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Day 1088: It's All About Perspective
Sep. 22nd, 2013 07:53 pmAchievements this week:
1. Finishing my niece's birthday present. It's a little too small, so I'm just going to make her next gift the biggest size possible and go from there. She did look adorable in it, though, so I am pretty proud of me. I ended up learning I could also crochet while reading, which is pretty cool, as long as the pattern is simple and repetitive, so I am happy. My dad always told me his mother could read and knit at the same time, and that seemed nigh unto impossible, but apparently it is possible. Now that I'm almost done with second season of Once Upon A Time, I can crochet and read instead of crochet and watch TV.
2. Learning foreign languages. They cancelled the community Spanish class I was going to take, probably because not enough people enrolled, so I decided to embark on a course of self-study via Duolingo. I've been on there brushing up my French, and people keep telling me that since I did French Spanish will be easy, so I started up on the Spanish as well. As it turns out, both languages count toward your overall Duolingo standing, so right now I am pretty roundly beating all my friends on the ranks. Instead of just using the app, I have a notebook where I've been keeping lists of nouns, adjectives, phrases, and conjugation charts. I needed those to learn languages in high school, and I've found they're still a useful learning tool, so I'm sticking with them. Once I get better at Spanish, Cody will help me with conversational skills, so that'll be nice.
3. Writing. Even though I have been sick, I have still been writing. It's been slow and sputtering and I missed a few mornings writes because I was tired and wanted to sleep in instead of getting up and writing, but now I am 14/30 pre-planned scenes through my novel, and I am happy. Of course, just like the last novel, I realized I had too many POVs and it really wasn't working, but in a fit of inspiration from last night I've started up a new outline that breaks the story into five neat parts a la Shakespeare, narrows down the number of POVs, and also keeps track of the story arcs for each individual character, which also gives me my subplots, so I'm pretty happy. I reckon I will push to finish this draft by the end of October and then try out the rewritten version for Nanowrimo. I think that may or may not be cheating but oh well. I also got my novella back from my editor who cursed me out for being an awesome writer (2010 was a good year for me and then it's been downhill since then, it seems, unless one counts fandom), so I need to get the rewrites on that done and then we can start publishing. Woohoo! Although one of the scenes that I was super proud of and loved a lot needs a serious work over, and I am going to need some external help. Good thing I know poets :)
4. Teaching. This week I taught a high school class - AP US History, Juniors - for Constitution Day. The teacher was super pleased I was a lady lawyer. Apparently his sister his a lawyer and he wanted a role model for his girl students - there were a lot of them. That class was easily 80% girls. It was also easily 90% white, so I figured I did a bit of representing. Also, I got called as a Sunday School teacher, so I taught the grown-up Sunday School class this Sunday. Small class, but people were friendly and spoke up, so that made things a lot smoother.
5. New states of zen achieved. So...little miss Ivy pooped on the carpet of the downstairs den. Cody was furious. I am still baffled as to how she even managed to take a dump that big without us noticing because she's never out of our sight for long. We couldn't really punish her because we didn't catch her in the act and she wouldn't have understood what she did, so I instituted a new mode of playing. I blocked off the stairs and the bedrooms and then left the kitchen door open and I worked in the kitchen all day. That way Ivy could come inside and give me puppy eyes and convince me to take a break and cuddle her, but she could also take herself outside to play and to go to the bathroom. I think she is slowly learning that the house is her den and she shouldn't go to the bathroom inside, but sometimes we don't keep very good track of how long it's been since she's been outside, and then she gets desperate when she runs loose through the house. She has been pretty well-behaved this week, all things considered, although she was pretty upset at being left alone for so long while we were at the zoo for my niece's birthday party yesterday. When Ivy gets upset, she rage quits her food bowl, i.e. flips it over and spills the food and water everywhere. That's how I know she's super upset. She rage quit her food bowl today while we were at church, too, so I figure she just needs to get used to us being gone for random periods of time.
...I am not sure what we are going to do with her over Thanksgiving and Christmas. This has just now barely occurred to me.
Also, this Thursday would have been my due date if I hadn't miscarried earlier this year. Don't get me wrong, there was lots of crying, and I skipped Relief Society because there was no way I'd be able to be cool with a bunch of happy mamas who've just had babies or are cheerfully pregnant. I stayed home and ate awesome homemade quiche (thanks to BenTen for the recipe) and Cody and I watched The Avengers on Netflix. However, I did make a meal and take it over to a lady who just had a baby (because that's what we do when someone has had a baby or a death in the family - we take them food). And I was pretty cheerful and rational about it, since I still get this kind of ugly pang of bitterness whenever I see a lady with a new baby. So...yeah! New states of zen unlocked. Go me!
4. Dancing. Despite dance class being cancelled this week, I did pretty well and have managed to learn the dances all right. Now I just need costumes and what have you.
This week I need to improve on being more patient, being better about getting up in the morning and getting things done for the house and for Ivy (although last week I was pretty darn sick and I still am pretty sick so I think not vacuuming the carpets in the house where we barely go isn't exactly a cardinal sin here). I also need to get Ivy her next round of shots and see about getting her spayed, poor thing.
All right. Let's do this :)
1. Finishing my niece's birthday present. It's a little too small, so I'm just going to make her next gift the biggest size possible and go from there. She did look adorable in it, though, so I am pretty proud of me. I ended up learning I could also crochet while reading, which is pretty cool, as long as the pattern is simple and repetitive, so I am happy. My dad always told me his mother could read and knit at the same time, and that seemed nigh unto impossible, but apparently it is possible. Now that I'm almost done with second season of Once Upon A Time, I can crochet and read instead of crochet and watch TV.
2. Learning foreign languages. They cancelled the community Spanish class I was going to take, probably because not enough people enrolled, so I decided to embark on a course of self-study via Duolingo. I've been on there brushing up my French, and people keep telling me that since I did French Spanish will be easy, so I started up on the Spanish as well. As it turns out, both languages count toward your overall Duolingo standing, so right now I am pretty roundly beating all my friends on the ranks. Instead of just using the app, I have a notebook where I've been keeping lists of nouns, adjectives, phrases, and conjugation charts. I needed those to learn languages in high school, and I've found they're still a useful learning tool, so I'm sticking with them. Once I get better at Spanish, Cody will help me with conversational skills, so that'll be nice.
3. Writing. Even though I have been sick, I have still been writing. It's been slow and sputtering and I missed a few mornings writes because I was tired and wanted to sleep in instead of getting up and writing, but now I am 14/30 pre-planned scenes through my novel, and I am happy. Of course, just like the last novel, I realized I had too many POVs and it really wasn't working, but in a fit of inspiration from last night I've started up a new outline that breaks the story into five neat parts a la Shakespeare, narrows down the number of POVs, and also keeps track of the story arcs for each individual character, which also gives me my subplots, so I'm pretty happy. I reckon I will push to finish this draft by the end of October and then try out the rewritten version for Nanowrimo. I think that may or may not be cheating but oh well. I also got my novella back from my editor who cursed me out for being an awesome writer (2010 was a good year for me and then it's been downhill since then, it seems, unless one counts fandom), so I need to get the rewrites on that done and then we can start publishing. Woohoo! Although one of the scenes that I was super proud of and loved a lot needs a serious work over, and I am going to need some external help. Good thing I know poets :)
4. Teaching. This week I taught a high school class - AP US History, Juniors - for Constitution Day. The teacher was super pleased I was a lady lawyer. Apparently his sister his a lawyer and he wanted a role model for his girl students - there were a lot of them. That class was easily 80% girls. It was also easily 90% white, so I figured I did a bit of representing. Also, I got called as a Sunday School teacher, so I taught the grown-up Sunday School class this Sunday. Small class, but people were friendly and spoke up, so that made things a lot smoother.
5. New states of zen achieved. So...little miss Ivy pooped on the carpet of the downstairs den. Cody was furious. I am still baffled as to how she even managed to take a dump that big without us noticing because she's never out of our sight for long. We couldn't really punish her because we didn't catch her in the act and she wouldn't have understood what she did, so I instituted a new mode of playing. I blocked off the stairs and the bedrooms and then left the kitchen door open and I worked in the kitchen all day. That way Ivy could come inside and give me puppy eyes and convince me to take a break and cuddle her, but she could also take herself outside to play and to go to the bathroom. I think she is slowly learning that the house is her den and she shouldn't go to the bathroom inside, but sometimes we don't keep very good track of how long it's been since she's been outside, and then she gets desperate when she runs loose through the house. She has been pretty well-behaved this week, all things considered, although she was pretty upset at being left alone for so long while we were at the zoo for my niece's birthday party yesterday. When Ivy gets upset, she rage quits her food bowl, i.e. flips it over and spills the food and water everywhere. That's how I know she's super upset. She rage quit her food bowl today while we were at church, too, so I figure she just needs to get used to us being gone for random periods of time.
...I am not sure what we are going to do with her over Thanksgiving and Christmas. This has just now barely occurred to me.
Also, this Thursday would have been my due date if I hadn't miscarried earlier this year. Don't get me wrong, there was lots of crying, and I skipped Relief Society because there was no way I'd be able to be cool with a bunch of happy mamas who've just had babies or are cheerfully pregnant. I stayed home and ate awesome homemade quiche (thanks to BenTen for the recipe) and Cody and I watched The Avengers on Netflix. However, I did make a meal and take it over to a lady who just had a baby (because that's what we do when someone has had a baby or a death in the family - we take them food). And I was pretty cheerful and rational about it, since I still get this kind of ugly pang of bitterness whenever I see a lady with a new baby. So...yeah! New states of zen unlocked. Go me!
4. Dancing. Despite dance class being cancelled this week, I did pretty well and have managed to learn the dances all right. Now I just need costumes and what have you.
This week I need to improve on being more patient, being better about getting up in the morning and getting things done for the house and for Ivy (although last week I was pretty darn sick and I still am pretty sick so I think not vacuuming the carpets in the house where we barely go isn't exactly a cardinal sin here). I also need to get Ivy her next round of shots and see about getting her spayed, poor thing.
All right. Let's do this :)
