my weekend writing progress. dododo
  3. Have moved all books off of three (1 big, 2 small) kids shelves, moved tall shelf into kids room. Now to put all the books back on shelves.
  4. Umm…someone from Tuscaloosa, AL just sent us a baby picture. Would someone like to claim this cute, cute baby picture? 🙂

     

—————-
Now playing: Kim Richey – Without You
via FoxyTunes

WIP: Searching for Uncle

I seriously don’t have a better title for this at the moment, but oh well.

Here’s the expanded story idea, from my 2YN homework on Forward Motion:

Amanda* and Charles* had a fabulous honeymoon on an isolated island. Upon returning home, they received stunning news: Charles’ brother & sister-in-law died in an accident while they were gone Even worse, to Amanda, her new niece & nephews were coming to live with them. Charles traveled a lot for work, so he inevitable left Amanda home to deal with the kids, but then they stopped hearing from him altogether. Amanda has to explain to the children that she & Charles don’t really live in the real world and that they must search another world for their uncle.

*placeholder name

(Oh, and this progress bar only updates every 1000 words, apparently. Right now I’m up to 400 on this project)

Thoughts in 140 characters

  • Kids, when you have chocolate-mint breath & brown bits in your teeth & you’re saying you’re not eating my candy cane, I KNOW that you were.
  • It figures: I wait patiently all day for the writing assignment, then it’s sent out just as it’s time to pick up kids from school. *sigh*
  • Looking at http://curiouspages.blogspot.com/ about bad kids books. Read most of them as a child. So funny tears are running down my face.

progress this week

I’ve been writing in my paper&pen (p&p) journal daily this week, not only life stuff, but at least 3/4 – 1 1/2 handwritten pages of fiction-type stuff. A character sketch or two, a couple little scenes. Nothing big, but daily is better than nothing. Feeling pretty good about it.

Day one assignment of 2YN on ForwardMotion today. Must write a one sentence description & 50-100 word description of my WIP. Mine sound pretty tame so far, but in my mind are better than my little descriptions, so I guess that leaves room for goodness, right?

  • Current Mood:  accomplished
  • Current Music: Chopin Nocturne in E flat Major