The Final Chapter and a New Scene

Oh boy oh boy oh boy... very exciting things happening in my life right now!

1. I just got a new microphone, so I can now record the audiobook of my novel.  Why is this exciting, you may ask?  The sooner I get it done, the sooner my parents read my novel.  Neither has any time (or in my mom's case) any desire to read, but both spend an inordinate amount of time in the car.  Put my book on CDs and they both can read it.  Plus, I like recording myself playing stuff and my old microphone got lost while we cleaned the playroom.  And this one is much nicer anyway.
2. Also just got a new book of French horn music- and it's DISNEY! Why wouldn't this be exciting?  I've spent most of the night playing Prince Ali and Go the Distance.  Prince Ali is stuck in my head.  But I love it.
3. Elli's birthday presents came today. She's going to love them.
4. I just got paid $121 for babysitting.  Seems my life has been babysitting.  
5. I finished editing my novel.  Am working on getting it up on CreateSpace.  I also shared it with a few people, which is exciting.
6. Elli's getting her novel up on CreateSpace as well.  It's a lot smaller than she anticipated, but it looks cute and will be a good beginning chapter book.
7. I figured out who to dedicate my book to.  And no, I'm not telling.  It's a secret!
8. In a matter of 2 hours and 15 minutes Camp NaNoWriMo starts!!! Twice Upon a Time, here I come.  (I was acting it out for Elli the other night using a small Mary statue as Jennie, a silver cross as Micah, a wood cross as Nolan, and an angel statue thing as Connie.  I will never look at that silver cross the same way again.  I felt ridiculous.  It was also like 11pm...)
9. My cousin's getting married this weekend!  Need I say more?
10. We just got memberships at the Y which is kinda fun.  Did my orientation tonight and discovered that there are machine where you can bike and read AT THE SAME TIME!  Forget the ellipticals and treadmills with the TVs- give me a good book and a crash free stationary bike that is klutz proof.  Lee's so funny.  He's so excited to go there and work out.  He thinks he's so cool.  "Haili, can we go to the Y every day?  I need to *flexes* work out" (keep in mind, he's 11... dear me...)

Reasons why I'm not happy

1. CreateSpace is being obnoxious with formatting my book.  And I mean OBNOXIOUS.  Every time I upload my novel, it screws something up and I have to go fix it.

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.

My crazy crazy week...AUDITIONS!!!

MY SCHEDULE (or why I won't be posting until Friday or Saturday)
Monday- solo and small ensemble contest: I'm playing "Nocturne" from a Midsummer Night's Dream by Mendelssohn on the French horn- wish me luck!  Get my sociology paper back

Tuesday: practice for large group contest after school... Flight of the Pegasus horn line at the end needs some serious work  Piano lessons.  Get my astronomy test back *crosses fingers*

Wednesday: youth group- my one day to myself this week

Thursday: Lee's birthday (remind me to post pictures).  Large group contest for band- have to skip Astronomy :( and be at school by 7:30 am.  AUDITIONS!!!!! AHH!!!!  Ahh!
-Okay Haili, are you done freaking out now?
-NOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-Okay, let me know when you are....

Friday- have to skip sociology because I have A honor roll lunch at Pizza Ranch... but I can only have cheese or fish pizza (do they have fish pizza???) or vegetarian...it's a Friday during lent and I'm Catholic.  CAST LIST!!!!!!! (I hope... otherwise I'll be insane all weekend... oh, wait, I already am!)

Quote from this morning:
Haili: Time to get up!  Time to get up and face the day, Lee!
Lee: (sleepily) What are you, some crazy person?
Haili: (without hesitation) Yep.  I thought we already established this.  I wrote a novel in a month, remember?

Little Miss Mommy

So last night I got the opportunity to play "Little Miss Mommy"  Little Miss Mommy is similar to Mr. Mom, but Little Miss Mommy is an older sister who gets to play mom.  Last night, that was me.
After I got to my high school, my mom emailed me saying that she and my dad were going to be busy and could I make dinner (which I appreciated, being that she usually waits to ask me until I get home and have to throw all my plans out the window to frantically try to pull something together)  Anyway, I decided to make one of Betty Crocker's Impossibly Easy pies.  They're kind of my signature dinner and they take about an hour to make.  I made  the mini cheeseburger pies last night and I'll probably be making the tuna and cheese pie tonight (no meat- it's Ash Wednesday!) Or the shrimp one.

Anyway, I had to get some ingredients we were missing, so as I drove home from school with my siblings, we stopped at County Market on the way home.  I thought that since we were there, I could just get the stuff for Lee's birthday cake while we were there.  I always make the birthday cakes in my house, even my own.  I just love it and it's something I've always found fun and interesting (if not exhausting).  Lee is having a 'food' themed party,  with a big pizza cookie cake, mini hamburger cupcakes, popcorn cupcakes and sugar cookie french fries.  So anyway, I figured I could get the stuff for it while I was at County Market and not have to make a separate trip (or make my mom do it).  For some odd reason, though, all three of my younger siblings came down with a spontaneous case of ADHD (not really...don't want to offend anyone that knows someone how has ADHD for real, but that's what it felt like) and couldn't stay focused.  It didn't help we were in the cake aisle.  When they weren't scattered like the four winds, they stayed behind me in a straight line... like a train.  I've never felt more awkward in my life.

I went home, made dinner, practiced piano manically, ate dinner, went to piano, and then came home and made astronomy notecards for 2 hours.  At 9 o clock (almost exactly) I burned out.  I was getting pretty tired by 8:30 and I've been having some ear problems again, so I wasn't feeling so good, but I thought... Almost done, Haili, almost done... just a few more topics and you'll be done... Yeah. No.  At 9 o clock, I threw in the towel, went downstairs and announced to my mom, "My brain is fried.  I'm not going to get anything done right now and even if I do, I won't remember it or I'll do it wrong.  I'm going to go read a book (well, re read for the third time... to be exact) for a few minutes and I'm going to sleep."

Which I did.  I woke up at 5:25 this morning on my own without my alarm, my ear felt better, I was well rested, and I had a strange dream (it involved this sweet little baby girl who was in foster care that for some reason my sister and I were given to take care of.  I named her Mercy Christine, which is my favorite name in the world.  There was also something about my mom making all Lee's birthday treats and me getting mad because she did them wrong...all while I was holding Mercy... it was weird).  I got up, got dressed, ate breakfast, and started right back into my notecards.  I'm almost done, but I'm running out of notecards...

That's the second time I've woken up at 5:25 on my own- I did it yesterday as well.  I figured out that if I go to bed at 9 or 9:30, I can get up early without an issue.

Oh, and the book I was rereading for the third time (in case you're intereseted- and you should be-it's amazing) was called Beyond the Reflection's Edge.  It's part of the Echoes from the Edge series by Bryan Davis.  He's an amazing author (I emailed him and he emailed me back- several times!!!!!).  Echoes from the Edge is about this kid named Nathan Shepherd and his mom's a world famous violinist and his dad's a spy and they get murdered.  There's this weird mirror Nathan's dad gave him that can take everyone to different dimensions (Earth Red, Earth Blue, or Earth Yellow- they're all slightly off timewise) but can only be unlocked with music and a flash of light.  Great music, great action, the murderers are going after Nathan, at one point he meets his Earth Yellow mother who is 10 (Earth Yellow is like 30 years behind Earth Red, where Nathan is)... it sounds kinda weird, but it's good... SO GO READ IT!!!

okay... I'm done.  Must do homework now... *sigh*
I'm out
Haili

I'm contagious!

So, one of my little brothers (not the singing one) came in my room last night and asked me if he could write a story and get a book published like me and Elli.  Let's call him... Lee.  He came up with this story idea titled "Get Lost!" about this kid getting kidnapped, escaping, but then going the complete opposite way from home as he tries to go home.  This character, Luckas Tarrington (I helped come up with the name) has the worst sense of direction ever which is really funny since Lee has the best sense of direction.  Like one time, we were going to my dad's mom's house for Christmas, and my dad accidentally turned to go toward my mom's mom's cabin, and Lee was the one who caught the mistake.  At like, age 4.  I'm not kidding.  When I drive him around, I still confirm with him that we're on the right road.

So anyway, now I've gotten my brother and my sister into writing, and my other brother (the singing one... let's call him Gus) asked me about this writing club I started last year and if we really were going to do it.  So now Gus is writing a story about a kid named Matthew who loses his skateboard.

So since I have now infected all of my siblings with NaNoWriMo, I have decided to make NaStoWriWe, National Story Writing Week, to take place over the winter break.  It'll be so fun.

Oh, yeah, and Lee came up with the best title for my novel.  Instead of Written in the Stars which is already a song, he suggested Beyond the Stars.  Which is awesome, but there's already a story about an astronaut by the same name, so I might have to tweak it a bit.  It's awesome!  Love Beyond the Stars maybe?

let me know what you think!
 and I shall be posting bloopers of my attempts to sing "Defying Gravity" on youtube soon... should be funny!