This week's questions are brought to you courtesy of twirlandswirl, the letter F, and the number 5...

How many times a day do you...

1. Brush your teeth?
   
2. Shower?
   
3. Check your E-mail?
   
4. Check LJ?
   
5. Eat?
   (sic)

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/thefridayfive/1466.html

Old sets that were used have been deleted, so please feel free to suggest some more! Remember that we rely on you, our members, to help keep the community going.

I'm applying to 2 schools, one in a "reach" (read: no way in hell) school and one I'm pretty sure I'll get into. The reach school, naturally, has a much more involved application. One of the questions is: "What are your special talents, hobbies or interests?"

I don't suppose I can write "running, jumping, climbing trees" on it, can I?

Originally, we were planning to have a big Labor Day party.  Then things weren't going so well with my sister so I scaled it down to just Kim's family and her friends.  (We promised her a party, so we were going to let her have her party.)  Kim's friends didn't look like they were panning out at the last minute so I invited just a couple of people.  Nothing major since it was so last minute and I felt guilty inviting people last minute, especially those with families, tight schedules and dog-phobic children.  Well, it now appears that there is panning out involved.

I am apparently mathematically challenged because, without inviting a fraction of those I wanted to invite, I  think we may have, like, 30 people and 2 dogs (don't ask).

Oh and did I forget to mention that there's a chance of rain that day?  The rain keeps going between Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  It's a little late to change the day, not that it matters because with the forecast changing a lot, I don't think I could pick correctly if I tried.

So... yeah.  I suck.  Apologies to everyone who I could, should or would invite but haven't.

Please pray for decent weather for me so I can set the children loose in the back yard.

I promise to do better next time.

Oh and I will post about the funeral and viewing later, but I can't think about that right now with so much going on between home and work.    Distractions are good, so this is working out after all.

I've been ignoring a FPS craving for several weeks. I'm talking Quake or UT `04 or something else along those lines. Can I get a "hell, yeah?" for sometime between now and next week? Anyone? I figure critical mass to be four people.

Willing to buy/download some new hotness if it's endorsed strongly enough or by multiple people. If nothing else, we can all download Sauerbraten, which is free and runs on pretty much everything.

What is it about sitting down to write a "Personal Statement" for a college application that has me forgetting everything about myself? Who am I again?

Angel had a bad reaction to a vaccine. Two weeks after he got 2 of them, he stopped eating and slept all day. I took him to the vet. He had a fever and was pretty much limp on the table. She gave him kitty Motrin, an antibiotic, antinausea and antacid (all as a just in case)and an IV. He looked much better after the IV. I am happy to report that he is fine now!! He is back to his old self. Very scary!!

I have a nasty cold though. Uggg. I canceled my trip to Georgia. I was supposed to go Monday but woke up with 101 fever. So I will go next week after my trip to Missouri.

Ben's quote of the day, totally out of the blue..."Mommy, I took the Jamba Juice from daddy and that wasn't very nice."

I'd pay real money for a pair of blankets that are exactly the size of the top of a twin bed. Changing the sheets on the top bunk of a bunk bed is a big enough pain without the added difficulties of trying to tuck the comforter in all around the edges.


I know I could make one, but time not so much being here.

On the way into my writing workshop on Saturday, I stopped for coffee at Starbucks and ran into the Boy of Inappropriate Age, with whom I worked at Starbucks back in the day and on whom I once had a raging crush. I took the advice of my YA writing workshop and tried to get in touch with my teen self, taking mental notes on how it felt to run into him and trying to surrender to the impulses of emotional immaturity.

I came up with: 1) felt happy I was dressed extra-cute, 2) tried to look super nonchalant, like I hadn't seen him right away, 3) felt nervous and tongue-tied talking to him, and 4) exited the conversation before I could say something stupid or embarrassing. And now I can use this information in my novel! (If I want my character to be a total emotional dork, that is.) This is how that works! Cool!

We talked a lot about poetry novels and graphic novels and did less writing on the second day, which was a little disappointing. We also talked a lot about editors and agents and people were all "so, if I want to make a $50,000 advance..." and asking a lot of cart-before-the-horse questions like that. Maybe they're farther along in the process than I am, though. We also talked about critique groups and writers workshops and that kind of stuff.

On the nuts-and-bolts side, we did a couple of interesting things. One was 20 truths/20 lies about our main character, and they could be as outrageous as we wanted. Once I was done, I said that my 20 lies made a way better sounding character, and read some aloud; one of the instructors said it could be the first paragraph of a novel. It goes something like this:

"She knows kung-fu. She is good at sleight-of-hand. She drinks a pint of whiskey a day. She speaks fluent Japanese. She is allergic to shellfish. She wears high heels everywhere. She's a member of the NRA. Her ambition is to be a stripper. She has never cried. She has never lied. She's in love with Steve Buscemi."

The final exercise we did was called "what ifs" where you're supposed to have a partner (or just by yourself) throw out random possibilities for your plot, or at least for writing prompts. I was too shy to do it with a partner, although I filed it away for next time I am talking to one of my writerly friends. But doing it by myself absolutely resulted in an awesome plot epiphany. As I was writing it down I was totally grinning.

So where does this leave me? Well, lots of things to write about. I need to make time to work on this project soon; even though the new semester starts tomorrow and the GRE is coming up, I need to keep the momentum going. I'm starting to think I really could write this thing--I mean I'm not promising it will be good. But it will be something!

I think I need some of you to give me your time management tips. After posting my little poll I don't feel a whole lot better about the housework. I spend somewhere between 2 and 3 hours a day on housework. I've been timing myself and I spend somewhere around half an hour on laundry alone! And the kids put away their own clothes so I'm not even counting that. Just the sorting and folding, switching loads and dealing with mine and Duane's and rags and linens makes it take that long.

I clean the bathroom every day. I don't understand how that can be a once a week chore, although it must be okay because a lot of people do it that way. It would be horrifically disgusting here though. It's gross if I skip a day; we only have 1 bathroom. So the bathroom takes 10 minutes.

I sweep and mop every day. We have bugs and besides, how can you have little kids and not sweep the kitchen at least once a day? That takes about 15 minutes. Many days I vacuum as well so add 10 to that.

So there I have more than an hour everyday and that doesn't include anything but the downstairs floors, the bathroom and the laundry. We could die of dust allergies and then get our corpses stuck to sticky counters and buried in piles of clutter but I'd still be spending an hour a day on housekeeping. How is that possible?

Maybe some of you are working a lot faster than I am. Is that it? I'm confuzzled.

I anticipate that this will be incredibly long and boring, but I want to enter my scribbled notes from today's writing workshop into the permanent record somehow, in case I need them in the future. You see, today was day one of a two-day workshop on writing a young adult novel. The question that I needed answered was: can I do it? Today I'm a little closer to thinking that yes I can. I mean write a good novel, maybe not. But write something that resembles a young adult novel? Maybe.

There were two teachers for this thing, one of whom actually used her own, recently published ya book as an example of what to do with dialogue. Poor form, I think. Am I wrong? Anyway, there was a nice mix of talking about YA lit, reading some of it, and doing some writing prompts. I'm going to go through my notes (which are probably out of order) and transcribe some stuff. Feel free to ignore this. ( blah blah... )

This week's questions were suggested by outfor_awhile.

1. What is your favorite song right now? Why?
2. What genre of music makes you the happiest?
3. What would you name your band and what kind of music would you play?
4. What is your favorite lyric of all time? Why?
5. What band/artist could you never live without? Why?


Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/thefridayfive/1466.html

Old sets that were used have been deleted, so please feel free to suggest some more! Remember that we rely on you, our members, to help keep the community going.

My oldest child turns 7!  Remember that user pic up there?  Jonah was Ben's age when that shot was taken.  Now he's a full on little boy. 

And what a boy he is!  6 has been a phenominal year for us all.  He's grown and blossomed and turned into a really neat little guy.  I enjoy his company tremendously.  I've been richly blessed by his presence here at the Roelands Compound and I'm so excited to see what 7 holds for him. 



These are good days.  I treasure them.