Well it's been almost a month since I blogged, but not too much has been going on.  We're gearing up for the holidays, and I'm sure there will be more to talk about with those coming up.  The person in our family who has been changing the most lately is Joci, because she's learning a lot of new words.  Here are some of them:

Hot! (usually followed by her blowing on whatever it is)
Soo (soup)
Hot soo! (blowing noise)
Shoe
Show
Pop
Juu (juice)
Mine!
Bye Pooh!
Bye Joe!
Bye sis! (these are all said randomly)
Ball
Yay!

So that's Joci.  She vocalizes constantly, but for the most part it's babyspeak.  Sometimes between her and Chaela, though, I think I might invest in a pair of earplugs.

"Well, I didn't ask if I could have cookies!"

A funny story from today.

It was my turn to teach Joy School this morning (a preschool taught by a small group of mothers, way cheaper than traditional if you've got the time).  Halfway through, I got a migraine.  Ugh.  It was awful.  But I went along with the lesson as long as I could.  I made it through snack time, which was two Halloween Oreos I bought especially for this the night before, one candy corn pumpkin each, grapes, and crackers. When it got too bad, I put on "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown," which got me through until parents arrived.
By the time the kids left, it was bad.  I could hardly see, couldn't focus, had a pounding headache, all the lovely things that come with a migraine.  It was lunch time, but I could hardly stand, so I gave my kids a cheese stick and made Joci a cup of milk and stuck her in bed with it for her nap.  Thankfully, the milk filled her up and she slept.

I told Chaela that I was sick and had to lay down for a while, telling her, "Sweetie, if you need anything, wake me up and I'll try and get it for you, ok?"

"Ok, mom!" she said, then sat herself at the computer, which she loves to play on.
Too far gone to care about the daily recommended amount of screen time for young children, I collapsed into bed.

I woke up when Joci did about two hours later, feeling much better.  Chaela came into my room and we had this conversation:
"Hey, honey, I bet you're really hungry since we missed lunch!" I said.
"No," Chaela responded.  "Not really."
"What?  Are you sure?  You're not hungry at all?"
"No."
Silence.
"Chaela... what did you eat?" I asked, suddenly suspicious.
"Um, I don't know, ha ha!" she giggled.
"Yes you do," I said.  "What did you eat?"
"Ha ha!  I don't know!"
"Chaela," I said in my 'mom' voice, "Tell me what you ate."
"Well..." she said, "I didn't ask if I could have cookies."
I remembered I had left the bag of Oreos on the counter, at least 1/2 full.  I remembered Chaela's propensity for using a stool to reach things she wasn't supposed to have.
"Chaela, did you eat that entire bag of Oreos?"
"Ha ha!  No.  There's one, two, three left!"
"You ate all the cookies but three?"
"Yeah!  And some pumpkins!"
"The candy pumpkins we had at snack time?"
"Yeah!  I put them in a bowl!"
I rubbed my face with my hands and sighed.  There's one thing to be said about being sick, it makes me much more mellow.
I sighed.  "Alright, well I'm glad you weren't hungry the whole time.  No more candy or cookies for the rest of the day."
"Ok mom!"
And she bounced away.
When I walked into the kitchen, I saw she'd even poured her own glass of milk and had obviously been dipping the Oreos in it.  She hadn't spilled a drop.  If she hadn't left the gallon out on the floor, I might have missed the fact that she'd done it.  And no, she never got a stomach ache or acted like she felt sick.

Kids.

Bucket List

Inspired by my friend Maya over at Musings of a Marfan Mom I decided to post my bucket list.  I don't think I have before, but if so, oh well!  She did it as part of a contest so check that out on her blog if you're interested, but I'm just posting mine for fun.

 1. Own our own home.
 2. Finish and publish a novel, preferably with some measure of success.
 3. Get some dogs, probably Siberian Huskies.
 4. Get a Master's degree.
 5. Become a more patient and kind mother.
 6. Travel to Hawaii, Alaska, the UK, Australia, Japan, and a bunch of other places.
 7. Get back into drawing and painting.
 8. Be in a musical.
 9. Make exercise a part of my daily (or at least every-other-daily) life
10.Always maintain a reasonably clean home.
11.Live in forested mountains in a house that has a loft with a sliding glass door that leads to a balcony.
12.Do something meaningful with my degree in linguistics, like help preserve a dying language.
13.Pass my passions, loves, and beliefs on to my children, if they're willing.
14.See the world from the cockpit of an airplane, or from a helicopter, or some view that's wider than an airplane window.
15.Learn to be conversational in Spanish, French, Japanese, and for fun and shock value, Welsh.

Costumes 2011: Complete!

The sewing is finished!  Here is Joci's costume... a little different from the picture but still cute.  I only hope she deigns to keep the hat on, or else the effect won't be as good.  We'll see.  That floppiness at the top is supposed to be a hat (the pink thing inside is a bandanna... her head needs all the warmth it can get).

So all I have left to do is get them some shirts to wear underneath and see if a friend has some fake plastic swords I can borrow!  I'm excited!

2011 Goal #2: Submit something for publication - Complete!

Well, as virtually all of you saw on facebook, I reached 2/3 of my goals for the year when I submitted a short story entitled "Faerie's Child" to Daily Science Fiction yesterday afternoon.  I haven't heard back from them yet, but I should within three weeks.

I'm planning on a rejection because, as I've said before, rejections are what happen.  If I get one, I'm going to print it and hang it on my wall to motivate myself to do better.  As the title character said on Castle this past Monday, "Rejection isn't failure; giving up is failure," or something like that.  It was a timely episode for me.

I'm so paranoid I just checked my email to make sure I hadn't gotten rejected while writing this blog.  Being a writer is going to be bad for my nerves.

And I can't remember if I've said this on my blog or not, but I've decided that if I can't get published professionally after a few years of trying, I'll self-publish.  That way all you people who feel bad for me can buy my stories for pity dollars which I will use to buy myself a pity Pepsi every now and then. : )

"The lies we live will always be confessed in the stories that we tell."

Orson Scott Card said that.  It both speaks to me and disturbs me.

Weight Loss Derailed

Ok, I was looking at some old pictures of Will and I on facebook today.  Look at this:

That's us in the summer of 2006, five years ago.  Now (oh, man, I really don't want to do this...) look at this:

This is us at Christmas in 2010.  There's one where you can see us a lot better, but I just can't handle putting it up.  I know they say that weight gain is a sign of a happy relationship, but this is ridiculous.  I have lost a few pounds since this picture was taken, but I am not going to reach my goal of losing a pound per week (52 pounds) this year.   You really can't tell with Will, but he's matched my weight gain almost pound for pound, it's just harder to see.  Probably because he's a guy and six feet tall.

Anyway, I'm tired of this.  I'm tired of feeling like a frumpy mom.  I'm tired of using my kids as a facebook profile picture because the ones of me are heinous.  I'm tired of being afraid of running into people I haven't seen since college.  I want to feel good about myself again.  I've let myself go since being in Utah (gained back about half the weight I lost at the beginning of the year).  It's time to recommit myself.

I recently bought a scale.  I think being able to see myself gaining or losing weight will be exactly what I need. I wish we'd bought one sooner, then I wouldn't be starting behind... again.

There are twelve weeks left in the year.  I would like to lose fifteen pounds by the end of it.  This goal scares me, but if I can accomplish it, I will have lost a total of twenty pounds in 2011.  That's not horrible.  I would like Will to participate, but I haven't asked him yet.

I will attempt to accomplish this goal by controlling how much I eat and incorporating exercise into my routine.  The exercise is going to be hard, because our place is small and my kids are underfoot.  Not to mention I'm already trying to balance writing, housekeeping, sewing, cooking, and actually being mentally present with my daughters on a regular basis.  Oh, and spending time with Will (ha ha, love you).  Anyway, if people who do all of the above plus work can make time to be healthy, so can I.  

Right?

Winner!

Ok, not exactly.  But I wanted to post that I entered my first-ever writing challenge on one of the two writing forums I frequent.  Thirteen people entered; many of them have been writing for years.  One or two are published.  The contest was to take the "trigger" and write the first 13 lines of a potential novel.  The trigger this time was the noir/hardboiled detective genre.

Guess what?  I got SECOND PLACE!  The only person who beat me is one I know has been published.  I just wanted to put up a little "yay me!" post, because I'm proud of myself.  It's nice to have a little validation... like maybe this goal of being a writer isn't completely crazy.  Maybe someday I really will be published!

We'll find out soon enough.  Within the next few days, I'll be submitting a short story to an online magazine.  I'm planning on it being rejected, because that's what happens.  But maybe it won't sting as much as it would have.

: D

Rewrite.

I'm going to let my story rest for a while, then I'm going to write it over.

Yes.  I'm going to rewrite the whole thing.  Why?  It's not working.  It's not... enough.  This story means a lot to me, and I'm not good enough to write it yet.  The manuscript has a  thousand little snarls that I can't untangle.  Not plot problems, just... oh, I don't even know how to explain it.  It's not right yet.

I care about this story, and I don't want to put it out there until it's as good as I can possibly make it.  I think this is the way to do it.

In the meantime, I'm going to revisit my first attempt at a novel.  I still think the story could be a good one, and I have a few random ideas that will make it better.  I'm not giving up my goal to submit something for publication in 2011, either.  I have a flash fiction piece (a VERY short story) in the works, and I know where I want to send it.  I will submit it by the end of the year.  I'm also toying with the idea of starting a new novel, so I feel like I'm moving forward instead of backward.  I hesitate to do this is because I don't want to feel like I'm starting, starting, starting, and never finishing.  At the same time, something fresh might renew my writing spirit.  I do have a few intriguing ideas I'd like to hammer out.  We'll see.

Costumes 2011: One down.

Here's a picture of Chaela's completed costume!  I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, though I wish I'd had enough of the stripped fabric to do the whole shirt.  Oh, well.  I like it anyway.  I made a shirt, two skirts, a bandanna/head scarf thing, and a shawl for tying around the waist.  Love it.

Next up: a break.  Then Joci's.