Disability was denied. Have to get a lawyer and appeal within 60 days. Can't count arthritis as part of my application because it didn't develop until the beginning of July and I was "last insured for disability benefits" on June 30th. My endo is acting up right now and I'm in a lot of pain. Dr. E wants to put me on Lupron but it would cost $850. They're trying to work out something with the manufacturer. As much as it will suck trying to deal with this while in a lot of pain and on pain meds I hope that will work to my advantage and they can see just how much endo affects my life.

Punday 11/4

NaNoWriMo

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I have officially decided to take part in NaNoWriMo this year! As such I'm not sure how much I'll be around next month. I mean I'm already way behind on reading and commenting due to some health stuff I'll probably post about tomorrow but I probably won't be writing blog posts much either. Friday Findings usually takes me a few hours and my Wednesday updates can end up as long as the daily word goal! I have quite a few puns saved up so I'll probably just schedule those before November gets here.

The official word goal is 50,000 words but I've decided not to hold myself to that. With my health in the state it is I feel that would just be setting myself up for failure. If I start to get behind I'm likely to just quit and I don't want to do that. So my goal instead is to finish the first draft of the ghost story my mom and I have been telling orally for years. I don't expect it to end up being that long, maybe 15-20k words. If I can get that done I'll be happy because then next year I can work on polishing it and maybe eventually self publish.

If I finish that fairly early then I'll start working on my other ghost story idea but if I don't finish it that's okay. There is always next November. That story will be in second person and I've never written in second person before, so I can look at whatever I get done during nano as practice. If I do somehow reach the 50k and "win" that would be super awesome and I'm going to reward myself with something like a sims DLC or some new clothes. That way I have motivation to still try, but I won't beat myself up about it if I don't get there.

To write 50k words in 30 days you need to write approximately 1,667 words a day. At the beginning it doesn't seem like much but around the middle it starts to feel impossible. Or at least that's what happened the last time I participated. Since I know I tend to drop out of month long every day things (like 30 Days of Thanks or 30 Day Blogging Challenges) I'm going to try and do Reverse Nano instead. You start off strong writing 3346 words the first day and then the goal decreases every day. If you are able to meet the goals you have 20k words by the end of the first week! The word count drops after that by about 5k a week. During week three your goal ends up less than the 1,667 you'd be doing normally. Week four you are writing less than a thousand words a day. The last two days you only need 117 words combined! I'm hoping this will help keep me going as long as I can meet the high word counts of the first week.

What about you? Have you ever done NaNoWriMo or are you planning on doing it this year? If so what's your strategy? Feel free to add me as a writing buddy on the website, my username is FrozenOJ like always.

Punday 10/28 - Halloween Edition

Angelversary Recap

I wasn't sure what to expect for my baby's first angelversary (which was Monday). There were times when I felt so bad it was almost like the day it happened. But I also felt extremely supported in both my private and blogging life, which is something that I didn't have until a few days later last year. I had a few friends message me privately letting me know they were thinking of me and that they were there if I needed anything, which was greatly appreciated. The day before we went grocery shopping and I got a big bag of Riesens which is my favorite chocolate candy as well as some ice cream and root beer for floats. I'm actually surprised there is still so much left!

The new Sims 3 expansion came out yesterday and the patch for it came out a few days before that, so it's not a good idea to play my families until the mods get updated. I was actually grateful for this as I'm normally okay playing families with babies but I don't think I could deal with it right now. I spent a lot of the day reading the fourth Percy Jackson book (The Battle of the Labyrinth) which thankfully is about middle school kids so they don't have any babies lol. And of course I got lots of puppy cuddles from my furbaby. That night we watched The Walking Dead and there was this scene with Michonne holding a baby and starting to cry. For those not familiar, she's a total BAMF. Not the crying sort at all! She wields a katana and at one time kept two zombies as pets. I don't know if I was reading too much into it but it really seemed like she lost a baby of her own.

In a way I feel like I'm lucky because most of the really emotional days happen so close together. Remembrance day the 15th, then the angelversary on the 21st, then our TTC anniversary on the 28th I think. It makes for a really rough half of the month but it also gets it all over with quickly. I think it would hurt more if everything was spread out. This way I can feel what I need to feel and hopefully come out of it feeling like it was cathartic in November.

Remembering the One We Lost