Fast Food Fatty

I don't eat a lot of fast food. I go to McDonalds maybe every 3 months or so. It's just easier and cheaper to eat at home. But tonight after our Gospel Meeting, we went to the nearby food court. I started out with a double cheeseburger and fries from McDonalds. I was freezing cold, so I then went to Starbucks and got a tall peppermint white chocolate mocha with whipped cream. While I was drinking that, Angel #2 came up to our table eating a chocolate dipped waffle bowl sundae from Dairy Queen. She ate the ice cream but was too full to eat the waffle bowl, so I ate it. On the way home, all that fat and sugar was starting to digest in my stomach and the ol' tummy was rebelling. I'm not used to all that fat and preservatives and whatever else they stick in their food. I think next week I'll get a salad.

book signing

I had a booksigning today at our small local bookstore. My 3 Nanowrimo buddies all came and we had a great time. It sounded like we were having a party in the back of the store. I did an author talk as well and, to my surprise, people came! There were two women and one of the woman's 2 pre-teen kids. I hadn't really planned on what I was going to say for my talk, but I winged it and it turned out pretty good. The title of my talk was: From Plot Bunnies to Published; the Journey of a Book. It helped that I knew my subject matter, I just started talking and it all spilled out. One of my friends said that she never would have guessed that I hadn't known what I was going to say before I started. Four people from our church who are visiting here on vacation also came to the signing and stayed for most of the talk, it was nice to have their support also. I didn't sell a ton of books or anything, but I had a nice time.

I've got about half of my kitchen cupboards emptied out and cleaned. I also lemon oiled all the cabinet doors, which made them look really nice. I can honestly say the kitchen looks better now than it did when we moved in a year and a half ago. Now, I can't wait to get all these boxes out of here. They're driving me nuts all piled up around here.

Mrs. McCormick, where are you?

Once again, last night, I went to ANOTHER concert. This one was Angel #4's Christmas concert and once again, it looked like they had the kindergarteners organizing it. It was held outside in the school yard lawn as usual. The teacher who organized it sang along with the kids, problem was, he was the only one with a microphone, so I spent 2 hours listening to some dumb guy's voice drowning out the voices of a bunch of kids singing their hearts out. It was pretty disappointing. They also couldn't get the lights to work properly and they kept flashing on and off and some lady sitting behind me couldn't understand the concept of personal space and was totally crowding up behind me. She put her BARE FOOT on my purse, people! I kept moving forward and she just kept creeping up behind me, kicking me in the back and bonking me on the head with her bag. But, the best part was when the sprinkler system went off right near the end. Yeah, can you believe it? I can't make stuff like that up. It really made me miss Mrs. McCormick. She was my elementary school music teacher all the while I was growing up and was also my kids music teacher when we lived in Wisconsin. This women taught every grade in 2 different elementary schools, organized the entire Christmas program and had the kids singing beautifully. Mrs. McCormick at her worst would surpass what I went to last night. Next year, I'm just going to stay at home and peel my skin off in 1 inch strips with a butter knife, it'll be more enjoyable.

We have a haunted printer. It's been starting up randomly, which really freaked Jake out the other day. It'll be turned off, but plugged in, and all of a sudden it'll just start humming and buzzing for a minute or two, then turn off again. I unplugged it, so if it starts up now, I'm calling Jay and Grant from Ghost Hunters in to check it out....hopefully they'll bring Steve and Tango along, cause they're just too cute for words.

Fun With Craig's List

I've become a Craig's List junkie, visiting the site at least once a day to see if there's any good loot. The other day, hubby bought two mopeds from Craigs list, which brings the moped total up to 4 in our garage. It looks like a group Heck's Angels lives here and it's REALLY difficult to get to the freezer at the moment. I can't wait til we move. Anyway, that wasn't what I wanted to talk about. I like trying to spot scammers on the List and laugh at how some try to look legit, but ultimately fail. I say this because one of the items available was located in Honolulu, HA, problem is, the abbreviation for Hawaii is HI not HA, as any Hawaiian would know. Another thing is that many towns around here are somewhat difficult to say and/or spell, yet, if you lived in the town, you'd think you know how to spell it, eh? Not if you're a Craig's List scammer. And it wasn't just an innocent typo, because it was spelled wrong twice in the same ad. But, I get my biggest chuckle in the pets section. Cockfighting is rather big down here, illegal, but popular. So, some of these guys want to sell their fighting roosters, but can't put that in the ad because, uh, cockfighting is illegal. So they put in these carefully worded ads selling their roosters with 'good bloodlines to help produce better eggs' and that sort of thing, then ask $150 for a single chicken. Those had better be pretty darn good eggs for that price, don't ya think?

It looks like we'll be able to move in to our new place as soon as Monday, which is cool. We're all getting pretty anxious to get out there. Angel #1 is off school today for his first day of winter break, #2 went to school to do make-up work and she'll be home early this afternoon. WE and #4 have today and a half day tomorrow yet before their vacation starts, though WE is pushing pretty hard to skip Friday since it's just going to be a goof-off day anyway. They don't go back until Jan 12 or 13 depending on the kid, so I've got almost a month of quality kid time ahead of me. Pray for my sanity.

Why couldn't they have just left it in the garbage?

A couple weeks ago, when our next door neighbor moved, she threw a lot of stuff in the trash. Angel #4 went over there and dug through it, looking for treasures. One of her treasures was a cone shaped bottle filled with vinegar and grapes or cranberries or something and corked at the top. It rested in a metal stand. I'm not one for decorator stuff and this thing was definitely a kitchen decoration. Well, #4 passed it on to Angel #2 and it sat in her room for a while. Tonight we told her she had to clean her room and sort through stuff she wanted to get rid of. She came down with that vinegar thing and asked me what she should do with it. Just as I was going to tell her to throw it away, it slipped out of its stand, dropping to the floor and shattering. Now the whole room smells like pickled mystery berries and there's broken glass and purple juice all over the place. The girls are cleaning up the mess, but it really stinks, so Angel #4 is armed with yellow Playtex gloves and one of those disposable air masks over her nose and mouth while #2 is going with the bank robber approach and has a dish towel tied over her face. Now I know why I don't go for decorator kind of things, they're just too messy.

Talk about messy, that same neighbor is paying me to clean out her house so renters can move in. Her house isn't messy, but it's still a lot of work scrubbing floors, washing windows and wiping out cabinets. I worked for most of the day today and have to finish up the bathroom and some kitchen stuff tomorrow. My arms are achin'! But, I'm getting into shape so I can do the same thing to my house next week once we get all our stuff moved out.

Book Review Tuesday: The Man Who Loved Jane Austen by Sally Smith O'Rourke Eliza Knight buys an old dresser and discovers letters written to and from Jane Austen hidden behind the mirror. One of the letters is from F. Darcy - thus, the mystery begins. Was there really a Mr. Darcy in Jane's life? What happened to him? What was his relationship to Jane? This was a completely different twist from any Pride and Prejudice related book I've ever read, and I've read a LOT of P&P related stuff. Part of it takes place in the present, the other part in the days of Jane Austen and Mr. Darcy plays a major part in both halves. You don't even have to like P&P or be familiar with the story to enjoy this book, though it will definitely enhance the reading experience if you are.

Random Daydreamer Fact - to make the RDF's more interesting, I'm going to have the Angels each come up with a fact about me to share with you. Today is Angel #2's fact: I've taken care of a newborn lamb - in my living room. (thankfully, the mothers maternal instincts kicked in in a relatively short time, so this was a very short term job)

Coffee

I forgot to mention that the other day when hubby and I stopped by to drop our security deposit off at our new landlords he gave us a coffee lesson. I've seen coffee plants all over the place around here, but never knew what was all involved in getting it from the bush to the cup. Now that I've seen it, I've got to wonder who in the heck figured it out. After picking the beans, they need to be run through a machine that separates the berry from the coffee bean. From there, the beans need to be dried, then put through a machine that removes the papery coating (called parchment) from around the beans. Somewhere in there, they need to be sorted, with the small, broken or chipped beans getting thrown out. After that, they go in the roaster, then the grinder and into your Mr. Coffee machine and down your gullet. Someone must have been really despesperate to figure out a use for coffee berries to have figured out to go through all those steps just so they could drink some bitter brown liquid and get a caffeine fix.

Last night the kids were playing 20 questions. The new family rule is that when it's WE's turn to pick the item, he has to clear it with me first. He tends to pick bizarre things like cholrine and deer hearts, which are pretty much impossible to guess. This time he picked a naked mole rat, which was guessed in about 5 or 6 questions, mainly because he gave a few hints. He also got mad at Angel #4 when they were trying to guess #2's item because they were on question #19 and she asked if the item was a hammer, screwdriver or a wrench. When #2 said 'yes', they realized that, as WE put it: if you'd only said 2 things, we'd have a 50-50 chance of maybe getting the right answer, but now we've only got a 25% chance. Math isn't one of his better subjects. The #4 pointed out that if he hadn't wasted 3 questions making sure that the item was lava, they wouldn't have needed all 20 questions in the first place. Yep, 3 of his questions were, does it have something to do with volcano's? "no" Is it lava? "no" Does it have something to do with lava? "NO!" I made a personal memo to myself to never be on WE's team for 20 questions.

Random Daydreamer Fact: No one I'm immediately related to (mom, dad, brother, sisters, husband, kids) has brown eyes, including me.

finally, another entry

Last night, my wonderful husband asked me how in the heck he was supposed to know what was going on in our family if I don't make regular entries in my blog and, I admit, I've been slacking lately. But it's not really my fault, Angel #2 keeps kidnapping my computer at night and doing whatever it is she does, and I don't get a chance to do my entries. So, here it is, Sunday afternoon and I'm making an entry now so I get it done.

Yesterday, WE had two different choir concerts at two different shopping centers, we just dropped him off at the morning one, but we all went to the one in the afternoon. He did pretty good on the ones sung in plain old English, but the Hawaiian ones and the sign language one were a bit of a challenge. I suspect he fell back to the old 'watermelon' strategy - though that didn't quite do the trick for the sign language song. He was a beat behind most of the other kids, which wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't been standing front row center. lol

Hubby bought a machete the other day, so then we had to go to our new place so he could try it out. He was having way too much fun doing the Crocodile Dundee thing out there. The kids are going to have a blast living there - there's just tons of things that have been hidden by overgrowth for years.

I want to give a shout-out to my friend Sierra who got ENGAGED the other day in a very romantic way. http://jsierramaira.bravejournal.com/ Everybody say it with me: AAAAWWW!

Exciting bonus Entry - I am a Compost Pile

Just got back from #4's concert, which was really good. The elementary school drama club also put on two plays, on of which was a musical called Hansel and Gretal Eat Right, which was a total hoot. One little boy played a compost pile. How cool it that??? I wish I could have played a compost pile when I was in elementary school. He even sang a song about it called: I Am A Compost Pile. One of the witches was a total little ham and totally stole the show (except for when the compost pile took the stage). She was waving her arms around, taking center stage and even singing in that warbly voice little girls use when they want to sound like opera singers. We were all just rolling with laughter.

STC's?

WE is learning about STDs in Health class and he feels it's important that he enlightens his parents on their dangers. Today, he was telling us about 'sniffalous', which got me totally snorting with laughter. I guess that would be a runny nose you get from having sex. And here I thought washing my hands was all I needed to do to prevent myself from getting a cold.

It rained almost all day today, which is unusual for where we live. The water garden is all filled up and the lawn is nicely watered, so all is good. Though it's been so dark and gloomy we've needed the lights on all day. BUT, that is MUCH better than the 8 inches of snow our friends in Wisconsin got dumped on them the other day, so no complaints.

Tonight Angel #4 has another band concert. This makes the 2nd one in the last 5 days and she's got another one next week. WE has two concerts on Saturday and another one next Thursday. I can't wait until the concert season is over.

Random Daydreamer Fact: I took piano lessons for 5 years as a kid and I still can only play basic songs with one finger. I'm not real musically inclined

18 years

Well, my marriage is now an adult with full voting privileges. Yesterday it was 18 years since I said "I Do" to the love of my life. Yay us! To celebrate we went out to lunch, then we both got sick, so I think we got food poisoning for our anniversary. Ain't love grand?

I'm starting to pack things up for our move. I wish I had more boxes so I could get everything we're not going to be using for the next two weeks all packed away and out of my sight so it feels like I'm accomplishing something. I'll head over to Walmart again today and see if I can score some boxes there. Even if I could get all our books packed I would feel better. We've got a lot of books.

Swimmin Pools - Movies Stars

Hubby, his buddy Chris and I went yard saleing this morning. We found a couple good deals. Problem was, we were taking Angel #1's new car for its inaugeral drive and it's just not very big. I ended up finding a glider rocking chair for only $5 and snapped it up, but then we had to figure out how we were going to get it home. It fit in the back seat just fine, but since the top was down on the car, we looked an awful lot like the Beverly Hillbillies driving down the road. The guys wanted me to sit in the chair and knit as we were cruising around, but I passed on that suggestion. I prefer to think of myself as more of an Ellie Mae than a Granny.

Today was Angel #2's last day at work. She gave her two weeks notice a couple weeks ago after she'd finally had it with one of the other library employees. She'd been warned about this woman before by other kids who'd worked at the library and I've had issues with her in the past. After all this woman's harassment, she finally quit. It's too bad that a kid's first work experience has to be ruined by one person with a bug up their butt. Sadly, the library keeps her on despite all the complaints they've recieved about her. Since there were library budget cuts, they can't hire someone to replace the Angel - maybe karma will be at work and the witchy employee will be stuck shelving books in her place.

Angel #1 looked so handsome tonight when he put on his uniform to go to the military ball. Cool thing about the ball is that they have to use their military manners or they get penalized. If they don't do things like stand up when a lady leaves or sits down at the table, they have to do things like sing a song in front of everyone or 'drink the grog' which is a disgusting punch with a dirty sock floating on the top of it. It only takes once and they usually remember their manners after that.

Random Daydreamer Fact: I played clarinet in the school band for about 3 months in 6th grade

How an Angel gets her groove on

Yesterday, Angel #2 went outside to mail a letter. When she was by the mailbox, I called to her from out of an upstairs window to tell her that she had the wrong postage and to come up by me and I'd help her. A few minutes later, she still hadn't come up, so I looked out the window again to see what the heck she was doing. She was petting and talking to the neighbors dog, which had come up to her by the mailbox. Now, she likes animals and stuff, but I've never noticed her being the least bit interested in this dog in the past. Then I noticed that at the house where the dog lived, someone was outside watering the bushes and it all made sense. Sure nuff, a couple minutes later, there she was, talking to the cute teenaged neighbor boy from across the street. When the angel was little, she was majorly lacking in social skills and I was a bit worried that she'd have a hard time dealing with people in her life, but I guess I didn't need to worry, she's obviously picking up those skills needed for socialization (as well as for picking up the neighbor boy). In attempt to remain naive in regards to his oldest daughter, hubby tossed out the desperate suggestion that maybe she just happened to be petting the dog and just happpened to end up talking to CNB (Cute Neighbor Boy). I was forced to burst his clueless little bubble and inform him that nope, his sweet little daughter was on the make. I don't know if the poor man will ever recover.



Tomorrow, the daydreamer offspring have a full schedule. I think you can tell your kids are getting older when you end up home alone on Saturday. This is how the day looks:

7am-10am Angel #1 had behind the wheel drivers ed

8:15am-5pm Angel #2 has to work

10am Angel #4 has to play in a band concert at a shopping center

10:30am WE has to sing in a choir concert at a DIFFERENT shopping center

11:30am-4pm Angel #1 has to work

5pm-11pm Angel #1 is going to the Military Ball (without a girl because he chickened out)

Oh, and I forgot to mention that, last week, the day before we left for Oahu, Angel #1 passed his written test for drivers ed. Now he's just got to finish his behind the wheel training with the teacher and he should have his license by the beginning of February. Yay for the Angel!

Random Daydreamer Fact: I've been to see the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, 4 different times, including the year they had a picture of Elvis, done entirely with corn, on the side of the building.

Invasion!

No, the Japanese haven't invaded Pearl Harbor again or the Huns the Roman Empire, it's ants and they've invaded my house. Ants are pretty common and it's a steady battle to keep them out of places where they shouldn't be, but they're particularly bad right now. We haven't had rain in a while, which may be the cause. All I know is that they're all over the place. Yesterday morning WE had a couple pieces of cat food by his bed (I haven't a clue why) and when I went to wake him up for school, there were hundreds of ants crawling all over the food and the surrounding area, including his sheets. They were in the dogs food again this morning, they've got a little parade going through the living room and when I grabbed my trusty bottle of Terro ant poison, they were even crawling all over that. In addition to the regular ants, I'm also battling this teeny tiny water ants. I call them water ants, but that's not their real name, I'm sure, but they're attracted to water, so I'll find them in the water pitcher if it's left on the kitchen counter, I used to have them crawling around the outside of our water cooler also. They're not attracted to Terro, so I don't know how to get rid of them, besides moving, which we're doing in 22 days (YAY!)

I picked up some boxes at Walmart when I was there today and got a little head start on packing. They're the perfect size for storing books, which is good since we've got a LOT of books.

Today, I had a mongoose in the kitchen and it was freaking Jake the Wonder Dog out something terrible. If he would have just left it alone, it would have left, but he kept nosing around by the counter it was hiding behind, making it afraid to leave. I couldn't get Jake out of the kitchen so it would leave until Angel #1 called to get him from the bus stop. The lure of a ride in the van was more than Jake could handle and he came with me, giving Mr. mongoose a chance to make his escape...at least I assume/hope he made his escape and he's not still hiding under the counter. Wouldn't that be a fun surprise in the middle of the night?

Random Daydreamer Fact: I actually like moving to a new place, it gives me the chance to go through all our stuff and decide what I can live without and haul to Goodwill.

Counting the days til we move

So, the guy across the street from our house decided to talk on the phone last night. Apparently, in an effort to not bother the other people in his house, he took his phone outside and did his talking on the edge of the road. To make matters worse, not only could we hear his end of the coversation, but he put the stupid phone on speaker so the neighborhood wouldn't be deprived of hearing the other end also. This went on for about a half hour or so and it was getting to be around 10 o'clock. We were starting to get pretty annoyed, if we wanted to sit around at night listening to other people's conversations, we'd watch a television show or something. I could tell hubby was just about ready to yell out the window for Mr. Annoying to shut up. I was catching bits and pieces of his argument with, from what I could gather from the conversation, his pregnant girlfriend who was thinking of moving to Hawaii from the Mainland to be with him. The fight was heating up when he said: "Reality? I'll tell you what reality is. Reality is that as soon as I've done my jail time, I'm leaving Honolulu." Well folks, I just couldn't help it and I burst out laughing. Seriously, how could I not with a statement like that? I guess he heard me laughing and finally realized that when you yell into your cranked up speaker phone in the middle of the street the whole neighborhood can hear the conversation. Next thing you know, he took his conversation (and his stupid phone) into his house and silence reins once again on our happy little street.

Book Reveiw Tuesday: Borrowed Bride by Elizabeth Lane Good, good, good. Set at the turn of the last century, which is cool because there are very few historical romances set during that time period and Elizabeth Lane does it SO well. Synop: his last night in town before heading to the wilds of Alaska, Hannah and Quint do the nasty. Quint leaves and disappears w/out a trace. Hannah finds out she's preggers and has no clue what to do. To give his brothers baby a name, Judd offers to marry Hannah, divorce papers at the ready so when/if Quint returns, he and Hannah can get married and raise their child. But...next thing you know, Judd starts looking pretty good to Hannah and vice-versa, then the angst begins. This is some good stuff, people and if you can get your hands on ANY Elizabeth Lane book, do so and open that baby up immediately. She's quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.

back in action

I'm back at home and halfway caught up with laundry. Yay me!

Oahu was fun. We got in on Wednesday morning and immediately headed to the mall. My friend Rene was also there with her girls, so we met up and did our shopping together. Sucky part is, this is the biggest mall in Honolulu...it's BIG, and I couldn't find a thing. I wanted some nice looking skirts or maybe a dress or two, but couldn't find a single thing that caught my eye. I ended up walking out of there with 3 bras from Macy's and that was it. And the only reason I got 3 of them was because it was a buy 2 get 1 free sale. The girls found a couple nice things at Old Navy and the boys found some stuff at Sears, so the shopping trip wasn't a total bust.

After the mall, we headed out to our church convention. It was wonderful seeing friends we only see once a year as well as others from our island that were also there who we see all the time. It was inspiring and uplifting and makes me want to be a better person in the year to come.

Thursday night, Angel #2 and our friend Kahala decided they wanted to brave the crowds and go shopping. They left at 11:30 and got there in time for the midnight opening. I decided sleeping was more attractive and stayed behind. I've never done the Black Friday shopping thing and never will. I don't like shopping the way it is. #2 and Kahala had fun though and #2 was thrilled with the $88 dress she got for $13, even if she DID have to stand in the check out line for half an hour to get it. It just confirms my suspicion that people are freakin nuts.

We got home last night. While we were gone, Angel #4's friends thought they'd be nice and feed the dog. They completely filled his dog food dish. That's not a good idea in Hawaii because we've got so many ants. I only give him about a cup at a time so he can eat it before the ants find it. Well, the ants found it and his dish was just crawling with the critters and we had to throw away a pound or two of dog food. Angel #2 also discovered that her cat caught a rat while we were gone and stuck it under her bed. It was obvious that it had been caught at the beginning of our trip and it was pretty darn nasty. Even after she cleaned it all up, it still kind of smells in her room. Welcome home....yeah.

packing and writing

As you no doubt figured out from the post right below this one, I finished Nanowrimo today. Yay me! I wrote some totally random scenes that don't really fit into the story very good, but it all counts, baby. Now I can head out of here tomorrow without the dark cloud of an unfinished Nano looming over my head.

Yep, tomorrow we all fly out of here and head to Honolulu for the long Thanksgiving weekend. We do this yearly for our church convention and we're all looking forward to getting there and meeting up with all the other folks from the other islands. I'll be back on Sunday night, though I'm not guranteeing a post here until Monday, I'm going to be tired.

Book Review Tuesday: Stuck In the Seventies by DL Garfinkle This is a young adult book about a girl from today who, somehow, manages to travel back through time via a bathtub. It was kind of fun to read, not only because time travel books are fun, but it's set in 1978, which brings back a few memories from my childhood. I especially liked seeing the 70's through the eyes of a teenager from today. It was a really fun read.

Random Daydreamer Unknown Fact: When I was a kid, I used to hide out in the basement with the lights off and sit under the window and read. By keeping the lights off, my parents assumed nobody was down there and I could read to my hearts content w/out being found out and forced to do my chores.

Whew

I am done, my life is complete and I don't think I'll be opening a Word document any time in the near future. That is all.

Nano - whine - O

I've pretty much spent my day whining about Nano. I whined to my Novelfriend's group, I whined at Romance Divas and I even e-mailed my friend Grey and whined to her. I've got writer's burnout. But, on the positive side, I've only got 2000 words left to write and this torture is over for another year. Yay me! To top it off, the kids have watched 7 Brides for 7 Brothers a couple times now this week and the song Sobbin' Women has been stuck in my head, which is kind of annonying, especially since I can't get my voice to go as low as Howard Keel's.

I did a ton of laundry today, there was a lot. I've still got 3 or 4 loads left to wash if I want all our clothes clean before we go to Oahu on Wednesday. Packing for a trip is so stressful, but it'll all be worth it when we get settled in on the Convention grounds and we can spend four peaceful days at church with out friends.

To finish things off, I'm going to introduce an exciting new feature to this blog, which I will implement when I think of it. It's called: Unknown Daydreamer Facts The title is pretty self-explanitory. I'll give you a little known fact about me and before you know it, you'll be a fountain of Daydreamer trivia. Lucky you.

Unknown Daydreamer Fact #1: I empty out vacuum cleaner bags and use them a second time (a two-fold fact, you know I buy half as many bags as the average person, AND you know that I'm cheap - though a lot of you already knew that one)

It was kind of rainy all day today and all yesterday afternoon. That's really odd weather for here, where it very seldom rains, and if it does, it happens at night most of the time. We can always use rain though, so I'm not complaining. We're going to have to get used to it, it rains much more the farther up the mountains you go and we're going to be at about 1200 ft at our new house. It'll be cooler up there too. Everything changes as you go up the mountain, it's like a completely different world. Actually, our whole island is like that, if you do a circuit of the entire island, you'll see beaches, lava fields, ranch/grazing land, mountains w/snow, rain forests - you name it, we've got it.

We was in our local paper today. They interviewed those of us on this side of the island who were doing nanowrimo, took pictures and wrote a really nice article. http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/articles/2008/11/23/features/features01.txt
Maybe it'll even sell a few of my books. Talk about Nano, I didn't do any writing today at all. That means that I've got to average 3,000 words tomorrow and another 3K on Tuesday in order to meet my goal of finishing on before we leave on Wednesday. Wish me luck.

Nanoing

Today I went to Borders and had a write-in with three other Nano-ers. Way very much fun, except they were selling grilled chicken in the Walmart parking lot and we were smelling that the whole time, which made us all hungry. I DID get some writing done and am back on track, I'd fallen behind yesterday, but I'm good again. I've got a little less than 6 K to write by Wednesday so I can validate my Nano word count before we leave for our church convention on Wednesday. I can do this!

Where does she sleep?

I'm washing bedding today. I went to take the sheets off angel #4's bed and this is what I found:

• 1 pencil
• 1 pen
• 2 composition notebooks
• 1 3-ring binder
• 5 stuffed animals (including a 3 foot tall lion)
• 1 Little Red Riding Hood type basket with a bed pillow in it
• 5 cat toys
• 1 dresser drawer
• 3 pair of pajamas
• 2 bathrobes
• 2 throw pillows
• 1 alarm clock

The top sheet was pulled off the bed and lying on the floor - apparently there wasn't room for it in the bed. Did I mention this is a single bed - the top bed in her bunk bed. She's a normal sized kid, definitely more Amazon than Thumbalina...and she also sleeps with her cat. Yeah, I don't know how it all fits either. The bottom bunk is completely empty because that's where Jake the Wonder Dog sleeps.

Oops, I forgot that yesterday was Book Review Tuesday. Here you go:

Tuesday Book Review:Snobbery With Violence by Marion Chesney - Anything written by Marion Chesney is great, but her Edwardian romances are da bomb. Snobbery With Violence is the first of a series - there's four written, I haven't read #4 yet, but I hope it wraps up the romance between Harry and Rose. They're mystery stories with a touch of romance. Good stuff

RIP Bonsai

Well, Bonsai made it easier for us today. He was so sick this morning when we woke up that WE asked that we take him in asap to be put down because he couldn't stand seeing him in pain. About fifteen minutes after the kids left for school, he died. I was glad we didn't have to be responsible for putting him down. Now, for Amber, the reason we didn't do this a long time ago. I certainly crossed my mind, but since I'm known as the animal disliker of the family, they wouldn't listen to my suggestion anyway, so I just shut my mouth and let the family make their own decision. Besides, just when we thought the cat wasn't going to make it through the night, the darn thing would start recovering and we'd think he just might make it afterall. But, turns out he didn't make it. There were tears, but it's how life works and the kids understand that.

And also for Amber, I don't like bunnies because they've got nasty little pointed teeth, just like all other rodents. So, it's not only rabbits that I don't like, I also don't like rats, mice, squirrels, chipmunks, mongi and any other kind of rodents. Chickens are also creepy looking.

the suckiness of having pets

Bonsai the cat has been slowly going downhill the last month. Every week he's got some new medical problem. Yesterday he started yowling and drooling. It's pretty gross. We put him in the garage so we didn't have to hear him and WE ended up sleeping in the garge with him all night last night, tough I don't think he got much sleep. We had a family discussion tonight about possibly putting him down and, as expected, there were tears. Suprisingly, Angel #2 was the one who brought it up. Of course, I've been thinking of it for a couple weeks, but didn't say anything because...well, everyone knows my feelings on animals, so my opinion is obviously biased. Since it's WE's cat, we kind of let him make the decision and he just told me, through tears, that if he's not better by tomorrow afternoon, we'll take him in. This is not a cheery household tonight.

I don't know about getting another Cindy for the new place, Amber. I guess I don't mind cows, as long as I don't have to milk them. I draw the line at milking. Hubby's been talking about getting goats and chickens. E-I-E-I-O

exploring

We took the kids up to see our new house today. They hadn't seen it yet, though that didn't stop them from fighting over who was going to sleep in which bedroom. We still don't have that one all figured out yet, the discussion's been shelved for the time being. We also ran around the land a bit. There's a LOT of room out there, which is cool. We'd been hemmed in in town for too long. Long ago, the place used to be a working farm and we found all kinds of rock walls, all overgrown with vines and tall grass. We also found some unused bee hives. Here's something most people don't know about me. Though I've never done it, I've always been interested in bee keeping. Maybe we'll get some bees and have those hives up and running, how cool would that be? The kids seemed to have fun exploring. We found a couple guava trees and some lilikoi vines. Hopefully, we'll find more fruit trees as we dig around the property more. Things grow fast here, so maybe we'll buy a couple orange and lemon trees and plant them, too. The pineapple I planted in pots a year ago really need to be transplanted too. We'll have a fun little farm in no time at all.

Why husband's shouldn't yard sale

Hubby and his buddy took the scooters out today and just cruised around all day. They hit a few yard sales. Fortunately, because of limited storage space, they couldn't buy a whole lot, but, do you know what WILL fit in the storage space of a motorized scooter? A bullwhip and num-chuks. Yeah. WE's already snapped himself in the back with the whip. How? I dunno. It's only a matter of time before he knocks himself out with the num-chuks.

Angel #1 spent most of this afternoon washing, vacuuming and otherwise cleaning out his new car. I can't get him to clean his room, but apparently a car is different. Now, if he can only get it to run without the whole neighborhood knowing about it, he'll be in business.

Angel #4 and I went to the library booksale today and scored big. We managed to get a copy of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, only the greatest movie of all time, for a dime. She was also being nice and picked up a copy of the 2nd Harry Potter book for her brothers, not realizing that it was a Spanish version. I guess it'll come in handy if some fantasy loving Mexican immigrant stops by for a visit and is looking for something to read. Though, of course, that's not as funny as the time the random person dropped a hockey book written in Finnish inside our front door. That was beyond strange - and we never really did find out who gave it to us, though through a series of strange events, we have a pretty good idea.

Life's milestones

Big day for Angel #1 today. He just bought his first car. It's not any great shakes, he paid $200 for it, it's a VW Rabbit convertible. He's pretty excited about it and has been sitting in it checking it out since it got here. It obviously needs some work, I've got the feeling it's going to be a fixture in my driveway for a while.

I had the funniest phone call the other night. My friend Keala called me and said "I talked to my dad." I sat there, quiet, waiting for why she's telling me this. Are you there? she asks. Uh yeah, you were saying you talked to your dad. Dead silence again. Finally, we figured out what we were trying to say to each other. Apparently, she's text messaged me wondering if I knew where her dad was because he wasn't where he was supposed to be and they hadn't heard from him in a day or so. They were worried and were contacting people who might know where he was. I don't have text messaging enabled on my phone, so I never got the message that he was lost, so I didn't get it when she called to tell me he was found. It was funny when it happened, I guess you had to be there.

Nano Powers - Activate!

I'm kind of slogging around on my Nano project today. I'm still ahead of schedule, but I want to be MORE ahead of schedule. Know what I mean?

Angel #4's teacher called me today. Turns out she took WE's cast out of the garbage where I'd thrown it and took it to school today. She put it on her arm and told everyone she had a broken arm. She wore the smelly old thing ALL day, and they'd even gone on a field trip. Well, I think her original idea was just to trick some people, but you know how these things can rocket out of control. I guess she had a pretty eleborate story going on, and since her teacher didn't get a good look at the cast, she didn't realize that #4's arm wasn't really broken until the end of the school day. By this time, the story had grown out of control. The teacher had a long talk with #4 about lying, then called me afterwards. When she got home from school, I had the lying talk with her also. The teacher told me some of her story, with her imagination, maybe she should be the writer in the family!

Yesterday hubby and I looked at a new rental house. I'd pretty much had it with dealing with the landlord here. I wanted to paint the interior of the house, you know, make it feel a little more personalized and like 'our home' instead of just a house we live in. After all, we've been here almost 1 1/2 years, we're not exactly fly-by-night renters or anything. Well, the landlord said no, even if we paid for the paint, did the painting ourselved and repainted it to whatever color he wanted when we moved out. Well, it's his house and it was obvious there was no dealing with someone with such a stubborn mindset, we decided to find a place we could personalize. Well, we found one, and it's out in the country! I'm pretty much over living in town and am ready for a little country privacy again. We'll be moving in January, so that'll give me plenty of time to do a leisurely pack instead of one of those 'throw everything in a box and hope for the best' kind of move. I think the angels are all good with the move, though #4 isn't totally thrilled with the fact that she'll be going to a different school next year. We'll just drive her back and forth for the rest of this year. Fortunately, the other kids won't have to move schools...and with any luck, their buses will come later in the morning than they do now.

yes, it's pink

I brought Angel #2 and her friends shopping today. While I was there, I picked up a package of toilet paper. They were out of white, so I had to buy colored stuff. I didn't know they even still made colored toilet paper. Anyway, I bought pink and it's caused no small amount of amazment at the daydreamer household. The girls commented on its pinkness when I put it in the car and wanted to know what other colors there were. I don't think any of them had ever even seen colored TP before. (blue and green, in case you were wondering). WE just came out of the bathroom a minute ago and said, "do my eyes deceive me, or do we have pink toilet paper?" "Whoa, we have pink stuff," hubby commented. It doesn't take much to put my family in a tailspin.

#2's friend, the vampire girl, eventually showed up last night. #2 was laughing so hard that she threw up. I heard her do it, but kind of forgot about it, until they brought it up this afternoon when we were sitting at the food court at the shopping center. Why they decided that was good lunch conversation is beyond me. While the girls did their shopping, I brought my Alphasmart with me and did some writing. I staked my claim at a food court table and started typing. Problem is, a food court in Hawaii, isn't like normal food courts. We had geriatric hula dancers strutting their stuff in ours. I've seen them around before, I'm not sure if they go their every day or just Tuesdays - I'm usually only at the food court on Tuesdays, since that's our usual go out to coffee day. Anyway, the funny thing I found about the geriatric hula-ers, is there wasn't a single Hawaiian in the bunch. They were all white people with a couple Japanese thrown in for variety. They didn't just hula, either, there were ukelele's and one old guy that kind of looked like Burl Ives (you know, the snowman guy in the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Christmas special), and he sang - really bad. It certainly made writing a bit more difficult.


Oh yes, it's book review Tuesday. I only read on book this week. It was called The Ticket Out by Helen Knode. Two word review: Don't Bother Hopefully I'll have something more edifying for you next week.

My boys really needed haircuts. Yesterday, I figured I'd hold them down and do it, so they wouldn't look freshly cut when we go to Oahu over Thanksgiving. WE whined the entire time, but today when I asked him if everyone like his haircut, he got his funny little grin and said someone told him he looked handsome. Angel #1's hair is so obnoxious and curly that by the time I finished with him, the bathroom looked like an episode of Poodles Gone Wild. They both look much better now.

No school tomorrow. Angel #'s 2 & 4 are both having friends over. Well, #4's friend is already here, #2's friend is famous for her ability to sleep during the day and stay awake all night - she gets through her school day by drinking energy drinks. She hasn't shown up here yet, so I'm not sure if she's still sleeping or wandering around town looking for a caffiene fix. #2 has been wanting a friend over for quite a while and it just hasn't worked out. I hope the vampire girl shows up soon so they can do whatever it is teenage girls do during sleepovers.

Angel #4 and her friend both play saxophone in the school band. For some reason, they were playing their saxes this afternoon on the side of the street in front of our house. Yeah, the neighbors all think we're weird.

Talk about weird neighbors, I got a laugh out of ours today. She's single and lives alone. She's been putting stuff for sale on Craig's List and had a man coming over to look at some patio furniture. She was leery about having a strange man over, so she came over here and borrowed Jake, the Wonder Dog for protection. I don't know what she thought Jake was going to do if something actually happened, maybe shed all over the guy or something. I think she just figured a 60 pound dog might disuade someone from trying any funny business. I told her that next time this happens to just mention her husband, the cop, in the conversation a couple times and it should have the same effect at Jake intimidation. I watched her house when the guy came over, there she was, showing him her patio furniture while dragging Jake around with her on his leash. The guy didn't buy her furniture, but he didn't try anything either. Jake must have served his purpose.

not a whole lot going on

I spent most of my time today either writing for Nano or thinking about what I was going to write for Nano. I got my 2000 + words written for today finally, so I'm keeping right on track. I just hope I'll stay consistant.

We found out that WE shaved his arm the other day. I guess the arm with the cast on had grown some gross black hairs - hair that probably just gets worn off under normal circumstances. Well, WE didn't want to wait for normal circumstances to wear it off, so he tackled it with his dad's Gillette. Now he's got razor stubble on his arm and got picked on unmercifully by his big brother. When I was a kid, I wanted a big brother so bad. But now that I see Angel #1 tormenting his siblings, I realize that I didn't miss all that much by being the oldest child in my family.

Angel #2 has a penpal. Angel #2, being the kind of kid she is, doesn't have a normal penpal. Her penpal is her friend Rose. She goes to school with Rose and works with her 3 days a week after school at the library. The plan is that they're going to write letters to each other, but they can't talk about the letters to each other in real life and the letters have to be about stuff that they don't talk about when they're together. Yeah, they're a little odd, but there's so many worse things teenaged girls could be doing that I'm willing to spring for the cost of a stamp once or twice a week.

way fun

We had a Nanowrimo write-in at Borders Books this morning. Me and three other people who are doing Nano in the area got together and talked about our Nano projects and did a couple writing wars. Writing wars are where you set a specific time and see who can write the most during that time. I ended being that for 3 1/2 hours. We're going to meet again in do weeks and do the same. It's so fun hanging out with other writers - they don't look at you funny when you talk about the voices in your head, because they're hearing voices of their own.

Ready....March!

Grey, you'll always be cool, no matter which way you comment. :D

We just got back from the Coffee Festival Parade. Angel #4's elementary school band marched in it. #4 plays the saxophone and her best friend, Maddog, plays the flute. They're all 5th grade and younger, many have only been playing their instrument since the beginning of September and the only song they all knew was Row Row Row Your Boat, so they played it over and over for the entire parade. They were incredibly cute and got a round of applause during the entire parade. The cutest was the little boy playing baritone. He'd stop playing in the middle of the song, stoop down and pick up a stray piece of candy thrown out by previous entries, shove it in his pocket, then start playing again. The whole group had a little bit of trouble marching when they started out. As long as they were moving, things were fine, but when they had to stop, the trouble started. Remember that scene in Animal House at the very end during the parade and the marching band all ran into the brick wall? Well, that's pretty much what happened, except, they didn't run into a wall, just each other. But, by the end of the route, they were getting the hang of it and doing pretty darn good. They can't wait for the Christmas Parade next month.

a non-mongoose day

Heather, this would be a mongoose. It's like a squirrel with an attitude. I don't like them in my house.

Yay, Afton is here in all her glorious anonymous glory! Glad you're here (I can't wait to hear how your date went)

We took WE's cast off tonight. When he got it put on, the Dr. said take it off in 5 weeks. But, it turns out the doctor is on a 2 week vacation, so the soonest he could get it off was Nov 18, 6 1/2 weeks after getting it put on. We couldn't see the point in him having to keep it on for an extra week and a half, just because the doctor wanted to spend a couple weeks in Vegas, so we took it off ourselves using a metal snippers. Besides, it was starting to reek real bad and Tag covers only a certain amount of stench....the smell was starting to cramp his style with the ladies. We'll get it x-rayed and take the pictures to the Doc on his Nov 18 appt, just so she can make sure everything healed like it was supposed to. First thing we had him do though was take a good soapy shower.

Like I don't already have enough critters in the house

I came down the stairs this afternoon and heard a scurrying sound under WE's computer table. I managed to look down just in time to see two mongooses? - mongeese? - mongi? hotfoot it out the open screen door and outside. We keep the screen door open a few inches so the cats can get in and out during the day. It is NOT for mongoose use. Apparently, I'm going to have to put up a sign to that effect so they know they're not welcome here.



Bonsai the cat seems to be a serial illness kind of pet. The urinary tract infection seems to be going away - we're medicine droppering cranberry juice down his throat, but now he's got these hairless bumps on his head and neck. I put some peroxide on them and some antibiotic ointment, since there are some open sores, but frankly, I'm getting tired of constantly finding new medications to put on this cat that seems determined to stay sick no matter what we do.

Yay for Blogger autosave! I accidentally hit the wrong button and deleted some of my post. I just popped over to the list of posts, clicked on this one and ta-da! There it was in all its pre-deletion glory. The only thing I'm missing from Bravenet is smilies. If Blogger has smilies somewhere that I'm not seeing, someone please let me know. I'm feeling smilie deprived.

It's finally over!

You were right the first time, Alaine, I didn't cancel out enough. Oh well, the choice has been made, I just hope America doesn't regret it too badly. I was happy I didn't have to wait in line to vote like I heard they had to in some places. I just went right up and did my civic duty. Angel #2 came with me when I voted and went into the voting booth with me. She talked me into voting for the guy with the Blazing Saddles theme song, but I guess it didn't really matter since he lost anyway. Looks like I couldn't vote for a winner today if I tried. Well, I certainly won't miss all the election bruhaha though. Personally, I'm sick to death of all of them, I can't imagine what it was like for those of you with tv's getting bombarded with television ads - at least I assume you were bombarded.

I'm glad to see some of you have found your way over from my Bravenet account...hopefully you all did. I'd hate to lose the few readers I actually DO have.

A new thing I'm going to try out starting next week (if I remember) is Book Review Tuesday. Every Tuesday (once again, IF I remember) I'm going to do a review of a book I read the previous week. I just picked Elizabeth Lane's latest The Borrowed Bride up at Walmart today. I read an excerpt on Unusual Historicals this week and it sounded so good I couldn't get it out of my head. When I saw it at Walmart today, I snapped it right up even though I put my name in the UH drawing to win the book. I didn't want to run the risk of it not being at the store next week when I went to buy it after finding out I didn't win it. I very seldom win anything, so I'm not really expecting to win it anyway. I'm just not a winning kind of person. Maybe I'll ignore my Nano responsibilities enough this week and read it for next weeks review.

I've got to say, I really like the autosave feature Blogger has. No longer do I hold my breath while typing out my post in hopes that I don't hit the wrong button and have the whole thing disapppear, which has happened more times than I care to think about at Bravenet.

just call him gimpy

WE was stung by something last night while walking Jake, the wonder dog. We think it was a centipede, since they're really nasty down here and their poison can really do a number on you. His foot is all swelled up and he's been hobbling around. Usually, if we know someone was bitten by a centipede, we put some Benedryl on it and it goes away relatively fast, but if you don't do that right away, it can cause swelling and pain, which is what WE has. He'll get over it, he's a tough little bugger. But with his foot swelled and his left arm still in a cast, he's starting to look pretty rough. Not only looking rough, but smelling pretty raunchy, too. The cast is waterproof, but it has cotton batting inside and that's getting pretty gross. He keeps spraying Tag on it, but it can only cover up so much stench. I can't wait for him to get that gross thing off.

Everyone's got off of school tomorrow. I think it's because the schools are used as voting venues, so they call off school to get the kids out of the way. Now I just have to remember to go and do my civic duty tomorrow and cancel out someone else's vote.

And we're off!

Okay, I took the step of leaving the security of my 1000+ entried Bravenet blog and heading out into Bloggerville. Yay me!

For newbies: I'm known to my internet friends as Daydreamer. I have for so long that I think people are talking about me when they mention someone is a daydreamer. Yeah, I'm self obsessed :D

I've got 4 kids, known as Angel #1, Angel #2, Angel #4 and WE - which stands for Worm Eater for sadly obvious reasons. Though, I'm happy to say that it's been a couple years since he's munched on worms...I think. I've also got a wonderful husband, who puts up with my lazy ways, a dog named Jake, who's lazier than I am, and 3 cats, Mouschi, Chloe and Bonzai. Bonzai is sick at the moment, we're suspecting bladder infection, so yeah, that's gross. Despite the plethora of animals, I'm NOT an animal person. I prefer them on my plate with a side of mashed potatoes and gravy to having them in my home, shedding and forcing me to pick up their poop with my hand wrapped in a plastic Walmart bag.

This month, I'm doing Nanowrimo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month, a commitment for the month of November that I will write 50,000 words on a new novel, started November 1st and, if not over, at least 50K completed by November 30. I've suceeded twice before, one of them is now published and for sale at Amazon, called It Takes Moxie. Last years project is done and I have some publisher interest, but it's been set aside so I can tackle this years project, tentively titled The Road Back Home. They're all 1920's romances, because I'm just a romantical kind of person. I've also got a second book published, called Eye of the Beholder.

For the last 2 1/2 years, I've lived within wave hearing distance from the beach in Hawaii. Before that, I was born and raised in Wisconsin and still have a strong Wisconsin accent and crave bratwurst and cheese curds on a regular basis. This is where I used to be: http://www.dulciemae.bravejournal.com/index.php But I guess I'm here now.