I had delusions of grandeur this weekend for writing.  Big, grandiose plans of sitting down in front of the laptop and getting crazy amounts of chapters accomplished. 
Here’s what happened instead: HBO free preview weekend. 
I watched The Dark Knight Rises twice.  I demanded to know why Christian Bale is hanging up the cowl and Ben Affleck is taking his place.  The Hubs suggested maybe Christian Bale is holding out for a Newsies reunion.  Maybe.  I have a feeling he’s too much of a professional these days to burst out into a rousing rendition of “King of New York.” 
And then this happened: We decided to formally start potty training The Preschooler (formally known as The Toddler), which was horrifying and traumatic for all parties involved.   
Despite this, I managed to finish up chapter four of Random Contemporary and firmly start chapter five.  I’m actually giddy over that, since I kind of expected my excitement over Random Contemporary to fizzle out like a sparkler.  Like a sparkler dipped in water and then shoved in a pile of sand.  Nevertheless, we’re trucking right along and if I wasn’t so distracted this weekend, I probably would have gotten more written. 
But one giant, gaping maw stood in my way.  Besides Batman and free HBO.  My house needs cleaned. 
And when I say cleaned, what I mean is it needs to look less like a dorm room and more like a house actual, reasonable adults live in. 
For starters, we’ve lived there since, I don’t know, like 2008.  A cat lived there briefly.  The Preschooler’s bedroom floor smells faintly of hamster litter, which perpetually astounds me because, yes, we had a hamster.  But it died before we bought the house.  I remember quite clearly, because it was the day after Thanksgiving and we literally had a funeral for him in my mother’s back yard.  Yes.  I realize that’s weird.  Maybe not when you’re eight, but I was like, twenty-three.  Weird.  Anyway, I don’t know what the floor in his room smells like, but to me it smells like hamster litter.  Which…is probably better than things it could smell like. 
Anyway, so, last week The Hubs and I thoroughly cleaned the living room carpet.  Literally only hours later, The Preschooler and The Toddler (formerly known as The Baby) thought it was hilarious to grind meatloaf into the carpet, then trail milk from one end of the room to the other.
 This week we’ve given up on clean carpets. 
Last week I scrubbed—and I mean scrubbed—the bathroom.  This week I put some things in the closet and called it a day. 
The majority of my time was spent hanging pictures on the wall.  Okay, three pictures, but seeing as how I’ve been meaning to hang one of them up for two years, it was time I stopped saying, “Meh, maybe I’ll paint first” and just slapped them up on the wall.  One might be crooked.  
In the end, my house just looks lived in.  There’s baby food squash stains on the living room ceiling from where The Toddler went a tad bit out of control when he was six months old.  Is there a chance someone lost a waffle in the living room?  Maybe. Will my little woodland shanty ever be featured in Better Homes and Gardens?  No.  But it’s home.  As long as I don’t find anymore petrified potatoes underneath the china cupboard, I consider it winning. 
So, yeah, I’ll put off deep cleaning the sliding glass door track in lieu of family time and writing.  I toyed around with actual titles for Random Contemporary this weekend.  I got nothing.  Nothing but sarcasm and double entendres which, though hilarious, probably aren’t the way to go.  I hate titling my books.  That’s another reason I never came up with a penname, because I’m too indecisive and get stuck on stupid things like, “Paige Turner” which again, though hilarious, isn’t the way to go. 
So for now, Random Contemporary will remain known as Random Contemporary.  I just see it as race with myself: will I finish the book first or title it first?  This is it in the good time department for me guys, please.  I’m at the height of my boring-ness right now.  I’m trying to live vicariously through my characters, but man, when I stopped writing last night the main character was standing in a parking lot.  Just standing there.  In a parking lot.  Granted, it was markedly more than I did yesterday, but still. 
See?  Throw me into a contemporary time period instead of historical and I leave these poor characters in parking lots.