November 1999

November 1: The masquerade party was pretty fun last night. I went as my character, Silver Lauritsen (or Silver Star). There were only four of us there most of the time, then one left and two others came in close to the end. My character got hit on by nearly everyone there: a cross-dresser AND his girlfriend, a mathmetition nerd, an alien, and a ghost. Other than the conversation being in the gutter most of the time (not an unusual thing for this group), it was pretty cul. I wasn't asked too many questions about my character though, that disappointed me. I was hoping it would make me really think about her. The only question I got that really made me think a moment was, "How do your experiences influence your lyrics?" Uh-well.

Tomorrow I need to remember to let sleeping dogs lie. Z was asleep when I was ready to go out to excersize. I snuck up on him. He woke up and moved when I was about two feet from him. I went, "Boo!" anyway and he jumped up about two feet(I'm not kidding) and then ran away from me about four feet before he stopped, realizing who I was. It was hilarious. Then I got him on the leash and stood by his water dish for him to get a drink. He just looked up at me, excitedly, with those puppy dog eyes. I pushed his nose under the water a couple of times, but he still didn't want any. "Ok," I said. I would regret it later. The first thing he did that made me upset with him was when I stopped briefly to speak to a friend that was walking to the house to talk to James. Z lifted his leg and sprayed my leg, AGAIN! I rubbed his nose in it and slapped his nose about three times again. Then I refused to even look at him. He did fine until he tugged to get at something when I was halfway through with the first set of jogging. I tugged hard and hollered his name. So, I was running out of breath already at that point. Then, after we rounded two corners and the end of the jogging was in sight, Z decided that he was going to be VERY stubborn about drinking from a mud puddle. I tugged and tugged and said his name through gritted teeth several times. He had slowed me to a walk at this point and refused to pick up the pace. I gave up and ripped the leash from my wrist and threw it to the ground and left him. It wasn't very long before he came trotting after, looking at the leash handle and then looking up at me when he caught up. I just ignored him. By this point my breath was coming in sharp, wheezing gasps. I refused to let him make me give up though, and I didn't. Once I got to the place where I started walking, I slapped Z on the nose, then ignored him again until I got to the corner to turn. I picked up the leash and didn't even look at him. I spoke to him in quiet, but angry tones and he knew I was upset. I didn't look at him or touch him the rest of the way. Even though my breath was still rough, I refused to let anything make me quit, so I did my other set of jogging. He did fine, of course we were on the side with no puddles though. The other two times we went around the lap, I avoided the puddles, but he still tried. The first thing I did when we got back, I let him get a long drink, then went to sit on the steps to pet him like I always do. He sulked and refused to come up to me. I said, "Fine," and hooked up his chain. I got his food and filled his dish, but didn't give him a treat like I usually do. I was surprised I didn't hear him barking or whining as I left him there. I feel bad, but I've got to let him know somehow that he can't stop while we're out excersizing. His stopping is getting out of control, especially now that he's spraying. I keep calling the one vet that's in town, but he's never in because he's really a large farm animal vet and just does pets when he's available. I guess I'm going to have to call a Meridian vet to get him nutered. I guess that's the price I pay for living in a small town.

Well, it's time for me to go get ready. We're going out of town this evening. It's only by chance that I have time now to do this. Will was sick today and had to go to the doctor, so I got home early. Poor guy, he was fussy all day. :( TTFN.

November 2: If I were titling these entries as some web journalers do, I'd call this one: Revenge, Houdini style or The Doggie strikes back. James found Z off his chain again today (the second time in as many days), he had wrapped it around a tree and pulled it off his head. We had the collar on as tight as it would go when he'd gotten off of it before, but he still managed to get it off. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that he ruined, not one, but TWO garden hoses, and tore up the carpet that James had so neatly cut to fit the carport step and nailed it to the wall. I miss that carpet. :( Not sure what we're going to do with the beast, the collar is on as tight as it can go. The problem is he has such a thick neck that it's the size of his head. James wants to try using a choker collar instead of the fabric one he has on. I don't like that idea, I think it will hurt him too badly. I guess we'll see.

Other news, Will did go to the doctor yesterday. His double ear infection, which he'd just finished the medicene for, didn't clear up, actually got worse. Poor guy. He was much better today though and took a 3 hour nap while I was there! Guess he's trying to catch up on sleep still.

I went to work late today, the woman I babysit for is in advertising at a local TV station. She had a shoot at 9 here in town, so she didn't go all the way to work (40 min drive) this morning. But, she had to do something with the election tonight, so I had to work until 5:30. She didn't actually get home, her husband did, and she'll be working till eleven tonight. I don't know how she does it, she's been fighting a cold, she was up with Will the other night when his ears were bothering him, she works full time, AND has a two year old AND a nine month old. I could never do that, NEVER!

Speaking of kids, the insurance company agreed they would cover me under two conditions. 1)that I lose twenty more pounds, 2)that I get a doctor's letter saying that I don't have asthma or ulcers. That second one worries me. It's true that I haven't been treated for my 'asthma' problems for over ten years now, but that doesn't mean that I don't have problems. I have about 1 attack each week, since I had pnemonia about two years ago. It's not a typical asthma attack, I don't know what it is and I don't know what causes it. I hate doctors, hate anti-biotics, and I hate being a slave to medications. I just know that if I go to the doctor they'll say their typical thing, 'Well, we don't know what it is, exactly. Must be a virus. Take all these poisons, Uh, anti-biotics and we'll send you on your way.' That's why I don't like doctors, most of the time I don't think they have a clue what they're doing.

Haven't had any time at all to do any writing yet this week, even the 15 minute timed practice writing I'd planned to start doing everyday. Life is just too busy at times, especially now that I'm commited to excersizing 1 hour a day. It's not just the hour, but also showering time as well, takes up a big chunk of my day.

Well, I've prattled on long enough. Have a great day! TTFN!

November 5: I am sick! That cold that's been bothering me for the last month, off and on, is on again. It started Wednesday morning with a really bad taste in my mouth, really exuding from my throat. Probably from drainage. I feel feverish off and on, although the thermomator says normal or lower. My lungs are full of junk; I spent last night sleeping between bouts of wheezing and coughing. Today I'm sneezing and dealing with a runny nose too. Luckily, I got the day off (my boss decided to take a day off to spend with her kids! Yeah!). So, I'm spending the day trying to feel better. I did go to a friend to by some herbs and I'm feeling better. My nose is clearer than it ever has been and my coughing has decreased some. I'll give the herbs a few more days to see if it all clears up.

When I'm sick like this, my mind is mush, so I've spent my time watching Star Wars, surfing around the web, and reading NAW journals. I'm just about through reading all the ones that I haven't read in a really long time (which, regretably, is a lot).

Vera-I listened to one of your songs, Diana before our RealPlayer shut down. I really liked the beat to it.

For some reason, I cannot get to John Savage's and Dorothy Rothchild's web sites. I keep getting: Page cannot be displayed. Wierd. I guess I'll check back later.

Alas! I can't remember anything about the other journals. I know there was something else I wanted to mention. What was that I said about my mind? Ah, it's mush!

Stopped by the library today, hoping to spend the day in bed reading. I couldn't find anything decent. Oh, I'm sure it's there, I'm just in a picky mood. I thought about The Phantom Menace, but it just didn't work for me right now. I did pick up a historical novel about J.C. Fremonts wife, Jessie. I grew up in Fremont, Nebraska, named for him. They have a J.C. Fremont festival every year where people dress up and re-enact things like his debate with Buchanan for an office (I can't remember if it's the Presidency or a Govenorship), and they have cival war tents set up with displays and plays and indian tepees and demonstrations. It's really a neat festival they do every year. I used to work as a nanny/housekeeper for a lady there and she gave me a J.C. Fremont t-shirt as my going-to-college present. I still have it. :) This book should be really interesting. Still hoping to get to it today or tomorrow. Hopefully my mind won't be too mushy to read that. :)

Z's doing better since James tightened the collar. He doesn't seem to be hurting from it yet. I'm really considering changing his name to Houdini, though. I started talking to him about it today when I fed him and he seemed to get excited over the prospect. :) TTFN!

November 6: Went midnight bowling last night (from 11-2) with some friends. Had a blast! They have a colored pin in with the others and if it comes up as the head pin and you get a strike, you win either 1)a coke, 2)a popcorn or 3)a free game. While playing three games, the five of us each got about four or five tries at it. Many times we came really close by leaving one pin. Most of the time I messed up and only got half the pins down at all. But, on my fourth try (I think it was), I got a strike!!! It was so cul. I was the only one of our group to do it. It was during my last and best game. My scores were: 115, 94, and 157! I believe the 157 is the best score I've ever gotten. I was on a league in Junior High, so I used to play quite often. That doesn't neciarially mean I'm good, mind you. My average then was in the 90's, which is not good at all. It does seem to be climbing though, slowly. Afterwards, most of us went out to eat at Waffle House, yum!

I felt great while playing, but I feel awful today. Makes me think I shouldn't have gone. We didn't get home until 4 AM and I woke up at 9 AM, took my medicine, then couldn't get back to sleep. Not coughing or anything, just not sleepy. I got an hour and a half nap a while ago, the phone woke me up or I would have sleep longer. My head has an ache right between my eyes that I've noticed I get when I'm tired. But, I just can't sleep! Maybe I'll try again later.

I've been doing some thinking about Silver Star. I believe I've discovered the reason I keep starting something and then quitting. I make excuses about this that or the other, but the thing is that I'm afraid. Ever since I started learning about how to write better, I worry about every word I put down. I think, 'Would it be better if I used another word? Is that too cliche? Is that sentance awkward? Did I conflict with a character description written earlier?' A whole myriad of editorial things come to mind. They say when you're in the writing process, you should tell Mr. Editor to shut up and let Mr. Creative do his job. I need to do that. When I wrote Erin Glen in 44 days, it was an adventure and I loved it! It was like a roller coaster ride, I didn't always know where it was leading me, but it was a fun ride. I didn't always have the plot mapped out, in fact, in EG I only had three major sections of the book figured out. Meaning: Daniel in Ireland, Daniel in America, Daniel heading west. Basically that's all I knew from the beginning. It was an adventure the entire way. I wish I could capture some of that back. I'm gonna try. As soon as this cold goes away and the ache in my brain subsides, I will get on that computer and write a minumum of 1000 words, six days a week. No more playing around and being scared. This time's for real! If it's ever gonna be done, I've gotta just do it. That was my motto through Erin Glen and I'm gonna start livin' it again. TTFN!

November 8: 1150 on SS today. That concludes chapter 1. I'm trying my best not to be concerned that it's a relatively short chapter.

Starting another internet writing class tomorrow. It's Preparing the Novel. I've had the book now for a couple of weeks and already have the first assignment read as well as most of the suggested additional reading. I even worked some on my writing assignment today. It's a plot outline of SS. I figure since I'm writing that one, I could work on it in this class and hopefully develop the plot further and better. I've already re-worked it and made it some better, now that I understand more about what plot is.

Oh, before I forget AGAIN. I found this site on Saturday. I was looking at Dorothy Rothchild's site and decided to go to her server, Spies.com. Just curious about what kind of server it was, if you could get a site and how much it costs, etc. From there I went to C.J.'s site (I've been to her journal before, I think Dorothy had a link to it before or something) anyway, C.J.'s site led me to another site (ain't web surfin great?) which lead me to the one I'm about to tell you about. It's Cat-Scan.com. I really don't like the language on this site (but I would NOT tell him to stop, it is his site and he can do as he pleases), but I LOVE the pictures. This guy held a contest for the best cat-scanned pictures people could produce. Here are the entries. I would suggest looking at the eight pages of entries first (they are really neat), then go to the main page and scroll down to the winners.

Went jogging today. It felt good. I had taken Friday off since I was sick, so it really felt good to get out today. I started walking slower than usual, thinking my chest congestion still left from the cold wouldn't let me jog as much as I wanted to. It didn't really bother me much. I get excited thinking in just two weeks from today, I'll be jogging a full 1/2 mile at one time! (If you think that sounds cheesy, you should look at the body that's doing it.) :) AND, I usually POWER WALK the rest of the 2.5 miles, so that's not bad at all.

Kudos to Erin on her novel, it's really climbing on up there. How in the world do ya'll get such high word counts for your novels??? EG1 was 53,000 words and I worry that SS won't make it to 60K, I hope it will, but I worry that it won't.

(I'm going to borrow Zette's idea here.) After I posted Saturday, I happened to find this section in Nigel Watt's book, Writing the Novel (the one I'm reading for class). On page, 164, he writes, "Write for nothing and no-one first of all. Write because there is a truth which demands to be burnt onto paper. Write in the face of your lethargy and despair and doubts. Write because you don't know how to write, because you don't know what you believe.

"Then write for yourself, for the pleasure it gives you. Write because you love language, because you love fantasy, because you love the freedom of creating a world beyond the reach of others.

"Only then write for other people."

TTFN! Happy Writing all!

November 9: SS is progressing nicely. Anoter 1750 words added today. It really felt good, the words just kept on coming. I didn't even check the word count today until I was past 1200 words. Usually I check at about 700, then again at 800. A sign that I wasn't enjoying writing. I think I'm getting a bit of the old writerly me back. ;)

I had to force myself to go out and exersize today. Not sure what it is, but today was the first time I've had to do that in several weeks. Maybe it was because I tried to keep up with a two year old AND a nine month old today. Yes, baby Will's brother was sick today. He can be a real sweetie, but when he's throwing a temper tantrum, he's a living nightmare! The tantrums are getting shorter and less frequent though, since he knows I just ignore him. :)

I'll make this a short post tonight, I still haven't gotten into the shower yet. (Is that cheering I hear? Was it the short post or the shower that has you cheering?) :) TTFN!

November 18: What a week! Last Tuesday after that post, there was a server error and I completely lost my stats page. I went to edit it and it was a blank file! And wouldn't you know it, that was the only page I hadn't backed up, in fact I hadn't backed it up since July! Luckily, it was still up at my old site, so I copied it over. Also Luckily, I had 0 word counts for August and September (I think it was). I knew there was a good reason that I didn't write those months. Also, October I had only done about 5000 words (all on the same novel), so it was easy to track them down, but I was sure panicking for a bit!

Then on Wednesday, Baby Will went to the doctor with a fever of 103.4 and 103.6. I was pretty upset when I came home from babysitting him that day! Poor guy! He still had his ear infection yesterday when he went to the doctor too! Today he seemed to feel much better though.

I did make a short post that day, but there was a server error when I hit 'save' and it didn't really save it. There's been quite a few lately.

Well, I'd planned to write 1000 words for 6 days a week. Last week I finished 2100 on Saturday, but I only had about 5100 for the week. This week I've written 0! Monday after work I excersised, then we had to rush off to a meeting (I didn't even shower!) Then Tuesday I didn't excersise until after a Bible study. Last night I didn't even excersise. Will was really fussy and I came home at 3:30 with a splitting headache so I went to bed for an hour. I would have slept longer if I hadn't have woken up coughing. Today I got home at 4, excersised and am just now getting some time to catch up on e-mail, make this post and relax. We need to go out and visit someone in a while, maybe, if they'll be home, so my relaxation time is only about 15 more minutes. :(

Maybe I'll get sometime Saturday to write another 2000 words. AND if we do visit these people tonight, then tomorrow night will be free. We usually watch TGIF on ABC, but I think we'll record it this week. I want to get writing!

On top of all this, I'm trying to get a home-based business set up. That's what the meetings have been for. I've been to two in the evenings and one on my lunch break. If you're interested, I'm selling Enrich herbs now. I'm also going to start taking them, I'll try to keep a post here of how I'm doing. I'm taking them for various reasons: 1)my neck aches (probably a calcium deficiency), 2) my lung problems (I've been told is a tyroid problem and I'm going to start taking Kelp-Norwegien and eventually a product called ST) and 3) to straiten out some female problems and to stop taking my prescription birth control to a natural form of birth control. Once I get some of these things straightened out (and can afford it) I'm going to take their weight-loss product, EnRich & Thin. I've heard a lot of great things about that product, it's helping soo many people lose weight. Two things I like about this company: 1) they TEACH you about the herbs, so you're not just taking pills, YOU'RE the one in control of what you take and WHY. We've given doctors too much control in our lives and IMHO they don't know what they are doing. 2)I like this company because they have strict testing of their products. When you by a NoName brand in a drugstore, you could get a product that is so potent it is harmful or one that is so weak it won't do you any good. Enrich is not like that. They have strict guidelines for their herbs, and if they cannot find herbs to fit their strict tests, that product goes on back order until they can find herbs that do. I guess a 3rd thing I like about Enrich is that they DO NOT put anything in the capsules other than the herbs themselves. Many companies use fillers and use fancy names for them. I saw a bottle from a large herbal company with wood pulp in it, it used a fancier name that most people wouldn't know what it was, but it was wood pulp. Wood pulp has no nutritional value whatsoever, why would they put it in their product? Because it's simply a filler, that's all.

Anyway, I could go on for days on what I've learned with these herbs. If you want more info though, please e-mail me. There are products to help with all kinds of problems. I've met one man who CURED his newborn son from cancer with only ONE chemo treatment, then they put him on EXTENSIVE herb treatments to purify the baby's body of the toxins. That boy is now four years old and as healthy as can be. There are herbs for, Lupus, FibroMyalgia, ChronicFatigue, weight loss, drug addictions and smoking, All kinds of Cancers, and many other things. I'll also be taking Bilberry which, people have said, helps eyesight. I've noticed that my eyes are already getting weaker from the glasses that I got this past August. I can't wait to get on that product and see how it helps.

By the way, for any of you skeptics out there who are saying that herbs are dangerous: I've met people who have been taking these products for 15 years and they are the heathiest, most energetic people I know!

Ok, this is a long enough post. I hope I can get back to making more posts that are shorter. ;) TTFN!

November 30: So much for more posts. :)

Hope everyone had a great Turkey day. I wanted to post something here, I think I have a picture or something somewhere, but I just didn't get time to. We left town Wednesday after church and we did it in such a hurry that I didn't get a chance to do anything on the 'net. We got back early Sunday morning (6:30) and that day was hectic as well. Then, yesterday, I didn't get to go to work because I was up all night coughing with my allergies. (I ate so much stuff over thanksgiving (for three days) that I got a sinus infection from my allergies) I ordered extra herbs and I just have to suffer it out until tomorrow. I'm feeling better, even went to work today.

In other news, my mom finished up a dedication page for my dad. Check it out if you'd like: Dedicated to Jim

In writerly news, I've decided that I'm going to try to reach one of my goals for the year. That goal was to write more novel words than last year. I spent more time on shorts this year so I'm about 25k short of making my goal. I'm going to make a try for it. I had figured last week that 500 words a day and 1500 on Saturday would give me 27k. I'm behind for the week, but I actually did take paper with me AND did write 1000 while we were gone out of town for turkey day. (that's a first, usually I take paper, but don't write) Since the last time I posted, I've written 3421 words. It was in about three sittings. I've got just under 23k left. Hmm, 23k by Y2K, think I can do it? Dare me. :)

It'll be awhile before December's page will be posted. I have to make it first. IF I do happen to make entries before a new page is posted, I'll tack them on to the end of here, then move them later. Most likely, knowing me, I'll make a new page. :) TTFN!