Mommy's Pen

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Archives for October 2010

NaNoWriMo and the Tent

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Remember this?  My post about my house being a disaster, what with a tent being pitched in my backyard for months on end?  And how I was busy crafting instead?

While most of the issues outlined in that post have been addressed, I have yet to take down the tent.  I make excuses and postpone.  I’m not sure why.

Well, last week I got a wild idea that I should write a novel in November.  Everybody’s doing it.  It’s called National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo for short. 50,000 words in 30 days.

I signed up and nagged a bunch of Twitter friends into doing it, too. (I made a list of the intrepid here.) But it took me a day or two to work up the courage to tell Ben.

I told him on the car ride home, as we were crossing the Ross Island Bridge. I explained the concept of NaNoWriMo and before I could finish Ben started chanting in a Rainman monotone, “Take down the tent, take down the tent, take down the tent.”  We both burst into laughter, but I got the message.  He would be supportive, but only if the tent came down first.

I feel rather blessed that this was Ben’s only stipulation for my embarking on this madness.  Not only is he supportive, he’s ridiculously full of good ideas for the book once I explained by general concept.

I’ll do my best to keep posting on this blog.  At least one day a week I’ll have an excerpt from the novel.  But expect shorter posts and lots of pictures.  There will definitely be a photo of the tent drip drying in my basement.

Melodrama on the 19

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On our morning bus, there are two ladies who sit together in the same seat everyday.  They are obsessed with Nora.  She’s so cute, so smart.  Look how she wears her sweather backwards so she can put things in the hood!

The problem is, Nora hates these women.  With a white hot little person hatred.  They are just too much, too fawning.  She does not respect them. 

One day, we were forced to sit right in front of them and Nora spent the ride with her head buried in my lap, occasionally raising her face to give them the stink-eye.  The nice ladies wrote it off to shyness.  Since then, I try to steer her away from them, lest she say something hurtful (read: embarrassing to me) within ear shot.  Something like, “Mommy, those women are annoying me.  I find them boorish and don’t wish to associate with them!”

Yesterday, we had to sit across the aisle from them and she made a big show of ignoring them.  She then proceeded to play peek-a-boowith a woman behind us.  To top it off, another woman sat in front of us and Nora chatted her up and attempted to tickle her!  There was only silence from across the aisle as the scorned women looked on in envy.

Three-year-olds can be so cold.

Timeline of Last Evening

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7:00pm Storytime begins.  Nora lays playing with a small flashlight while I read the Flopsy Bunnies.

7:05pm Nora claims she is tired and wants me to stop reading.  I turn out the light and we lay in bed while she plays with the flashlight and is repeatedly warned against kicking her sick daddy.

7:25pm Nora asks to move to her bedroom.  We stop to go potty.  I begin to hiccup.

7:30pm Nora and I lay in her bed.  She mimics my every hiccup.  I use hiccups as an excuse to leave her bed.

7:35pm I decide cereal is the perfect hiccup cure and eat a very small bowl. Hiccups are still heard from Nora’s bedroom.

8:00pm I am in bed reading tweets and all is quiet from Nora’s room.  I can hardly believe my good fortune that she is asleep by eight.

8:02pm Nora bellers from her bedroom, “Mommy or Daddy!”

8:03pm Nora is wide awake and demanding a snuggle.  I lay with her for a few minutes, then make an excuse that Hoover needs to be let outside.

8:15pm Nora bellers down the hall again.  I walk halfway down the hall and use my sternest voice to call, “Nora, go to sleep.”  To my amazement, this works.

8:30pm I’m pretty sure this is when I fell asleep.

10:30pm Hoover wakes me up to let him outside.

1:30am Nora calls out from her bedroom.  I drag myself to her bed.  She winds herself around me and seems to fall back to sleep.

1:32am Nora sleep talks, “Mommy, all the bears died.”

“Go to sleep,” I whisper.

“Mommy, all the bears died.”

“How?”

“They just died, so don’t worry about it.”

 1:35 I drift off to sleep, wondering what happened to the bears.

The Gift of Gout

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Nora calls them "debeled" eggs

Last night, I made an enormous batch of deviled eggs, using eggs from our hens, of course.  I stood at the kitchen counter, reading tweets from the laptop and peeling eggs.  It was strangely relaxing.

Nora was stacking firewood with Ben.  Eventually, she came in to join me.  Instead of asking to help peel eggs (not one of her favorite tasks) she washed her hands for about thirty minutes, standing next to me on a kitchen chair at the sink.

The deviled eggs are delicious.  Leaning towards too rich.

I also have a very special box of cookies and a loaf of fresh bread from the farmer’s market in the pantry.

My sister and her family are coming.  My two nephews will be in my arms in a few hours.

My plan is to feed them delicious things and take them fabulous places.  If I do this right, I will give them all the gout.