This post should be locked into the top of my journal. Thanks, author_by_night!

( Ahavah's Emergency ContactsCollapse )

The reading deprivation week is a task for Week 4 of The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. My AW Buddies and I are starting Week 8 today, but I saved the reading deprivation specifically for this week.

I still have trouble with this 'hell week' every year. I have a hard time enjoying Cinco de Mayo anymore, including seeing all the happy posting & partying, after what happened to my mom on May 5th (<-- TW for that link: head trauma, lots of grief). It's all the Mother's Day posts that are worst of all. She died on Mother's Day, and that's probably my fault since I wouldn't let them pull the plug on our wedding day. I still hate myself for that, tbh. I was too hurt and greedy. I still wanted to go ahead and get married with her there, and not do that that day. So anyway, I decided to do my reading deprivation to help encourage me to stay offline from 5/6-5/13, and hopefully I can miss most of the Mother's Day hoopla and stay more positive and upbeat this time.

I have a lot of things I plan to get done while I'm not reading. I still plan to write. And I do plan to cheat and keep up with my online write-in chats that I've been having with my writer buddies. That helps me SO much. I get more done than I probably do the rest of the week.

Here are the things I plan/hope to accomplish this upcoming week:

• Go through mom's things. It's way passed time.
  
• Do a ceremony/shamanic journey.
  
• Write more stories!
  
• Revise Fire Witch and send it back out. This may be cheating too, but I'm also long overdue on that revision. May get to it tonight, in fact. We'll see.
  
• Plant my garden! That is also well overdue. Sheesh.
  
• Finish helping Josh fix the pasture fencing.
  
• Put in more resumes/job apps now that I'm well again.
  
• Do a couple big cook days, trying new recipes I've been meaning to try. That was the week I got sick, so I never got to any of the new stuff. Hope to do some of them today, in fact.
  
• Check out the local-ish SCA group.
  
• Try painting or drawing again.
  
• Maybe try selling some kefir at the Farmer's Market.
  
• Write letters.
  
• Check out the videos in my new Intro to Guitar class that I haven't had a chance to even peek in yet.
  
• Go for walks with the family.
  
• Find my camera. Take pictures while on our walks, if I can find it.
  
• Clean more around the house.
  

Now, I do have to go to the library tomorrow and look up some books on their catalogue to see if any of the branches have them. I tried Friday, but it was storming so they had the computers all shut down. I found that that particular branch did not have any of the books I was looking for, so I want to find out who does and pick them up throughout the week as I head in various directions. If not, I'll put in some long-distance orders via the library share thing they have.

It will be interesting to check back in afterward and see how much of this stuff I actually got done. Here's hoping!

I was keeping a list of books I've read this year, and I lost it. So I've started a new list, and I decided I'd probably better keep a version of it on LJ for future reference. I haven't gotten as much reading time as I would hope, and a lot of reading I've been doing has been magazines instead of books. I do think I had one or two more on the list that I can't remember. Josh says there was one big novel I was reading, but neither of us can remember what it was. I'll add them if they come to me, and I'll add others as I finish them. I tend to read a few books at once, so I have several partially-read books, but I'm not adding them until I finish the whole thing.

Interestingly enough, my search for my list has turned up another list I kept like 6-8 years ago. It wasn't dated, and it has books on there that I don't even remember. I think I'll add a little blurb on these to spark my memory.

Books I want to focus on this year include: More sci-fi novels (I read a lot of short stories but am woefully ignorant in novels), books that have won awards (especially recent Pulitzer winners/contenders, Hugo or Nebula winners, and especially novels that won both Hugos & Nebulas), literary fiction (basically just trying to figure out what that really is, at this point), the 8 Books that Neil deGrasse Tyson feels every intelligent person should read, anything on writing craft, and all of the unread books on my bookshelves.

( 2013 Books!Collapse )

Given some huge breaches of confidence that I've had lately, I think it's past time to do some clean up on my journal. It's years overdue. I have become more paranoid about what I post here, which has actually stopped me from posting a lot anymore, and I really need this to be my safe space again. I will be doing a very major friends cut this week, and I'll also be redoing several of my filters.

I only plan to cut journals which have not been updated in 2+ years (no matter how close we used to be 6-7 years ago; if I haven't heard from you in years, I hope you'll understand), and people with whom I've grown apart or just haven't connected to very well.

I'm on the fence about people I'm still connected with on facebook or other sites but whom I never hear from here. I'm leaning towards removing here, not because I don't want to be friends at all, but because there's no real reason to keep a bunch of people on who have left LJ. And a LOT of people have left LJ. If you're still reading and I just didn't realize it, feel free to let me know if I removed you in error.

I'd like this to be a place where I feel comfortable baring my soul again, and I want to post a lot more here. I find myself not doing that anymore, and the only way I feel to fix that is to make sure I really know everyone who is on here and exactly who has access to it.

If anyone wants to take this opportunity to remove me, please feel free, and thank you for the time we spent together. If we chat at all these days, you really have nothing to worry about. I've just 150 friends and only real active friendships with way less than that. This is my family/soul sharing space, and I just need to be careful lately who I'm sharing my innermost personal things with.

Thanks for understanding!

We're starting a Flat Stanley Project with the girls, where we send their flat alter egos traveling around the world to learn about geography, science, history, cultures, language, religion, and anything else we can squeeze in. Each of the girls has a different goal for their project. I'm looking for people who will “host” one of our flat girls and then send the project on to the next stop.

Goals:

Flat Eden - visit all 50 United States (and Washington, D.C.)
Flat Ivy - visit all 7 continents (Antarctica might be an exciting challenge)
Flat Maya - visit all biomes of the world (as listed here: http://bioexpedition.com/types-of-biomes-in-the-world/)

Instructions:

1. You'll receive Flat Eden, Flat Ivy, or Flat Maya and their corresponding notebooks in the mail.

2. Post to our facebook page or send us a postcard to let us know where our flat friends are in the world. (We will be studying those places as our flat versions travel.)

3. Take a few pictures of you and your flat friend hanging out, exploring the local area.

4. Tape or glue at least one physical picture to your page in the flat notebook with a description of what you and your flat friend did.

5. Feel free to share as many extra pictures as you want on the facebook page! This cuts down on postage weight (especially for the one hitting all 50 states).

6. Send the package on to someone else on the list. Personal addresses will not be posted publicly anywhere, but we will have a list of addresses in the notebook you receive. Cross your own name off the list once you've gotten it.

7. If there are any blank spaces and you know someone who would be willing to host, please feel free to send it their way! However, please make sure the person agrees and is expecting it. We don't want to lose our projects!

Thanks so much! Here are the places we'd like to visit and need some volunteers for:

( Flat Eden – 50 States & DCCollapse )

( Flat Ivy – 7 ContinentsCollapse )

( Flat Maya – Biomes of the WorldCollapse )

I haven't done a post on my sweet baby in a while. Maybe I should. She's now 17 months, and I started this post 3 months ago. Ha! She seems so much older, and she always has. It pains me that my family and a great many of my RL friends haven't gotten to meet her. Obviously I'm biased, but she really is so extremely awesome. Let me see if I can describe her and do her awesomeness justice for anyone who's come to know our family. She's a big piece, so please indulge me as I revel for a bit.


I find it really incredible how she just came out so Maya right from the start. So bright and communicative, even before she could talk. From that first day, you could sit down and have a deep conversation with her – and totally know what she said back. She was a grown-up just waiting to get on with things. And now she's mobile, vocal, and not waiting around quite so much anymore.

All of my girls have seemed early in certain areas as they developed, but Maya really seems exceptionally ahead of the game. I thought maybe I was giving her too much credit until my friend & her hubby came to visit, and they both really wowed over how advanced she seemed. And she was being kind of shy with them, so she was dialed back.

Maya often reminds me of Stewie from Family Guy, just without the extensive vocabulary. She conveys with exactly as much clarity though, and what she's conveying is often along the lines of “Woman, I am going to list many reasons for my displeasure and then end you” and “Victory is mine!”

She signs and says a great many things though. She's said some short sentences said before she turned 1, and she began signing short sentences on her own just after turning 1. Her common signs: Please, thank you, milk, more, all done, dog, chicken, rooster, giraffe, baby, cat, dragon, rabbit, & applause. Signs I've seen her do but not quite so often: mom, dad, up, drink, food, out, kiss, car, pig, hot, fish, truck, cookie, cake. Maybe more I'm forgetting. She understands a lot more, and she speaks even more than she signs.

Maya's favorite music is still Rusted Root (here, have a song of theirs that is not 'Send Me on My Way'), but her favorite song is Run, Baby, Run by Caspar Babypants. She's started listening to kid cds (courtesy of a wonderful FB friend who sent us a fun kid package). She really enjoys dancing. She learned the Run, Baby, Run & Hokey Pokey moves within like one or two times of listening to the song, doing the moves herself without having to see sisters do it. She loves to break it down. Her signature move is what we've dubbed 'the chicken wing', because she'll get going and bend to the side, cock her elbow way up in the air by her head, and start shaking it around. She also quickly picked up on the girls' favorite move, the “Litterbox” from Puss in Boots.

In addition to her previous favorites of cheese, avocado, and ramen noodles with mixed veggies (three separate favorites, not one weird meal), Maya's new favorite food is red bell pepper. She will devour some red pepper, raw or cooked. She also eats cheese its and goldfishy type snacks way too much, so I try to give her the healthier cheeses & veggies that she loves. She's less picky than Josh and the big girls put together. Maya will eat. She'll eat the food before you have it all set down on her high chair table, and then she'll eat the seconds before you sit down with your meal, and then she'll eat your meal.

Maya's days revolve around Daddy. When he works, she gets up early, gets some love and attention, and then sees him off to work. We all wave bye-bye from the storm door, and daddy blinks his lights at us. Then we shut the door, because it's cold nowadays, and try to have fun & keep her from destroying the house until Daddy comes home for lunch. She's been helping the girls feed all the farm critters for a while now. Josh will usually share half of his lunch, so I have to give him more now for him to eat on his breaks where he doesn't come home. Sometimes Maya gets too sleepy and goes down for a nap, missing his lunch break, and that throws her off for the whole day. She's glued to the window or door every day by 2:30, even though Josh doesn't get home until 3:30. Sometimes if she's too antsy, I'll dress her up and take her outside to get some energy out before Josh gets home (although that's starting to become the only time I'll take her out, because his arrival will draw her into the house without a fuss. She loves outside time and will fight me to stay out).

Her favorite toys right now are the magna-doodles, but she's also mesmerized by the doll who closes her eyes when you lay her down. And Soft Kitty! She carries Soft Kitty, a Christmas gift from Grandpa-monster, around everywhere. She loves reading, but we have to keep paper books away from her because she's too overzealous & passionate with them. She needs more board books, because keeping our papery books & magazines away from her is hard. Glad she's a book lover though. She's recently started paying attention to some of the girls' cartoons, which kind of makes me sad at her young age but is also helpful sometimes when I just can't redirect her from her favorite mischief. She particularly seems to like Dora. Even more, she loves Dave Canterbury's blacksmithing tutorials. She'll fall asleep at night to the sounds of the blower and chinking metal while rocking with dad in his recliner.

Maya's favorite mischief right now is attacking the computer. Of course. She particularly enjoys turning it off while I'm trying to let shows buffer or pushing it over in a huge huff if you piss her off. Unless we're extra diligent, she'll come and start pushing buttons the minute you step away from it if you don't close it down when you leave. Sucks at buffering time. Also, our computers break too freaking much, so she needs to just stop. She has a kid laptop she plays with sometimes, but she knows the difference. She's also been playing with my cell phone a lot. I can't get it to charge (not sure if it's my charger or the phone...we have this problem with electronics a lot, oddly), so I've let Maya have my cell phone for now. She LOVES talking on the phone, real or imagined. She'll also tell me that she's talking to papa, and twice she said it was Boo Boo, which was really weird. That's what the girls called my mom.

Maya is my best helper around the house. I give her laundry that I take off the line, and she'll take them to the basket in my bedroom for me. She'll hold wet stuff while I hang it. She likes to help cook, but that's a balance between trying to let her learn & feel helpful and trying to teach her that you don't just grab at everything hot and sharp when people are cooking. She'll also pick up her toys and put them in the box if you encourage her to...for now. I'm basking in that. She's a 'stacker' like Ivy, and she loves playing with and then reorganizing the cans in my cupboards or stock room. She'll bring me a jar of babyfood or any snacks she wants to have.

She's scribbling and figuring out pens right now. I let her use the pens because she's so diligent about eating crayons and erasers, but mostly we try to get her to stick to the magnadoodles. She won't leave cds & dvds alone if she can find them. She still loves dressing up, and now she enjoys wearing Josh's hat when he's not around. She'll put his hat on, sit up in his chair, and totally pretend she's daddy for a while when he's at work. She's enjoying playing with her sisters. She'll pick up her rag and start washing anything that needs washed. She is currently finding fart and butt humor hilarious, and she's still wiping her own bottom at changing time, but I still can't get her to pee in the potty. Sometimes she'll let me do her hair up fancy, but not often. She's pleasant and fairly talkative to people whenever we go out these days, except at the DG where I used to work. She's always rude and off-puttish to any of the ladies there, which I actually find kind of amusing. Perhaps she remembers what it was like when I was working there & pregnant with her. She does not like anyone at DG. Workers, not other customers. She'll flirt all day when a guy comes up.

At night, when she's super-duper sleepy but fighting it, nursing but looking around and doing everything to keep her eyes open, all I have to do is smile at her. Hold the smile, so any time she meets my eyes, she sees my smiling face, and then her eyelids will start to flitter closed. As long as I don't stop smiling until they stay closed, it's the sure fire way to get oversleepy Maya to nap. It's so, so adorable.

She's started saying “No, no. no” while shaking her head a lot, and if someone gets hurt, she'll run up and go, “Shhhhhh”, while petting or hugging them. Sometimes she'll hurt someone just so she can Shhhh and kiss on them, but we're working on that. She enjoys blowing kisses and making animal noises. She used to like roosters best (not counting dragons), but now she's really excited about goats.

That's life with Maya.

I'm trying to catch up on my writing/school work today. Those are my ONLY goals today, heavily focusing on writing, so I'm not really playing online & may not get around to comments and stuff until Sunday. Maybe tomorrow, but tomorrow kind of sucks already, so I'll play it by ear. We'll see. My overdue journey write-up this morning was cathartic and I'm feeling relatively okay today, but I have a feeling tomorrow will be pretty hard on me.

( Cut because this ended up longer than I meant it toCollapse )

- Did I say “quick” update? Sorry about that! I can do almost 2k words in a journal entry easy as pie, but getting 2k in my novel takes 3 weeks. Yeah. That's changing too.

- I promised myself that I would write these overdue blog posts as a warmup, but I couldn't post them until I'd done at least another thousand words on my novel. Sprints started at 11, so I was going to visit with Josh on his lunch break and then jump in on sprints. He threw his back out again at work & they sent him home. Emergency chiropractor visit + pay day shopping + feeding critters/farm chores + dinner + shower means I got NO writing done today on my 'writing day'. Yeah. That just keeps happening. Tomorrow, after work anyway, will be a ME day. It's already been declared, Josh is off work, I have sacred space & writing to revel in. This is my weekend. It's happening.

x-posted to mission101

I still have my Farm 101 list, which I'm actually still plucking away at even if I haven't updated in forever. I also have a better sense of what kind of TIME and funds those goals take, so I realize my farm list wasn't as realistic as it should have been. Regardless, I will keep plucking away at it until April, when it's up. In the meantime, I'm focusing my new list on personal improvement, for the most part. I'm not getting as much help from the hubs or the kids on the farm as I had hoped. So, this list is solely about me and the changes I need to make.

New dates: January 1, 2013 - September 29, 2015

( The list! Sections include: Body, Mind, Spirit, Love, Farm, Writing, Finances, Personal EnrichmentCollapse )

I'm leaving it off my writing filter for now, because I'm hoping maybe some fantasy readers (whether you write or not) might read the synopsis and be willing to give me some feedback. Be brutally honest! This year, I'm redoing my idea from last year, fleshing it out more, and working on an outline. I'm hoping to get a FULL first draft finished in November, to eventually clean up and ultimately publish. For really real. So, please feel free to give feedback now while the ideas are still rough. Let me know what sounds too cliché to even consider, what could potentially be cool if I pull it off, and what sounds awesome and you definitely want to see more of.

Synopsis

Magic was banned after The Dragon War, more than 1000 years ago. Prince Ravi of Judra wants a chance to restore magic to the world, but his mother – as well as every other leader of the known world – won't allow it. They fear the wrath of The Last Dragon, the one who banned magic, but the dragon hasn't been seen in centuries. Ravi decides to seek the dragon and either prove that she's long dead or ask for a chance to study the lost arts. To his surprise, he finds her very much alive. Draelia is willing to grant the prince's greatest desire...if Ravi will do the same for her. Ravi has a chance to live his dream, but is it worth the price?

*

First off: Horrible synopsis? I've gone through several attempts. I want to tell enough to get across the storyline, but there's way more to it than just that as well. I worry that it sounds too trite. I dunno.

( Spoilers for The Dragon Alliance! Please read if it interests you & feel free to weigh in. I do give lots of spoilers though.Collapse )

I'm really enjoying catching up on my modern poetry class. I haven't done any poetry in a very long time, and I'm really getting a lot out of the class. I want to read a lot more poetry. So...

What's your favorite poem? I asked on FB too, but since there's a lot more room for discussion here, please feel free to get into why or any other poets & poems that you'd highly recommend. Thanks!