Delivery Day!

I know I said I'd be around a bit more - well, at least try to be around a bit more, but this whole health thing is totally kicking my butt. I have been trying to get to blog posts and make comments and stuff, but as for my updates on here, they may continue to be pretty sporadic for the next couple of weeks as the docs and I try to figure out what is really wrong with me.

In the meantime, have some cupcakes and celebrate with me!

For today is new Washer & Dryer delivery day! You know what that means? Dancing and singing and detergent swirling and energy efficient sudsing and fresh, warm Downey scented clothes straight from the dryer! I've never been so excited to do the laundry before, but after 8 months of hauling our clothes off to the laundromat, this has been A. LONG. TIME. COMING.

By Monday the enthusiasm may have worn off, but for now, I'm riding the high of new laundry wave - literally. (Clothes tend to build up when you have two kids under 5!)

Have a great weekend everyone!

Chocolate Stinks and Character Traits

A while back our big kidlet Phephe (she's 4), did a bunch of stuff and earned a prize. She picked chapstick. She'd always been really good with the chapstick ends I'd given her in the past and husband and I agreed she could go pick out some chapstick.

So we went to the store and this is what she picked out:

Yep, that's M & M flavored chapstick. No big deal. Weeks pass. She uses it sporadically, as most days she forgets she has it.

Then, before we leave for IKEA to pick up my new office stuff (pics to come - so excited to share), Husband walks through the house, sniffing. The entire house smells like chocolate. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but this is not that good, rich, chocolatey smell. This is the el-cheapo cocoa-buttery chocolate smell.

Then Husband walks into our bedroom and nearly gags. Phephe looks at me. And she looks guilty.After some hemming and hawing she fesses up to rubbing her chapstick on the heating vent. So every time the heat came on, the smell grew stronger.

Why am I rambling on forever about this, you ask? Well, Husband and I have been together for nearly 10 years - married for almost 7, and I just learned three days ago that he absolutely hates the smell of chocolate. I mean, seriously? How could I not know this? He likes chocolate chip cookies, and candy bars, but finds the permeating scent of the stuff to be repulsive.

That got me to thinking, do you really know your characters? And I don't mean what they look like and turn-ons and turn-offs? I mean in 10 years from now are you going to look back at one of your characters and realize - OMG, that is why he was gagging every time she baked chocolate cupcakes?

Sleep's Overrated

Those of you who know me, or been following for a while, know that I'm a bit of a night owl. I've been known to stay up until 3 or 4 A.M. working on this or that, a new wip, some revisions, reading a good book, whatev.

But guess what? For the last week or so, I've actually been SLEEPING! I know, right? Crazy! What is this world coming to? Break out the 72-hour emergency kits, because something big is a-comin'.

Just kidding.
So yeah, I haven't slept much for the last couple years, and I've been fine functioning on something around to 3-4 hours of sleep a night, if that. I've gotten so much done in those hours when the everyone in the world (on this side of the planet anyway) is resting their pretty little heads.

Now I'm torn. I'm sleeping more and it feels great! But then, I think about the 3-4 hours of time I used to do things, like write, read and revise. With a full time day job, 2 little kidlets and a husband who works more than full time most weeks, I'm sorta hoping my body will decide that 6-8 hours of sleep is totally overrated and let me get my extra ME time back.

While I mentally wander off to decide what to do about this issue I've decided is Over-Sleepage, I wish the rest of you 

P.S. I noticed I had a few new followers , so I thought I'd start by saying, welcome to my humble abode. I can be random at times, but I make up for it in Hello Kitty cupcakes.

The One Ring

Husband likes to tell people about our venture into the world of Tolkien via the first Lord of the Rings movie. You see, we went to see it, on opening night. This was not actually a truly planned event, I think the conversation went something like this. . .

Me: you wanna go see a movie tonight?

Him: I guess. What do you wanna watch?

Me: I don't know. I just want movie theater buttered popcorn.

Him: I want Sour Patch Kids.

Me: Okay, let's go.

Then we just picked the movie that had the next soonest starting time. Little did we know we were walking into a cult phenomenon. (At the time, neither of us had read much Tolkien and had purged all experiences from high school.)

Moving on. Can you imagine if the One Ring was actually one of these and not something cast from the depths of Mount Doom or what not?

Evil Dark Lord could’ve just passed these nifty little color coded sheets and yanno, when he was having a bad day, people could just leave him alone.

Or bring him some Super Mario cupcakes or whatever. (Super Mario would've made Middle Earth way cooler.)

I know that’s a bit random for today, but it’s Friday. And although the sun looks like it may be breaking through the clouds outside, it’s supposed to flurry all day. Then SNOW tomorrow. And be frigidly cold.

And we found a leak in our roof last night. Yeah. Sweet, I know.

Anyway, I’ve committed to turning my personal internal mood ring to be a nice shade of light blue and dang it, I’m trying.

Okay, have a great weekend everyone! Good luck to all who are Nano-ing or Reviso-ing or Delete-o-ing or maybe just Reading!

How to Get Unstuck (with a Side of Cupcakes!)

The auto-tweet for this blog post is my 2000th Tweet! I know, I know, I'm a total dork for celebrating such an event, but every now and then, a girl just needs a reason a for some cupcakes!

Moving on... Here is some general "getting unstuck" advice:

1. It seriously stinks, but nail polish remover with Acetone will almost always work if you've mistakenly superglued somethings together. Like fingertips together. Or a butt in a chair. You know who you are!
2. Peanut butter will get chewing gum out of hair. (Gum? In hair? You better have a good story to go with this one...)
3. Freezing will get gum out of clothes. (Which one of you didn't empty your pockets before we started the laundry???)

But what about getting words out of your brain?

I think everyone has a different answer for this. As I've been poking about in other blogs, I noticed I wasn't alone in my sudden feeling of stickiness. Not that I was sticky, but I had hit a wall. I was stuck. (So maybe I should've said feeling stuckiness?)

Anyway, as I was saying, I was stuck. I knew there were words I wanted to get out, but I just couldn't find them. Every time I sat down to write, I just stared at the computer screen. At the notebook. At the pen. And everything stayed blank. This lasted for days. Days grew to weeks.

Then a friend said "take a break."

Lightbulb! Duh. Why didn't I think of that?

I don't know what made me think I had to write everyday forever. But that was what was going through my head. I felt like I had to keep running, running, running. Swimming, swimming, swimming. How on Earth was I going to keep up with all the other aspiring authors out there trying to write the next NYT Bestseller, trying to find an agent, trying to get published if I didn't keep writing?

So I decided a break was what I was going to do. I had enough written to last me for a while in both my online and live crit groups. I would just focus on reading (research!) and maybe the fog would clear. Less than 24 hours after I decided this, my muse returned. And I've been scribbling notes relentlessly since then.

So when you get stuck (wordage wise), apparently one of the best things you can do is NOTHING! Who would've thought? Oh, and jamming to Evanescence doesn't hurt either.

Oh, but wait. You guys didn't come to hear about me doing nothing. You wanted cupcakes, right? I know, sorry. I got distracted. But here. See, aren't these worth the wait? Wasn't sure what you guys would like. Go ahead, help yourselves!

WiP Wednesday: . . . And Cupcakes For All

The Husband has asked politely if I would start today's post with a big fat: GO UTES!! (even if the game isn't until Saturday)
So there you go. Moving on.

I've been in a rut lately. Stuck in the mud. Or quick sand. Or drying concrete or something. I haven't written anything in weeks. Weeks I tell you!

For all these many days I've loitered about the house. Mostly I spent time with the family, which has been really good, and then after they all went to sleep, I read this and that (I probably wouldn't have finished TTW if I was writing), worked on my crits, did laundry, pretended I knew how to cook and just generally putted about.

I have to say holy huge THANKS! to the gang on Rallystorm Throwdown and my Twitter Critter buddies for all the words of encouragement, sympathy, and just because you guys let me whine without making me feel lame! You guys ROCK! You kept me just this side of drowning myself in Jalapeno Kettle Chips--a recent new MUST.

So after all this many days of dinking around, I had to go to live crit group. The last meeting was 6 weeks ago and we've gone through a "management change" so I did have a chance to submit something back then. It was a good meeting and I got some insightful feedback.

On the drive home, as I was jamming to my Fallen CD because I <3 Evanescence and can't listen to it when the kids are in the car. (Phephe calls it my scary songs, yeah, I guess I can see that.) And then IT struck me.

I pondered IT some more overnight. When I woke up still thinking about IT I knew I was on to something. So I dropped a quick note to one of my BFFs with a 1-liner thought on the whole thing and got the most AWESOME positive response from her. She's even going to help me with research and everything!

So YAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY! Adorable Hello Kitty Cupcakes for ALL!