More Nuts in the Shell That Was November

The entire world’s been kind of crazy and I’ve spent the last month or so waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or maybe it’s waiting for the axe to fall. Either way, things were kind of swirly for a month, just like the leaves that Mr. Demonic raked up (28 bags full and counting), but were replaced by more the next day. Funny thing about leaves, they never go where you want them to, and they never stay in one place for a long time.

Hmm… Much like children.

Ms. MiniD managed to flunk out of chemistry last month. I warned against taking a chem class that was scheduled at 8 a.m. on Fridays, but she wouldn’t listen to me, would she? I guess she thought that her roommates might wake her up in time. Or that maybe now that she is 18, she would magically wake up and be ready so early, instead of lying in bed until I threw something at her.

My daughter sleeps like the proverbial log, and she’s been a late sleeper since her early teens. It was murder getting her out of bed when she was in junior high. When her brother was still here and a senior in high school, he did the lobbing of hard objects at her. He was her ride. Of course, he had to go to California for college, thus leaving me with trying to waken her.

I thought things might improve when she got her driver’s license, but instead it got even worse. She was marked tardy so many times, she had detention on a regular basis. Her remedy was to sleep on the couch instead of in her bedroom. That way, she could hear us as we were getting coffee and struggle to wake up.

But I can tell you, it didn’t help much. She’s had so many conversations with me when she was sleeping (and I thought she was awake) that I can’t even count them all. As soon as I left, she would go right back to sleep. We had this same problem with her work schedule. There were a couple of times where I ran back home to shake her tired behind awake.

So after this long protracted period of playing alarm clock, I held out no hope for her. However, it was time for her to figure it out on her own. So I sat there and allowed the counselor to sign her up for an 8 am class. Oh, and I purchased a $30 alarm clock guaranteed to shake the deepest of sleepers. But she still managed to sleep right through, even with all of the aids. She missed so much class, she was falling behind, and thus came the withdrawal.

Let’s just call this a $5,000 F, that’s what Mr. Demonic calls it.

(On the positive side, she re-enrolled into another English class, so she will still get one credit. So let’s just say the F was approximately $3,000.)

Some might remember the brief story about our manager. That, my friends, needs an entire post or two to describe what was going on. However, I will say one thing. Since he’s been gone, the rest of the staff has been far happier. He wants to come back to work, but Mr. D is praying he will get a disability. Although they had been good friends in the past, Mr. D can’t stand the sight of him now. Plus, we pay him too much. We can’t afford it anymore. This may be the year where he actually makes more money than does the Demonic family, and friends, when your husband works 12 hours a day five days a week, and six hours a day the other two, the rewards had better be the hell worth it. At this point, we’re coming dangerously close to it NOT being worth it.

Well, back to work. Tomorrow I think I will discuss this year’s Thanksgiving dinner. Here’s a preview: It wasn’t good.

November in a Nutshell Part I

I’ve had to chop this up, since November was such a huge month. So expect my life in nutshell installments over the next couple of days.

NaNoWriMo = a success. I told myself that I was going to use the month of November to get the lead out of my shorts and write a substantial amount of words for the novel that has been gathering dust in my brain. It took me a year and a half to write 70K words. It took me 29 days to write 50K. Yes, I am lazy. But that’s progress. If you’re a fledgling author, I would highly recommend the NaNo route for you next year. If you are highly motivated, as I was, you will automatically reserve a certain amount of time each day to write. I am hoping to continue with the regimen, but it’s hard to say. I have some personal issues that I must address shortly. (More on that later.) Plus, I’m lazy.

I used my real work time to play, so that I wouldn’t have to play once I started writing. This means I was on Facebook during the morning playing Scramble. For those who don’t know, Scramble is very addicting. If you like words, don’t go there; it will be hard to extricate yourself. Depending on the day, I would either leave the office at 1 p.m. or 3 p.m. and go home and write. Silence works best for me. Weekends, I wrote in the morning. Most of the sessions were at least three hours long, but I did have a few days where I marathoned about six hours.

The thing about NaNo-ing is that you have a lot of cheerleaders in your corner. Not only did I have trusted friends online urging me on to victory (like the Little Fluffy Cat, Rochester, Dr. B, Corina and others), I also had some real people giving me some good advice. I reached out and did some research, which got the people I spoke to excited for me. They actually want to read the story now, even though my novel is quite chicky and these are old guys. (Well, a little older than I am.) I needed to know how much a guy like this would make if he had an office and agency of a certain size, and they were very helpful. These two guys were actually very funny. I told them that my protagonist had a son who went to school in San Francisco. I told them about the no-good husband, and warned that he wasn’t my real husband, the dear Mr. Demonic. Then they asked me where the family lived, and I said “in my house.” They thought that was hilarious. Research is a good thing, especially if you’re clueless like me. Well, I knew about the story lines, the emotions. Being a mom, being a daughter. But the technical jazz, yes, I needed help. The NaNo people also send you emails to cheer you on. This was beneficial.

I think I have about ten chapters to go before I can wrap this puppy up. Yeah! My character is making a cross-country trek to California. She’s in Colorado now. She must go deep inside herself to find herself, after trauma. It turns out her son has to do the same thing. All ends well in San Francisco, which is where all should end well.

While thinking about the mom-son relationship, I got to thinking about the mom-daughter relationship. So, guess what? As soon as this book is put to bed (and the crazy novella I’ve been working on that just needs an ending), I’m starting another book. It will have a grandma, mom and teenage daughter, set in my northern Tundra town.

Oh. I’m so excited about that.