Made of WIN!

How awesome am I? I just wrote a novel in 30 days! That’s how frickin’ awesome I am!

Ahhh… feel the sweet sweet peace of another November’s hard work, over and done with.  51,191 words, by the official NaNoWriMo count.  And it’s not even late afternoon.  Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll be catching up on posting it here for my faves, those wonderful, faithful cheerleaders of the interwebs.  And most importantly, I can now turn my attention to those less important things that I’ve let slide more than a little over the last month.  One thing I know a few of you have been asking for, I’ll finally get around to posting my wedding pictures! I swear!

All this free time also means I can start getting ready for Christmas. And boy am I ready for some month-long merriment.  Of course, it helped a lot that when I got out of bed it was snowing. Snow! Yay! I love snow!  No, I really do.  No matter how cold it is, it always seems warmer with snow.  There’s science to back that up, too.  Well, it’s turned to rain now, but there are still little patches on the ground.  I hope it snows like gangbusters this winter.

Jumping to another subject entirely, my job search is going well.  Last Friday (before Thanksgiving), I submitted a resume and cover letter in response to an ad on CraigsList looking for teachers for a daycare in West Haven.  I got a call Monday morning while I was doing the laundry and had an interview on Tuesday morning.  The place is brand spankin’ new.  They aren’t even open yet.  And the interview went really well.  She called me the next day to have me fax over my transcripts and certificates from various training courses.  I hope that’s a good sign!  With any luck, my transcripts will get to her this week (I had to have them sent from the respective registrars’ offices), and she’ll call me back and I’ll have a job.  I certainly hope so, anyway.  This whole unemployment thing sucks, especially the not having any money part.  LOL.

Thanksgiving was good.  We went down to Darien to see Alan’s grandparents and assorted relatives.  I finally met Kathy’s sister-in-law, as well as Alan’s great-uncle, Gary, his wife, Peggy, and their younger son, "little" Gary, who’s a little but younger than Alan.  That’s a little odd if you actually think about it, because "little" Gary and his brother are Richard’s first cousins, Alan’s first cousins once removed.  But that’s just the weird way life works sometimes.  Hell, my first cousin, Kelley is older than Alan’s uncle, so there ya go.  The day was lovely, and Alan’s grandmother kept saying how nice my family was at the wedding.  She seemed especially taken with Addison, and honestly, I didn’t know how to respond to some her questions and comments about him.  I mean, I barely know the man, and he isn’t exactly known in our family for his kindness and humanity.  But whatever.

And it turns out that Alan will be getting the day after Christmas off, so we can go up to Vermont. Yay for Christmas with my family!  And since it’s Vermont, it’s almost guaranteed that there’ll be snow.  Of course, I say that now and it’ll turn out like "White Christmas," where they haven’t had snow since Thanksgiving.  Either way, it’ll still be a holiday with my own family, and I can’t really complain about that.

In the feline world, Karma has a bit of an ear infection.  She had an appointment on Friday for another distemper booster and her rabies shot.  Her ringworm is almost all gone except for a tiny spot on her ear and one on her back that I found yesterday. Time for another bath.  Ugh.  She also has some ear cleanser and drops that I have to put in twice a day. Whee.  But she’s remarkably patiently about the whole thing.  Aladdin would be exactly the opposite.  Actually, he started behaving very strangely after she and I got back from the vet.  He kept hissing at her.  I don’t think he’s hissed at her in weeks, not since their first few meetings.  He’s backed off today, but he did it all day Friday and Saturday.  Maybe he was threatened by her fresh-from-the-vet smell?  He’d best get used to it, because both of them have another appointment in a few weeks.  I hope Aladdin’s ringworm will have cleared up by then.  I’ve been putting apple cider vinegar on it, and I think most of the fungus is dying, except on one leg, where he clearly doesn’t want me putting the nasty stinging stuff.

I don’t know if I mentioned it, but Jen has set the date for her wedding.  November 8, 2009… and naturally she has besieged us all with possible bridesmaids gowns. So far her favorite is a beautiful ballgown with this gorgeous pick-up skirt.  I really hope she goes with that one, because seriously, how many opportunities will I have to wear a ballgown now that I’m all grown up?  Isn’t that odd?  Ballgowns used to be reserved for grown-ups.  Now they’re practically the desmesne of the teenage girl.

Don’t mind me, I just finished a mammoth book called Teenage by Jon Savage, and I’m following it up with The Death of the Grown-Up by Diana West.  Interesting reading, although that first one took me quite awhile.  Added to the demands of NaNo, it took me more than two weeks to read, when I had been going through a book every few days.  It’s going to ruin my average! LOL… I’m still keeping track of my reading.  So far, I’m on my 42nd book since the start of July.  Not bad, eh?

Anyway, I’m off to celebrate my astonishing novelling victory with some well-earned vegetation.  Maybe I’ll even make myself some cookies.

~Liz