HEALTH UPDATE:

Started the day feeling better but by afternoon I was tired and had little energy so I took it easy.

WRITING UPDATE:

Rewriting Chapter Five of Sword & Illusion, should be finished tonight. I’m adding a battle scene tonight. My editor (read: husband) thinks I shy away from battle scenes, which are essential in fantasy novels. I think he’s right because I’ve recently realized that I don’t want to hurt my characters or really make things tough for them.

THOUSAND GIFTS #6

97. I got a very nice phone call from my chiropractor. She bought a copy of Attack of the Queen right before Christmas and she called today to say that she’d finished it and said it was too short and read too fast. She even quizzed me a little on the next one, like when is it coming out! I am still writing it, so I guess I’d better go faster.

98. Last night as I was in the kitchen getting ready to shut the house down for the night and talking to my darling husband, Noah played the first line of Joy to the World on the piano! Apparently, Steve and his mother taught him out to do it and he remembers. Today he was asking me what comes next.

99. I got the craft tote I ordered from Joann’s online with the gift card my mother sent me for Christmas. I love it and it will work perfectly for my cross stitch just as I’d hoped and I ended up with five plastic storage boxes that I can use for something else.

100. I’m learning how to knit two socks at the same time on double pointed needles. I’m making a pair for Noah because he is usually running around the house either barefoot or in school socks. He needs some kind of slipper thing, so this experiment is for him.

101. I returned all the library books today, so that’s off my mind.

102. Juliette’s bowling coach is going to have the drug test paper for me to sign tomorow. Juliette had brought one home but in the midst of the holidays we lost it so I emailed her coach and it’ll be okay.

103. Juliette’s feeling better with her cold today. She was even in that euphoric mood she gets into after a migraine or illness. It’s fun but annoying when it happens at bedtime.

104. When Juliette was 6 years old, we moved to Germany. There’s a TV show there (I think it started when it was EAST Germany) called the Sandmann. It comes on EVERY NIGHT at 7:50 pm. Every kid in Germany knows Sandmann. It’s so hard to explain to Americans. He’s little animated guy (like an elf in Rudolph – that kind of animation) who is the Sandman. He goes to a bunch of little kids who sing a song that it’s not bedtime yet. They watch a cartoon or too, then he sings that they’ve had fun but it’s time for bed and he throws sand at them (magic, glittery sand, you get it) and all the kids in the country know it’s bed time at 8 because Sandmann is over. Today Juliette found that you can see Sandmann and some of our favorite cartoon characters from his visits on youtube.com.

105. I taped a bunch of Firefly episodes on the DVR so they’re mine to watch whenever I want!!

I’m going to take a bath now and got to bed. More news tomorrow!