and even though there's no way of knowing where to go, i promise i'm going

the year for me does not start on january first, but rather on the eighteenth of april. last birthday was a hard one. it came at the end of a difficult year and looked to be the start of a similar one. i was stuck in the biggest rut and could not see a way out of it. this birthday is different. i mean, sure, there are some things in my life that are still definitely stuck, that i really need to stop being complacent about and sit down and unstick at some point, but other things are decidedly not. i have come out of my rut and fallen into a groove.

this was a crazy year of checking off milestones. i bought my first house. anxiety made it a lot more stressful than it probably should have been, but i learned about mortgages and real estate and signed contracts and talked deals and convinced people to give us a loan and made one of the biggest decisions of my life. it was all very grown up for someone who is still a child at heart, and very real for someone who lives most of her life in fictional worlds. and i haven't talked about my house very much since we moved in, but furnishing it has been its own adventure. i like how it's coming along. (i finally have a library, and that has made my life.)

i was pregnant for a lot of this past year, something i had always said was just not for me. and you know what? it turned out that i was very, very wrong. i was blessed with a very easy pregnancy, and i loved being pregnant. as much as i love my baby, there was more than one occasion after he was born that had me crying because i was no longer pregnant. (the first time i caught sight of my reflection in the bathroom without my pregnant stomach was heartbreaking.)

and i had a baby. it's been a little over a month now, and i love being a mom. it's not easy, but it feels right. i was never very career-ambitious and i made a quick pit stop on my academic journey a while back and forgot to get started again, but suddenly there is something that i want to do again. being a mom is right up there with published author. there are still moments where i just stare down at cricket in awe and can't believe that he is mine, that i made him, that i carried him inside of me for nine months and then brought him into the world. it's truly miraculous.

and so this birthday is different. if last year was the year for deep breaths, this year will be a year of action, of tying up loose ends, of clearing off my back burner, and of enjoying the present instead of constantly living in the past. (i still need to find a word to encompass all of that.)

also, yay for odd numbers.

*Be My Escape - Relient K

they said, "i'll bet they never make it"

i don't know about you guys, but november was a weird month for me. like both, super busy and also super unproductive. i got a lot of stuff done, but at the same time it feels like my to-do list is just as long as it was before, if not longer. sure the contents of list went from major things like buy a house, etc to buy a storage ottoman, but still. so much to do.

my house, despite the fact that i now have a couch in the living room, a crib, rocking chair, and closet in the nursery, and curtains in most of the rooms that will be curtained, still feels like i'm in the process of moving in. a month later. there are boxes that are piled up because there is nowhere for me to put the junk inside of them yet (i still need more bookcases and a desk or something for everything that was in our built-in office at the apartment) and my momentum has completely flat-lined so i just stare at the boxes that i could probably unpack and think "meh."

but! i did manage to finish my nanonovel which absolutely no one thought i would be able to do so hah. the writing was sporadic, to say the least, but i passed the fifty thousand word mark yesterday morning, and that is really all that counts. i never did manage to get the word count up here on the blog. oops. so here's the breakdown of the writing:

i didn't start writing until day seven when i wrote 2587 words. then on day twelve i got to 4712 words. on day fourteen i made it to 11303, and stayed there until day twenty-two when i wrote up to 17530. that was when i thought i was going to start writing every day like i was supposed to, and on day twenty-three i went up to 19250 words. of course, i didn't actually start writing every day. on day twenty-six, i wrote up to 28525 words. and then i didn't touch it again for a couple of days. on the twenty-ninth, i wrote like crazy and made it all the way up to 46811. my fingers cramped up and my eyes felt like they were going to fall out of my head, but it was worth it. then on the thirtieth, i crossed the finish line and stopped at 50184. you can see from the chart above that literally the only day that i made it to where i was supposed to be (which is shown by the diagonal line) was on the last day. but i finished, and that is all that matters.

*You're Still the One - Shania Twain 

quick updates about what's been going on in my life slash proof that i am alive and have not given up blogging:

• we have been living in the new house for a week, now. we still have no couches which means our living room cannot be set up which means there are still boxes of stuff that cannot find homes which means we are still technically not moved in which kinda sucks. 
• we do have internet and tv now, though. so yay for that, although i really haven't used either very much.
• aside from not having couches or a living room (or a dining room. we are basically living on the floor) half of my books cannot find shelf space. i need more shelves, but it's not a high priority at the minute so my library is also filled with boxes of stuff that still need homes. 
• i am doing nano, slowly but surely. very, very slowly. i have only been able to write three days so far which sucks. i have just over 4500 words. i will put up the word tracker on my blog eventually in case you care. i will make it to fifty thousand by the end of the month.
• i have a blog post that i am halfway through and another one that is just barely started that i will finish and post as soon as i'm less behind in my nanonovel. they are both a lot sappier than usual. i think my pregnancy hormones are getting to me. 
• due to panicking, some poor planning, and stupid apartment policies, we still have our apartment for a bit and i have been making sure that the almost four years of living there (more like three and a half for me, my husband lived there alone for a bit) is wiped clean. this involves a lot of cleaning, obviously, and carrying last minute things down three flights of stairs. in really small batches. because i am pregnant and not supposed to be carrying heavy things. i have spent more time at the apartment this past week than i have at the house.
• apparently it's deer mating season (or so i am told) and the other day a stag came running across the street and sort of almost got hit by us, and my first thought was, "god, james, look both ways" and i think i have a problem. 
• i am itching to have some down time to start crocheting/knitting. i will crochet so many baby blankets. and sweaters (i found a fast and easy and still adorable sweater pattern that i will make a hundred of.)

and all this in different houses

[one] the thing i hate most about day light's saving and the inevitable ending of daylight's saving is that there are some clocks that do not change automatically. specifically, my car clock does not change automatically. and despite the fact that i have owned my car for going on two years now, and it is basically the same, if updated, make and model of the car that i was driving when i lived with my parents and just slightly different than the car i was sharing with my husband post-parents and pre-reggie (my current car), i cannot, for the life of me, ever remember how to change the stupid clock. and of course i usually notice that the clock is wrong when i am in the middle of driving and glance down at it only to have a mini panic attack about how oh-my-god-late i am before i realize that the clock is just stupid. and while i can press all the buttons during red lights, i can't look through the manual to remember how exactly the thing gets changed until i park. and a lot of the time, i forget when i'm parked and then go days having the mini panic attacks until i finally get my act together. and then i always say, "i am totally going to remember how to do this this next time," but the time between clock changes is just long enough for me to really forget again. (yesterday, though, i was riding shotgun in reggie and i was able to get the manual out and change the clock the second i noticed it was wrong. definitely some sort of record for me.)

[two] it is now the third day of november and i have yet to write a single word for my nano novel. i have yet to even think of a plot or character or even random thought i can run with for my nano novel. it's sad, is what it is.

[three] BUT i do successfully own a house now. which we spent (with the very appreciated great help from the rest of my awesome family) the entire weekend moving into. aside from a few random things in my apartment closet (my wedding dress, graduation robes, a gazillion and three bags), a couple of vases, and the contents of my freezer that i totally forgot about, everything is in the new house. and not just in it stuffed in a box somewhere, but in it and unpacked. it's really pretty impressive.

[four] i probably should have just written these last three points as their own blog post (or at least one point) HOWEVER, when i said that everything was in the new house, i meant everything except for my couches. which would not fit through the door. so they are currently hanging out in my garage while my living room is looking pretty lonely with just a coffee table. so we are now faced with the need to go shopping for new couches. which of course, because i am me and weird, makes me sad because my couches.

[five]  in baby news, my husband and i have narrowed our short list of boy names to the top two boy names. i am leaning towards one, he is leaning towards the other, we'll see who wins at the end.

*New Houses - Two Door Cinema Club

we're heading out in a bit to go to the closing thingie (i always want to say closing ceremony. it should be a ceremony.) for our house. which means that yes, this whole stressful road is coming to an end and by tonight, we should have the keys to our very own, very first, very new house. and like all major milestone-type moments of my life, i am a mixture of excitement and nerves and nausea. i kind of want to jump up and down but mostly just want to throw up. add to that the hormones of pregnancy, and i also want to do a whole lot of crying. oh well.

speaking of pregnancy, i had an appointment this morning where the doctor literally sat in the office and burst out laughing at the rate i gained weight in the past few weeks. (suffice it to say, i gained a bit more than i was supposed to.) i'm chalking it up to stress and stuff making me want sugary/salty carbs instead of literally everything else. protein is just very unappealing to me lately, and i'm not sure why. french fries and donuts, though? yes, please. with thirds. starting from monday, though, and i am back to healthy eating.