Woke up to Christmas hatching out in the living room. My brother decided it was time to try and see how the furries will deal with trees and decorations.
Our John Deere Santa hanging on the room divider, with mermaid tail looking for a home.
Nutcracker trying to hide the stationary bike.
Dragon coming along.
Challenging piano solosNice easy carols, easy font to read. Fun, quick to master.
More challenging less known carols like the Wookiee one.
All 7 pages of When Christmas Comes Around (Polar Express)Probably the most challenging to me sounds the easiest, Linus and Lucy. And one I want to sing with (and my hands take all my concentration for now) Oh Holy Night.
For next year, I hope I start Christmas music before Halloween. I’d like to be more proficient by this point. And I hope I know those last few songs with very little brush up time.
Oh, in case you need to see how gentle goals help:
I started back to piano last October. The goal: sit and play as long as it’s fun, then move on to something else. At first, I’d only play a song, or five minutes. Today I’ve clocked an hour and a half! And it’s still fun! And I’m not hurting as much as I used to.
Ties waiting for their turn in the light.
The two frogged and reworked. Still not striping up like I’d like.
And a new writing goal: 500 words a day starting today. And work 4 scenes a day on Folie à Plusieurs. But TrackBear is being a BEAR! So I need to find another way to keep track. I did get 637 words in a zoom sprint with Yvensong.
I think I already shared this. But glad to move on.✅Started a dragon.These will be frogged so I can even up the stripes.These were as big as those above, but the stripe was so far off I couldn’t deal with it. The balls on the tips of the needles are the froggy bits.
The other socks are sitting quietly until I can get back in the groove.
With NaNo over I’ve made up my mind to write at least 800 words a day to keep the writing muscle activated.🤞
With lots of sight reading of Christmas songs, I ran across this fun ditty. It’s being added to Lucy and Linus, and When Christmas Comes to Town songs to learn this season.
Only three more days of NaNo. I need 1,200 words tonight to be on track. It has been such an ordeal this time. It has been a rollercoaster of emotions. I’ll be glad to see December!
Managing to keep on track–i hope.
I’m trying to learn a couple Christmas songs. I’ve always wanted to play Lucy and Linus and now I’m also challenged by the song in Polar Express
I pulled out all the Christmas songs to play with.
Nearly finished with the Balloon diamond painting.
Duolingo is still fun for me.
The only knitting making progress are my experimental slipper socks.
No finishing here. Just cuties.
Milo keeps watch inside and out.Shiloh is always nearby.
I mentioned yesterday how NaNoWriMo seems the time for math and charts. Everyone knows to reach 50,000 words in 30 days, you write 1,667 words a day. But get ahead or behind, one must ‘math’ it out.
I use tons of junk mail envelopes and other scrap paper figuring out how to get to goals hourly, daily, weekly. When the brain needs to make sure it’s right, pull out the calculator. As if ‘adds’, ‘subtracts’, ‘timesies’, ‘dividing’, and ratios, and “Hey, look a prime!” aren’t enough. Then I run over to TrackBear and many times a day update my latest word count to find out if I ‘bear down’ can I reach my goal? And they offer a cool chart to prove it.
This year (and this is subject to change at any minute) cooking and housework call my attention that I normally seem to ignore.
But naps and dream times bring my characters alive or bring questions.
This morning I woke to the title of this post. Folie à Plusieurs, the Musical.
How? I asked the muses, mermaids can’t sing or dance except in cartoons. ADHD mind now sings, “Look at this stuff….” And tightening the lasso on the muse I bring back the line of questions.
Are there animals with gills and lungs? Do any of those animals make noise? Who can do the tap dance?
This story started with males I was sure were going to be the antagonists. Nope, not so much. The next three a mermaid, a selkie, a melusine, the two tail finned mermaid ala Starbucks.
The problem with the mermaid, um, hard to run to safety on land if even a tear of moisture creates said tail fin.
Selkies are rather pretty, though noisy, seals. Maybe a pad around on stage but singing voice needs help.
The melusine can move around due to the two tail fins and wings. But she’s too powerful for stage.
Then comes the never ending research. I hope you can see the Tubes I found. They aren’t showing up on this writing page. If not maybe research the fishy questions above. Eye opening! The little fish can supply the tap dancing sounds. The other voices plus a whale or two may supply tunes. Musical? Maybe?😂🤣🥴 (And yes, I count these words!)
By next week this balloon will be finished. I think I’m tired of balloons.
Yay!
Sondheim is rolling around in his grave as I work on this and quite a few other of his songs. (That intro kills my eyes and hands!) By the way, I finally got brave enough to get back into Phantom songs. That has inspired much longer playing sessions. I started out last October 1, 2024 doing minutes or just an easy tune. This week I managed two sessions of over an hour each. And I was excited by how much fun I had!
On the other hand, I’m maybe 2k behind. At least TrackBear helps me adjust my daily goal making the 50k within reach — I hope.
No, my machines are not so fancy-dancy. Still, my time on both the stationary bike and treadmill increases. I hope it increases.
For the knitting, I’ll just use last week’s pic as I’ve done very little knitting.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “something you enjoyed.” Write about something you thoroughly enjoyed. Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!
I know my life might seem boring to others, but this blog is the place where I talk about the things I enjoy.
Would I love to travel or go to amusement parks? You bet. But my life seems to be on a different path. I find my joy where I live.
Learning something new gives me joy. Bring creative expresses my joy. And also do arts like drawing and diamond painting, music, like piano and my other recent pursuits, writing the story popping up in my head brings me joy. Yarning is delightful.
My favorite is visiting with family and friends. But that doesn’t happen as often as I’d like still it’s the icing on the enjoyment cake.
Finally working on the top ( which means I work upside down so I can reach that part.)The Inktober prompts I’m using today: artic and rival. These are the only thing I could sketch to represent. The story perceived them differently.Two faces facing off.
So far I have 8,951 words. I have more to write tonight. Yeah, I’m behind now. But I am having fun with my imaginary friends. NaNoWriMo 2025. By the way, that site is TrackBear. A way to keep track of wordage.
Some of the songs I’m playing with now.All the socks in progress now.
Though writing is a lonely task, by necessity, it is nice to have company in the process.
I have an overactive imagination and writing helps harness that mess of the muses. Still, I know anywhere from 1 to 30 days I will long for human contact.
Sadly, it is hard to help my family and friends to know when they can help and when I need solitude. Sometimes the muses make me work for every letter, sweat and swearing can apply here. The fam and friends can wave in passing, just don’t feel hurt if they are ignored.
Then there are the desperate days, company helps open the mind from the hurricane of the deserted brain. But whereas in normal days I can luxuriate in the glow of love, in writing times, like NaNoWriMo, I have to limit myself to people, even the well-meaning, can stifle the process.
When there are folks accompanying my creative pursuits, I cannot look at other’s fantastic works. I think I have hypochondria to other people’s musings. Sorry, everyone for not peeking. We’re all safer that way. I can’t wait until my Inktober and NaNoWriMo fuse is finished so I can check out all the glory you all have created.
This past couple of weeks my energy has been low. I worried whether I’d feel up to NaNoWriMo (I certainly lost the Inktober during October) but I plan to incorporate the Inkprompts with the writing. I have enjoyed drawing my characters.
But after three 20 minute naps I was still tired and went to bed around 10.
At 12:10 I woke with enough energy to skip into the living room to open my laptop and write! I managed 1,684 before sleep call again. I’m so happy with the story so far. I can’t wait to see what happens!
By the way, I think my title is Folie à Plusieurs (the madness of the masses). What would you expect from a reunion of old hippies?
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “alarm.” Use it as a noun, use it as a verb or an adverb or an adjective, use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!
Alarms are ringing in my head. The night most people feel as exciting fright for Halloween, is my deadline for prep for the night of writing dangerously. Midnight after the trick or treaters have counted and downed much of their bounty, I’m drinking tea and hoping for words to count. But I have to wait for that moment. Five more days! (Only 5!)
This last week my reality was so much better than playing with my imaginary friends, but that time away made these characters as flimsy as paper dolls.
Well, my stream just found an idea! Maybe I’m playing with my new friends this next few days. That is IF I can put down the yarn long enough to create a yarn. By the way, NaNo2.org is the new site, thanks, Yvensong. Still checking it out.
Working on my series: Haven.
Doodler (zendoodle.com)
Music major: voice and piano
Mom of four great adults
Reiki II practitioner
I have been on disability/retired for 10 years now from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia.
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