Aw, Crud - NaNo Crud, That Is

It's inevitable. Every November when I plan to dive into NaNoWriMo and up my productivity, a monster rears its ugly head and bellows, "Nooooo!"

Most of the time that monster comes in the form of what I've dubbed NaNo Crud. And that's the very monster that loomed over me this month. Shortly after my last blog post, I got a cold, and right when I thought I was getting better, I got a worse cold (could have been bronchitis, it was that bad, but I didn't go in to the doctor to find out).

So, I missed blog posts and my writing progress froze because just moving off the couch was difficult. I was hopped up on Mucinex DM so I could breathe and sleep, and cold meds make me whoozy and loopy as all hell.

I'm starting to feel a bit better now, though I'm still hacking up a lung between typing sentences.

12,963. That's what I'm ending NaNoWriMo at this year. Progress is progress, and that's almost 13k words more than I had before the month started. It doesn't earn me a NaNo Winner banner, but that's OK.

This sick has also made me realize that I need to take a step back and reassess my writing output. I think I've been expecting too much of myself, especially since I want to get the editing business in a good place as well, and I still have a kid at home most of the time who needs my attention!

December, a low writing output month to begin with due to the holidays, will be planning and reassessing month. And organizing. Oh, and I'll likely be reformatting a few books since I ordered a Macbook and I'll be buying Vellum!

It's not like I'll be idle. I just think I need a month worth of no pressure for writing and revising and figuring things out. And some family and holiday time. I've been neglecting several other things while tackling writing tasks. I'll be back to revisions of Thorns Entwine the Blade in January, though!

And don't worry, I still have some fun blog posts planned for December. After all, I saw Thor: Ragnarok and watched the first half of the season of Star Trek: Discovery. I have many thoughts on both.

Never stopping, just slowing down a little so I can enjoy the scenery. Live in the moment, right?

Challenge Fail - Onto the Next?

Nope. You didn't see any after pictures of the girls' room. I got everything out! As planned. Then I started slowly moving stuff back in and sorting into piles, but that didn't actually start happening until after Sunday, and then between summer school, swim lessons, and sheer exhaustion, not a lot of progress was made during the week. Because I also wasn't going to do it all on my own. My eldest is old enough to help with her crap.

So, we had to get things ready to deal with the bedroom. Everything (except a bunch of my books) is back in the girls' room, though for the most part in sorted piles. I'm not about to take a picture of that, though, because now there's even more stuff in there from our bedroom. Yeah, things are a mess. Here's a nice picture though of when I emptied the room out!

This means we're onto the next project, and I'll have to finish organizing the girls' room (and my books - I did manage to select one bag of books to be taken to Half Price Books - that's a tough job for me!) after the bedroom is done.

Now, for the most part, hubbie's taking care of the bedroom. I, of course, helped him move everything out, but he'll be dealing with the wall repairs, the priming, the painting, and the ripping out of the ugly brown carpet. It sounds easy, doesn't it? Not in a 100-year-old house it isn't. The walls are plaster, and we have some pretty huge cracks. Plus he needs to be extra careful because there's lead paint in the room. He's not even touching the closet (a project for a cooler week).

Sorry that my blog's been taken over by life stuff, but right now, this is what's going on! Sadly, life can't be writing, gaming, and fun all the time. I'll leave you with one of the before pictures of the bedroom. You can see the horrible blue wall as well as the nose-wrinkling brown carpet. Sadly, I'm guessing the blue and brown combo is back to being an in thing? I sure hope not. Here's hoping the hardwood under the carpet looks nice!

Challenge Accepted! Kind of... Maybe...

This has been a hard week. My husband has been out-of-town for work, so it's been just me with the kids. I feel like I can barely sit down...even when I'm sleeping. I've already been interrupted three times while trying to write this post!

Well, one of my goals this week was to make room in my poor, poor study which has pretty much become a storage room. We need to be able to move our bedroom furniture in there to paint and rip out carpet in the bedroom (and I hope after the bedroom is done I can slowly reclaim my study). And I did it! I moved most of the boxes of papers out and have a nice large space. Sorry didn't do before and after pictures. I mean, a lot of the junk got shoved into the closet, anyway - lol.

But... the girls' bedroom is a complete disaster. It needs some serious organization. I'm not too mad at my eldest with the mess because, well, she clearly takes after me. I'm um, okay, not going to say how old, but you get the picture, and I still can't seem to get my shit together. However, I keep hurting myself when I walk in there, and we want to get the toddler on the lower bunk and the eldest on the top bunk.

My husband told me to wait on taking care of the girls' room until we're done with the bedroom, but I just can't stand it. Everything needs to come out so we can start fresh and put things away nicely. This sadly includes giving up half of the bookshelf that I still have a claim on with my own books (I need more bookshelves!), so I'd fill up the study again, temporarily. We're starting the bedroom next weekend.

So, I said I could have the girls' room done by the end of this weekend. And then my eldest proceeded to take a whole hour to move two stacks of books into the study. Such a pokey child!

Think I can do it? I'm starting to have doubts, but I got to try!

Here's a before pic. If I get it done, I'll write a new post with the results and an after pic (I'm scared it won't look much better, though, because the kids have too much crap - ha).