Anti-Procrastination Live Blog

Hi my most patient and dedicated of readers! Thursday is my day (mostly) off, and I don't have to be anywhere until 5:30, so I'm anti-procrastination live-blogging today!

I want to edit the final five (!!!!) Chapters of ONE, then send it to Kinkos to print so I can start doing the second-pass edit this weekend.

In addition, I have an insane amount of cooking and cleaning to do.

This morning's cooking projects include:
Double batch of oatmeal chocolate chip muffins
Spiced pear sauce (I am seriously freaking-out excited to eat this)
Chopping veggies for chicken and noodles today, cholent tomorrow, and lentil soup Tuesday
Chicken and noodles for dinner
Double batch of matzo balls
Eggs for breakfast sandwiches for the next two days
Prep the kids' lunches for tomorrow


I also have to:
Clean 2  1 bathrooms
Change the kids' sheets
Change our sheets
Do two loads of laundry
(Folded two) Fold five loads of laundry and put away six
Re-hang all the work clothes I have strewn around the study right now.
Clean the dining room table (does yours accumulate as much crap as ours?)
Clean the living room and spot-clean the carpets (kids are disgusting. We'll leave it at that.)

Wheee! Let's go.

4:45 AM - I drag myself out of bed. Clearly still trying to work out the best sleep schedule to wake up refreshed and alert, because all I can manage to do for the next hour is answer a few emails and comment on a few blogs. FAIL.

5:45 AM - Hair and makeup done and coffee brewed.

7:15 AM - One load of laundry in. Double batch of muffins done. Kids woken, fed, dressed, and packed in the car.

7:20 AM - David offers to take the kids to school and I almost weep with relief.

7:30 AM - Kids are gone and I'm off to grocery shop.

8:45 AM - Return home from grocery shopping with waaay more groceries than I intended (trying to avoid shopping Sunday, so I got a whole load instead of just the ingredients I needed today.)

8:55 AM - Get on the computer to submit my pitch to the Op Awesome Contest because it opens at 9. Navigate to the site and see that there are already 15 comments!!!! What!?!? Scramble to copy and paste my (prepped, thanks CPs) pitch from Evernote, click "post," then realize IT WAS THE WRONG PITCH. WHY DIDN'T EVERNOTE SYNC #&%$&*($&%()(????????

9:00 AM - Finally get the right pitch posted, then realize the punctuation is bad. Kill me now.

9:20 - Have procrastinated and chatted a bit on Twitter a bit. *hangs head in shame* Although. I have made an important decision. It's a JANE EYRE (read: Michael Fassbender) kind of morning. Gonna get to work now with it playing in the background.

(I know. Yum.)

10:45 - Groceries put away, veggies chopped, portioned, and stored, Pears, raspberries (found in the back of the freezer ftw) and orange zest in the crock pot for pear sauce, chicken soup simmering, matzo ball batter chilling.  Fruit washed and cut for kids' next three meals.

10:48 - Paused to watch the most romantic scene in the whole damn movie. Goooood timing. Mmmm.

11:30 - Laundry's in, lunches packed, tweeted a spell, movie's over. ("Edward, I am come back to you." Guh.)  Switching to MANSFIELD PARK!

1:45 - Finished the chicken and noodles, the matza balls, and the eggs for breakfasts for the next couple mornings. First load of dishes drying, cleaned the kitchen (had to do a deeper clean than anticipated because it was scuz-zy), took out the trash, cleaned out the fridge, froze a bunch of chicken broth. Mopped the floor. Finished the loads of laundry.

Take cookies and pizza crusts off the cooking list because they're just not necessary today.

Read an email from my dear darling awesome CP Jean giving me some crit about TT's first 100 pages. It was one of those awesome crits that had me nodding my head in agreement most of the time, and also has my stomach twisting because now I'm wondering if I should try to make those edits before Baker's Dozen goes live to agents (i.e. lock myself in the office all weekend editing.) I think they would probably take 6-8 hours. Emailing my other CPs to ask a "what would you do?"

Oh, geez. Oh geez.

1:55 - Okay, reading the email again, maybe the edits aren't that earth-shattering at all. Maybe it would take me on the low end of 6-8 hours.

Also, Alexa sent me this:


*jaw drops*

2:10 - Get a call from the pregnant-lady chiro I've been trying to see that she can take me at 4:45 tonight!!! Heavens rejoice!!!! (Because I'm pretty sure my back's gonna fall off sometime here.) Email my boss, hope it's okay that I don't come to this event at 5:30 tonight and try to make it to a later one instead.

2:31 - Ohhh geez. Realize I've been sitting staring at the computer for the last 20 minutes doing pretty much nothing. &$*(+@*&(*& Off to clean the bathrooms.

3:00 - Threw a second load of dishes in the dishwasher, blended up the pear sauce (you guys I swear to you I am a freaking culinary genius.

3:15 - Change the kids' bedding. Discover a pile of blankets that are damp and smell distinctly of urine. I'd like to say it was one of the boys, but I'm pretty sure it was Nesyah, since her chubby little naked booty was running around the house for a good fifteen minutes this morning. That's loads three, four, and five of laundry.

3:45 -  Cleaned the kids' bathroom (the grossest) and pick up the living room. Contemplate scraping melted crayon off the heating vents. Decide against it. Clean fingerprints off the TV and dust everything ("dust" = scrape dried yogurt and smeared chocolate chips off several surfaces.)

4:10 - Change laundry and vaccuum everything, after digging wads of accumulated dirt out of the vaccuum.

4:20 - Check email. A relief since hips are about to shake apart and onto the floor. A SUPER relief because ALL OF MY CPs HAVE ANSWERED MY EMAIL OMG I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. They say I shouldn't do all the edits, but I should tackle one of them. That, I can handle.

4:48 - Okay. Reply to my CPs, who are all freaking geniuses, then make up the bed and fold some laundry SUPER quickly. Hopefully get a little writing done between 5:15 and when the monsters sweet baby darlings get home.

8:00 - After a fast appointment, managed to fold two loads of laundry and put them away. Gave the kids dinner - Nesyah and Asher at FIFTEEN matza balls between them. They must be mutants. Bathtime, bedtime, collapse. Luckily David is game to serve me dinner while I lounge on the couch.

11:00 - Wake up from having fallen asleep on the couch. Check my email (duh.) CHESSIE HAS SUGGESTED THE PERFECT SOLUTION TO MY MS PROBLEM. And now the gears in my head are turning. Return the email, make some in-MS notes in my Kindle, and crash in my real bed this time. Starting all over again tomorrow!

Anti-Procrastination Live Blog

The last anti-procrastination liveblog I did TOTALLY RULED, so I'm doing it again today. I have a full day at home, and I have some BIG goals. On tap:

- drop off and pick up kids from school
- make chicken/matzo ball soup for dinner (it's just one of those days)
- clean the bathrooms and the kitchen
- wash the bedding
- color my hair and give myself a pedi
- edit 5 chapters edit 4 chapters/finish the "rising action" section!
- set up another query flurry for tomorrow
- look/be/feel fabulous

Yes. I am a nutcase.

Here we go!

5:30 - I awaken to a lovely conversation between my two boys about poop blasting through the baby monitors. Serious. You can't make this stuff up.

6:00 - Eggs and toast are on the table for breakfast, and Asher and Nesyah have an epic battle over who gets the Wolverine plate. Nesyah wins.

6:30 - Kids are dressed, second load of laundry going in. I scrub the downstairs toilet and disinfect the bathroom sink and wall (yes, WALL - two boys potty training = SO SO GROSS.) Slap on a bit of makeup so as not to scare the preschool teachers.

7:30 - We are out the door!

8:30 - Kids are finally installed in school, after I had to talk Rami down from the brink when I told him we're cutting his hair in a couple of weeks. (We wait till their third birthday for the first cut.) I left him with a mere trembling bottom lip after I got him to agree that long hair minus a tiny bit of hair from the end is still LONG HAIR.

8:45 - I stop at the grocery store for a head of garlic and egg noodles for the soup, and walk out with those things plus approximately ten million pounds of clearanced Halloween chocolate FTW.  Think how great this will be for my students and care packages to Chessie and Gina. Realize that I have never sent Maggie a care package and have a mild panic attack. For Christmas, ladies. Christmas.

9:00 - Throw a chicken, some water, some soup veggies, the garlic, and salt and pepper into the stock pot, set it on the burner, and wish it luck.

9:15 - Reply to twitter @s and obsess over one of Those Scenes I wrote late last night. Hm.

10:00 - Answer a couple of emails from CPs (FIRST PRIORITY LADIES.)

10:05 - Watch this badassed video on fire blankets. (It's research!) Mostly I like it because of the guy's accent.


10:45 - Have spent waaay to long replying to a couple of Those Scenes my CPs sent me last night. It is so much more fun to reply to emails during the day, when I am awake at all. I feel like I might actually make any sense.

Also obsessed with this whole wheat waffle. Is there ANY kind of syrup other than "butter flavored?" (Answer - NO.)

Okay. Time to edit.

11:40 - Uh, yeah. So I've done NO EDITING in the last hour. I filled up my water bottle. And...that's about it.

11:43 - Blue screen of death on my netbook. %$#*$&&(&#)_(_@

2:00 - HOW DID IT GET SO LATE!??!!?
Anyway.
My matzo ball soup, FTW.

Kitchen is sparkling clean. I'm going to color my hair, and scrub the other bathroom, put clean sheets on the kids' beds, and put in another load of laundry while it sets.

3:00 - Aforementioned tasks accomplished, and by now I'm having some pretty intense round ligament pain. I'm not budging for two hours.

3:40 - Okay. Just responded to a CP with a writing confidence crisis (FIRST PRIORITY) and spent about 20 minutes weeping over websites that tell the story of my deepest darkest fear happening to other people. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!?!?!  I have an hour to edit before I leave to pick the kids up. Guh.

4:00 - The first of two word wars with my amazing CPs Maggie and Chessie. For some reason, knowing someone else thinks I'm working on ONE for fifteen solid minutes forces me to ACTUALLY DO IT.  One and a half chapters edited in the first one, and the second word war yielded another chapter edited. I'm almost caught up now - on chapter 9! woot!

6:30 - The children are home and - what else - eating? Asher and Nesyah eat a dozen matzo balls in about ten minutes. It's actually incredible to watch. Most grown adults can only eat two or three.

7:15 - Get an email from Gina that indicates that she is ACTUALLY POSSIBLY SERIOUS about writer's retreating with me. Stare at phone. Swoon. Start looking at flights.

8:23 - Children fed, pajamaed, in bed, husband fed. Back to work - I can get another two chapters in at least before I nod off, right? Right?

9:14 - Just finished the second chapter! (Cheating, kind of - I've been obsessing over Chapter 10 for three months, since it's the first scene I ever wrote for this book ever.) In case you're keeping track, I've come up short on my goals today, but only a little - one pedicure and one chapter. Oh, and looking/feeling fabulous. (Maggie told me I could cross off "be fabulous," and she knows what fabulous is.)

This is where I say that a good woman knows when to quit, and call it a night. Thank you so much for live-blogging with me, can't wait till the next time! You really helped me stay focused (yes, this is what 'focused' looks like.)

Sleep tight!

Anti-Procrastination Live Blog

Whereas:
- My CP Maggie's Monday Anti-Procrastination Live Blog was pretty much the best thing ever
- I'm not going to work until 3:00 today
- I have a ton of stuff to get done before I have to leave at 2:30...

I decided to add more to my plate and do an Anti-Procrastination Live Blog of my own today! Wheee!

5:15 - I drag myself out of bed, an hour and fifteen minutes late. Remind myself that if I want to wake up at 4, I have to be in bed by 9:30. No exceptions.

5:22 - Read an email between me, Maggie, and Chessie. It seems I've offended Maggie. Or Maggie thinks she's offended me. Or something. And I went to bed before I saw that reply. Better remedy this via tweet. (Make a mental note to form the subject of the email into a  blog post. Topic: What constitutes "typical YA?")

5:32 - The children are laughing and playing (read: AWAKE OMG HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE) in their room, but I hop on the elliptical anyway. I open BEAUTIFUL CHAOS on my Kindle, even though THE SCORPIO RACES is there too. TSR is meant to be lingered over and savored, like Thanksgiving dinner, while BC can be slammed down in satisfying five-minute chunks, like a power bar. The ladies do not fail to disappoint, with this definition of "heartache":
"That feeling - the pain that wasn't pain...the perfect ache I felt in the empty places she usually filled."

5:59 - Done on the elliptical, and off to the races. The kids know that "six-zero-zero" means they can leave their room, God help us, and I want to be ready.

6:02 - Forget the kids. Tweet about Gina's Last Call for Free Books. She's hit 200 followers and is giving away a bunch!

6:23 - Finish torturing the baby getting the baby dressed. Oldest says he is freezing and husband says he has a fever. Run to CVS to get Tylenol.

6:25 - CVS is closed. WTH?

6:35 - Return home from grocery store with overpriced Tylenol and some stuff I need for today's baking. Administer Tylenol. Take oldest's temperature. He does not, in fact, have a fever of any sort. Probably did that backwards.

6:45 - Start a load of laundry. Pick smashed muffins from this morning's breakfast out of living room carpet

6:55 - Start a batch of challah dough in the bread machine, unload dishwasher, and wipe down counters.

7:35 -Pack all the children are in the car to go to school! Husband and I decide the car needs an oil change but he can't do it. I need to go to work at noon instead of 3 to make up for the hours I'll lose doing that tomorrow. Panic.

7:54 - Challah dough is out of the bread machine, pizza dough is in. I (finally) have an English muffin and some coffee. T-one hour till I need to tend to the baking and laundry. Let's see what I can get done, writing wise.

8:23 - Replied to 2 emails from CPs (first priority!) and commented on a few blogs. Now to writing. Want to get in 500 words before I braid this challah.

9:00 - 200 words down. Run over here to post an update. Realize that this url is crashing Chrome on my computers.  PANIC.

9:28 - Still trying to figure out why the F blog is crashing Chrome! (Works fine in IE.) Is it virused?

11:26 - Pizzas are done and challahs in the oven, but you guys? I CANNOT FIGURE OUT WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS BLOG. I've removed links from this post (sorry Maggie and Chess) and a twitter widget from the sidebar. It's now crashing IE also. I'm a little stressed because I've never backed it up and now I'm afraid I'll have to delete the whole goshdarn thing.

As of right now, I pretty much hate blogger and chrome and the whole internet. And I think I invented some new curse words. So my house is still filthy, and I've only written 200 words, and now I have to leave for work. Hopefully better news later today. Thanks for bearing with me.

12:06 - IT WAS THE SHARE BUTTONS!!! Grrrr. (Thanks to Kate over at O My Heart for her help!) Still have not left for work.

12:54 - Finally got myself together (I look GREAT, thanks for asking) and arrived at work. No more writing till at least 7:30 PM, and now I've agreed to a word war with Maggie. Have to do 1300 more words by the time I go to sleep. What have I gotten myself into?

 And now I have accepted some vague word count challenge from Maggie. It's not looking good for me.

2:15 - Ohhhh my.....geez.


*Ahem* Back to work.

5:01  - Thought I'd get at least a couple hundred words in between visits with students, but it's been an INSANE day  here at the office. Grateful to see so many students, not looking forward to having to get another 1300 words out once the kids go to bed. But I'll do it, because I promised Maggie I would.

6:03 - Home from work, dropping off a student at her south campus dorm (because I am awesome) and stopping at the grocery (oooh! Avocadoes.) Light the jack-o-lanterns, restart the dryer, throw the pizza I made earlier into the oven and the veggies in the microwave, cut an avocado in half.

6:05 - Open Twitter so I can trash-talk Maggie about our word war at 7:45. BECAUSE I AM GOING TO OWN HER.

6:35 - Another 375 down. Rewarding myself with pajamas.

6:39 -  Just found out (via Facebook) that David is a FREAKING SAINT and has taken all the children to Jiffy Lube for the oil change so 1. I don't have to do it tomorrow and 2. They are out of my hair for at least another hour.

7:31 - After a particularly harrowing dinnertime in which I asked Asher (4) to bus his table and he went from horrified to outraged to indignant, deciding I was the Worst Ima Ever (yes, he went to time out) AND the baby flung homemade pizza sticks  at my head, the children are finally in "circle time" for a bedtime story. Thank. God.

My crit partners have graciously pushed Word War to 8:00. *Cracks knuckles* Can't. Wait.

7:57 - Prep for word war with Coke and chocolate. David says, "Don't embarrass me by losing." Cute.

8:00 - It's ON. Can't believe I'm pantsing this sucker.

8:20 - 699 words!  Woo! I'm so close to what Maggie challenged me to now!

8:48 - We are crazy and did ANOTHER one. This one wasn't as good - 494 - but I'll be darned if Maggie isn't the smartest thing next to those fabulous shoes I wore today. These word wars pushed me to just over 1700 words for the day - almost a whole page over what Maggie challenged me to!

Obviously, I bow to her.

(Oh! And she and G did a bang-up job in the word war too. Gina even punctuated stuff! And spelled it correctly!)

Whew! I'm spent. Gonna crit for awhile, then turn in.

9:42 - No crits done - got distracted by Prince Charming on Once Upon a Time (he reminds me of Davis.) Going to bed now so I can wake up at 4 tomorrow, and hang out with THE ELITE then.