cindale

Yesterday I tore up my bathroom. It was sort of gratifying, which is sort of scary.

Anyway, I didn't tear up the whole thing, just the floor. I cut the carpet away where I'm going to put vinyl. It cut very easily and the pad below practically fell apart for me. This shows me what crap low quality stuff they used to build my house. I'm getting used to it by now.

Anyway, Hubby had to help me with pulling up the finishing strip since it was nailed into the concrete, but I actually pulled up vinyl and pulled off the baseboards all by myself! I realized, though, that we're going to have to move the toilet out of the way. I told Hubby I thought I could do a toilet and he just looked at me like I was crazy. I've seen it done a couple of times and I've read about it on the internet. I might not be able to move it by myself, but I think I can disconnect and reconnect it.

Anyway, I know you were dying to hear about my remodeling, so I thought I'd enlighten you.

I couldn't manage to finish the HP books before the movie, so I thought about watching the movies this weekend. But there's five of those things... FIVE! Did you realize that?? I don't have time for that! I have things to tear up!

I was trying to read the HP books before the movie comes out. I'm in the middle of GoF. Thanks to my handy dandy calculator, I figured out that I'll have to read NINE chapters per day to finish through HBP by Tuesday night.

That is so much NOT going to happen.

I'm hoping to have carpet installed in about two weeks (I've paid for it, but they haven't set up the installation date yet). I have a ton of other remodeling stuff to get done before they can install the carpet, including painting a room, installing some vinyl tile, and patching wallpaper, not to mention moving the stuff out of the rooms. I'm starting to work on what will probably be a big project for the youth group at church, and I'm feeling driven to get the editing done on my manuscript. And, oh yeah, I have a job and two kids!

So the HP reading will have to go. I'll probably still read them, but I won't have them finished by the HBP movie. Not tragic, I know!

With all that's going on over the next couple of weeks, the manuscript will probably get shuffled to the side a lot. To get it done, I probably need to think of it as a job and work on it every day, but on the other hand I find it hard to think of it as a job since I don't know if I'll ever get paid for it.

Right now, though, I'm going to sleep. Night!

(Over text messaging)

Boy who apparently has a crush on my daughter: Hey baby.

Daughter: Quack

Boy: What?

Daughter: Quack

Boy: What are you doing?

Daughter: Moo

Boy: Okay bye!

(So did he get rejected by a duck or a cow?)

And randomly, apparently my PJ pants scare youth interns...

I went. I'm still alive.

Actually, it was a really good experience.

It was this: http://win-acfw.com/web/win-conference-june-26-27-2009/

It's for writers of inspirational books, and so far my fiction writing is all mainstream, but I figured the topics would be general enough to apply to me. I'm a Christian who writes, even if I don't write Christian books. :)

My biggest fear was that I'd have to talk to people. I hate mingling at parties, wondering who to talk to, afraid of interrupting. So I get there, and the first 30 minutes is mingling. Ack!

It was fine, though. No, I didn't get to disappear into a corner like I wanted--people came up and talked to ME! It was a little hard for me to talk about my writing, but I made myself. I don't talk about my writing much to my friends, and I thought strangers might be easier, but it wasn't.

My clothes were fine. I dressed up just a little (for me)--I wore slacks and a nice top. About half the people were dressed like me. The other half were more casual. I'm going more casual today, mainly because the temperature here has been over 100.

There was every age there, too (no kids). I saw some girls and a guy who looked like late teens or early 20's, and I saw a few women who looked like they were at least 70, and everything in between.

The speakers are a good mix--two very different authors (different genders and different genres), an agent, and a publicity person. There was also a pastor who gave a short, encouraging talk at the beginning.

I'm going back today. It's all day with lunch. I know part of the purpose of this is networking, but I'm still nervous about it. I think it will be okay, though. Last night it seemed like people actually wanted to talk to me, even after they found out I wasn't anyone important, (and even after I spilled my tea twice) and that put me at ease.

I know going to writer's conferences is good for me. But instead of taking it like medicine, I'm actually starting to feel a little guilty about the time away from home because the conference is fun!

There's a writer's conference in Tulsa that starts in just over an hour. It's only $60 and the topics sound really good. I really should go.

I'm terrified to go. What if I make a fool of myself? I don't have anything to wear. I have no idea what to wear, actually.

(When I commented on my lack of wardrobe in the car last night, my daughter said, "Why do you have to wear anything?")

So should I stay home, promising myself to work on my editing instead, or should I go and hope I can stay invisible and just listen?

I had a friend who was going to go originally, but she had to go to Dallas. That would have made it easier, because I would have been committed to go and I would have had someone to sit with.

When it comes right down to it, I'm very shy.

My kids are going on a mission trip, and I'm going as a chaperone. We're leaving today and we'll be back Friday. Since this is junior high kids, we don't go to third world countries (we leave that for the Seniors--they went to The Dominican Republic), we're going to Oklahoma City. The kids will be working with a downtown mission (The Refuge) and with a day care for special needs kids (Special Care).

Anyway, this past week has been crazy with my mom having a scary heart procedure (she's fine), remodeling, trying to keep work caught up, my daughter going on a float trip in a scary thunderstorm, and getting the house ready for Hubby to live alone for a week (I feel like I need to take care of him even if I'm not here).

I'm nervous. I think it must be leftover nerves from the crazy week because I went on the junior high mission trip last year and it was fine, even fun! It's in a different place this year, and maybe a little of that uncertainty is catching up with me. I'm not usually like this. I think getting away from work and the remodeling for a week will be really good for me. I love doing things with the teenagers!

Won't have internet, probably, unless I check my e-mail on someone's phone.

We just decided to go to early church service instead of late like usual, so I'd better go get some make-up on...

Eww. I hated revising back in my fanfiction days. When I would get a chapter back from one of my beta readers I would always feel a little sick to my stomach at having to make changes. Especially swishandflick05's, because he would always do things like urge me to add more description and metaphors, or challenge my characterizations.

However, this time I have One-Pass Manuscript Revision by Holly Lisle. I think I have innerslytherin to thank for directing me there.

I'm not very far into it yet, but so far I think the method is brilliant.

For one thing, it's a method, which appeals to me as a detail-oriented systematic accountant. But wait--isn't writing an art form, and the novel a work of art? Yes, of course, but one of the best pieces of advice I think I've ever heard is that you have to force yourself to think of the manuscript as a product instead of a creation. The hard truth is that if you want to have a writing career, someone has to buy your novel.

For another thing, the method forces you to think about big picture of your story. If you don't know what your story is about, it's impossible to determine whether the components belong.

But the thing that has me proclaiming the brillance of the method is that, ironically, it has already sparked me to create.

I wasn't planning to do much with my first scene (which is six pages). I had already revised it multiple times and I thought it was as close to perfect as it was going to get. However, after applying Ms. Lisle's instructions, my first scene is covered in red.

I was afraid that revising would cause me to cut and condense, which in my case is a little scary because my word count is already on the low side. I need to add, if anything, but "padding reads like padding."

However, I'm excited to report that this method of revising has sparked me to add several lines of dialog that are not only amusing, they foreshadow an important point that comes up later.

Anyway, my point is that I've discovered that revising can actually be fun. Who knew?

And maybe this method will actually help me bump up my word count without padding.

Happy Anniversary, Hubby!
:)

R has been my faithful reader for over two years now. She's been reading my novel (and giving me feedback) a chapter at a time. She's actually read the first half of it twice since I made major revisions.

My next step in this process is to print out the whole thing and take a red pen to it. I decided on a whim to call R first to see if she had the last few chapters I gave her so I wouldn't have to print out all of it--save a tree, you know.

She had every chapter. I was touched. She knew exactly where it all was, too.

So when I picked her up for our staff meeting (we work together, and she lives down the street) she carried out this file folder with this 1-1/4" stack of papers in it (yes, I measured it--I'm a dork). I was like, "Is that my novel???" I had never seen it all together like that.

I think that's the first time it really hit me--I actually wrote a novel.

It's a big stack of papers. R said it was a lot of typing. Yes, but every word of it is an expression of me. It's my imagination articulated and put on paper.

So even if it never gets published, even if only my friends and family read it, even if the agents laugh at me and tell me not to quit my day job...

I WROTE A NOVEL!

Stolen from rainpuddle13:

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (x)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (x)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (x)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (x)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (x)
6 The Bible - (x)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (x)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (x)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ()
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens ()
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (x)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ()
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ()
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ()
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (x)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (x)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ()
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger ()
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger ()
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ()
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (x)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald ()
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ()
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ()
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (x)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ()
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ()
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (x)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (x)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (x)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ()
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ()
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (x)
34 Emma - Jane Austen (x)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (x)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (x)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - ()
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ()
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden ()
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (x)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell ()
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ()
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (x)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving ()
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ()
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (x)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ()
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ()
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding ()
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan ()
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ()
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (x)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ()
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (x)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ()
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ()
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens ()
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ()
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon ()
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (x)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ()
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ()
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold ()
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ()
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ()
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ()
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding ()
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ()
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ()
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (x)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ()
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (x)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ()
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ()
76 The Inferno - Dante (x)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ()
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ()
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ()
80 Possession - AS Byatt ()
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (x)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ( )
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (x)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro ()
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (x)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ( )
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (x)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ()
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ()
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ()
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ()
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery ()
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ()
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ()
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ()
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ()
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas ()
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (x)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (x)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ()

Only 35? What a loser!
This is good, though, because it reminds me of some books I need to get my kids to read...

Front bathroom (we've already replaced the tub/shower, had the drywall repaired, and pulled off the wallpaper)
1) Finish sanding the walls
2) Prime the walls
3) Paint the walls
4) Paint the baseboards and door
5) Get the floor replaced

Master bedroom and bath
1) Move everything out, including furniture, and figure out where to put it (and where to sleep)
2) Get the shower replaced
3) Paint the bedroom
4) Paint the doors and the baseboards in the bathroom
5) Get the drywall around the shower repaired
6) Patch the wallpaper around the shower
7) Get the carpet replaced in the bathroom and bedroom
8) Get tile laid in front of the shower
9) Move all the furniture back in
(I haven't quite figured out the sequence of all this yet.)

Other
1) Go on a mission trip the third week
2) Refinance the mortgage to pay for the remodeling
3) Edit "finished" novel
4) Outline new novel (right now I have almost 20 pages of notes that are so jumbled they're almost incoherant)
5) Keep up with my job, the laundry, and the dishes, as well as entertain my kids who are out of school

Overwhelming? I'm trying not to think about it. Notice I wrote down the thing I did yesterday and crossed it off, even though it's not June yet. That makes me feel a tiny bit better.

I wonder how much my kids can help?? I'm not sure I trust them with the painting, so maybe not much. I think I'm going to make them take over the cooking and dishes, though, and maybe most of the laundry. That will help indirectly. :)

I think I might have finished my novel.

I have a couple more scenes floating in my head, but I think I'm at the point where I need to call it done and start into editing. One of the scenes will need to be worked in for foreshadowing, but the other might be unnecessary.

I'm printing the last few chapters out for my faithful reader of two years to read, and then it will be time for The Red Pen Of Doom.

I'm not sure if I'm elated or terrified.

I think I'll go watch a movie.

My kids are gone. The house is so quiet--it's weird.

Yesterday was the last day of school. My parents picked up my kids right after school and took them to Branson. So far (from my daughter's text messages) it seems they're having a really good time. :)

Hubby and I went to Red Lobster last night (we had a gift card), which cost over $50 with just us, so would have been $100 with the kids! Man! It's getting so expensive to go out! This is why we will remain loyal to Taco Bell for the remainder of our days. And why I will try to cook most nights, even though I get tired of it.

Tonight we're going to see Star Trek again. I don't guess I ever commented on that here. Maybe I will after the second viewing. Anyway, Hubby and I are huge fans--have been for 20 years (him longer). We've seen every episode of every series and every movie. I don't guess you would call us "hard core" fans since we don't go to conventions and stuff, but we do like the franchise.

So anyway, as fans that are almost "hard core," we loved the movie. Yeah, the time line shift changes a lot, but we felt like it worked, and the plot was in keeping with the spirit of Star Trek. (And I don't feel like that's a spoiler since it happens in the first five minutes.)

I'm in the weird position right now of reading two books I have trouble putting down. I started reading "Hearing God" by Dallas Willard first. It's a fascinating and balanced (in my opinion) look at how God communicates with humans. Then I got the e-mail from the library that they had the third Maximum Ride book for me, and I HAD to start that because the second book left me hanging in many ways.

So one of the things I will do while my kids are gone is finish two books. I suppose I should finish one before the other, but I keep going back and forth. The one book is feeding something in my soul that is hungry, but it's very academic so I have to be focused to read it. The other is something my eyes can fly over quickly and gives pure entertainment.

I love both in books. :)

Stolen from several old Checkmated Buddies
(Well, they're not old in age, but they were my buddies when I was involved in Checkmated, so... yeah.)

Anyway, with no further ado, ( My Soundtrack )

Okay, I had another experience with a book I hadn't had in a long time. This one made me cry.

Suspense and Sensibility by Carrie Bebris is the second in her series that casts Mr. & Mrs. Darcy from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice as unsuspecting and reluctant sleuths. This time they interact with the characters from Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. It isn't necessary to have read the Jane Austen books to enjoy this one, or even the first in the series.

I read the first of Bebris's Darcy mystery books and reviewed it earlier in my blog. I liked this one even more.

The plot starts out with Mr. & Mrs. (Elizabeth) Darcy sponsoring Elizabeth's sister's (Kitty) first season in London. She quickly catches the attention of a young dashing heir, Harry Dashwood (introduced as a spoiled child in Sense and Sensibility), who intially worries more about the tying of his cravat than the tenants on his estate. However, the idea of settling down with a wife seems to cause him to think more seriously about the responsibilities that come with his inheritance, and he wins Mr. Darcy's support by asking his advice. Harry and Kitty become engaged, and everyone seems to approve the match except Harry's mother and an aunt who hoped her daughter would catch Harry's eye.

Soon after the engagement, however, Harry begins to act oddly, and as his behavior escalates into rudeness and debauchery it threatens everything he formerly held dear, including his fortune and his engagement. This is the mystery that Darcy and Elizabeth end up solving.

One would expect members of the ton in their situation to try to use their influence to persuade Harry to behave, and if that didn't work, to eventually encourage Kitty to break the engagement and discontinue association with the cad. However, the author does a good job of believably keeping the Darcys involved in Harry's life by other associations.

I guessed at the solution to the main puzzle of the book long before the characters did, but I think the author intended that, meaning to give it away in the prologue. Anyone who has read the first Darcy mystery knows that the author employs a bit of mysticism in her plots, and that knowledge paired with the prologue makes the solution to the mystery obvious. However, I don't think it diminished my enjoyment of the book at all--I still didn't know how they were going to figure it out, and I knew from the first book that Mr. Darcy would be skeptical of anything he couldn't explain with science.

There were a few other twists in the book that I predicted, but the two things at the end that moved me to tears were surprises to me. I really liked that the book didn't tie up completely like I expected.

emiv says the next one, North by Northanger is her favorite so far, so I'll definitely be reading it soon. After the second Maximum Ride book.

And emiv, I'll tell you privately what made me cry if you're curious. I don't want to give any spoilers here.

Yes, I'm a fan. I've been watching the last four seasons and I think it's gotten better every year. It's the only TV show I keep up with, and I enjoy watching it and discussing it with my kids.

This year, I remember noticing Adam during the top 36, and every week I became more and more convinced that he would win. He seemed to be on top of his game every single week, and set a standard that, in my opinion, none of the others could reach. He was consistant--consistantly good.

However, all the "girls" at work seemed to like Kris Allen, so I couldn't help taking notice of him. I liked his personality, and he seemed to improve every week. I was surprised the week he beat out Allison to take a place in the top three, but then when he sang "Heartless" with only his guitar the next week I began wondering if he could actually beat the "top two" contestants (Danny and Adam).

I was surprised last night, but not disappointed. Honestly, it was fun to be surprised. I think maybe that's one of the things that keeps me going back to the show year after year.

Did Adam deserve to win instead? (Kris seemed to think so!) Maybe. He was, in my opinion, the only one who was consistantly good every week.

However, it seems to me that Kris improved in skill and confidence to the point that he matched Adam. When Kris did his first audition, Simon actually told him that his lack of self-confidence was off-putting. Kris gained enough confidence on stage to be molded into a star, but at the same time stayed true to his humble personality.

So, from that standpoint, yes, I do think Kris deserved to win. I hope he is very successful. I'll look for his CD. :)

Last night I had an experience I haven't had in a long time, and it felt good, though I was hurting this morning (literally, my back, but also because I'm sleepy).

I couldn't put a book down.

Granted, I came home last night from going out of town so tired it was hard to string a sentence together, and a little grumpy because I couldn't watch the NASCAR race (we don't get the Speed channel), so I decided I was going to curl up in a chair and read. However, the reasonable time for me to go to bed came and went, my husband went to bed, and then one of my kids (no telling how late the other one stayed up--my son is a night owl). I had to finish the book.

Though, I have to say, I was a bit frustrated at the end because I was left with many more questions than answers.

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment is the first in a YA series by James Patterson.

Six "mutant" children (they have wings and can fly, among other things) spent most of their life in cages undergoing painful "experiments" until a kindly "doctor" rescued them. After four years of freedom, six-year-old Angel, the youngest, is kidnapped and taken back to the "school." The other five, of course, must rescue her, and along the way must discover their own destinies.

Okay, on paper this plot sounds cheesy, but the writing is so skillful that it's anything but. There are many twists and turns in the plot to keep the reader guessing, and the author has the storytelling ability to keep adults entertained while allowing his younger readers to keep up. The loose ends at the close of the book were frustrating, but since Book 5 in the series came out recently I can only assume the questions are answered eventually. And, of course, the author wants you to keep reading the series!

The main character and leader of the group is Maximum Ride ("Max"), a 14-year-old girl, and most of the book is written in the first person from her POV. If I had had any skepticism about a man writing a teenage girl, it would have been gone a few pages in. Patterson manages to capture typical longings and emotions of a teenage girl, including motherly instincts, and combine them with the toughness, anger, and sometimes hatred of a girl who began her life constantly abused and was later trained in combat. Max is a very complex character, full of passionate love for her family and hatred for her abusers, and very often repressing strong emotions to convey the image she needs for leadership of the family.

I highly recommend this book for teenagers as well as adults, and I plan on reading the next one as soon as possible!

Tonight I made my kids watch "Bringing Up Baby" (and I got grumpy when they tried to text during). On the other hand, I'm reading Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment by James Patterson.

My son has been enjoying the Maximum Ride series, a YA fantasy/action/adventure series, and has been telling me he thought I'd like them. I'm about 1/3 of the way through and I'm enjoying the non-stop action, blunt narration, and character development so far. I'll let you know. Has anyone else read them?
(I have a hard time getting through books quickly these days because I'm so busy, but I'm making myself read.)

My husband and I watched just about every old black & white movie we could get our hands on before we had our kids. We love them, but that interest has sort of gone by the wayside in more recent years. However, now we're finding we can enjoy them all over again with our kids. Once they get over the whole non-color thing, they really enjoy them. I think tonight I picked a good one since it's a screwball comedy with animals--what's not to like? (Cute is not the description I would prefer my kids to use about a leopard, though.)

And I like to play Guitar Hero with my kids. Is that weird?

I have no idea who will be voted off tonight! I thought they were all three good. What do you all think?

Also, I wish LJ had a "like" button like Facebook does. Sometimes I don't have time to comment, but at least that way I could let people know I do read. For instance, _ashestobeauty_ got a job, and I like that because I know that's been a concern for her.

But anyway, who watches AI? Thoughts?

I can't think of anything to blog about. Any ideas?