I'm trying to figure out what I want for Christmas. I didn't really want anything last year and anything I wanted I got when I asked for it. A new notebook computer from Dell(although I'm definitely getting an iBook for my birthday), as much yarn as I could possibly want, books, magazines, software, etc. So, this year, I'm making a list of things I want so that, should The Honey be at wit's end for what to get for me, he can check here to make sure he's not getting me something totally ridiculous (although I'm pretty sure that's not possible).

The first thing that comes up, especially since I particularly want a Knitting Journal, is yarn and knitting/crocheting accoutrements. I'm making a wish list at my favourite yarn store. The yarn I want to make a sweater with is pretty expensive, but I think that it will be an awesome sweater (if I don't screw it up). I'm working on a sock right now and it's going awesome. I already want to try a sock in a different yarn that will actually match the clothes I work in, but that's neither here nor there. I'm not afraid to wear socks that have nothing to do with the colours I'm presently wearing.

My second thing is something electronic, whether it be a new digital camera or a spiffy cell phone, or a PDA for on the go notebooking. I don't really need any of these things, although getting a new digital camera would be really nice.

My third thing would be magazine subscriptions. I would like the subscriptions to a couple of writing magazines and a couple of knitting magazines. I would also like to join The Knitters Guild of America.

Of course, gift certificates to book type stores wouldn't be snubbed either, or specialty tea from Teavana, which would also be nice.

Finally, I would like a terry cloth type robe and cute little animal slippers, a video or two (the new Sound of Music with all the added features so I would have three copies, Cinderella, Serenity (best movie I've seen this year) or the box set for Firefly. I'm sure there are others, but that's all I can think of right now), maybe a few CDs ( something from Elliot Smith, or The New Pornographers or some bootleg Arcade Fire)

Well, that's all I can think of now. At least it's better than last year, where I just drew a big blank. And that ain't good.

How much is this blog worth?

How long has it been. It feels like much longer than 11 days. I've probably written 4,000 more words for NaNoWriMo since I last wrote, but I've written one and a half scripts for a project that is under way. Maybe if we complete it, you can see what I've been up to.

I have chosen a "winner" for the next plot point contest and I will be posting that part of my story shortly.

I have two short stories in my head right now and I've already started writing one.

I have so many great things going on that I want to tell the world, all 5 of you, through my blog, which is why I love writing this blog, though I choke and don't do it often enough.

So imagine my surprise when I find out:

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

So there you have it folks. Words mean nothing. Only links to something substantial does. And I'm okay with that.

Day 15 - Nanowrimo

I just caught up to day 6. I have to come up with characters for something my husband and I are doing with a bunch of people from his job. I am meeting with a class of fifth graders in a few hours and thursday to convince them that writing is more than punctuation and that you can write without the internal editor on (I say, even though I can't stand to see the little red and green lines under my words when I'm writing and when my husband asks me what I think of something he's written, I immediately start doing the grammar check, yet somehow I seem not to be bothered by incorrect words in my own writing {i.e. blogging} - although I'm sure I'll change "graft paper journal" to "graph paper journal" one of these days).

Right now I've been up far too long and the Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack is doing wonders for helping me fall asleep. 3000 word or more tomorrow is my battle cry.

Sockotta

I'm learning to knit socks. I have about an inch of the leg part. I'm knitting on needles so small that sometimes I drop one without knowing it. Completely without knowing this thing is not still between my fingers. They are so small, when someone asked me what I was making and I said, a sock, they said, "Oh, for a baby?" "No. For a full grown adult," I answered. These needles are so small, so pointy that I either want to use them as toothpicks or cross myself and pray that I don't poke an eye out.

I love my yarn shop. When they get a website I'm going to link them. I've been to yarn shops in other towns and another yarn shop in this town and I haven't found a group of women as friendly as I've found at Creative Yarns. Christy Ott helps you so much, even if you didn't buy the yarn from her, which makes you want to buy everything from her. She gave one of the ladies a birthday party today because this lady was turning 40 and her boyfriend of 2 years dumped her out of the blue. She cares about her customers. Right now, she's making wish lists for her customers, so I'm going to get The Honey to go into the yarn shop for some shopping. I hope I get to be with him so that I can see his face. Can you imagine my techno-savvy baby trying to purchase yarns for hand knitting? He's worried about being married to a woman who still has a box of tapes, wait until he sees all the yarns I want. Although there is a graft knitting journal that, if I get it, I can knit him an Apple logo something. I just found out I can felt (knit super big using wool yarn then shrink in the wash with hot water to make it virtually indestructable) an Apple logo notebook computer case. I just may do it if I get an iBook for my birthday.

I am ashamed to say that in the last few days, I've only added several hundred (not thousand) words. I am ashamed to admit that I may not write 50,000 words by the end of the month. I am discouraged and encouraged at the same time. I still want to keep writing what I'm doing, but I am not as committed to making it a novel. I am beginning to get interested in the lives of the people I'm writing about. I want to go into their histories, get to know them like new friends. That's good. But I am discouraged because I didn't make myself sit down and write for an hour or two every day. I know that I can get words flowing at various time (like for blogging or internal lectures aimed at various children acting co-workers) but this has been really hard. I did know this going into it, but I have never wanted to just throw my hands up like I have these last two weeks. I've been so busy, this is the first month in a year that I've gone to bed before 3am and gotten up before 11am on multiple days. It's been good and refreshing, yet I'm not working less (I'm working more) nor do I have less things to do (I'm basically on my 4th short story since starting Nanowrimo), but I've been getting sleep. That's gotta be good. It certainly is an answer to prayer.

When I get a battery for my camera, I will show you the sock. And the eye-stabbing, toothpick knitting needles that daily tax my life. You should pray.

NaNoWriMo Misery

So here I am, trying to write, and by trying to write I mean updating my iPod, adding songs to my song library, looking at old pictures of me and vowing to lose a little more weight, eating Pringles and reading my email. And by reading my email, I mean checking it every 5 seconds to see if someone sent me email. I'm at a little under 6,000 words, which would be good if it were day three, but it is actually day 7, which means I'm 10,000 words behind. WTH??? I think I'm going to be one of those people who just burst into tears randomly as I feel the crushing weight of word count bearing down on me.

So here I am, writing so well for this little blog (how did you like that long, long story of our trip to Miami? Cause the weekend felt as long as that story looks) but I can barely get to the next plot point for my story. Your assignment, dear reader, is to give me the next plot point. I'm not going to tell you what the story is about. I just want you to tell me a good plot point. If I use it, I'll post an excerpt. Thanks for having my back. (I just found out, by looking at the date, that it is really 8 days into it, so I should have 12,000 words by the end of tonight *bursts into hysterical tears*)

Miami Wedding

A friend from college got married this weekend. There were alot of good, funny moments and alot of other moments that are by no means related to good or funny. Yet.

We drove to Miami, Florida at 12:30am Saturday morning and left at 12:30pm Sunday afternoon. The wedding was at 6pm, Saturday. So, we were given a time of 12 hours to drive. That means we would get into Miami around noon on Saturday. That would give us time to rest, shower, and go to the wedding. The groom's mother has a condo in downtown Miami that she let us borrow for the weekend. We didn't have the keys or the room number. We didn't know that his mother was divorced so she was not using her married name. We didn't know where anyone or anything else was. We tried calling the number we had and noone answered. We got into town around 10am and we drove around until 3:30pm before we were in the house. So, that gives us a couple of hours before we had to be at the church. The Honey gets a few minutes of shut eye while I want to clean the road off of me. Let me tell you, a steaming hot shower can cure all ills. I wake the honey up and we try to follow directions we hadn't written down and we were about 20 minutes late to the wedding. We found the church by some strange act of God and sat on the wrong side of the church. We left the church to go to the reception and got there an hour later than it was supposed to start, but by some strange act of God, it didn't start until after we got there.

You know how someone gives you directions with abbreviated names as if you know what they are talking about? Well, let me tell you, Biscayne Blvd and Key Biscayne are not the same thing, even if you are told to follow Biscayne out to a resort, You're supposed to go to the island, Key Biscayne, and follow THAT street to the Ocean Club, not Biscayne Blvd, which only takes you north towards Aventura. Which is neither Miami nor Key Biscayne. Honestly, we spent so much time driving this weekend that when we stopped for food on the way home, The Honey wanted to stay inside because he couldn't stand going back to the car just yet. We spent 35 of the past 48 hours in the car. Driving. Trying to find things. Every bit of our time in Miami was spent trying to find something. The Apple Store, The yarn shop, The groom's mom's house, the church, the reception, the way back to the house, the way we came so that we wouldn't go to other cities. We made so many wrong turns, I think the security people started to communicate to each other about us.

When we were driving, we hated Miami. But when I saw my friend's beautiful, smiling face, when I saw how proud my Cuban mama was (my friend's mom and I adopted each other as family), when I saw people I hadn't seen in forever, I was glad to be there. Wilma did so much damage. The clean up, street closures, street lights that are out... it gives Miami a sort of third world country look that doesn't go well with the sleek building and even sleeker people. People are working overtime to get things back to normal, but, as my Cuban poppa says, "In Miami, when the shelter in your back yard blows down, you just go out and buy a new one." He is just grateful that he was in the US when all this happened. For him, he was out of electricity for 6 days, but some places that experience this kind of devastation, or worse, are out for years. He knows he's fortunate and I was glad to understand that.

The wedding was beautiful and almost completely in Spanish. The priest spoke heavily accented english, so that means the entire service was in Spanish for The Honey. The bride and groom had been dating for 9 years and when the priest heard this, he said, "9 years! This is like marrying a brother and sister!" But it was awesome because it was beautiful and not understanding any of it kept me from tearing up too badly and ruining my eye makeup (which might not have been that great to begin with). We did alot of kneeling and at one point, I got to kiss my husband and shake hands with the people around me. I don't know what that was all about, but we did enjoy the kiss. Every marriage reminds us of ours and makes us feel even more like newlyweds (as opposed to old married people).

The reception was beautiful and I got an awesome picture of my friend dancing and laughing (which, when I post, I will delete everything in these parenthesis and put her picture instead). We had great dinner companions and I felt honoured that though I wasn't a bridesmaid (and I am quite fortunate for that) I was sat at the table with the other bridesmaids (most of whom I knew or had heard of for the last 9 years). We laughed and talked and drank too much champagne (except for The Honey, who had to drive - remember 35 hours driving). We took pictures and ate the most awesome steak with red wine pairing I'd ever had, followed by the best chardonnay with giant prawn pairing. Next came the time of sleep that was the most in our time there (10 hours).

We had to wake up early for the wedding brunch, a smaller, family and close friend affair that I was honoured to be invited to and I got to talk with everyone alot more. It was super hot outside and there was enough damage to know that hurricanes are no respecters of person. With another wedding as our backdrop, we got to celebrate, with mimosas and omelets, the fact that two such good friends were also now husband and wife.

Despite how irritated we got when we couldn't find where we needed to be, The Honey was such a trooper. To get to the wedding, he drove like a bat out of hell. I was holding onto the door for dear life, part scared to death, part proud as hell. The fact that we were late had absolutely nothing to do with his driving. Normally, he drives like an overly cautious mother. Then, he was driving like me in Los Angeles. It was awesome. And when we had driven an hour in the wrong direction, he still turned around and took the exits I told him to take even though at this point, he would rather have gone to IHop and gotten a coffee than drive any further to a wedding reception. He did everything I asked him and then more, and I learned just how much my husband continues to love me.

It was a grueling weekend, it was the best and worst weekend at the same time. The things that were inconvenient were very inconvenient. It was everyone's fault that things were as bad as they were (we could have gotten all info earlier, they could have called back) but everything worked out. (I also remember that she drove the same amount of time for the 15 minutes it took me to get married and I didn't offer anything more than a casual reception that lasted less than two hours. At least she made it two days of activities for our drive). The Bride was beautiful, the Groom was happy, a new life was started and I am more than glad that I was there for it all.

NaNoWriMo

Well, I'm doing it again this year. Trying to write 50,000 words in a month. I'm already behind on my word count and wasting more time by telling you about it. That's okay. I had 631 words when I sat down to write at 2:30am and now I have almost 4000 words, which catches me up for Nov. 2, but puts me 2000 words back for today. Ah well.

Last night, The Honey asked me what I was writing about. I said, "Me. I think that's what all writers do, no matter their characters and situation, it's really just a story about the writer." "When are you going to write about me?" he asked. "You'll be in the story, but the main character is me." "Screw that! I want to be a main character." So he storms off to the computer room. I get up to follow him. He opens his word processor and starts typing: I wanted a story where I was the main character. I thought this would be easy when you're married to a writer, but I guess I was wrong. So I have to write a story about me my own damn self.

As he's writing, he looks back at me. "So, what do I win if I write 50,000 words?" "I don't know." "Who won last year?" he asks. "Everyone who wrote 50,000 words," I say. "What? everybody won?" "Everybody that wrote their 50,000 words." "That's how you treat children! If I don't get something, I'm not doing it." "You get the satisfaction of finishing a big project in a short period of time. That is a prize for a writer." He shakes his head and turns back to the computer. I laugh and go back to procrastinating. He comes out a few minutes later and sadly says, "I'm not doing it anymore. I just wanted to let you know that you were safe."

I love my husband.

Something That Will Make Josh Fuller Sad

My husband, The Honey, decided that he would start blogging again. So he tried to do it through Safari (which is the Mac web browser that he is in love with) but things didn't work. What things? Heck if I know. So he decides to get Firefox again and do it from that browser. But it doesn't work and he remembers he has an old version (this is what I heard, possibly now what he said) so he needs to get the new model of the old version before he can actually use the new version. So he does that. Then he re-types everything that he'd typed earlier, got his pictures, put them in, had the link to his sister's baby website and tried to publish. Blogger was down. He decided that maybe it was a sign. So, as of this posting (at 5:11am and with no attempt to get him to change his mind yet) he will stop blogging forever.

Don't cry, everything works out eventually. And remember, God really does answer prayers.