Story Epiphanies and Frustration

At the moment, I should not be on the computer, being that my room is not clean.  But I am on the computer because I have to re-sync my iPod.  "Why?" you might ask, "Why, Haili, must you re-sync your iPod?"  Because, oh curious blog reader of mine, my younger brothers though it was perfectly acceptable to take my iPod, erase it of my music (ALL of it) and sync it with whatever was in their wimpy iTunes library.  (which was sample music...)

Now, if you don't know my brothers, you won't know that they have sticky fingers and are always getting in trouble for stealing everything from my dad's sugar (he's diabetic, so when he needs it, he needs it.) to taking my sister's and my Easter candy.  You also will not know that I am the ONLY person in my house that owns an iPod of any sort (mine's a 4th gen iPod nano that I won in a drawing at Winterblast in 8th grade, a few days after my birthday).  Come to think of it, I'm the only person who own anything made by Apple.  My siblings have MP3 players, but they're all the same, so it's easy to see why they might take Elli's "on accident" And Elli and my brothers each got a mini DVD player (the boys share) and they're exactly the same.  Elli put some kitten stickers on hers and the boys have foil stars on theirs.  But they got theirs taken away and have stolen Elli's several times.  (Elli bought it with her allowance money, after the few weeks that we had allowances).

So, anyway, there I was, cleaning my room like a good daughter, and after finally getting my iPod boombox to work and failing to get Air1 to come in on the radio, I decided to find my iPod, which I had recently recovered from the boys, and put in some tunes.  Imagine my surprise when some Willie Nelson song comes on and all my playlists,(including a high-energy one that inspired last year's NaNoWriMo) are gone.  Let's just say I was not happy.  And a few less- than- savory words escaped my mouth.

But... I fixed it.  I can fix anything, right?  Right.

On to happier things.  After seeing the Avengers with my family (because it was a rainy day) we went to drop off a dresser at Salvation Army and my dad wanted to find some short sleeved dress shirts, so we went in.  That place is HUGE!!  I love consignment stores, so I had a hayday.  I only found four things- a pretty gold headband that I am currently wearing, an orange shirt with pretty little flowers on it, a brown/tan shirt with blue flowers on it, and my mom found a really pretty pair of heels that matches it exactly.  I'm wearing those and my jean skirt to church tomorrow... all of this for like $12.

Also, had a major story breakthrough on the Storm Children front.  While cleaning my room, (go figure) I found an old school library book of Elli's about fairy tales and proceeded to read it.  I came upon the last story, The Snow Queen, and remembered my attempt at retelling this fascinating fairy tale.  Then I realized- my storm children!  I renamed Rain Vallisri to Rain Gerdasri (ger DA sri) and made her into the Gerda character.  I made Ciro (wind) visible and gave him a last name, Ciro Kayten.  He's the Kay character.  I made Ferren Thorling (thunder) into the "Robber Girl" character (only he's a boy...) and had Elysia (lightning) be another girl the old lady at the beginning of the story has under her spell.  She and Rain escape together and Elysia helps Rain find Ciro.

Rain's still a gypsy girl, taken in by Ciro's mountain dwelling family after her parents are killed by the townspeople.  When Ciro goes missing/is kidnapped by the Snow Queen, Rain decides to repay the debt to Ciro's family by saving her best friend.  In the tale, Gerda often speaks to the river.  I may give Rain the power of water-speaking (to borrow a phrase from Shannon Hale, another retold fairy tale author).  And the other children similar powers.  Of course the Snow Queen and Rain's battle shall be interesting... cold and water...hmm...

gotta go- more later.