*is shaking her fist at fate*

Oi! Ms Fate! I'd like a word with you, Missy. *glares wrathfully* What's with all the crap you've been throwing in my path lately, huh? If I was speaking literally, I'd have been cleaning muck off my shoes for the last month. What the heck happened to giving me a break, huh? *glares again*


You know, I do my best to get along, I really do, but when you keep doing horrible things to me, it's kinda hard.  First you decide that my husband needs to have weekly accidents on his upper limbs for a while. Look, Mrs - my hubby can get himself into scrapes all by himself, he doesn't need any other help thank you very much. *pointed glare*

And as for my son... well, when exactly did you decide to turn him from a reasonably well behaved child into The Teenager Most Likely To Threaten His Teacher With A Hammer? What's up with that?

Oh, and don't even get me started on my daughter. You know, the One Most Likely To Drive You Insane - remember her? Not content with making her possibly the most exasperating little girl within a twenty mile radius, you seem to have decided that excess cheek, downright rudeness, and infinite wind-up capabilities are now Miss Ellie's new foibles. She's my daughter, and I love her to bits, but really... you need to let up a bit with her or she may end up being strangled. Or at the very least gagged.

And what on earth have my poor pussies ever done to you to deserve near death experiences? I'm a conscientious pet owner. I feed them well, they have the run of the house, I keep my daughter away as much as I can (though there have been a few incidents of the poor things being Ellied, granted), and I make sure they get treated with anti-flea stuff regularly. So, any chance you could tell me why this month's flea treatment caused most of their fur to fall out, gave them open sores, and caused my older puss to constantly shake for almost a month?? *glares through narrowed eyes*

Now don't get me wrong, none of these things happened to me personally, but still, they've happened to my nearest and dearest, and that's not on, Missy, that's not on at all. Give the Smith family a break, can't you?

Of course, although none of the above directly happened to me, you couldn't leave me out, could you? *eyeroll* Oh no, that wouldn't be right, would it? I have been happily cough free for the last two years (after suffering every winter for twenty odd years) - probably something to do with not having to walk to work in the bitter cold at the crack of dawn - and I thought I was clear of the damned thing. So what did you do? You gave it back to me. Well thanks very much for that. No really, thank you. It's really made my year. Not only to I struggle to get above five hours of sleep at the best of times, but now I get to wake up every hour or so and enjoy a fifteen minute coughing fit. Lovely.

You're a bit of a bitch really, aren't you Miss Fate. Take that. *punches*

*is plodding along*

Yup, it's slow going, but I am plodding along. Of course, it's Saturday, and I did say I would blog on Friday, but seeing as it's WriMo month, and I finally had a bit of luck with the writing yesterday, I think I can get away with it. *winks*

It's been a funny week. I got off to a good start by pumping out a thousand words as soon as the clock struck midnight and it was officially November the first. Great! Start as I mean to go on anallat, yes? Of course, this is me, and nothing is ever as straightforward as that, so there was bound to be something to cock up my good intentions.

Yup, my hubby got hit off his motorbike early Monday afternoon. He seemed fine, and I breathed a sigh of relief, not least because he had already camped at the local A&E department a fortnight before after being 'glassed' at the local pub, and then knocked down by a car as he was chasing the person who did it. (Knocked down, if you can believe it, by one of his friends (!!!) who was on his way back to the pub to help break up the consequent kerfuffle). Anyway, twenty stitches to the arm, and several cuts and bruises later, hubby was home. All good. I figured the Smith family was done with the A&E for this year, after all, one visit to the emergency department is quite enough, thank you very much. *nods*

Monday evening arrived and I was getting ready to pump out some more words on my NaNo. The kids had been fed, the house was tidy, school preparations had been done for the following day, and I had a lovely take away pizza to sustain me. Hubby was doing his best to eat his meal, but found that he couldn't lift his arm very well. Trip number two to the A&E, here we come. Several hours later, we finally get home, with severely bruised shoulder and ribs, and a broken thumb to add to my hubby's injured arm (which, by the way, was infected from the glassing incident).

That was quite enough drama for one day. I was tired, it was late, and I figured Tuesday would be a better option to get to my writing.

*rolls eyes*

Yup, Tuesday was no good either as it turned out. My daughter woke up with a stomach bug for company. Cue two days of multiple changes of clothes, excess use of toilet paper, and repeated speeches telling my daughter that no, she can't have anything to eat because her belly will never get better if she doesn't give it a rest. The problem with stomach bugs is that often you don't actually feel ill as such, you just can't eat anything. And seeing as my daughter loves her food, you can imagine how difficult it was. If I heard say "But I'm starving!" once, I heard it a hundred times.

Anywho, Thursday arrived, my daughter returned to school ( after a hefty breakfast *snort*), and I thought to myself Yay!!! Shortly followed by... oh bugger. Stomach bugs tend to be catching you see. Yeuch.

So yesterday was the first day that I actually managed to do some work on my NaNo, which is why I got sucked in and decided to keep writing as long as the words flowed. Hence the slight change in my blogging schedule. I'm still a bit behind, but I have decided that I am not doing anything today apart from write, so hopefully I can catch up a bit. I won't hit my personal goal of 17,500 words by tomorrow night, but the recommended target of almost 12k by the end of day 7  (according to NaNo standards) should be doable.

And so I am plodding along.

*is struggling*

Yes, it's only day three of NaNoWriMo and already I am behind. I'm around 2k behind at the moment, but I really wanted to be ahead at this point, so my personal goal for today is ever further away.


It's so typical. I took two weeks off from work specifically to get ahead, yet I am already struggling to stay on top of things. Of course, I spent all of Monday evening at the A&E with my husband, who managed to get himself knocked off his motorbike earlier that day. Several x-rays confirmed bruised ribs and shoulder, and a broken thumb, so he is fine all in all, but the worry and the annoyingly long wait to be seen by the doctors really scuppered up my first day of NaNo.

Still, I thought I would catch up yesterday and today. No problem. I hadn't bargained on my daughter getting a stomach bug though. *rolls eyes* Honestly, I think I've spent the majority of the last two days trying to explain to my daughter why she wasn't allowed to have anything to eat.

Anywho, quite apart for the lack of time at the computer, I'm just really struggling to get my first few thousand words down. I know where I want to go, and I know what I need to cover in the first few chapters, but somehow everything I type doesn't sound right. I've made the mistake of deleting paragraphs at a time because I'm not happy with them, which is absolutely the wrong thing to do with a WriMo. Last year I just kept typing, even though I knew there were hundreds of mistakes, and more than a few sections that were definitely shaky. I need to get the same attitude going for this year, because if I keep deleting large sections of text, I'm going to end up with nothing.

So, I have given myself a little pep talk. *nods* No more deleting!! No more wasting time correcting spelling and typing errors!! (Yes, that's how much I am dithering - I am checking for typos. So not like me at all). And no more worrying about whether a sentence could be phrased better!! Just. Keep. Typing.

See you Friday, when hopefully I will have a blog titled *is storming ahead*.

*crosses fingers*

*is informing through rambling*

Just a quick one today (er, blog that is) so that I can tell you that I've managed to start writing for my NaNo novel. No really - I did. *is shocked and stunned* I'm only just past a thousand words, but I should hit my personal goal of 2.5k by the end of today. *nods firmly* I have to work at a slightly faster pace than the official 1,667 words a day if I am to win, you see. I'm currently off from work and won't return until the 14th, so a few extra words a day are essential to make up for the second half of the month where I know I will be tired and less inclined to write. I figure 13 days at 2,500 words is what, 32,500k? That'll leave me 1,030 words per day to write for the remainder of the challenge, which sounds infinitely more preferable to 1,667, right? I don't think I can finish the story in 50,000 words, mind you, but I'd love to have 50k under my belt by the end of the month. I'm thinking the novel should be hitting 80-90k as a finished product, but there's no way I'm getting that many words down in thirty days...


Anywho, I should also mention that after last month's effort of blogging every day *is shocked and stunned about that too*, I'd like to keep to a semi-regular blogging schedule if at all possible. I highly doubt that every day is doable - especially seeing as it is me we are talking about - but I figure three days a week might be a nice compromise. Possibly Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but nothing is set in stone yet.

Lastly, asterisks are back. *nods again* Of course they are! I can't blog without asterisked titles during a WriMo month, can I? That would be unthinkable! Inconceivable, even!

Lastly, if anyone would like to Buddy me on the official NaNoWriMo site, you can find me under the moniker of Tundiel, and my novel is titled Soul Identity. Go ahead and add me, there's always room for more slags and clarts on my buddy list. *smiles winsomely*