Failed-To-Say.net

Um . . . I distinctively remember making a post at the beginning of the year with a goal of making a post every week. So much for that. If it weren’t gross, I’d include a picture of a chicken running around with its head cut off because that’s pretty much how I’ve felt since the start of the year.

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Well, I didn’t exactly start the year off as I hoped to, which was with more consistent blogging, but I’m starting now. It’s close enough to the beginning of the year that hopefully I can fall back into the pattern of regular updates instead of the random updates from time to time.

I’m hoping to do some site maintenance soon. I’ve had Failed-To-Say.net since December 2003, so it just celebrated it’s 8th birthday on Christmas, which is awesome, but that means my blog is pretty old, and while I try to keep on top of WordPress updates, it also means I haven’t exactly been the most organized over the years. Categories + tags are a bit of a mess, and I want to fix that this year along with more blogging. And maybe I’ll eventually get the theme I made for myself up sometime soon as well.

The last month has been very busy. On top of the holidays, we had several birthdays in the family. We actually have birthdays that overlap the holiday. My grandpa’s birthday is on Christmas. My brother’s is on New Year’s Eve, and my nephew’s is on New Years. Then my stepbrother and mom also have December birthdays as well as my grandparents anniversary. They’ve been married for 48 years, which is just insane but awesome at the same time – especially when most marriages these days don’t really last.

The holidays were good. We had a full house for Christmas, and my brother, who has been living up north with our aunt and uncle, came down to stay for about a week. It was really good to see him. He’s doing so much better. Before, he was very hyper and couldn’t sit still most of the time, but he’s really mellowed out. We went to see The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn while he was here. It’s been our tradition to see it together, but we didn’t have a chance until now. Luckily, it was still playing in the theaters. Also, we went to see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with our mom and grandma. I think they were all mostly confused, but I thought it was a terrific. I plan to write a review on Bitter Shade for it and Breaking Dawn soon.

At my brother’s new school, they’re moving toward using the iPad instead of books, and everyone is allowed to rent out an iPad for the school year, and Blaine had his with him. I played around with it a lot, and it’s really awesome. I was very jealous, and it quickly made it’s way to the top of my wishlist.

I think Tori is finally getting over having pneumonia. It really took a lot of out of her. She was sick several times after and missed quite a few days of school because of it. She’s had a rash that the doctor at first thought was an allergic reaction to the antibiotics, but now he thinks it may be eczema. He suggested switching to Dove soap and using Lubiderm lotion. If that doesn’t help, he’s going to send her to a dermatologist. Needless to say, it’s been a rough couple of months for Tori.

On the writing front, I reached my goal of 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo, and as a prize winners receive a voucher for 5 free print copies of their novel. While I won’t be getting a copy of the story I worked on last year, I will be using it toward getting another story printed up. That’s my main goal for the next few months: to edit and revise my novel and get it printed. I have until June, but I’d like to be finished by May at the latest. I’ve recruited a couple of good friends to help in the editing process. It should be interesting because I really haven’t revisited the story in quite a while.

As for my 2011 NaNoWrimo story, For the First Time, I hope to finish it this year as well. It’s going to need quite a bit of work as well, but I feel good about the plot and characters and how far I got with the story during NaNoWriMo. I already have a lot of editing ideas in mind, but I’m mostly just pleased to feel excited about writing something. Last year, on the whole, was a bit of a bust when it came to writing, which was pretty disappointing, but it did do a lot of reading in the meantime. I feel like reading helps. It’s a good way to see what does and doesn’t work for the storytelling, plot and characters on the reader’s side of things, and I hope to take some of those ideas into my writing. We’ll see.

Anyway, I’m aiming to try to update at least once a week, and I anticipate many of my posts to be talk about the editing and revising process. Hopefully, it won’t be too boring, or involve too many *head desk* moments.

It’s been quite a while since my last actual post. Things have been hectic and busy, so most of the time, by the time I have time to blog, I just feel too lazy to do so.

I’m currently participating in NaNoWrimo, but with some luck I just might reach 50,000 words tonight. I’m currently less than 4,000 words away. I’ve been writing an original novel, whereas in the past I’ve mostly worked on fan fiction. This was an idea that came to be back around August. I thought about it some, but I hadn’t really fleshed out all of the details. I actually intended to try to finish another story, Solace, but on the first of November, it became very obvious that that wasn’t going to work. My heart and head weren’t in the story and every word felt like pulling teeth, so a couple of days into the endeavor, I switched stories. My writing methods have been a little odd. I’ve mostly been writing scenes as they spring into my mind, or based on prompts that friends have given me. I know I’m going to have a lot of editing ahead of me, but I feel good about the idea, characters and the direction of the story.

As for Thanksgiving, we had it here, at my grandparents house, as usual. Also, as is tradition, we had entirely too much food. I made my mandatory cheese ball, and tried a couple of new recipes. I made pecan pie bars that I think collectively everyone agreed were just as good as, if not better, than an actual pecan pie. I also made homemade rolls. That didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. They tasted fine, but they were a pain to made. I think the future, I’ll just buy rolls from the store and save myself the headache.

We also had an abundance of wine. Normally, we’d have one bottle, but when I went to the store with my grandma, we wound up getting two bottles. Then my mom showed up with two bottles of the same brand. Oddly enough, we all got different flavors. By the end of the night, we had gone threw three of the bottles. My mom, sister and I were all tipsy and coffee was required for sobering up. Of course, I woke up with an awful headache the next morning, but I can’t complain too much.

My mom, her boyfriend and my stepbrother stayed until nearly nine in the evening. We played the game Phase 10, which always goes on for a very long time. In all, it was really a good time.

On the downside, Tori’s been sick since the Thursday before Thanksgiving. She came home early from school with a fever and not feeling well. The fever went down overnight, but then she went to her dad’s for the weekend and came back feeling bad again, so my grandma took her to the doctor on Monday. They took x-rays and found out she had pneumonia. He gave her some medicine to help clear it up, and we thought she we getting better, but when she went back to the doctor on Wednesday and they took x-rays again, the infection in her lungs was actually worse, so they send her to the hospital down near Carmel. Tori was scared, but once she got there, she was fine. She had a nice room with her own TV, DVD player and computer, so she was pretty much in the height of her glory. They ran antibiotics through and IV twice and released her on Thursday morning. She actually almost didn’t want to come home because it was so nice down there. Plus, she got waited on by the nurses.

We think she’ll be able to go back to school tomorrow. Luckily, last week was a short week of school, but she still has quite a bit of homework she needs to do to catch up. She’ll go back to the doctor again this week, but she seems better. She’s eating again and regained her sassy attitude.

The next few weeks will probably be hectic as well, as I gear up for Christmas and try to figure out gifts on a very small, nearly non-existent, budget, but I will try to blog on a more regular basis. It’s much too easy to get out of practice and just let it go.

Anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to go shopping with a 21-month-old, 7-year-old and 17-year-old, who do not like shopping, is crazy. Following this theory, my mother is crazy. And, okay, maybe I am a little too, but in my defense, I did not realize my nephew would also be going when I agreed to go with my mom.

For context, my brother is moving up north to live with my aunt and uncle on my dad’s side of the family. He was getting in a lot of trouble here, and staying with my dad was just an all around bad idea that only made things worse. Living with my mom wouldn’t help either because her boyfriend is a jackass when it comes to my brother. In the end, it was my brother who called our uncle and in a matter of a week, everything happened, and he’s up north now and will be starting his new school on Tuesday.

Since everything happened so quickly, my mom really didn’t have a chance to take him shopping for some new clothes and other things he’d need, so that was why we went up north yesterday and picked him up to go shopping. The experience probably would have been better if my niece and nephew weren’t with us, but I think my mom wanted to take them to show them off, which I can’t blame her for, since they’re damn cute.

After shopping, we went to the campground where my aunt, uncle and cousin and his wife keep their campers all year and were staying at for the weekend. My uncle tried to talk me into staying, but I was tired and just kind of wanted to go home by the time we were done. Of course, a horrible storm rolled in as we were leaving and lasted most of the way home.

I’m pretty bummed about my brother being about an hour and a half away, but I know it’s probably for the best. I think he just needed to get away from our dad, for one, and his friends, for another, because neither of them were helping the situation. I’m holding out hope that things will go well for him since he’ll be in a different environment. Plus, my aunt and uncle are almost always doing something, and since my brother is very easily bored, that should be good for him.

I’m just going to preface this post with the note that I have now set this blog up to crosspost to Livejournal, so if any of my friends are confused, it’s probably best of reference the last few posts on failed-to-say.net because I’m currently too lazy to recap the last few months.

I feel absolutely horrible. For whatever reason, my allergies, apparently, decided to gang up on me on Sunday evening. I’m utterly perplexed by my nose’s ability to both be stuffed and runny simultaneously. There’s been a lot of sneezing, and if I called someone, they’d probably think if was some prankster calling to breathe heavily in their ear. Therefore, I will not be answering the phone nor will I be calling anyone until I feel better. I’ve been taking the generic version of Benedryl, and it does help. It also makes me very tired, which isn’t not very conducive to getting things done. Today, I magically appear to have an earache, which sucks because I just bought an audiobook –One Grave At A Time by Jeaniene Frost– that I’m very eager to listen to and currently cannot because my ear is currently occupied by ear drops and cotton. It’s a spectacular look as well, I’m sure.

Nonetheless, I helped my grandma clean out the small shed behind the house. We managed to get it all done. A lot of things are going to Goodwill and several others went in the trash, but everything that came out of the shed that is being kept is now back in it. There’s more that will go in there later, but that requires sorting through things first.

As promise in my last post, I have pictures of my redecorated bedroom. It looks very bright in the pictures, but it’s actually a bit darker than things appear. I still have touch ups that I need to work on, and I have plans to paint my closet doors. I’ve yet to decide on the design, though I might do something that is similar to my bedspread, but I need to get more paints for that first. Read more »