A great day

So, we had our 12 weeks scan today. According to this one I'm 12 weeks as of today which is four days different than the first scan - not that it really matters! The baby will come when it's ready to come lol.
Everything is developing in the right place in the right way which is excellent, the woman doing the scan even used the words 'perfect' and 'lovely' on several occasions which was nice. Once again it was totally amazing to see it up there on the screen, so much bigger and more developed than the last time I saw it. It was wriggling around which hammered home just how real this really is - it's in there, growing and wriggling and developing. Stunning. So we got to see it's face (which didn't really look very facelike, the scans are pretty grainy), it's arms and hands, it's wee feet kicking about, it's lovely spine, it's thumping heart and the two sides of its brain even. All there - woohoo! lol
And here is a pic, if you can't make it out it's the length of the baby on it's back, head to the right, tush to the left.


And in other news I'm editing! wooohoo, it feels good. I'll have to look around and see if there is anywhere I might be able to submit my novella too, I definitely want to get it out there.

Living in the present

I was watching Oprah yesterday, which honestly, I don't normally do, but I was bored at home and flicked the TV on and there it was. They were talking about a book 'A New Earth', which I have neither read nor heard about until yesterday.
The little slice which I did watch though was a good reminder to me. It made me realise that when I accepted the challenge to publish a novel this year I started living in the future - I was thinking so far ahead that I was virtually incapable of living in the now and actually getting the work done. I think this can happen in a lot of situations, and I know individuals who have a really hard time with this. Before yesterday I hadn't thought that it could be such a problem, but now I see that sometimes it can.
For me it meant that I got too focused on the outcome I wanted to see that it meant I had a hard time getting on with the work that would get me there. I've struck this a couple other times, last year was a major one for me where I was so obsessed with getting the right grades for my papers in order to move onto Master's that I was too stressed out to function. If I hadn't just let it go and said to myself 'whatever happens will happen, and it will be ok', I would have ended up failing just about everything. And ya know, I didn't get good enough grades, but I did pass every single paper and I'm happy about that - I realized that wasn't the path I wanted to go down anyways so all that stress and worry and anxiety was for nothing.
Life tends to work out how it's going to, and while making plans and looking forward to your future can be a good thing, getting so stuck in thoughts about it that you end up gimping yourself is not helpful at all.
I got back to basics with the writing thing anyways. I decided awhile back that it wouldn't matter if I never got published, and that has brought a lot of the joy back to it for me, freed my mind up and now it's being creative and lovely for me. I have some energy and passion for it again and I love that, I missed it so badly.
Life is for living, and enjoying. Don't get too wrapped up in the future because life is right here in the now. We all need to be reminded of that from time to time.

Fresh week

It does feel like it's fresh, for some reason. Perhaps because I have been up since 5am and unable to get back to sleep. I've had a chance to lie in bed and listen to the rain coming down hard, and soft and hard again. It's stopped for now but I know it will be back.

Today, for the first time in weeks, I am going to make a list. I thought I was going to get around to that last week but I never actually did. Today I will, though I am still unsure whether it will be a day list or a week one. We'll see.

I'm growing. It's a little disturbing. I mean, I knew it was going to happen at some point but I just figured it would take a little longer than it has. I keep thinking to myself 'I'm getting fat(ter)!' but I'm losing weight. It doesn't add up, and yet at the same time I know it does. The baby needs space to grow into and I'm providing it.

I think today's list will go something like this:
Wash the dishes
Get the laundry out of the way
Clean up my writing desk
Read through novella and mark it up for editing
Return the DVD's
Pack miscellaneous computer stuff into a storage box

It's probably a big enough list. Now I better go and get my little girl out of bed :-)

On to new things.

So, yesterday, the big unpleasant task I had to do, turned out not to be so bad after all. Well, the act of it was, but the outcome - much more positive than I could ever have imagined.
I had to tell our flatmate that he can't move with us when we shift into the new house. Now, Damian has been flatting with me for the last four years, Simon has lived here for the last two. Four years is a really long time, but it is finally time for Simon, Ivy, and I to just be a family. I'm not even going to mention the many other reasons why we've made this decision, but it's all for the better, it'll mean my life is a lot less stress, that there is one less person I am picking up after and finally I might be able to stop feeling like a mother to this young man.
Initially he took it really badly. I told him just as we pulled up to the place where he sees his psychologist - my reasoning for leaving it until then was that I hoped his psych could help him to come to terms with the information and deal with it in a better manner. He walked off down the street, I followed and tried to convince him to go to his appointment, but when I left I wasn't sure he was going to, wasn't even sure if he'd contact me to get picked up let alone come home at all that evening. Thankfully he did! By the time I picked him up he was actually feeling ok about things. He understands why, and agrees that it's the right time for a change. No hate, no loathing, no self pity - I was impressed, not at all the response that I had forseen.
So it seems everything is going to be ok. And I am finally working through the reality that we are actually going to be just a family. It'll be really weird, but pretty wonderful I am hoping. I'm looking forward to not sharing the space with someone else, to being truly alone when little one is at daycare, to knowing that the place is just ours, all the mess and the noise and the moods, all just ours.
So, just over 5 weeks time, and we'll be in our new place. Just us. And just under 5 months after that our new addition will be arriving. Wow, our lives are really in for some major changes this year!

Wednesday

I did in fact get some writing done on Monday, however paltry, and I did get through and email off those two reviews for friends. It's so nice to have them out of the way. Yesterday I spent most of the day feeling sick, and then cleaning frantically when I felt well enough to do it. The house is in a bit of a state - with Simon down with a flu/cold/something, and Ivy too young to really get into cleaning and me feeling all morning sicknessy for most of the day not a lot was getting done at all. So now the washing is caught up, the floor is vacuumed, the kitchen is clean and it feels really good!!!
It makes me look forward to moving even more, to having less junk and clutter in our lives. It fills me once again with the strength to rid ourselves of the excess that fills up every corner of the house. It also makes me wonder how the move is going to go.... I realized yesterday that by the time I de-junk this house there will be so much space in the place it will feel like we are swimming in it. And then we are going to go and move it all into a smaller house where it'll probably feel like there just isn't enough room. Well who knows, hopefully it won't feel that way.
I have an unpleasant task to carry out today - I'll update again later after it's done. I'm dreading it with about 50% of my mind, the other 50%, along with my soul and body are rejoicing that it will be done. I always feel out of sorts when I know I have to do something and I know that it's going to be unpleasant, I'll feel better when it's over with, even if the fall out is going to effect us for weeks to come.
Off to make coffee, little one woke me at 530am this morning, scraping her nails along her bedroom wall. The noise drives me mad, it's all I can focus on. Shortly after she called out cause she needed to go to the toilet and refused to go back to sleep. I made her stay in her room until it was time to get up, but I had to go back in twice to get her to keep the noise down so that her father could sleep. I hate it most because I have a really hard time getting back to sleep. If I am out of bed for more than 3 minutes or so I just can't seem to do it. On the bright side, this means she'll be having a nap today for the first time this week!! lol

and today, I shall write.

Really. I'm going to.
There are a couple small things I want to get off my desk, and I'm going to work through those first. Edits/changes/suggestions for two people's writing that have been sitting around for far longer than I would have liked. It'll be good to have those emailed off to the right people and not sitting as a reminder that I have been super slack. Clearing up loose ends always feels like something that should be done before you sit down and get into the actual work of things - often, I know, you end up getting them done and then NOT getting into the actual work. I'm not going to do that today.
I'm not sure what I am going to write though. I know my script needs work. I want to finish off the story that there is over this week, but my attention is being drawn by other things, more exciting things. So we shall see! It'll be fun anyways, I just hope that the energy I am feeling right now tides me over til mid-afternoon, by then I should have a good about done and I can sleep mmm sleep.

The Script

Is not going as planned. Which is not to say that I'm making no progress, rather that progress is slow and I know I'm dragging my feet. I've come to realize that it's not going to be 100 pages long by any means, which is annoying because I simply don't have the energy right now to come up with something new to write about - nor do I have the time, enthusiasm or willpower.
So I'm going to finish this script, despite the increasing evidence that it's not that well suited to a movie. Well, not a movie anyone but me would want to watch anyways. I have to accept that I have strange tastes - maybe I should just be running with that thought. To hell what anyone else thinks, I should write it for me and me alone?
I should be thinking like that, from tomorrow, I will. Tonight is for sleeping though, mmm sleeping. I think it's been a week since I have needed to have an afternoon nap which is evidence that I'm slowing regaining some energy. Along with that I'm getting back some inspiration and motivation, just not for the script.
I have some things I want to edit, many words I want to write, new story ideas cropping up. It's nice to be excited again, to be dreaming my stories and thinking about them in the back of my mind again. I love it.