To Recap NaNovember

"And I'm still waiting for/You to be the one I'm waiting for"
Is what I have stuck in my head as I listen to Joy (Let's Be Frank Mix) well sitting in the backseat as my sister races down the tollway. What fun, doubt not. Except my Dad is listening to Radio 90.1...very dull. Despite the fact that my mom's second cousin is on there...or something. I guess I'm related to a previous decade singer. Woop. Dee. Do. If only we could put Mmhmm in.
Ah well. Anyways. Here I am to make something of a recap of the last month as I had not the time for posting the various things that have happened that I probably would have posted about if I had time and some of the things that I wouldn't have posted about even if I'd had time. To began...
On the first of the month we had a little mini Newsboys/tobyMac concert thing with several friends (including the lovely Kiwi). We watched Houston, We Are GO and Alive & Transported. tobyMac was cool, doubt not, but Newsboys took down the house. Very, very cool. We ate pizza (and chips) and drank Ginger Ale and told jokes.
And about this time we got a new president. Needless to say, I am not 'happy' with the choice of president. Since I know just about nothing about politics and the economy and all that rot I am trying to remain optimistic about the things going on around me. So I will try not to think about the fact that Obama is going to tax coal companies and skyrocket electricity prices. My parents, being small-business owners and unwealthy, will be taxed to death by Obama and his plans. Now, if my family is taxed majorly they aren't going to easily be able to pay for the electricity that will skyrocket so how am I ever going to charge my iPod?!
Still, I remain optimistic and close my mouth on the subject. Everyone else can keep there mouth shut too, I do not want a bunch of comments about politics on my blog. It'd give me nightmares or something worse, doubt not.
On the Saturday after that we went to a costume party/birthday party thing. It took me forever to come up with something to wear or something to dress up as. Of course the immediate thought was to dress up as Peter Furler...um, yeah. I thought of that but didn't have much interest in attempting it. I then consider dressing up as Summer Furler...but that didn't fall through either. I'm not really one for dressing up--sorry! Imitating Summer would have taken clothes I don't have, make-up, and a different hairstyle. Then I thought I'd dress up as Arrabella Strange (from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel by Susanna Clarke) but I don't remember what dress she wears when she was stranded out in the snowstorm nor would I have a dress anything like it (I always think of The Tempest when I think of Arrabella). Atlast I thought I would pull the wedding dress we have out of the Dress Up Box and wear that saying I was Kate (from Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew) but I was told that we no longer have that dress. Which is okay, I guess, 'cause the last time I saw it it had a big blue stain on it.
Atlast I just wore black stuff that was tattered and lacy (i.e. a tattery black skirt, black socks and shoes, a darkish green shirt, and a black shawl of my Mother's; no headband thingy, sadly) and just said I was Yente from Fiddler on the Roof and hoped no one had recently watched the movie. I wish I had had a cane...
We had great fun, eating meat sandwhiches, a jelly dessert, and ice cream. We played Psychiatrist (and I got hoarse yelling so much), Freeze Tag (I just watched), and a game generally referred to as the "Mongolian Clapping Game." Our church has missionaries in Mongolia and they brought that game back to us a few years ago when they came to the States for a visit. I was the snake. I am always the snake. I have been the snake almost every time I've played that game for...a long time. No one will take me from the snake--I Am the Snake. I take hope in the fact that Kiwi is the zombie and will not readily try and take the snake from me. She would be cruel if she did. I might not never ever comment on her blog if she did.
*consumes a Thanksgiving dinner* Relatives talking about...nothing.
*returns for the two hour drive home* Listening to Mmhmm. I'm sure it is giving my Dad pain. He doesn't like anything harder than Sara Groves or Chris Rice. I think he likes some of Michael W. Smith too...
I also think he's secretly laughing at me, my Mom appears sceptical, and a sister is in the seat behind me singing along to her own iPod. Kale just doesn't know good music when she hears it.
On the 14th I borrowed a book called Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid by Lemony Snicket from the library. I've wanted to read that book for ages! Finally. I do like Snicket's humour but his actual books (I've only read his A Series of Unfortunate Events: A Bad Beginning, BTW) tend to be pretty stupid --sorry!
I really liked this book. It is one of those books that you purchase and keep on your coffee table for the evenings when you want nothing more than to sit and read something pointless. Until I get a copy of this book for my own I shall have to continue to go to Lewis Carrol on these occasions. Hopefully I can fix this phenomenon soon.
When I become rich and famous (or before) I shall write a book like this. My first entry in the literature section will be
"Fate is the thing that ends your lunch break in the middle of the most exciting chapter."
Or some such something. I do find that kind of thing rather fun: books that you can just open at random and find amusing and interesting things to look and and read; funny quotes, strange sayings, and the song track list for a scientist's favorite album.
On the Sunday after that (which was the 16th) my sister and I interviewed another family from church. A man, his wife, and their son. My siblings thought the son (named Peter) looked like Jody Davis (former Newsboys member) and wouldn't let the poor kid forget it. One of the last interview questions asked the question of tombstone enscriptions. What would they like written on their tombstones? Both the parents said boring things but Peter said, "He Looked Like Jody Davis."
On the seventeenth I borrowed a book called The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan (and two Relient K CDs) from the library. The book is a short picture book. I liked it, the writing (what little there was) was good and the pictures had lovely details but I didn't like how he drew people in that book. Ah well, it was still nice.
Maybe I'll talk about the CDs another time, not today.
The day after that I got the book The Arrival by Shaun Tan from the library and I loved it! It was really fun and pretty and artistic to look at. No words but made entirely up with pictures. It was really poetic and fun to look at, like I said. I liked the style of drawing and the art better in this one. The story line is pretty easy to follow and I loved it. Man...no words to describe. All I know is that I liked it and hope the rest of you will too. Shaun Tan lives in Australia, BTW. Hopefully that's incentive. I want a copy of The Arrival.
*loves High of 75*
On the Wednesday that was the 19th (or I think it was Wednesday) I got invited to go to see Downhere. Kiwi, the lovely girl that she is, invited me and one of my siblings to go see them with her (and her sister?) and another girl. I'm quite excited. I'm not really a Downhere fan. I like the keyboardist's voice more than the lead singer's. I like a few of the songs and--hey!--what's twelve dollars to spending some four hours with my friends? *cough*alotofmoney*cough* So yes. Anyone who reads Kiwi's blog (shame if you don't!) already knows this but I figured you could all use some reminding that, yes, we art going to see Downhere.
On that same Wednesday I learned that tobyMac is going to be coming to a place that's about three hours away and the tickets are only ten dollars! (He's coming near you, The Same Anonymous Dude.) Probably won't get to go but the idea is pretty cool. I'll manage if we don't go but I would die if this were Paul Colman. Seriously die.
On the 22nd I passed my 50k wordcount goal! (And no one noticed and congratulated me except Alyosha. *pouts*) So yes, I passed the count at 9:30pm and promptly went to bed. My story wasn't finished but crossing the goal was pretty sweet.Two excerpts:

• There is nothing a little soup and hot tea won't help to cure. One must always have some on supply when someone else feels like "a cup of tea with no milk in it." Tea without milk is disgusting. So when one feels bad (or disgusting, as the case maybe) tea with milk and hot soup to the rescue!

And...

• "And I won't die."
  "Is that a promise?" the king said. "If you break your word I'll never believe you again."
  "It's a promise, Father, if I die you can throw me in prison and feed me on bread and water only for six weeks and then behead me." The queen wailed even louder.

Please note that this is writing in the raw and so subject to not being very good and lack in grammar things of that sort. Everything I write lacks in grammar, sadly. I am looking at these excerpts and I'm already dying from lack of blood over here 'cause it's all going to my face. So yes, the first one is a Paul Colman referrence and the second one is a Black as Night referrence with hints of The Horse and His Boy in it. I could post many others that referrence to people, places, and things around me but I've forgotten them. Except there was one part were I had a character say "try not to die of suspense" which was a Alyosha referrence. The rest of them I forgot.
*the effects of the ice cream are showed off in the backseat by several siblings singing His Cheeseburger loudly*
[The above was written on Thursday the below was written on Friday]
The day after that, Sunday, I stayed home from church with several siblings because of my cold. I've gone to church on worse nose days so I'm not sure what's up with that. Dad said stay so I stayed. After church several of my older siblings (the ones twelve and over) went to a friend's house where a friend of a friend was going to be showing off essential oil products or something. Needless to say, I stayed home and used the computer and added 2,700 words to my wordcount. I think we had sloppy joes for supper.
Monday I didn't feel well at all but did my best to make it through the day and my afternoon shift. Ate a little supper (which was fish, carp I think, but I don't really follow what kind of fish it is. I think carp is the kind with the fat red skin, it dosesn't taste as nice as other kinds of fish.) I traded supper table chores with my sister and went to bed at about 6pm. I got up twice (for various things, like seeing which video clip won AFV) but that only made my head pound all the more and I could hardly stand or walk and my vision was spinning so much that I went to bed and slept without waking up or knowing who won.
Tuesday, the 24th, was the next day and found me feeling better. I was hoping and planning to finish NaNo that day but due to various things was only able to rack up about 3k more. That brought my total up to 56k.
My afternoon shift on this day consisted of watching the checkout counter for several hours. I had a grand total of two people come in. A woman generally referred to as "The Poetry Lady" came in and bought some random something for two dollars and eleven cents (the cents was tax) and a older man who possessed a dirty mouth and smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and didn't buy anything.
When he came in he immediately grabbed a picture book about Squanto and brought it over to my desk/counter and proceeded to tell me different things about Squanto. Things I already knew. Like the fact that Squanto is the Englishized version of his real name. Or the fact that the first thing Squanto said when he met the pilgrims was "Anybody got some beer?" and this little old man thought that was the funniest thing. At this point he said he had to leave and I feared for a moment that he was going to leave with the book without paying but he put it back. In doing so he caught sight of our world map and was "jist wond'rin'" what the little red pins were for. I said for all the countries we've mailed to. "Not many to Russia and [don't remember]?" he said. I said no and he laughed and said they couldn't read English anyway. I do not doubt that this is true but we do have a few foreign language books for sale so...
He wanted to know what my name was, I told him and though he repeated it correctly the first time he kept calling me other names. Which I let him do because it's too bothersome to correct and I hardly mind. He said again that he should go but did we have any really old books? I showed him our 1870s or so copy of Les Miserables and he thought that as somewhat interesting. He wanted to know if we had any books on the Civil War. I got him one and he looked at that saying something about "young ladies" not caring about the war but he fought in it/one (I assume he meant WW2 as he couldn't have been that old). He complained that we hadn't really needed to fight that war, it was just a bunch of people wanting money, and that the body quota had been huge but that was mostly because the soldiers weren't used to the climate so most of them had died from disease not gunshot.
He said he needed to go again, he stood by the door for awhile looking at the display case and wanted to know the price of one of the books in it. It was $37 and he didn't buy it. He looked at the free bookmarks and took one of the business cards and took a pen out of his pocket and wanted to know if I spelled my name with a C or a K and then he wrote something on the card. I assume it was my name but I do not hold much hope that he wrote the correct name down. Ah well. It looked at this point like he was going to go but he didn't because he spied some tractor manuals I was looking up. He thought that was delightful and commented on all the good little things one can finding in shops of that sort. He then said he would leave me to write my novel and become famous (??) I said I really was writing one and he found that to be funny as well and laughed and said he found young people entertaining. He then left saying he would come back sometime soon. Does this give Alyosha enough information to tell me what personality type he is?
Wednesday I got a comment from Kiwi congratulating me on passing my word goal of 50k and later on that day I wrote the most words in one day I've ever written in the recorded history of the last three years: 6,500 words. I'm quite proud of myself. That finished my novel, at a little over 62,500 words, and I closed with the profound and awe-inspiring sentence that follows:

• All was well, yes, I think it would be quite safe to say that they all lived happily ever after.

I used the word "doubt" 20 times and the word "so" 294 times and the word "and" 2,565 times, according to Microsoft Works Word Processor or whatever this thing my Dad has is called. I only used "epochal" once and do wonder how many times Alyosha used it.
I'm pretty pleased with my book. In a odd way. It's a pointless story (in three parts with a epilogue) and I'm not sure if anyone I know will like it (not that I plan on showing it to anyone). But I'm thinking with some editing it will be okay. I've never really edited a book before (and hardly ever proof-read anything) but I've read authors' advice on such things before so I hope I'll be okay. If anyone ever buys a book with the above sentences in it, though, you know it was theft. I don't plan on really attempting to publish anything. It's a nice fantasy, no doubt, but in reality it seems like a lot of scary and bothersome work.
Yesterday, Thursday, the day I started this post we watched a little of McDonald's parade and a little of Macy's parade on the telly. Quite fun to watch even if I don't like Miley Cyrus's or anyone else's singing. I noticed they all seemed to sing about the same thing; forgotten love, forbidden love, or ex-love. It's all so very tragic.
The dancing, fire juggling, and some of the costumes were cool.
We then took the two hour ride to my uncle's house and stayed there for about six hours. Eating the normal stuff or hanging out making a mess out of their fussball (also called "table football") game where I kept loosing. I really enjoy playing it but I generally loose. Typical, ain't it? We had some good sweet potatos, instant mashed potatos (I did my best to forget they were instant), turkey, cream spinach, and apple pie with ice cream. It was fun. Complained about the government, life, and talked a little about music. First year we didn't mention NaNoWriMo. *is sad*
And today I have done nothing more than sneeze unbiasedly all over everyone. My cold insists on staying with me for another day. And I didn't eat breakfast today. My sister made oatmeal. I can't stand the stuff; I like fish, tolerate liver, but I can't take oatmeal.
And now that NaNo is over and this post is complete I must retire and do my best to get caught up on all the things that were previously negligted.