Goodbye November

Phew! November is finally drawing to a close. And what a month it has been!!!!!

I succumbed to my internal desire (with some prodding from a few internet buddies) to join National Novel Writing Month, completely unsure of whether I could possibly write a 50,000 word novel in the space of 30 days AND still do justice to my blog! If you haven't noticed my quiet sidebar announcement yet, I am officially a Nanowrimo WINNAH!!!!! Yes, you may bow down to my brilliant ability to say a lot of nothing in plenty of words. :-)

In an effort to balance the scales and pledge my commitment to maintaining this blog, I also decided to join National Blog Posting Month. That sure was a LOT of fun and a great way to find new bloggers and make new friends.

I am curious though as to whether I picked up any NEW regular readers from participating in Nablopomo. I know I had many visitors from the website and the randomiser but I also know I have visited MANY blogs and have only returned to a few. So if you found me via Nablopomo in some way and have decided to become a regular reader - can you let me know? (curious minds and all that....)

I am feeling very proud of the fact that not once did I make a post along the lines of "I got nothing but have to post because of nablopomo". :-) Not that I'm criticizing anyone who did. I just thought I may have to resort to that myself so I'm pleased that the ideas kept flowing despite the pressure to post EVERY DAY.

It is interesting how it can change the dynamic within your own mind when you have an OBLIGATION to post every day. But I did get used to it after a while and settled back to my normal routine of posting whatever seemed to pop into my head.

Now, being the sensible person that I am, I figured writing a novel AND maintaining this blog was enough to do for the month of November. Yeah right? Instead, I thought it would be nice to start a
new blog. Something rather different from this blog and also an opportunity for me to explore wordpress just a little. I had no idea how familiar I'd actually become with blogger until I attempted to use and understand wordpress. LOL. But it's been fun and as much as I find it difficult learning technical stuff, I do enjoy learning and stretching myself. So it's been a worthwhile exercise.

Now, apparently as long as I THINK I am going insane, I'm not. So as long as I'm *aware* that starting BLOG NUMBER 3 , also during the very busy NOVEMBER, is kind of a crazy idea....I'm safe from the men in white coats (are there really men in white coats?????? I've always wondered that......) Now I will admit I'm fairly passionate about blogging and all that but I NEVER imagined I'd be someone to ever have more than 1 blog, let alone 3.

I'm sure by now you're all in awe of my brilliance!!!! After all, she's written a novel AND maintained not 1 blog, not 2 blogs but 3 BLOGS!!!! (yeah okay, only 1 of those blogs was posted on every day - this one is still my first priority). All the while still reading and commenting on other blogs, attempting to learn more about blogging, trying to attract new readers to her blog because her whole self esteem now revolves around whether people read and comment and LOVE her. LOL.

Not to mention cooking nutritious meals for her family (ummm...... shhhh.... don't tell anyone that her DH is quite handy in the kitchen), ............love her children to bits (yes dear, I love you...now can please go away....can't you see that mummy is BUSY), .......wrap Christmas presents (yes, wrapping 1 present qualifies me as having STARTED my Christmas wrapping!!!!!!), prepare for a birthday party, wrap birthday presents......do some Christmas craft with her kids.....

It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's.......... "supermom" (note the Amercian accent there!) .......... LOL. As IF!!!!!!!

Wondering how all this could possibly be happening?????? You should see my poor neglected house!!!!! *sob*

Well, this is what my desk looks like. Actually that's not too bad a shot really, it can get a lot worse than that. Sadly, I don't work well in a cluttered environment and yet I continue to do so . Ooh, you can see my laptop in this photo so now you can kind of picture me typing away, talking to you! :-)

No, I didn't cheat and get Rufus to write my novel for me! He just looks a lot neater sitting on the chair than sprawled on the floor.......

Usually I have a mug and a cup and at least 1 plate there somewhere along with a packet of lollies, some dried apricots and almonds. I like to eat while I'm "thinking". Just like "umm...." in a conversation gives you time to think about what you want to say next, stopping to stick something in your mouth gives you time to think about what you want to type next.

I don't even want to THINK about what my weight is doing right now. If you ever make it to the bottom of my blog page - you may have noticed my weight loss ticker doesn't get updated much. That's because my weight is heading in the WRONG direction!!!!! I blame it on November really - too much sitting and EATING while typing copious amounts of........words (I was going to say crap but it hasn't really ALL been crap - at least I hope not!!!).

Here's another shot and to be perfectly honest, it was at least twice as bad as this yesterday. I'm cheating. These shots I took a couple of weeks ago with the intention of posting them in an effort to challenge myself into cleaning them up. Instead, I just kept adding to the clutter while ignoring the fact that my writing was keeping me from other more "domesticated" tasks. I should have taken another shot yesterday before I began to sort things out a little - that would have told more of the REAL story here. :-)

If I wanted to REALLY embarrass myself, I could go and take a photo of my laundry! LOL. But a girl has to have some pride!!!! I think there are currently 3 washing baskets with ironing in them and 1 with folding to be done.

What I'm trying to point out here is that yes, I did achieve a LOT during November and I'm quite pleased with that. But it did come at some COST. No-one can do everything!!!! (Well, maybe someone can....let me know if you find them). I'm kind of pleased to see the end of November and plan to spend the next few days trying to get my house back in order before it gets descended upon by 4 year olds on Monday!!!!!

Oh, and I've started a new feature on Lightening's Blogworld which mentions a few posts from this week that I really enjoyed. Hope you have time to stop by and take a look. :-)