I meant to post this earlier today, but got tricked into decorating for Christmas. And what I mean by tricked is that I told The Toddler that if he was a good boy while my mother watched him, I’d let him help me put the tree up. When he remembered this little detail, we put up the tree. Yay Christmas.
I know, I know. I’m the world’s biggest bah humbug-ing grinch. I just have been less excited about the holidays since my dad died in 2007. It’s getting better now, with the boys and all, but ugh. Decorating. We had to put the tree on the dining room table to keep the boys from swinging/climbing/knocking over/setting it on fire.
Anyway.
It’s a good thing I ate delicious plain oatmeal for breakfast because, holy cow. Those boys saw that tree and WHAM. They went insane. And plain oatmeal is the best. A packet of Splenda and I’m good to go.

I also consider cookies and cream poptarts to fall into the “breakfast of champions” category. It’s a balance, these kinds of things.
Well, true to expectation, I wrote approximately half a paragraph the entire last week of November. I finished NaNo about 13,000 words short. On December 1, I wrote 2,000 words out of the blue. So, yeah, a balancing act. I’m at almost 40k right now. Hurray for perseverance!
I was admittedly slowed down by a spur of the moment research session when I was writing a scene about someone writing. Oddly enough. But, it occurred to me. This is the 1860s. Are we still using ink wells? We have pens. We have pencils. But what are we using during the war?
This then somehow morphed into me spending almost two hours skimming Stephen Sear’s “Landscape Turned Red”about the 1862 Maryland Campaign which although a good book, really had nothing to do with ink pens.
A bridge to cross at a later time, I guess. I’m trying not to get bogged down in distracting little details. Obviously this is a plan that isn’t working. I once took a writing workshop with Bernice Small. She said with her historic pieces, she writes out the entire book first and then goes back to plug in the minute historic details. I’m aiming for this.
In the meantime, I’ve been cooking. Baking. Watching too much Duck Dynasty (Team Jase!) and a surprising amount of Kevin Bacon movies. And at this particular moment in time, unimpressed with the mid-season finale of The Walking Dead. Time to pop in the Season One DVDs and remember happier times. You know, before we knew we were all infected.
And finally, when I should have been writing but was instead researching, I stumbled upon some recipes from 1862. There’s a dessert recipe I think I might try, because you know. It’s been awhile since I had a cooking disaster. We’ll see how this one turns out. I’m already altering the recipe a bit, since I’m pretty sure no one wants to eat their baked cakes cooked around a stick. And then dipped in jam. Yum.