The 21 Steps of Death

It may be a difficult thing to remember when you’re older and the genuine fears of the real world are always somewhere in the back of your mind, but it’s been well-studied that humans enjoy being scared. The rush of adrenaline and the ability to laugh about it later (assuming, of course, that the fear wasn’t justified by something horrible happening) is a wonderful rush and is the reason why horror movies/novels/video games/etc are such a big industry. It’s fun to be scared. It’s even more fun to be able to laugh and reminisce about it afterward.

When we’re young it’s even more fun because our imaginations are truly outrageous. As an adult we might get creeped out by a movie about ghosts, but afterward we’re pretty set in our beliefs that ghosts don’t really exist. As kids, we can go for years believing in a particular ghost story because we have amazing faith in the improbable. We’ll even make up stories and convince ourselves that they’re true. My friend and I used to spook ourselves silly with stories about how my house was haunted by the ghost of a previous owner, despite the fact that the house had only ever had one previous owner and he was still very much alive. It’s an amazing (and sometimes hysterical) trait that children have: the ability to completely make something up and then convince yourself that it is absolutely true.

I can remember tons of stories that used to be passed around when I was a kid, but one of the silliest was a tale we referred to as “the 21 Steps of Death”. You see, I grew up right along the Atlantic Ocean in Nova Scotia, Canada, and along the shoreline of my hometown are several “barracks” locations…that is, the old stone installments that were used by soldiers during the war. One particular area includes a three-story stone building that has been widely used by graffiti artists:

Photo taken by my father, Daniel G. Clarke. Awesome shot, dad!

 

…and the accompanying underground bunker which is set off to the side of the building. The bunker section of the barracks is visible from the ground only by an open rectangle through which two sets of stairs can be seen. Unless it is high noon, with the sun blaring down on top of you, looking down upon those two sets of stairs shows you only darkness below. A frightening image for a child.

And so there were the tales. Those steps, they said, were haunted by the ghosts of dead soldiers. Whichever staircase you took, there were 21 steps in total, and as soon as your foot touched the 21st step you would be whisked away by the ghosts, deep into the earth, to join them in their eternal watch for enemy ships approaching the Nova Scotian cliffs. Every kid I knew growing up believed in this tale. Many times I can remember standing next to those stairs, looking down with my friends, everyone double-dog-daring each other to go down.

What’s really funny about this story is that the main plot point, the number of steps, was complete and utter nonsense. First off, how did we even come up with that number when no one was willing to try going down? Who decided that the number was 21? I’ll never know, but when we finally became old enough and brave enough to actually try going down the steps, we found that there were…18. 18 steps. Even if you counted the ground at either end of the steps, that would still only be 20, and if you counted both sets of steps it would be 36. So where did the number 21 come from? Who knows. Presumably the first kid who came up with the story thought that 21 sounded spooky, somehow. In the end it doesn’t really matter; the point is that for a while, before we became brave enough to debunk the myth, we had a creepy story to keep us mystified.

A kid’s view of the world can be literary gold, should you only take notice of it (or make the attempt to remember back that far). I can remember so many scary stories we had; stories about dark paths in the woods, stories about monsters on the cliffs, stories about what was buried in the empty lot behind my grandmother’s house. We had a story for every locale, every imagined fear, and every misunderstood circumstance. And that made childhood all the more awesome.

What scary stories did you and your friends have when you were kids? Were they in any way based on truth, or were they the completely made-up insanity of kid brains? If you have kids of your own, what kind of crazy stuff have they come up with? Please share!

Review: Nerd Block and Nerd Block Jr (for Girls), June 2014

This is it, ladies and gents: my first ever review for Nerd Block and Nerd Block Jr (for Girls). In case you don’t know, Nerd Block is a subscription box service aimed at nerds. For a monthly fee you receive a mystery box full of geeky goodies to satiate your nerd lust. This particular box service has four options: the original Nerd Block and the new Horror Block are aimed at adults, always include a shirt in your chosen size, and cost $19.99 plus shipping and handling. The two Nerd Block Jr. options (one for girls, one for boys, aimed at ages 6 to 11) include all toys/collectibles at a cost of $13.99 plus shipping and handling. Once you subscribe your credit card will be charged every month just before the boxes are shipped, but you can cancel your subscription at any time simply by emailing the Nerd Block crew at any time before the current box is shipped (once it’s shipped, it’s yours).

This is the first subscription box service that I decided to try, seeing as my husband, my daughter, and I are all enormous nerds. I ordered an original Nerd Block (my husband and I enjoy different nerdy things, so I figure we can share what’s in the box according to our likes), as well as a Nerd Block Jr (for Girls) for my daughter. Now you all know that I’m not a fan of dictating what kind of toys a kid can play with, but I’ve noticed that the boy version of Nerd Block Jr tends to include a lot of video game-related products, which my daughter is as-yet too young for, so I decided to go with the girls version since it tends to include items from things she enjoys, such as My Little Pony, Hello Kitty, and Disney stuff.

Now, before I get into the review, I want to explain how I’m going to do things. I’ve seen lots of reviewers talk about the “value” of the box, and I think that’s an important part of a review. To those ends, I’m going to talk about “value” as it relates to my neck of the woods, Nova Scotia, Canada. It tends to cost a lot more to ship to Nova Scotia than other parts of Canada, which is why my Nerd Block subscriptions are a little more expensive than others may find. Additionally, many of the items in these boxes may be things that I can’t get in Nova Scotia. Thus, when breaking down the cost analysis of the items, I will be basing the information on what it would cost me, personally, to get these items to myself in Nova Scotia. If an item can be purchased at the local Walmart, I’ll give you the price plus tax that I would have to pay. If an item is something that I would have to order online I will give you the price plus shipping and handling that it would cost me to get it to myself in Nova Scotia. Clear enough? Alright then, let’s get on with it!

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Say hello to two members of the Nerd Block family. When Nerd Block first began the subscription service was a bit cheaper, but so too were their shipping methods. I’ve watched plenty of review videos from some of the original boxes, and I just wanted to mention that I’m very glad that they upped their boxing quality. The original boxes were very flimsy and something that could easily be taken apart (and stolen from) during shipping. I don’t know if this ever happened to anyone, but it definitely seemed very possible. The new boxes are very sturdy, and much more professional-looking. Just thought I’d mention that. 🙂

Nerd Block Original

I opened the original Nerd Block first, with my husband in tow. We were both pretty excited, but I have to admit right off the bat that said excitement waned pretty quickly. I’ll explain as I go on. The total cost of the original Nerd Block plus shipping and handling to Nova Scotia was $33.05.

The first item in the box was a classic Ghostbusters t-shirt. I will concede that it is a decent shirt. Unfortunately, while I love the movie, Ghostbusters isn’t the kind of thing that I would care to wear on a shirt, and my husband isn’t a fan of block-picture shirts like this one. He’ll probably wear it as a back-up shirt, but it wasn’t exactly a thrilling start for either of us.

I couldn’t locate this particular item online (other than a few people selling it on Ebay), and I believe that it is a Nerd Block exclusive, so I can’t actually give you a good cost analysis on this one. Thus I’m going to take a stab at guessing the approximate value. I’ve ordered plenty of shirts online, and with the terrible shipping costs that I tend to incur, the average cost tends to be anywhere from $15 to $30. Since this shirt doesn’t hold a great deal of value to my husband or I in particular, I’m going to assign it a value of $15.

June 2014 was a special “double shirt” month with Nerd Block, so our second item was another shirt, this one emblazoned with an image of “The Iron Sentinel”. This shirt definitely appealed to me more than the first one did, although I have to admit that the “Iron Sentinel” is a little obscure for me. I would have preferred a shirt with just Wolverine on it.

This shirt also appears to be a Nerd Block exclusive, from what I can find, so I’ll have to assign an arbitrary cost to this one as well. Since I’ll probably wear this one much more often than my husband will wear the Ghostbusters one, I’ll give it a value of $20.

Item number three was a little collectible die-cast Mario Kart figure, and of the available options we got Mario. It’s a cute little thing, if not incredibly tiny, and will likely wind up on a shelf with other video game swag if my husband and I ever manage to get the basement set up the way we want it.

It took a bit of searching and a lot of incredulity, but apparently this tiny little figure goes for about $13 in nearby stores. For the purpose of my cost analysis I will use this number, but I just want to state here and now that I would never pay more than a couple of bucks for this tiny thing. It fits in the palm of my three-year-old’s hand, for crying out loud.

***Edit July 9th***
While out shopping we found this little guy on clearance for $2.50. Since I don’t think it’s worth much to begin with, I’m reassigning it that value and have adjusted the box total value accordingly.

Moving along, we have a Minecraft sticker of a Creeper face. Kinda cute, but not exactly thrilling. Neither my husband and I have played Minecraft, so this will probably wind up in one of my daughter’s sticker books.

I had a bit of a time nailing down a cost for this one, since they evidently normally come in packs, but the average seems to be about $2 (which, by the way, I think is ridiculous for one sticker).

Item number five is a Doctor Who collectible vinyl figure from Titans. Upon ripping the box open I found that I had received the Third Doctor. The Titans figures are pretty cute, but I have to fess up again: I was a bit disappointed in this. My reasoning is that leading up to the shipping of June’s Nerd Blocks I was continually reminded about how this month’s block included “one exclusive Doctor Who item”, and with all that hype I was expecting something a little bit more exciting than a tiny blind box figurine. It’s cute, and I can honestly say that I’d love to have them all, but blind boxes aren’t exactly a thrilling “exclusive item” in my eyes.

The approximate price for these blind box figures seems to be about $10, and to that I have to ask: who are you people who are paying $10-a-pop for an item that you can’t see until you rip it open? I mean, they’re adorable, but they’re only about an inch-and-a-half tall and you could easily spend a couple hundred dollars trying to collect them all!

Finally, we have a “nerd-approved” item, a desk pin-art toy. You probably had one of these when you were a kid, or else you always played with them whenever you found one in a store. Kinda cute, kinda funny, but not something I would ever have purchased for myself. We will probably just give this to the little missy and let her have at it. She might find it amusing for a while.

You can get these toys pretty much anywhere, and since it’s only a small version I’m going to assign it the value that I’ve found them many times for at our local Dollarama: $2.

All in all, based on the numbers I came up with, we’re looking at approximately $51 worth of items for a cost to me of $33.05. It sounds good, and can’t say that the value isn’t there, but my husband and I were disappointed none-the-less. For one thing, the store value of some of the items is far more than we would ever consider spending on them ourselves, which tends to make it feel like they’re worth less than they really are. For instance, I would never have paid more than, say, $3 for that Doctor Who blind box. The fact that it actually costs about $10 doesn’t change the fact that I feel it is only worth about $3. Add in the fact that not a single one of the items is something that my husband or I would have bought for ourselves under normal circumstances, and we can’t help but feel disappointed with our first ever Nerd Block. We’re going to give the subscription a couple of months grace to see how things go, but my husband has all but lost interest at this point. I have high hopes that next month might be better (it’s supposed to include Star Wars items, and I’m a huge SW geek), but it’s a cautious kind of optimism. Prove yourself to me, Nerd Block. I want so badly to love you.

Nerd Block Jr (for Girls)

When I chose the girl’s version of Nerd Block Jr for my daughter, it was mostly because every block unboxing that I had seen so far had included at least one My Little Pony item, which I know my daughter would love. Unfortunately (and I should have seen this coming), our first Nerd Block Jr did not include any Pony items. Boo. Unfortunately, I was disappointed already.

The first item in the box was a “How to Train Your Dragon” collectible toy. We got “Night Fury” Toothless. He’s a cute little dragon, though my daughter hasn’t seen either of the movies in this series yet, so it won’t mean much to her. Perhaps I can get her to sit down and watch it sometime soon. She likes dragons, so she might like this little toy.

This is a very common toy that can be found at Walmart. With the tax it’s cost is approximately $6.

Item number two is a small Barbie Mega Bloks toy. It comes with a little Barbie figure and a bunch of tiny accessories. Cute, but I’ll probably end up taking out the accessories because they’re so tiny that they’re pretty much guaranteed to be lost within minutes. The little Barbie doll will probably wind up in one of my daughter’s castle play sets, and she’ll probably play with it, but Barbie isn’t a character she knows (she has Disney princess dolls), so this isn’t a huge deal either.

I couldn’t find this precise item online, but almost-identical items can be found at Walmart and Toys R Us for about $6.

The third item is a blind bag (Nerd Block seems to have a thing for blind bags/boxes) of a little Smurfs Mega Bloks figure. I haven’t opened it yet so I’m not sure who we got, but I can tell you that my daughter hasn’t watched anything related to the Smurfs, so again, this item isn’t that exciting.

These particular blind bags go for an average of about $5.

Finally, something that my daughter will actually genuinely enjoy. This item is a pack of mini-coloring pages (8.8 cm x 12.7 cm) featuring Minnie Mouse, along with 6 mini-markers. Not exactly the most thrilling of items, but my daughter enjoys coloring and recently got into Mickey shows, so this is at least something that will interest her.

I couldn’t find this exact item, but similar items with different characters on the coloring pages go for about $6.

Last (and, if I’m honest, definitely least) is a “Rainbow Magic” book called “Belle the Birthday Fairy”. I have a couple of complaints about this particular item that I feel I have to voice. First off, the book came with a sale sticker still on it. Since this is a mystery box for which the whole point is supposed to be value, I find it a little disconcerting that an item was shipped with a sticker that clearly shows that the item is worth less than it might otherwise have been. I have no misconception that Nerd Block pays full price for the items that they ship out, but shipping an item with a sale sticker right on the front of it is pretty lame. Second issue: this is a paperback novella with no pictures and a “big kid” language level. I can’t say a whole lot since I ordered a “for ages 6-11” box for my three-and-a-half-year-old, but even if my daughter was 6 I would be highly disappointed in this item. It would be lovely for an 11-year-old, but in no way would the average 6-year-old be able to enjoy this book. I could read it to my daughter, I suppose, but I feel that defeats the purpose of the Nerd Block being a “just for kids!” kind of deal.

This book can be found for about $8 at book stores, but since there was a sale sticker emblazoned right on the cover that stated $3, that’s all I’m going to assign to it.

In the end my daughter’s first Nerd Block Jr has a value of approximately $26. Since I paid $22.99 for the block and at least one of the items is something that my daughter will not get any enjoyment out of at all (the book), I was not impressed in the slightest. I’m really hoping that next month’s Jr Block will be better, because if I’m paying basically cost for items that my daughter might not even enjoy, I will definitely not be continuing the subscription.

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So there you have it. My first round of Nerd Block boxes was a bit of a bust. Somehow, amazingly, neither of the boxes really included anything that I, my husband, or my daughter are interested in. I liked my little Doctor Who figure, and my daughter will color the hell out of those mini Minnie Mouse pages, but those two items alone were definitely not worth the combined $56 cost of the boxes.

In the end, my husband is completely unimpressed, my daughter is probably not going to show much interest at all, and personally, I’m just disappointed. I really want to like Nerd Block, and from the reviews that I’d seen for previous months I really thought that I would like it. Unfortunately it seems that for my first month Nerd Block chose to pick all items that mean nothing to me and my family.

I’m going to give you one more month for both blocks, Nerd Block. Please impress me.

You Know What Opinions are Like, Don’t You?

A fellow blogger, one I happen to follow, has started up an interesting project. This blogger is known as Opinionated Man, and on his blog HarsH ReaLiTy he has come up with the idea for “Project O“. Basically, throughout the month of September he is going to be researching and discussing the concept of “opinions”, what they are, where they come from, what factors in our lives affect the ones we have. He plans to do this by way of information gathered from us, the bloggers, the readers, the people around the world connected together by the internet.

I thought this sounded particularly interesting, so when I saw that he released a template of questions for use in the project, I decided to write a blog post answering them. As per his requests, I will also be emailing my answers to him for use in the project, and I urge you to do so as well, should you decide to take part on your own blogs.

So without further ado, here we go:

Question 1: Please provide a window into who you are, some background information in a not too overwhelming profile here.

I’m a wife and mother, and an only child, but I grew up positively surrounded by cousins. I was a book-nerd kind of kid growing up, as well as a bit of a geek (I liked Star Wars, anime, video games, etc). I never had a lot of friends, but I loved the few I did have. I’ve wanted to be a fiction writer since the third grade, but somehow or other I became an instrumentation technician by trade. It’s a very male-dominated field but I’ve had surprisingly few issues in my seven years in the trade. These days I write whenever I can and aspire to become published sooner rather than later.

Question 2: If you haven’t already done so please provide your country of origin, whether you are male or female, an age would be nice, and where you currently live if that differs from the country of origin.

Country of origin and the country I’m currently living in are both Canada. I’m female and 29 years old.

Question 3: Recount the first time you remember having a differing opinion from someone significantly older than you. Do you remember what the topic was about? Did you voice your opinion or hold it to yourself?

The first time I can remember having a really strong opinion to the opposite of my elders was when I first started to realize that I thought religion was hooey. I was in the 7th or 8th grade, I believe, which is when Catholic kids complete their “Confirmation” ritual. It involves going to church every week for so many weeks and doing this and that and there’s a big ceremony at the end…and after a couple of weeks of church (I hadn’t really gone since I was little) I remember thinking, “This is ridiculous, I don’t believe a word of it, and so why am I trying to become a permanent member of this church?”

I did voice my opinion to my father, who more or less told me that I could believe whatever I wanted, but that it would probably be worth it to just complete the confirmation and be done with it since some of my family is very religious and it would likely have ended up in a huge fight. I took his advice and never went to church again after that ceremony.

Question 4: What levels of respect were practiced around you when you were a child? Was there bowing involved, handshakes, “yes Sirs and yes Ma’ams,” or some  other equivalent respectfulness in your culture’s tongue? Is an honorific given to someone older than you and do you often respect and practice that? How might the culture you were brought up in have affected the growth of your own opinions?

There weren’t a lot of honorifics in my childhood. Mostly we were just expected to watch our mouths (no profanity) and our tones (no smart-mouthing). I don’t know if it was a product of my upbringing, or if it’s a general feeling that I absorbed from my environment, but I grew up believing that age has nothing to do with respect, and that it doesn’t matter if you’re 100 years old and I’m five, you do not automatically get my respect if you haven’t earned it. There are, in my opinion, too many older people out there who feel that they should be respected by the sheer fact that they’ve survived for a while longer.

Question 5: How traveled are you and to what degree do you keep up with international news? You might also provide an educational background if you wish and if that education was gained from somewhere other than your current location. How available is the news and what goes on in the outside world to you in your country?

I’m not particularly traveled. I’ve only traveled within Canada, and not even all the way across (I’ve started in Nova Scotia and gone as far as Alberta). I obtained my education (Bachelor of Technology) in Nova Scotia. International news is available enough here (if not a little bit “tweeked” by the media), but I can honestly say that the degree to which I keep up with it is minimal at best. I glean my news stories from what others deem to be important (my husband might tell me about something, or my father might post a status update about it on Facebook). It’s not that I don’t care what’s happening in other areas of the world, but I’m the kind of person who can barely handle the events going on in her own life, never mind the lives of people I’ve never met.

Question 6: If you could share an opinion on a single international incident or topic that you either feel strongly about or that might not be known to the rest of the world what would it be? You have our attention.

As mentioned above, I don’t really keep up on the news or international incidents, but if there was one topic that I’d impress upon the world if I could, it would be the stigmas surrounding depression. These days it’s been proven that depression can stem from any number of factors, including physical (hormonal, for instance) ones that in no way reflect a person’s life or situation. I’ve seen people be berated for “pretending to be depressed” because the feeling is that someone can’t be depressed if they have what is considered to be a “good life”. Too many people think that depression is only allowed if the person has “real” reasons (got fired, wife left, someone close died) to be depressed, but there are scads of reasons for someone being depressed. I myself had a doctor check me out for chemical-imbalance depression because of a couple of other complaints I had brought to him, and the reaction I got from a few people close to me was very simply, “you’re not depressed”, as if it was an impossibility. I wasn’t, but that doesn’t give anyone the right to presume to know what’s going on in my mind and body, and true depression – whatever the cause – is a very dangerous thing to ignore and scoff away.

Question 7: What does the right to an opinion mean to you? Is it essential to freedom to have this right? How far would you go to protect that ability? The world is on fire with people of passion, how passionate are you about things you value?

This is a tough one because while I believe everyone has a right to their opinion, there are plenty of cases in which someone’s opinion is clearly wrong or psychotic. For instance, a kid who shot up his school because he was being bullied had the opinion that his tormenters deserved to die.

I do believe that everyone has a right to their opinion, but how you act on that opinion is the real trick.

I’m passionate about a great many things (the depression issue above, acts that I consider to be extremely poor parenting, the current employment insurance scandal going on in Canada, and so on), and this kind of passion inevitably leads to a battling of opinions. It can be very difficult, in these situations, to grit your teeth and accept that other people have different opinions. How does one find a happy medium in this sense when your opinion is that another person’s opinion is wrong? It’s a bit of a catch-22, isn’t it?

Question 8: Is it ever right for you to be allowed an opinion while someone else is denied that same right on the same topic?

In my opinion (haha, this is getting silly…) there are plenty of situations where I would deny someone their opinion. People are going to have an opinion whether you like it or not, because that’s the way that works, but I would deny someone their opinion if they had absolutely no knowledge or experience of the topic at hand. For instance, say I’m yelling at my daughter in the mall for doing something bad, and someone comes up to me and berates me for yelling at her because I’m “causing her psychological issues”. If that person has no kids of their own, has experienced no psychological issues as a result of the same kind of situation, and has never so much as opened a book on psychology, then what right do they have to impress their completely-pulled-out-of-my-ass opinion on me?

Question 9: The last question. upon completing this template and hopefully contemplating the issue what does this project mean to you? How can Project O potentially enlighten or help the world?

Mostly I’m interested to see some of the outcomes of these questions. Opinions are a tricky concept because they can come from so many different places, including but not limited to plain old base emotion. I hope that reading other peoples’ responses to these questions will help people to understand each other a bit, and maybe even help them learn a bit of tolerance.

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 34

Fellow bloggers, do you ever peruse the spam section of your comments folder? I’ve been flipping through there lately whilst permanently deleting them, and I’ve got to say it’s quite a riot. The spelling and grammatical errors, the blatant inability to properly speak English, the giant walls of Chinese character text, the ceaseless waves of adds trying to sell me things like Viagra. It’s really quite amusing. That said, thank the makers of WordPress that the spam filter on this site seems to work really, really well. I think if I had to put up with all this stuff popping up in my main comments folder every day I would absolutely lose my mind. 😛

Okay then, let’s get on with it!

Health and Body Image Goal

Last week was the very embodiment of “sitting on the fence”, wavering between healthfulness and the exact opposite of thus. See, last week my husband, our daughter, and I went on a shopping trip. We traveled one province over to Fredericton, New Brunswick and shopped for two days straight…then we drove backwards a little to Moncton and shopped for another day…and then drove all the way back to Halifax and shopped for another day before finally heading home in the late hours of the night. Now the thing about four straight days of shopping is that it involves a lot of walking (healthful), and in our case also a lot of carrying the baby around because she’s a lazy little bugger (healthful to everything except my back). By all rights, by the end of that trip I should have lost about five pounds, that’s how much “exercise” I got. Ah, but then there’s the other part of a four-day shopping trip away from home…fast food. Yeah. I believe we had a healthy breakfast on two of those days, and an actual restaurant supper on one of them. Everything else was Tim Hortons coffee and donuts, Taco Bell Big Box Meals, and A&W Chubby Chicken Wraps. It goes without saying that no, I didn’t lose any weight while I was on this trip.

In other news, however, the leak in our basement that I mentioned in yesterday’s post – along with the overwhelming stench of cat urine that I couldn’t seem to locate the origins of – led me to began scouring down the basement yesterday. I’ve got it clean almost back to the pellet stove, which (you’ll have to trust me on this one) was a good bit of work. I have some more to do throughout this week, but the point is that soon I’ll have my basement back in working order and cleared of all the junk that we’ve been tossing down there, and I’ll be able to start exercising down there again. That’s not to say that I will (I’m a terribly fickle person, you see), but that’s my intention. Those of you who pray, please pray for me to have some motivation, please and thanks.

Editing Goal

This one stands exactly where it stood last week. I’m still transcribing my notebooks (they seriously feel as though they’re never going to end), and through this am also editing as I type. By all rights I should be working on editing my zombie apocalypse since that was the original subject of this goal, but these notebooks are another distraction like the supernatural romance was – I feel like if I don’t get them out of the way I won’t be able to focus on my apocalypse. It’s really quite frustrating. Sometime in the future I have to figure out how to better organize myself. I’m the very stereotype of the scatterbrained writer who can’t keep track of anything they do.

1,000,000 Word Goal

Because of the aforementioned shopping trip, I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to write this week. It’s not an excuse, it’s an explanation. The trip had a purpose, one which we achieved gloriously in my opinion, so that’s all there is to it. Despite this distraction which tore me away from my writing, however, I did manage to pluck out 11418 words. Most of that was morning pages, but there’s a bit of blogging and transcription in there as well.

And with that, I have a mini-goal for myself. My best week yet was somewhere in the range of 24,000. This week I’m going to try to break 30,000. That’s over 4200 words per day. It will be very difficult, I think, but all the transcription I have to do will surely help me. Wish me luck!

Things I Know About Kids: Terms and Conditions

My daughter comes off as very shy. Whenever she meets new people she buries herself into me and pretends like she can’t see them. If they come too close to her she yells and twists away. Even with people she knows, sometimes she acts like she’s never met them before. On occasion one of her grandparents has shown up at our house and swooped in for a kiss only to be shrieked at and run away from.

I don’t know if other parts of the world have a word for this, but around Nova Scotia we call it “being odd”. It’s generally considered to be something that every kid goes through around a certain age – being “scared” of anyone and everyone who isn’t one of their parents or siblings – and that they all grow out of it.

Here’s the thing though: my daughter is not “being odd”. She isn’t even shy. She just has boundaries and she would appreciate it if you respected them.

Mine is the one thinking, “Just breathe…just breathe and maybe she’ll let go.”

People seem to have this impression of the way kids are at certain ages, and they assume that by a certain age (approximately where my daughter is now) they should be outgoing and outspoken, love hugs and kisses, love showing off to everyone around them, and be all-in-all little attention whores. When a kid shies away from hugs and kisses or doesn’t want to talk around people, everyone assumes that there’s something wrong, that they’re “odd” in some way, that they’re too shy or too coddled by their parents. Worse yet, some people get outright offended: “Oh, your kid doesn’t like me? Well screw all of you!”

In this, as with many other subjects, people always seem to forget the golden rule of children: they’re all different. Just because one doesn’t react in exactly the same manner as you’ve seen other kids react does not mean that there’s something wrong with that kid.

Yesterday I took my daughter to a birthday party for my cousin’s daughter who is a few months older than mine. There were a bunch of other kids at the party who were about the same age, and they were all running around like the little maniacs that they are. Anyone standing back and watching the kids could tell that mine is the “shy”, “odd” one. She was always at the back of the pack, the quietest, watching the others carefully, very concerned about the kids who were being rough or fighting with each other over a toy. And whenever an adult approached her, she would shy away, run off somewhere, or come and leap into my arms.

But then about halfway through the party my cousin’s wife nudged me and pointed down to where the kids were playing. My daughter had my uncle (a gruff man, by all accounts), by the hand, and was dragging him over to help her play on the swing set. A few minutes later she had one of my other male cousins by the hand, showing him how she could go down the slide. A comment was made that she apparently loves the men, to which I gave the following explanation: “Yeah, she does. She loves the men because the men leave her the heck alone.”

It’s a simple concept, yet I can’t seem to get it into most peoples’ heads. My daughter is not shy, nor is she odd. She just wants to deal with you on her terms. She likes to stand back and watch, to get an idea of the people around her before she lets them into her bubble. She wants to see who you are and what you’re about first, and then she’ll approach you. Instead, for the overwhelming most part, she gets people swooping down on top of her, pinching at her cheeks, trying to force kisses on her, and immediately demanding that she start doing tricks for them (“Can you say your name?”, “What’s this letter?”, “I heard you can count really high!”).

When I try to explain this to people they seem to get upset for some reason, as though I’m telling them that they aren’t good enough for my daughter and to stay the hell away. But that’s not it at all. Imagine for a moment that you are in the same situation: you’re brought to a party where you’ve never met half of the people there, and even the ones you recognize are people you’ve only met once or twice. The second you arrive everyone swarms down on top of you. One of them is talking to you in a high-pitched baby voice about how cute you are, another is grabbing you by the face and trying to force a kiss out of you, and a third is scribbling letters and numbers on a piece of paper to see if you can tell her what they are. How would you react?

Yes, lots of children love the attention, they love showing off and being snuggled and made the center of attention. But some kids don’t. All kids do not react the same to all situations, no more than you react the same way to something as your parents, or your neighbor, or the guy who mans the cash register at the gas station. The sooner people accept that fact, the sooner kids like my daughter can stop being psychologically tortured on a regular basis.

Sometimes you just have to meet a kid on their own terms and conditions.

Jobs I’ve Had (and Headaches I’ve Endured)

After stumbling across this post from lazylauramaisey I started thinking about all the jobs I’ve had over the years and I thought, hey…why not share?

Papergirl for the Cape Breton Post
This was the first job I ever had and believe it or not I think it was one the longest ones I ever had. If I’m remembering correctly, I started the route in the eighth grade and didn’t quit it until I went to college. Sometimes my mother would drive me because the route was a few streets away from where we lived, but a lot of the time I walked as well. It wasn’t a bad job for the most part, and at Christmas I got some pretty nice tips, but there was this one family I spent five years wanting to strangle. They were as rich as any family can be in Cape Breton, and it was like pulling a crocodile’s teeth trying to get my payment out of them. They would actually look out the window – right at me – and then not answer the door. My first “customers are idiots” experience.

Cashier at Zellers
For those who might not know, Zellers was a Canadian department store, much like Walmart. When I was in high school I got a job there for the Christmas season, working cash. I absolutely hated it for two main reasons. One, I was still pretty shy in high school and the job forced me to talk to people all day. Two, there weren’t enough support staff. A major flaw at Zellers was that sales were rarely properly programed into the registers, which resulted in a lot of customers loudly proclaiming, “That’s not the right price!” as I scanned. The thing is, people would do this all the time whether the item was on sale or not to try and cheat the system, and the only way to combat it was to call a “floor-walker” to go find the item in the store and prove what the actual price was. During the holidays calling a “floor-walker” was tantamount to insanity…it was so busy that chances were they would never get to you. So when my line-ups started getting super-long and all the customers started getting super-agitated I just stopped calling for help all together and overrode any price the customer’s told me was wrong. I probably cost Zellers a lot of money that holiday season, but in my defense, they should have hired more damn people.

“Waitress” at the Marine Atlantic Ferry Terminal
I put quotation marks around waitress because I didn’t really serve the food, but I did sometimes serve ice cream. It wasn’t a bad job, but I had an idiot boss who would rather us wash down the same tables fifty times than stand still and do nothing for five minutes when there were no customers. I offset my annoyance by constantly filching Rice Krispie Square treats.
Also, once, my boss demanded that I stay late, even though legally I couldn’t drive that late (I was still a new driver with a restricted license). It was my first run-in with opposing an employer. I told her that I’d happily stay late if she paid my fine when I got it. She ended up sending me home.

“IT Specialist” at the Coast Guard College
This was a work term for my university program, and I can honestly say I didn’t learn a damn thing. The job mostly consisted of things like replacing the batteries in the TV remotes in the residents’ rooms. The one challenge I had was when the speaker at a meeting was having issues getting his computer to work with the overhead projector…that was the first time I’d ever seen a Mac computer, but damn it, I got it working.

“IT Specialist” at Cape Breton University
Another work term, and twice as useless as the first. This is the university that I actually attended, and they created the job just to have something available because they were having absolutely no luck finding work terms for the students in my program. I had almost nothing to do for this entire term. I spent most of my time transposing a huge map via this huge electronic drafting board, which wasn’t part of my job…it was just to pass the time.

“Floor Walker” at a different Zellers
This was the first job I got after my future husband and I moved in together, and I hated it so much worse than the first Zellers. I mostly wandered around replacing merchandise that people had moved, or straightening up clothes that people had unfolded, but those were the “good” parts. The bad parts were dealing with customers, who at this particular store seemed to be twice as idiotic as others I’d dealt with in the past. I remember this one particular lady brought in a flyer the day before the sales were to start, and absolutely demanded that we give her the sales prices that day because one of the graphics on the flyer said, “Come in and enjoy our great sales today!”

A-Little-Bit-of-Everything at a Nova Scotia Liquor Store
As far as customer service goes, this was one of the better ones. Everyone in the store did a bit of everything, so I’d be on cash one day and replacing stock another day, unloading new stock the day after that. But the best part was the drive-thru. Yes. I worked at a liquor store with a drive-thru. It was completely idiotic because legally the customer had to receive their liquor, pull forward, get out, and put the liquor in the trunk. It was just…foolish, honestly. But whatever. I enjoyed working the drive-thru. I particularly liked working it with this one other girl about my age. We would trade off on working the window/cash and actually running for the order. I enjoyed running for the order. It was also quite humorous because you can’t imagine how many customers we got who drove up to the drive-thru speaker with no idea as to what they actually wanted. I’ve gotten orders such as “uh…some kinda rum?” and “this thing in a blue bottle…I have no idea what kind of liquor it is”. I also had more than one traveler from another province beg me to let them take a picture of me handing their order out the drive-thru window. I don’t blame them. Leave it to Nova Scotia to have drive-thru liquor stores.

A-Little-Bit-of-Everything at Walmart
Yes, I did eventually end up at a Walmart, only because the liquor store just kinda…stopped scheduling me in. Anyway, I started in an actual store, doing more floor work, but what I was really hired for was a large group that was set to “build” the new Walmart that was going up. We put the shelving together and arranged it properly, pieced the cash register area together, put up all the signage, and eventually stocked all the shelves. It wasn’t a bad gig for brain-dead work that you could zone out during, but I hated it for one reason: the manager. Never have a met such a stone-cold witch. The best example I have against her is when she refused to let my young coworker have the afternoon off to go to her cousin’s funeral. Apparently “a cousin isn’t a close enough relative”. I was so disgusted that when I got the girl alone I told her to take off and I’d cover for her. She didn’t because she needed the job to pay for school and was scared she’d lose it, which just made me that much more disgusted. When I finally left that job it was all I could do to keep myself from slugging that manager in the face on my way out.

Customer Service Rep for Sirius Satellite Radio
…which is a nicer way of saying, “call center punching bag”. I activated people’s radios, took payments, resolved issues with accounts, and helped them troubleshoot issues with their radios. By way of explaining what this job was like, I beg everyone this: if you ever get a Sirius Satellite Radio, listen to the rep who is activating it for you. I lost track of the number of times I asked, “Does your radio have a clear view of the sky?” and received a “Yes!” only to find out later when the radio wouldn’t work that they were really in a parking garage or in the middle of their apartment building. It was all I could do not to scream bloody murder at some people.
Also, occasionally, the Sirius system would screw up and double- or triple-charge people. This made for some very interesting conversations. One man with a trucking company had purchased three radios with lifetime subscriptions (approximately $500 each) and been triple-charged, making his bill jump from $1500 to $4500. He was extremely calm and polite while I fixed the issue. Meanwhile a few years later I got a customer who had been double-charged his $15 monthly bill and he completely lost his mind. I actually hung up on him three times because he wouldn’t stop swearing and calling me every name under the sun. Pleasant!

Instrumentation Maintenance Tech at the Paper Mill
My first “career” job, which is what I trained at university for. This job taught me first and foremost that I knew nothing. I may have spent four years and a crap-ton of money becoming a technologist, but my first few months at that mill taught me that school means absolutely bupkiss without experience. I really had no idea what I was doing, and my older and much-more-experienced coworkers didn’t let me forget it. Within my first six months I burned myself on several steam pipes and once managed to spray myself with hot condensate. It’s really quite amazing that I have any skin left. Oh yes, and lots and lots of 120 volt shocks. You’d think I would have learned to wear my gloves, but…no.
Maintenance is an interesting beast. You learn a lot – because you have to – but it can be very stressful because you have to keep the plant running. When the plant is down it’s losing money every minute, and that’s directly correlated to how fast you can fix something. I didn’t really realize just how stressed out this job made me until long after I’d lost it (when the mill shut down and was sold).

Commissioning Technician on the Kearl Lake Project
My first (and so far only) job out West turned out to be an excellent one. I had a good contract, good coworkers, good (for the most part) bosses, and good work. Sometimes it was hard work – particularly in the middle of winter when you’re outside in minus 40 degrees Celsius – but it was interesting work with very little stress. Since we were still building the plant there was no big scary rush to get things going like right goddamn now!!! I also got to experience the job both from the field and from the control room, which I think taught me a lot. All in all I can’t complain about this one. It was a good job with good people and I made a lot of money to pay off lots of debts and bills. Yes, after ten other jobs, I finally hit one that didn’t make me want to murder the world.

Writer!Okay, so it can’t really be considered a job until you’ve been paid for it, but it sounds better to say that I’m currently working as a writer than to say that I’m currently unemployed. 😛

My eighth grade English teacher told us once that by the time we were thirty-five we would have had up to ten different “jobs” and possibly one or two different “careers”. I didn’t believe him at the time, but there you have it: I’ve had 11 different jobs, only two of them part of my career as a technologist, and one unpaid “job” as a writer. Amazing. Has anyone else had a varied string of jobs like mine? Please share!

Distractions are…um…hold that thought for just one second…

This past weekend my husband and I celebrated the dual joys of our 4th wedding anniversary, and the marriage of two friends of ours. We enjoyed a beautiful ceremony in the lovely community of Cheticamp, whilst also spending time with another married couple who we hadn’t seen in a long time, and marked the whole thing off by staying at a sweet little chalet along the coast. It was all quite lovely.

Because it was our anniversary, we were inevitably asked what we got each other, and my husband got to tell our companions that he bought me a Playstation Vita.

For our wedding anniversary.

Because I asked for it.

Hey, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while and haven’t yet figured out that I’m a total and utter dork…now you know.

Hubby bought me a Wi-Fi version Vita with a 32 GB memory card, connected it to his Playstation Network account, and downloaded a bunch of free games for me (Sony, don’t ever change your Playstation Plus system…you’re definitely doing it right), plus he picked up Rayman Origins at Walmart. Since last week I’ve been glued to this little handheld joy-box. The Vita definitely has it’s flaws, as any gaming system tends to, but I’m absolutely loving it.

And that’s a bad thing.

Okay, it’s a good thing because it was a present and I wanted it, so obviously one would hope that I enjoy playing with it. But it’s a bad thing because it is a positive time vampire. This morning I got up at about 8:30 am and started playing it. Other than to put it aside long enough to get breakfast for the baby, a coffee for the hubby, and to dance with the baby when she suddenly decided I had to dance with her, I didn’t put the Vita down until 1:00 pm. I got a dozen or so Rayman trophies, and that is all I accomplished all morning.

This is the face of my procrastination.

I didn’t write, I didn’t edit. I definitely didn’t exercise. I didn’t do any laundry or dishes, and I didn’t start tidying up the guest room (which I have to do because we have two days worth of guests coming next weekend). I didn’t even really get dressed. I put on a pair of jeans long enough to run out to the car for something, but I couldn’t be bothered to throw a bra on under my shirt, and I still haven’t as I’m typing this. The baby is still wearing her pajamas. I only just took something out of the deep freeze for supper, and I haven’t established what I’m going to do with it yet. The kitty litter is full and the cats’ streaming water dish has been broken for several days. There are a ton of leftovers in the fridge that have gone bad and I haven’t thrown them out. There are about ten boxes of old baby clothes in the hallway that I’ve been meaning to go through so I can send some stuff to consignment.

But instead of dealing with any of these things that need dealing with, I played my new Playstation Vita for four and a half hours straight. And if I’m totally honest? The only reason I actually stopped playing is because I realized that battery was dying. Yes, the only thing that dragged me away from my gaming is the fact that battery scientists (that’s a thing, right?) haven’t figured out how to make mobile batteries last longer yet.

Distractions are a terrible thing when you’re in a position that requires you to be self-motivated. Currently I am not employed; I’m working on my writing, but I’m not in a position where I am getting paid or compensated in any way. That means that every morning when I get up I have to look at myself in the mirror and tell myself, “Okay. You are going to get some damn work done today!” And then I have to try to follow through with it. I have to pick my own self up, with no hope of any kind of payment of any form, and I have to force myself to sit down and write. That in and of itself wouldn’t be too bad, except for the fact that while I’m trying to force myself to write I also have to deal with a child who thinks I should wear little pink play glasses all day, and a household worth of chores and errands that never seem to slack off in any sense of the word.

Distractions are terrible and they must be eliminated. They must be stricken from the lifestyle. It is the only way. Only when distractions have been completely removed will one be able to go on with one’s day productively and efficiently.

Unfortunately, I’m way too distracted by my shiny new Vita to get on with eliminating my distractions right now, so if you don’t mind…

WHY DO YOU MOCK ME SO?!

Catch Ya on the Flip Side, Alberta!

As has been known to happen on occasion, my life has come to another set of crossroads. Tomorrow, after a mere 5-1/2 hours of jumping around the office like a lunatic, my job will be done. I’ll board a bus to go back to camp, where I’ll have a snack, grab my bags, and wait for the bus that takes us to the air strip. Once I’m on the plane it will be a moderately uncomfortable nine hour flight, and then I’ll be back home, with no idea of what the future holds.

I am amazingly calm about that fact.

Less than two years ago my world was turned upside down when the mill where my husband and I both worked shut down. At the time I had only been back for two months after having been off on maternity leave, and my husband was home taking a few months of parental leave. We’d been trying to work out what we were going to do for child care when he returned to work (and how the hell we were going to afford it); we still had student loans to pay, a car loan to deal with, and a mortgage hanging over our heads, to say nothing of the fact that we had a tiny little princess who relied on us to take care of her.

Those weren’t good days. I readily admit that on the day the announcement was made I broke down more than a couple of times. I was the only woman in the section of the mill where I worked, and as such I spent a rather large chunk of the day locked alone inside the women’s locker room, trying to gather up the pieces of my shattered psyche. I had no idea what we were going to do. Numbers kept running through my mind, and those numbers told me that there was no way we could pay our mortgage, our car payment, our student loans, and all those little things like food and heat on two unemployment checks. A quick call to the bank that holds our mortgage revealed that there was no kind of safeguard for this situation: we would still have to make our full payments. A longer look into the local job bank website revealed what I already knew: that there were no other jobs for an instrumentation tech or an industrial electrician nearby enough that we wouldn’t have to move to obtain them (and since the housing market in our area is so bad, there was no way we’d be able to get rid of our house and move). Basically, the weight of the world fell down on me all at once. We were trapped in a town with no job opportunities, in a house that we had little to no chance of selling, with bills that we would have no way of paying. We had a little savings set aside, but it wouldn’t last long. By the end of that first day I was Googling the repercussions of filing bankruptcy.

In retrospect, my reaction was a little more dramatic than was necessary, but it was still a rough time. I had no idea what we were going to do, and I was STRESSED OUT. There were no jobs in our field that were a reasonable distance away, and the jobs outside our field barely paid more than what we would be receiving on employment insurance. The only other skill I felt I had was writing, but I had no idea how to go about that, and writing takes time that we didn’t really have.

My husband and I had to make a hard decision; one of us would have to stay at home with the baby while the other went out West for work.

Those who don’t live in Canada might not understand exactly what I mean, but I can put it pretty simply: the overwhelming majority of good jobs in Canada are located in Alberta, specifically on the oil sands. Lots and LOTS of people travel from their homes in other provinces to find work in Alberta. Many of the oil sands jobs involve working strange shifts, such as working for ten days straight and then having four days off, or working for three weeks straight and then having two weeks off. Depending on the company they might fly you back and forth from your home for every shift, or you may have to pay for your own flights if you want to go home. Some jobs require you to find a place to stay nearby (and, ideally, pay you a “living out allowance”) and others book you a room at a “camp” where you stay while you’re on shift.

To put it in simple terms, working “out West” is not an ideal situation. You’re away from home, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months at a time, away from your family, and often with many restrictions put on you (for instance, many of the “camps” prohibit alcohol and you can lose your job if you even show up to check-in with the hint of liquor on your breath). There can be good money to be made, depending on where you go and what kind of work you do, but many people won’t even consider this kind of life because of the implications of being away from home for so long.

But we had to do something, so my husband and I started applying for jobs. He got the first call, for a job that required him to find his own place to stay and transportation to and from work. It was a ten-days-on, four-days-off shift, which meant that even if he wanted to pay for the flights he couldn’t really come home (it takes almost a full day to fly from Alberta to Nova Scotia, another to fly back again, and it would cost a major chunk of his check). It was an awful job that he understandably hated, but luckily he was only there for a month when I got the call for my job. It would be two weeks on, two weeks off, the company would pay for all flights, and it was a “camp” position, so I’d have no expenditures while there. It also paid quite good money, so we’d easily be able to survive (and save!) even with my husband at home watching the baby. It was probably the best offer I could have gotten.

And it terrified me. I tried not to show it, but it absolutely terrified me. I’d never even been on a plane before, never mind flying 75% of the way across the country, and being away from my baby girl for two weeks at a time. The morning I left for my first shift I struggled not to start bawling my eyes out while sitting past security waiting for my flight. I really didn’t know how I was going to handle it.

I’ve been at that job for a year now, and it hasn’t felt nearly that long. Despite all my fears and worries, it turned out to be a great job. I’ve had awesome coworkers, and in my time out here I’ve managed to pay off all of our student loans, plus the remainder of the car loan, and I’ve put money aside for the baby’s education fund, in addition to our other savings (which will put a big chunk in the mortgage when our term comes up next year). There were lonely days, but I was able to Skype with my husband and the baby most nights, and when I was actually at home I could spend two straight weeks just playing with the baby if I wanted to. After an incredible amount of stress over the loss of both of our jobs, we found ourselves in a position to actually get ahead, and I haven’t suffered for it. The lifestyle may not be ideal, but it’s not impossible to do. It was a good decision to make.

So now that this job is over, I’m heading home without stress clouding my mind. We may be back to dual-unemployment, but it won’t last forever. We have significantly less debt than we had a year ago, we’ve saved a ton of money by having my husband stay home instead of having to deal with child care, and I’ve collected a number of contacts who could help me or my husband get an upper hand on the next job. We can’t both stay at home and relax forever, but for the time being I plan to go home, enjoy my family as much as I can, and take solace in the fact that there is no rush to work something out asap.

I’m taking a well-deserved vacation.

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 23

Would you look at that? Spring actually exists in Nova Scotia! I was really starting to wonder, but Mother Nature has proven my suspicions wrong again, and in one day she managed to sunburn me. You’re a horrible witch, Mother Nature. That’s why I hide inside like a vampire.

Okay, enough foolishness, let’s get down to it:

Health and Body Image Goal

As per tradition, I’ve been eating pretty poorly while I’ve been home, thought it’s been less because of the abundance of awesome food and more because I’ve been extremely busy. Cleaning and cooking are one thing, but having our niece over for a night…those 36 hours may have taken a year off my life. o.O

That said, I’m not feeling too shabby. I gave myself almost a full week off to let my legs heal (running in cheap, Walmart sneakers is not advisable…I ended up with major shin splints and a very achy knee), and then I went out running with my new Saucony sneakers. I know nothing about running shoes, but I thought I’d give these a shot since they were rated well and happened to be on sale, and I’m pretty happy. They give me a little bounce and definitely cushion the impact of hitting the ground. I think I will do well with these.

As an additional note, I hopped on the scale yesterday to see if maybe I was lucky enough to finally drop a pound or two, and found that I’d dropped almost five! Huzzah! A specific amount of weight loss is not my primary goal, but I definitely have some to lose, so it’s good that it’s going. Sometime soon I’ll track down a measuring tape and see what my measurements are looking like as well. I’d like to lose some belly fat, as I’m constantly reading about the dangers of it.

Editing Goal

This is a bit of an odd week that I’m not sure how to report. You see, I technically have been doing some editing…just not on what I’m supposed to be working on. It’s going to take me a while to finish editing Nowhere to Hide, and it occurred to me that the less I have to think about, the easier it will be to find the time and energy to work on it. So I’ve set it aside (for a very short time, I swear) in order to instead edit a short supernatural romance I’ve had done for a while. I know I can whip through this one pretty quickly (I’m already finished two of the ten chapters), and when it’s done I can submit it to the publishers I have in mind and then not worry about it for a while. So, I guess you can say I’ve made progress in that sense, right? 🙂

1,000,000 Word Goal

While focusing on everything else, the actual writing tends to slow down, but I’m happy to report that I managed to squeak out 6867 words over the past week, amongst a number of different things. Currently my yearly total sits at about 125k, which is nowhere where I wanted it to be, but still very good for me. In the coming weeks (particularly if I get laid off soon, which is very likely) I plan to delve into a few books on writing that I hope will help my productivity, amongst other areas. In particular I think I’d like to try out The Artist’s Way. I’m a bit put off by the word “spiritual” in the sub-title, because that word always makes me think of religion, but fellow blogger thelivingnotebook has been talking about the book lately and he makes it sound very interesting, so I’ll give it a shot. 🙂

Now, unfortunately, I have to pull myself out of my cave so I can walk my daughter to playgroup. And you can be damn sure I’ll be covered in sunscreen this time.

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 14

It’s the best time of the month. I’m boarding the bus to go to my last day of work for the shift, and that shift is only six hours long. What could be better?

Well, a lot of things, I’m sure, but still, I’m in a pretty damn good mood. And I’m not going to let Accountability Tuesday ruin it for me! Dammit! 😛

Health and Body Image Goal
I’ve been having a very difficult time on the exercise front, which I hope will be at least partly reduced once the Albertan sun starts coming up earlier. I’ve just been so tired and it really doesn’t seem as though there are enough hours in the day! That said, I have been doing fairly well with food intake over the past few days. Making salads, eating egg whites, all that kind of thing. Mind you all of that is likely to go to hell when my flight lands in Nova Scotia, but at least this week was good. 😛

Editing Goal
There’s not a great deal to report, although I’ve finally actually gotten going. It’s a slow process because I haven’t done any in such a while that I’m still more or less trying to remember what’s happening and what I want to fix. But baby steps are still steps, right? Right.

1,000,000 Word Goal
I had planned to go nuts this week, and that didn’t really happen as I’d hoped because work got ridiculously busy, but it was still a decent week. Between a combination of my work in progress, blogging, and a little love story that became as the result of a writing exercise, I wrote 9174 words past week. Adding to the couple of extra days that weren’t part of last week that means I’m up to 10877 words for Camp NaNoWriMo so far! Not too shabby if I do say so myself!

Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got some good old fashioned happiness to get to. Be home in less than 24 hours before I’m home, baby girl!