Skipped Out On My Own Invitation

No need to post what week of 52 this is, since I dropped the ball on posting weekly.  Oh well.  I felt bad at first not following through, but I’ve let it go, since there are only so many hours in a day to get it all done.  Too much goin’ on lately, so focusing on the most important stuff first.

So, what’s been happenin’?  Well, as many of you know, I was participating in the Camp Nanowrimo, which is a virtual camp that participants join in April (and there’s another in July) to write a novel, short stories, poems, scripts, what have you.  My goal was to write a novel and reach 50,000 words.  You only have the 30 days alloted during April and you have to submit by 11:59pm April 30 to see if you are a winner.  I won!  As did a couple of my friends!!  Yea!

So, now that that’s done, or that part is done, I’ve put my novel on a back burner to focus on this new job I was presented with.  Wonderful new job!  Flexible hours, the same money as I make now per week, plus less gas I need to buy, plus less hours, plus no one to jerk me around daily, oh, I just can’t stop about the perks, but I’ll stop anyway.  It’s a great deal, but it’s also scary as H-E-double hockey sticks.  Ya know, any time ya take a risk, it’s pretty dang scary.  And good stress is still stress.  So, anyway, I gave my two weeks notice to my current day job while still working for this other job for about 10 or so hours per week.  My last day with the blegh job is May 22 and I’m soooo excited.  I get to pick my sweet baby up from school on her last day and every day for the next school year.  I get to spend quality time with her during the summer, and I cannot wait!!

So, that’s a bit about what’s been going on.

Above, you see an image of my beautiful mother. She’s such a sweetheart!  She’s one of my best friends in the world!  We hang out every chance we get, and this was the Saturday before Mother’s Day.  She and I decided we’d treat each other to an early Mother’s Day meal out at our favorite restaurant!  Saltgrass Steakhouse!  Oh baby!  Hallie pitched in some of her allowance for the meal for our Mother’s Day gift, as well.  We have to drive like 3 hours to get to this place, but it’s so worth it.  Every mouthwatering bite!  Plus, ya know, we are always up for a roadtrip, a daytrip, any kind of trip trip.  I love to drive and my girls love to ride.  It’s just so relaxing to drive and look at all the sights, and shop at our favorite stores, although we went into our favorite store and some old ladies were working in there, following us around, stalking us, forcing stuff on us and we walked out.  Never have we left that store without a purchase.  First time for everything.  We were very disappointed, and I plan to send a complaint to their website and see if it makes a difference.  You should not hound the shoppers!  Grrrr!  But, we shopped around at some other shops, took some shots of ourselves in a photo booth – Cute and Fun!  And also found a new Panera Bread that just opened up down there.  Oh, all this was in Bossier City and Shreveport, Louisiana – 3 hours away from where we live.  It was an awesome day!  We left at 7am and got home at 7pm.

Sunday was a stellar day!  The weather could not have been more beautiful.  Sun shining, breeze blowing, warm enough for shorts, but almost too chilly for shorts depending on how hard the wind was blowing.  I told God, “You really made this a perfect weather day.  I could be happy in temps like this every day!”  I can’t remember the last weekend before this one where we did not get rained out!  So, we thoroughly enjoyed our Blue Sky Holiday!  Mama slow cooked some roast, mashed up some taters, fixed a salad, and we were in hog heaven at her house just hangin’ out and chowin’ down.

I hope all you sweet mommies out there had a memorable and wonderful Mother’s Day, as well.

I’ll head on over to my 101 things and update that in a second.  Let me get to prayer requests.  What did I forget?  Anything?  Let me know.  Oh, and when my life gets back to some sort of normalcy next week, as I’m working on my new daily schedule now, setting everything up, I will also get back to finishing my novel, and then I can update you on how that’s going.

Y’all have a beautiful day!  Love ya!

-Carol

Oh, last post, I invited y’all over Sunday and I didn’t even show up.  I am pitiful!  One day, I will have my rear in gear and be organized.  One day…

Prayer Requests:

1) For Mama to be healed and feel good again.  She’s been feeling sick for months and has a dr’s appt coming up.  Let the doc tell her it’s something easily fixable with diet and exercise, not eating certain foods, etc.
2) For this new opportunity I’ve been granted work out for the greater good.
3) Please pray for Jennefer about her new job, and let it be as awesome as she is, and let her transition from one job to this next one be much smoother than she anticipated.
4) Please pray for Sherree to quickly be able to follow her heart and dreams.
5) Please pray for Carlie to be safe and well.
6) Please pray for Carlie to come by sometime and let us know she’s ok.
7) Please pray for Patrick to find the woman of his dreams, fall in love and get married. Pray he finds her this year.

Camp NaNoWriMo is Closed

April was a treacherous month, wading through the waist deep virtual muck and mud in my hip waders, trying to find my way through the murky water, watching out for quick sand, having been warned beforehand.

Making it to camp was the easy part.  All I had to do was register and show up for the full 30 days.  Camp was so welcoming with my cabin mates’ happy faces to say hello and offer friendship (although 2 or 3 of them were rather quiet and shy – I totally get that, by the way), late nights with camp fire songs, ghost stories, s’mores, wine and cheese, the whole bit.  I even made some friends from other cabins.

Early mornings, starting usually at 230 and 3am, consisted of gallons of hot coffee, heavy cream and sugar, and handheld breakfasts such as granola bars and peanuts, since we ate on the hiking trail, and needed quick and easily accessible energy.

Many of those days, I made it through long hours of hiking uphill, through rocks, brush, the murky water I told you about (careful to avoid the quick sand of writer’s block).  And a few of those hiking days, I reached a point where I had to rock climb, and since I didn’t bring my climbing nor repelling gear, I scrambled, which is how I prefer to rock climb anyway, plus I had my handy dandy hiking boots and my trusty gloves, so I didn’t have too much of a problem.  The biggest threat was the height of a few of those rocks.  We are talking mountains, people!  I became exhausted at how far I had to go just to get back to camp and thank heavens I brought my flashlight, since some of those days, I didn’t get back till after dark, but then I left in the wee hours, so I had my flashlight at the beginning of the trek anyway.

30 days of hiking, climbing, wading, guzzling wine, sipping hot cocoa, living on cheese, peanuts, granola bars, s’mores, canned beans and the like, I was ready to be done and get home.  Some of that might sound good to you, but when you are hungry for a real meal, and sleep deprived, ya ain’t happy!  I counted on my friends to get me through.  I had friends and family back home cheering me on, new found friends at camp, and a friend of mine that joined me there at camp, who lives across the pond.  We encouraged and supported one another.  We shared.  We laughed.  We cried.  We drank heavily (coffee in the a.m., wine in the p.m.), and we retired when we could not keep our eyes open one minute longer, try as we might.   Our slumber was our most treasured restful activity, as we did not have much rest during these crazy days.

And together, we made it through to the end.  Some of our cabin mates decided to skip out early and go home.  I’m guessing the pressure got to be too much.  I feel sad for them, since even after all the sweat, blisters, hunger, bug bites, spotting bears and mountain lions, bruises, exhaustion and sleep deprivation, we made it successfully through to the end.  We saw each other through.  Maybe not as long-lasting as Survivor, I’m tellin’ ya, Camp NaNoWriMo ain’t no joke.  It ain’t for the wimpy, but if you ever need a lesson in follow-through, which I did, since I usually suck at it, Camp NaNoWriMo or the regular NaNoWriMo is definitely for you, if you are a writer at heart.

Goal:  50,000 words.  Finish Line:  50,229 words.  We did it!  And congrats to my beloved friends, Gerry (went with me to camp), and Lynn (one of my cabin mates), whom I joined at that finish line!  Ready to go again in July?  Om, yeah, I may have to think on that one.  Maybe November.  Maybe.

As far as everything else going on, A LOT!  Sorry to always be late about posting and totally slacking in the month of April with hardly posting at all.  At least I’m updating this, but I still need to update my 101 list, prayer requests, other goings on, and I’ll try to get to all that this weekend.  Only so many hours in a day, and a lot is going on, so hang tight.

I hope and trust all of you are well.  I’ve really been missin’ y’all.  How ’bout we make plans to have coffee or I can put on a kettle for tea and we can sit a spell and catch up, maybe this weekend?  Sunday perhaps?  Come on over.  We can sit in the porch swing or rockin’ chairs and talk all about it.  Whatcha say?

Love ya!  Catcha Sunday!  ;)

-Carol

Oh, and that is one my newest pseudonyms, ‘C. S. Blake’.  And om, in case I wasn’t clear, this was a virtual camp.  Camping through the computer.

Sorry, Been MIA

Let me start off by apologizing for leaving hi and dry.  I joined in with this Camp NaNoWriMo project, which went from April 1 through April 30.  My goal was to write a novel and reach at least 50,000 words by the deadline and I reached it this morning, and then some.  So, yea!  I reached my goal!  Woooohoooo!  However, now I will need some time to revise, finish, revise again, polish, etc.  I’m hoping this will not take too long, and I suppose I could and should get back to blogging.

A buddy of mine joined me in the Camp Nano race as we cheered each other on.  He’s awesome!  He reached the finish line a few days before me, but he was waiting for me at the end.  Thanks, Gerry!

Anyway, just wanted to apologize.  I left and I suppose I didn’t explain why and when I’d return.  And I’m back, so I’ll get back to my weekly postings and updates this weekend – back to a more normal posting schedule.  Just thought I’d let you know.

And thanks to those friends out there that knew about it and cheered me on!  I appreciate you so much!  Well, I just really appreciate all of you.  It’s always pretty awesome to have a nice circle of friends and I would most certainly include each of you in that circle.  So, thanks, to each of you for your friendship.  And I’ll try to be better at regular weekly postings from now on, unless of course, I join in with another Camp Nanowrimo (I think there’s another one in July) or regular original Nanowrimo (which is always held in November).  But I’ll give you a heads up first, k?  K.

Just posting a sweet pic of my babe as she’s half asleep in the car on the way to school one morning.  Yes, I snap and drive.  Sorry to all of you early commuters out there sharing the roadways with me.  ;)

Hope y’all have a groovilicious day!  *love, hugs and smooches*  ;)

-Carol

That’s My Buddy

He is as silly and sweet as they come. He loves to lay on his back, scratch it in the grass, be silly, wrestle, have his picture taken, and as you can see, he truly loves to ham it up. He is a big squishy teddy bear!  Hallie and I belly laugh at him daily.

It’s National Blog Posting Month. It may be too late for you to jump into the soup, as I believe November 5 was the deadline to join, but you can still go to the blogroll http://www.blogher.com/nablopomo-november-2012-blogroll and check out the blogs that have joined just to see what they are up to. Check them out. Offer your encouragement. Some are not used to posting daily and it can be a real chore sometimes. Just a kind word can make all the difference.

It is also National Novel Writing Month, and if you are up to typing 50,000 words by November 30, please join us. Crazy, right? It’s actually a great daily exercise to get back to writing every day. You force yourself. You push yourself. There is a very large community of crazy Wrimos out there and all of us probably need a good swift kick in the pants to keep up with writing. So, here’s to writing, and to all you writers out there that like a hearty challenge. Join us any day (I think you can join any day during November.) during November at http://www.nanowrimo.org/, but remember, you only have until Nov. 30 to submit 50,000 words, so get crackin’.

Silly Funny Faced Babies

We were walking and running and wrestling and kissing with Buddy today and got tons of great funny photos. Here’s one with Hallie and Buddy making funny faces at each other. They are two peas in a pod. We love all our furbabes, but I’m tellin’ you, this boy is straight from heaven. He is quite the gentleman. And a silly one, at that. I’ll have to show you one of him being silly, maybe tomorrow.

We had an awesome day. Hope you did, too! Hope ya have an even better Sunday. I’ll be getting up waaaaaay early to work on my NaNoWriMo. I’m a little behind on my word count. But I’ll catch up. Love ya! *squish!*

-Carol

It’s National Blog Posting Month. It may be too late for you to jump into the soup, as I believe November 5 was the deadline to join, but you can still go to the blogroll http://www.blogher.com/nablopomo-november-2012-blogroll and check out the blogs that have joined just to see what they are up to. Check them out. Offer your encouragement. Some are not used to posting daily and it can be a real chore sometimes. Just a kind word can make all the difference.

It is also National Novel Writing Month, and if you are up to typing 50,000 words by November 30, please join us. Crazy, right? It’s actually a great daily exercise to get back to writing every day. You force yourself. You push yourself. There is a very large community of crazy Wrimos out there and all of us probably need a good swift kick in the pants to keep up with writing. I, personally, put writing aside for many months, due to a block, due to fear, self-doubt, what have you. But, I’m taking this month to jump back in and get back to one of my top 5 things that I absolutely love and have missed like an old dear friend that just moved back into town. I want to get to know my friend again, to spend time with her and have a good time. As with all friends, there are ups and downs, but you keep on keeping on, try to get past the downs so you can get back to the ups. So, here’s to writing, and to all you writers out there that like a hearty challenge. So join us any day (I think you can join any day during November. I didn’t join till Nov 3 or 4.) during November at http://www.nanowrimo.org/, but remember, you only have until Nov. 30 to submit 50,000 words, so get crackin’.

Silly Rabbit

My little bunny.

Y’all have a sanfrantastic sort of day! We’re gonna! Gotta catch up with my NaNoWriMo today. Sorry this is a short one, but hey, at least I’m consistently posting. Daily since Dec. 2011. Maybe I can actually follow through with something. Love ya! *squish*

-Carol

It’s National Blog Posting Month. It may be too late for you to jump into the soup, as I believe November 5 was the deadline to join, but you can still go to the blogroll http://www.blogher.com/nablopomo-november-2012-blogroll and check out the blogs that have joined just to see what they are up to. Check them out. Offer your encouragement. Some are not used to posting daily and it can be a real chore sometimes. Just a kind word can make all the difference.

It is also National Novel Writing Month, and if you are up to typing 50,000 words by November 30, please join us. Crazy, right? It’s actually a great daily exercise to get back to writing every day. You force yourself. You push yourself. There is a very large community of crazy Wrimos out there and all of us probably need a good swift kick in the pants to keep up with writing. I, personally, put writing aside for many months, due to a block, due to fear, self-doubt, what have you. But, I’m taking this month to jump back in and get back to one of my top 5 things that I absolutely love and have missed like an old dear friend that just moved back into town. I want to get to know my friend again, to spend time with her and have a good time. As with all friends, there are ups and downs, but you keep on keeping on, try to get past the downs so you can get back to the ups. So, here’s to writing, and to all you writers out there that like a hearty challenge. So join us any day (I think you can join any day during November. I didn’t join till Nov 3 or 4.) during November at http://www.nanowrimo.org/, but remember, you only have until Nov. 30 to submit 50,000 words, so get crackin’.