Tripping Through Life

I’ve reached 50,000 words (well, plus another 500 or so over that).  The beginning of November starts off so fun with thoughts of what you will write during the month.  The days go by and every day that I don’t get in my needed 1,700 words, I start to worry.  Then I start to get desperate.  Today, November 30th, I had to write 5,000 words to make it to 50,000.  I did it easily by 3 p.m., who knew that I could do that on  the last day.  I am celebrating, woo-hoo!  I just wish Brett had not been so busy so he could have been writing and encouraging me during the month–maybe next year.  (That is if I decide to do it next year. It seems like I don’t get much else done except this, and now a whole month has gone by and tomorrow is December, yikes!)  But for today:  woo-hoo!

It’s November…that means it must be NaNoWriMo!  Woo-hoo!

As we were leaving the hotel in Colorado Springs last week, a magpie (bird that is on the bigger side, and quite eye-catching, with its black, deep blue, and white coloring) decided to play “chicken” with us.  Is that term “chicken” too old and unknown now?  I think it is from the 1950s and I remember it from 50s movies where two drivers aimed their cars at each other and took off, with the “chicken” being the driver who turned away from the other car first.  Well, that is just what this magpie did:  it was flying right towards us on a level with our windshield.  I really thought it was going to hit us, but at the last minute, it flew off to the side.  That’s good, after all, we were much bigger than it was, and we would have won that bout!

Home from our long vacation, and it’s back to the grind of cleaning the house (even more so after being gone for so long!), and working in the yard that has gotten slightly wild with no one to tend it.  Nothing has appeared of great interest for me to write about, but I thought that I should put in a last post before June ends.  Wow, July starts tomorrow, and with it, the last half of the year.  Time goes by much too fast!  So long, farewell to our lovely June! (It was a June to remember, though.)

I could not help but comment on this article I read in Friday’s USA Today newspaper. It was about fishing tournaments and one of them really caught my attention; not because I would want to participate, but just the opposite, it is something I can’t imagine ever participating in!

It seems that “noodling” is what they call catching catfish with your hands. You walk along the lake shore, and look for catfish holes. If and when you find one, you reach your bare hand in the hole and try to pull out the catfish! Ewww! Getting your hand scratched up is the least that will happen if you run into a giant catfish–or worse: a snapping turtle–in the hole!

This contest is in Pauls Valley, OK on July 11th for any of you that might think it would be a fun thing to do!

And no, I am not talking about a place; rather, I am talking about temperatures, as anyone who has been in Maryland these past 4 days knows!  We went from snow in March, to having pretty cool temps to suddenly having 4 days of 90-degree temps or higher.  Way too hot for me this early in the season!  I’m glad to have the mid-60’s like we have today so everything (like my kitchen) can cool down a bit.

I am not a Yuppie, but I went to Whole Foods anyway today!  I have never been there, so when a friend asked me if I wanted to go with her, I said yes.  It was interesting.  They had a lot of organic food, but not all of it was organic.  Then I was reading online and it said they had a ground beef recall last year, so they are not immune from having bad food, so I wonder if they are that much better than my local Safeway.  I was reading online that most of the organic food in our country comes from a few very large farms in California.  I wonder how much organic food is really organic.  All of a sudden, in the past couple of years, there is organic food everywhere.  Can it all be different from the regular food?  I really wonder. I think in another year or two we will have an organic food scandal where we will find out that most of what is labeled organic, is not really organic, as more and more food suppliers try to cash in on the wave of buyers who are now buying organic food.  But I thought I’d buy a few things and try them out.   The prices were not as high as I expected them to be, so that was a pleasant surprise.  We had a fun day, with a yummy lunch at TGI Friday!

What a fun weekend we had!  We rented a wood splitter and spent all day Saturday and most of Sunday splitting the rounds of wood that my hubby had spent the last couple of months cutting with his chain saw.  It was a lot of work, but it was fun, and of course, we had to see just how fast we could keep things moving when splitting the wood.  Well, it’s done for now and we have multiple piles of wood sitting around in our forest–and they do look good, all those mounds of wood.  Unfortunately, we now have to bring all that wood up the hill closer to the house so it can keep us warm on these cold, cold days . . . but I guess that is another job for another day.   :o)

I have just about had it with the glitter! I received a few Christmas cards with glitter on them, and thought, boy, what a pain. But then I had to run out and buy a few more Christmas cards to send out to people because I ran out of the cards we had bought earlier. Well, there wasn’t much to choose from in the store, and at only 3 days before Christmas, they weren’t even on sale (thanks, Target!). So I looked around and found a couple of boxes with nice looking cards in them. When I got them home and opened them, I realized (duh!) that one of the boxes had cards with glitter on them, plus there was glitter all over the envelopes, and glitter just all over inside the box–yuck! Well, I had to, so I sent them out. If you got one from me, I apologize!
My husband had some cards with only a small area that had glitter on them. The next day after getting those ready to mail, a guy in his office asked him why he had glitter on his forehead. My hubby was able to explain that no, he wasn’t trying to make a fashion statement!
So, I make my first New Year’s resolution . . . I will not buy any more cards (or anything else) with glitter on them! You know, that is one resolution that will change the world. :o) Hey, we all have to start somewhere!
(And, I wonder what exactly they make glitter out of these days anyway. I am sure that it is not the same as the way they used to make it, way back when.)

I have reached my goal of writing 50,000 words during the month of November on a novel.  It actually is a pretty decent base to work from if I ever take the time to finish working on it and try to make a real novel out of it.  But I am happy, happy!!  What seemed like a nearly impossible goal when I started (actually on Nov 7th), has been accomplished, wow!  Here is my winners award, for all to see:

What better thing to do on a gray, cold, rainy November Sunday in Maryland–can’t think of anything much better than reaching my goal!