Okay, so I had all these days off and I had big plans, and do you know what I’ve done? Housework, paperwork, bills (can we say car insurance?) and nap. I guess that last week of work left me tireder than even I knew. I’m still going to bed before 10 every night!

Hopefully, I’ll get more done on my “big plans” in the next few days, because I really want to have some substantial progress just so I can show it to myself, let alone anyone else.

My blogging mojo has flown out the window for now. It’s been a … rough night …. on numerous levels. I should maybe go to bed, but it’s way too early.

While I was out NaNo’ing I did have some other exciting stuff happen. I get my acceptance letter to UNCW, and also my financial aid notice. I’m in and it’s paid for, basically. That’s exciting news for me, and I am really looking forward to starting classes in January.

I’m also planning some house stuff. I need new floors in the kitchen and living room, and a couple of windows. While I am doing all that, I plan to go ahead and do new counter tops and cabinets for the kitchen. And a new, deeper sink. I don’t know whether I will end up with danze faucets or some other brand, but I do know I will have two separate handles for the hot and cold water. My one handle faucet has gotten itself all twisted up somehow and getting hot or cold is a guessing game each time I use it, and the shut off is also at a different point each time. I am tired of fighting with it.

What else? Typing. I am doing a lot of typing, because I wrote most of the book longhand. I am estimating it will come in around 60K for the first edit and I have a little over 20K in the computer. It took about 90 hours to write the thing, I think, and I calculated 63 to type it. And then there are additional revisions, etc, etc, etc. But I feel really accomplished, because HEY! Write a book was on my list, and i have done it.

Speaking of list(s), I need to update all of mine. But not today. Today, I need to finish blogging, deal with this week’s paperwork and then type some on the book. So exciting a life, right?

So, uh *cough*, I am currently cell-less. I find I like it, somewhat. This past week, it was almost a relief to walk out the door without a brick on my belt. To be out of the loop, no constant buzzing to interrupt my every thought. I was able to stay focused on what was happening right in front of me, LOL. Yep, highly distractable, that’s me.

I’m not figuring to stay without service for very long, and I will probably have the phone turned back on early next month, but for now, I am going to enjoy not having it. When I do get it turned back on, I think I may use it just a bit differently than I have in the past. I like having a personal voice mail holder, so the kids don’t erase the messages before I get a chance to hear them. And I like being able to fire off a quick question to a friend by text. And I like the new technology, it’s a marvel what they can pack into one of those little phones. But I don’t think I’ll be shopping for a new htc desire 2.2, and I am pretty sure I won’t be answering that stupid thing every time it beeps at me.

Yes, my name is Cass, and I am was addicted to my cell phone.

So, I finished the book I was writing for NaNoWriMo. I hit 50K on the 23rd, I think it was. I write over 6,000 words that day. Even I was impressed. And I also cleaned up and re-organized the kitchen and living room during November. There at the end of the writing, they cleaning and the words were feeding each other. As I used the book to clean my mental house, clearing my physical house became….the next and most logical thing. I truly was not sure which would be done first. It ended up being the writing, but only by a couple of hours. Once again, my physical environment closely resembles my mental state, but this time, they are both mostly tidy, with a few odd bits still needing sorted, mostly in the back corners. I’m ok with that. I’m so ok with that, that I am intensely guarding the progress I have made on both fronts.

Now it’s back to the more mundane stuff of life: school paperwork, organizing the bills and getting them paid, figuring out this year’s managed hosting service, and so on. And work, which didn’t stop during NaNo, but wasn’t quite as bad as it is now. As Christmas approaches, folks are getting testy. Why do we celebrate the birth of the Savior by snarling at complete strangers? One day last week I actually had to tell TWO customers in a row that I could not help them if they continued to scream at me, because it rendered me unable to think coherently. Yeah. Crazy.

Anyway, I’m sorta back. I missed you. But…I was writing to you even while I wasn’t here

Ok, my mind is now moving faster than a short-circuited garage door opener. I cannot tell you how many times in the past several months I have attempted to explain my response to social situations and gotten the blank stare of incomprehension.

I’d copy and paste the whole article here but that would be rude. It’s about introverts and how they think/function. And it totally explains why most every time I go out in public, I feel like I am putting on a face. It’s because I am. The “public” face, the “extrovert like most of the rest of you” face. I enjoy getting out and I enjoy people, I just do it in my own way and it takes a lot of energy.

It also explains why I so much prefer people like myself who understand that silence is totally ok. I am totally failing here to explain this …thing. But reading this short article was such an affirmation for me, like seeing myself in a mirror I didn’t realize was there and finding out that I don’t actually have a huge hairy wart on my psychc chin.. I’m an introvert, and that’s just how I roll. I live in my own brain, and I am totally ok with that.

How many of you are worriers like me? I think it’s genetic, cause my mom, she worries about every little thing. Me, I don’t worry about the traditional stuff so much: money, possession, whether or not to take calcium supplements. No, I tend to always be thinking “what happens after this?”.

Like, I’m writing the book, and what am I going to do with it when I am through? Like, I want to get the house clean, and what will I do once it is? It’s like I want to know what my future holds. I want to see tomorrow, today. It frustrates me sometimes to be that way. Am I so concerned about how that story is going to end that I am missing important details along the way? Why can’t I just enjoy the present for what it is? Why isn’t that which is NOW enough?

I advised a friend yesterday to quit letting the past control today. Maybe it would behoove me to turn that advice around and quit letting tomorrow control today for me. Enh, it was free advice and you get what you pay for, I reckon.

But thanks for asking. I guess I could spend this whole post complaining about being sick, but that would be boring. Instead, I will recommend this shampoo for thinning hair for women to my mom and tell you that my offline writing is going well, and that I really wish I could take a nap. That about sums up my life today.

And how are you?

Have I mentioned that I hate being sick? It’s not that I am miserable, because I could deal with that by laying in bed and reading and napping. It’s not that no one bothers to send flowers online, since I can’t smell them anyway. The problem is this: I live with a lot of little people. We make a lot of laundry and a lot of dishes. Now, my teens can pick up some slack, but they can’t do it all. And so the mess just keeps piling up. And that would not be quite so bad, except that I did finally start to make headway with the underlying unorganized disorder right before I got sick, and I have watched all that progress slip away these last 7 days. THAT is aggravating in the extreme.

I am supposed to be resting today. But I can’t stand it anymore. I must get the living room in vacuum-able condition before I go stark, raving mad up in here. You don’t want to see that, people. I’m just sayin’

And yes, I am still writing, everyday.