Mama in Pajamas

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Sitting around the kitchen table, doing school work together as a family, beginning the day at whatever hour works best, wearing pajamas and fuzzy slippers, a typical homeschooling family starts its day. I remember back when I was researching homeschooling this was one of the scenes that was repeatedly painted by homeschooling experts.

I never quite understood the appeal of sitting around past breakfast time still in pajamas. Pajamas are for sleeping and nothing else, that is, unless you're sick or you have a newborn. The thought of going past breakfast still wearing my pajamas is depressing. I can't walk to the mailbox in my pajamas. I'm not sure why, but all I know is that if I have to open the front door for any reason, I will at least put on some real pants.

Apparently, I'm strange (surprised?). It seems that wearing pajamas in public is the thing for the PTO crowd to do, particularly while dropping children off at school. It's like a scene straight out of People of Walmart. I almost feel overdressed in the morning dropping my children off while wearing jeans, a Target crewneck, and gym shoes. That's right, I didn't get the memo. I can almost hear the other moms thinking, "Who does she think she is? Wearing real clothes here like that."

So, in tribute to these moms, and dedicated to their traumatized children, I present to you, my highly-regarded, award-winning, five-star poem entitled "Mama in Pajamas."

Mama in Pajamas
by http://mamarantingnow.blogspot.com/

she drives the kids to school

with rollers in her hair

she looks like such a fool

you wish she wasn't there

she walks out of the car

with slippers on her feet

why does she walk so far

why can't she be discreet

you hope your friends can't see

maybe they're all asleep

oh, Lord please have mercy

or else you just might weep

mama in pajamas

morning, noon and bedtime

tell your shrink your traumas

of mama drama school time

The Reverse Miracle

It's really strange how sometimes a child can feel perfectly fine until it's time to go to school. We've been having some problems with getting Googie off to school in the mornings. He has a behavior contract at his school stating that if he finishes his homework before 8:30 in the evening, I sign his homework notebook and he gets extra time in the gym when he gets to school. You'd think it would be that simple?  Ha!

The main problem we seem to be having is that he comes home completely exhausted from his school day. I pick him up from school (which is about ten minutes away) and as soon as we get home, he falls asleep and stays asleep until the morning. You can imagine how hard it would be for someone to complete their homework while sleeping. You can also imagine how hard it would be to wake up a sleeping child that is either a very heavy sleeper or a gifted actor, one so talented that he won't even wake up for pizza and ice cream.

And so, here we are, it's morning and the dreaded homework wasn't completed the night before. Everyone wakes up, eats breakfast, and starts their day. Googie is happily sitting on the sofa reading a book about family games (that child doesn't read fiction, but I digress) when he calls out, "Mom, do I have to go to school today?" Which actually means, "I didn't complete my homework so I don't want to go to school."

I continue what I'm doing and casually answer, "Yes, it's Thursday. You go to school on Thursday, you know that." He doesn't say anything for quite a while and I continue to pack his lunch and get ready to leave.

Suddenly, and unexpectedly, I start to hear strange, wild animal sounds coming from the family room. It either sounds like a raccoon is dying or a coyote is giving birth. As I ponder how a raccoon or a coyote got into the house--maybe the kids left the back door open again last night, or there is something trapped in the chimney; stranger things have happened at this house--I walk over to the family room and find Googie doubled over in apparent pain, groaning, and clutching at his stomach. "My stomach hurts," he moans.

"It's a reverse miracle!" I exclaim as I usher him to the car and take him to school.

Winner, Wiener, Whiner

 or What Does a Winner Do After Winning?

Right now, all I can think about is that line from the movie Shark Tale when Oscar says, "Wait, Lola, I'm not a nobody, I'm a wiener." Because instead of feeling like a winner, I feel like a wiener. You see, you're probably thinking that after winning NaNoWriMo I just sat down, took it easy, basked in my glory and gave up on writing. And you wouldn't be too far from the truth considering that it's been about five months since my last blog post. There was something about writing a 50,000 word novel that resulted in what appears to be a complete writing moratorium on my part, but not really. I've actually been doing a lot of writing, that is, if you count posting on Facebook, writing text messages, writing responses to e-mails, writing and whining in my iPad journal, and now writing cutesy titles for my boards on Pinterest. In short, I've been doing absolutely anything and everything to get out of revising my NanoWriMo draft.

Then one day not too long ago I found myself pondering a Mark Twain quote that keeps making its rounds on Facebook. It goes like this:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

At that point reality hit me on the head and I realized that  I only had about six months until NaNoWriMo started again. That little voice inside my head, that same little voice which kept saying that I needed a few weeks to regroup after NaNoWriMo before revising the novel. That same voice which kept saying that I needed to just forget the whole thing. That same voice which made the New Year's resolution to have a working draft of my novel ready before the end of the year. Yes, that voice, just told me that I needed to finish what I started.

Because when I really thought about it, I realized that years from now, when I looked back on my experience with NaNoWriMo, I would regret not having a finished draft of my novel more than I would regret giving up because the story would never be perfect.

In short, I'm back and I will finish that novel, even if it turns out to be silly.

I'm a Winner!

Yes, it's true. I Won! I'm a bona fide, card-carrying, badge-earning winner of NaNoWriMo. I finished writing 50,000 words of pure genius. Well, I can't guarantee that's it's pure genius, but at least it's the beginning of something.

Twenty-five days ago I began with a blank file, the misguided notion that I could write a novel in one month, and an idea for a novel. Now I have 50,000 words of what could someday be a best seller (a girl can dream, right?).

However, please, O, please don't ask me if you can read it now. These 50,000 words are just a draft of the beginning of a novel. Maybe someday in the future, after thousands of revisions, and thousands of more words, I'll actually have something worth reading, but right now I just have 50,000 words, a lot of gaping plot holes, lots of inconsistences, boring dialogue, and probably a lot of worthless nonsense.

But at least for now, I can go back to my previously scheduled life.

NaNoWriMo: Happy Donation Day and Hitting the Halfway Point

Today is NaNoWriMo Donation Day. It's the day when the good people at The Office of Letters and Light, sponsors of NaNoWriMo, encourage us Wrimos to donate toward the program. The National Novel Writing Month is a free program that is made possible by donations from viewers like you and me. No, wait, that's PBS, what I mean is that this program is offered free of charge to anyone who wants to take part; however, it costs money to put together and host this program so they need good people to donate money to make it all possible. Here's a little video that explains it rather well.




So, yes, I donated toward the program. And why not? If I didn't have NaNoWriMo to push me to get my novel written, the novel would just stay safely tucked away in my brain for years on end waiting for me to have the time to write it (never), waiting until I can make sure I have the idea perfectly outlined (Who am I kidding?), waiting until I am sure that I know what I am doing (procrastinating), or just plain waiting.

So here I am, close to the middle of the month, and I have hit the halfway point. I actually have written 25,000 words of my novel, out of the 50,000 word goal. That means that this novel is beating the three P's of procrastination, perfectionism, and paralysis.

May the long-winded, rambling, wordiness that is verbosity lead me to 50,000 words so that I can win this thing!

NaNoWriMo: Day ARGH!

No, I didn't just go all pirate on you. That's the sound of stress, but not stress caused by writing my quota of words for my NaNoWriMo novel. No, it's the sound of the stress caused by my attempt at trying to manage the stress in my life. When I embarked on this great, non-pirate filled journey, I envisioned long nights spent trying to come up with the words to fill a 50,000 word novel written in just one month. It does sound stressful, right? What I wasn't expecting was that coming up with the words wasn't the problem, the problem was that my life really is pretty stressful, and no amount of denial will cancel that out.

While I'm working on the novel, the words just seem to flow. Granted, I can't vouch for the quality of said words, which may end up being as good as a banshee screaming or me singing out loud (which actually sound like the same thing). Yes, while writing the novel I actually get lost in the story; I become the protagonist in my made-up world, and experience things that I have never done or will ever do as long as I retain my sanity (the jury is still out on that one). It's been an exiting, lucky, thirteen days of non-stop action.

My real life, on the other hand, has gone on as it usually does. With things needing to be done around the house, and me doing these things around the house. Then, today, I had an epiphany. Why don't I ask the other members of this household to help around the house a bit, especially now that I've taken up this temporary, new task of attempting to write a novel in one month. Some support here people, please? So I pick easy jobs like, "Someone, anyone, could someone please let the dog out?" I wait, repeat myself, no response, repeat myself again, then I hear "ARGH!" coming from the other room. Apparently, letting the dog out is a stressful job. So now I have myself under stress from all that needs to get done, and another family member that is stressed out beyond belief because of my bright idea to ask for help around here.

Then, I have an epiphany (great day for those, I hear). I will reduce my stress by not asking for help around here. Hear those crickets chirping? That's the sound of peace and quiet. The sound of stress reduction. The absence of ARGH!

NaNoWriMo: Day 4

Well, this post should actually be called Day 5, since technically it is the 5th day of NaNoWriMo, but I’ll still call it Day 4 because all I have to report is what I wrote yesterday, and I’m still hoping for a successful day.

Yesterday I was all about the experience. Last night, I even wrote a post reporting on how successful the day had been, including all sorts of statistics about my word count, about how I would finish the novel well before the 30th of November, and about how I had it all figured out. However, after barely surviving this morning, I started to look over what I had written, and laughed so hard that I about laughed up my lung. Who was I kidding?

This morning my son was running around practically yelling, “Danger, danger, Will Robinson,” like the robot in Lost in Space. You see, while I was being all Zen and writing all sorts of amazing things for my novel for the past few days, life was still going on all around me; I just didn’t notice.

Remember all those silly rules I wrote after Day 2? Something about sitting away from distractions like dirty dishes, piles of dirty laundry, clumps of dog fur? Did you know that just because you can’t see something, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist? You did? Then why didn’t tell me this? Let me tell you, I woke up this morning and noticed that all these things had magically materialized all around me.

Clean uniform pants did not exist in our house this morning. Food? Oh, that’s right, I was too busy to notice that we were all out of food. So, today I spent the day doing all those things that I hadn’t done while I’d been writing these past four days, which means that later on tonight, I’ll be drinking a nice hot cup of very strong coffee. Who needs sleep tonight? Not I! I have this thing to win!