Monday, 31 October 2005
I have this strong urge to write, so I am sitting here typing with no idea what I want to say. I've been thinking a lot, and I had the most relaxing and happy weekend in ages this last weekend. I feel good, mostly. I feel grateful to my friends, for being such great people. Work has been looking up, although I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. I just need to catch my balance, I think. There has been a lot of change all over my life, and I haven't settled into the new pattern yet.
I roasted a cauliflower tonight, and shared it with my friend who's staying here. It's amazing how easily and quickly an entire head of cauliflower goes down when you roast it with a little olive oil and salt. It's delicious, and I have not been a particular fan of cauliflower. But this is all crispy and roasted and good. If you have trouble getting your veggies in, it's a good way to fill up the quota.
Speaking of quotas, I have taken the mad step of signing up for National Novel Writing Month, which starts here in just over three hours. The idea is to write a novel in a month - 50,000 words of fiction in November. I've wanted to do it for years, but November was always a busy month for me. This year it's a little different, and I was thinking it might be a good distraction for me. And a good opportunity to try it. I don't really care if I make it or not, I just want to try sitting down and focusing for a month and seeing what happens. It should be interesting.
It might also take some of the writing that would otherwise have gone here, but I've been fairly sporadic lately and I don't see that changing much until things are concluded here. I do think trying this will be good for me; I've never written anything that long, especially not in fiction. I've had vague novel ideas before, but none that ever got to more than a page or two. My plan is to simply write, and not worry about continuity or quality or anything other than writing the same story for a month. I'll let you know how it goes.
I just had another ring of the door-bell, even though I'd turned out the light and given out all but one piece of available candy. Three kids were there: two princesses and a ninja turtle (I think that's what he was). I held out my one snickers bar and asked what they wanted to do. "Rock, paper, scissors!" says the turtle. "Great!" says I. Two pieces of paper and a pair of scissors later, the princess in the pink dress had the candy. I have now turned out the inside light as well as the outside light, because the only other candy I have in the house is a fair trade chocolate bar and one pumpkin spice truffle from Godiva. And I think I bit into the bar already.
I haven't ever gotten a lot of trick-or-treaters here, so I think this year is the busiest yet. I'm not sad about this, but it does make me wish I'd bought more than one bag of candy. I didn't want it sitting around for an entire year (like the Crunch bars I threw out last week), and I didn't want to eat it, so I didn't buy it. And now I have no candy and I must keep the house dark. I guess the rain earlier made the roaming happen a little later this year. I am not stingy and horrible, I simply have no candy left. Good thing my computer is in the back of the house.
For the next month, all my co-workers will bring in bags and bags of candy to share. It's either what they didn't give out, or what their kids took in. Yay for chocolate!