Creepy Dreams

I have a tendency to talk in my sleep and on occasion, I've been known to get up and wander.  It's not something that happens a lot in adults- most folks outgrow the childhood tendencies.  Lucky me.

Last night as I was laying in bed, the oddest thing happened.  I fell asleep without noticing it, which normally wouldn't be a problem.  However, in my dream-awake state, as I was laying in bed staring at my dresser, I noticed River had snuck in to the bedroom, walked to my side of the bed then snatched a toy that was near my head.  As she turned to flee, her tail slammed in to a nearby lamp and nearly knocked it over.  I screamed "RIVER!" then sat bolt upright in bed, disoriented.  

Did it happen? My eyes darted to the closed bedroom door.  Slowly my faculties returned.  No, she couldn't have gotten out of her kennel, much less have gotten in to the bedroom.  Nevermind there were no dog toys in bed with me.

A new thought occurred.  Did I really scream her name out loud?  Oh geez, not again, Tim loves to catch me sleep talking, the more outrageous it is, the more fun he has.

I paused, waiting.  When he didn't comment, I began to relax. I slowly scooted back down under the covers.

*POUNCE*

The bed shakes and I feel the familiar weight of Toby, the needy cat, laying across my leg.  With a gasp, I sit bolt upright again.

I had been fooled again.  Apparently I slipped back in to sleep nearly instantly, though my brain still thought I was looking down towards the foot of the bed, getting comfortable and preparing for sleep.  There was no Toby, though my brain clearly told me he had been laying on me.  I felt the bed bounce when he landed on it, I heard the slight creak of the springs.

I sat for a moment, gathering my thoughts.  Finally, I settled myself in and tightly shut my eyes- then shut my eyes again. 

Though I had some strange dreams, I managed to keep them from bleeding over in to real life.   *whew*

-Kristen

Almost Free!

Tomorrow is my last day of my last full week of work.

Yes.  I'm leaving my job- and I couldn't be more excited.

I've been working on the crocheting orders I have- hooray!  I've also been throwing myself in to earning money through my online surveys and earning gift cards through Swagbucks.  I've actually already had another job offer, but I'm not interested in jumping in to another position before I've even fully left this one.

The book is on hold again.  I've noticed that if I am unhappy, the first thing to go is any creativity.  Since I've been unhappy in my "real" job for a while, you can imagine the tiny bit of work that has gotten done.  It drives me nuts because I'm so very close to the end and my beta reader has been begging me for months to finish up the next installment. Working on it!

 Speaking of books, I got an awesome and unexpected honor recently!  A friend of mine is publishing her first book soon (I'll be sure to share details of that as it progresses) and she wanted to give me an acknowledgement in it!  That piece of news absolutely has made my week.

So, here we go- I'm about to step out into the world of being unemployed.   I'm excited and plan on reviewing our budget to make sure there are no unexpected expenses that derail my wonderful break!

-Kristen

It's Mine!

Not my actual car.

It's mine, it's mine, it's mine!

Today, the check cleared for our final payment on one of the cars!   We ended up paying it off early (the last payment was due in August) and I am so excited!

Once we get the title, we can drop the insurance down on the car for an additional savings- which means we can snowball that car payment (once I pay our savings back for the loan it gave us to pay off the car) and the insurance savings in to hitting another piece of debt harder!

I feel like we are finally on our way! I have dreamed of the moment we'd have this car taken care and be able to move forward.  I'm so thankful we'd been paying a little extra for the past few years as well, as it helped us "cash out" even earlier.

I just had to share my joy!  It feels so good to be one step closer to my goals.

-Kristen

Sleepwalker

I got lost in my own bedroom last night.

Sadly, it's happened before.

I was sleeping and in the dream that I didn't know what a dream, I was standing in our front hallway and someone cut their hand wide open.  We're talking blood gushing EVERYWHERE.  Apparently my panic in my dream translated too well to my body, because I leapt out of bed to get bandages to help the friend- only when I opened my eyes, the room was pitch black.

It took me several minutes to reconcile that I wasn't where I was supposed to be.  Meanwhile, three steps away from the bed, I was utterly lost.  I recall hanging on to the dresser at one point (right beside my bed) and trying to convince myself I wasn't in the front hallway, I was in the bedroom.  In my mind's eye, I still saw the hallway, knew that I had to be there because that's where I last "remembered" being.  Meanwhile, my brain is feverishly trying to figure out what the dresser is and where it fits in to the hallway, what the bath towels are- anything I touched, it tried to contort in to something else.

After stumbling around in just a few steps, I finally was able to calm myself and recognize enough of the signs of sleepwalking that I knew I could go back to bed.  Thankfully I was easily able to find the bottom of  the bed and I gingerly (and blindly) walked myself back to my spot and crawled in.

This has happened off and on forever, even though I haven't caught myself sleepwalking in a while. It's very bizarre to know what you are doing and to see it, but not be able to stop yourself- I usually have to play out several minutes of whatever is going on until I can convince myself to go back to bed.  Sometimes I can do this without waking Tim. Sometimes, I'm not so lucky.  I sit here now, fully awake, and wonder how my motor skills were fully functional, but the reasoning was not.  I can still feel the panic of knowing someone was badly hurt and needed help, but not being able to make it to the bathroom (right off the main hall) to get towels to help.  Add in getting lost in the dark, in a familiar place and it's even worse.  I knew that if I walked too far, I'd have trouble finding my way back to the bed.  Perhaps it was some small part of me trying to keep me safe.

Oh well, thankfully that was the only episode of the night- and no.  It never occurred to me to call out to Tim for help  (turning on the light, etc). In my sleepwalking state, I was alone. And lost.  In the dark.

-Kristen

Book Update

So, I posted a while back (here and here) about the book(s) I'm writing.

I've been concentrating on the one closest to completion, the one nearest and dearest to my heart.  I *think*, perhaps, I finally have a title.

The first 10 chapters have been sent to the beta reader and I'm getting some really positive feedback, as well as some valuable notes about anything that needs clarification.

Apparently I am also quite fond of commas.  I already knew this about myself.  I'm ok with it.

I'm currently working on some rewrites of later chapters.  The book started out going one direction and actually ended up metamorphosing into a whole new creatures as the characters developed their personalities beyond my first scribbled notes.  Regardless of how or why they changed, several chapters are severely out of date, trying to propel them down a path that just doesn't exist later on. I'm saving these chapters in case they fit into later projects and rewriting them from the ground up.

Occasionally I go through periods where I can't get the words down quickly enough.  Other times, like last night, it takes me well over an hour to bang out a few paragraphs to my satisfaction. It helps to have the pressure of the beta reader to keep me powering through the tough-to-perfect parts.  Even if I try to distract myself by cleaning (or blogging) I know I have to get back to work to keep ahead of the demand for new chapters.


So there you have it.  I'm still plugging along.

-Kristen

The Book

I wrote before about my books.  The plan had been to read it as objectively as possible, then start editing and writing more. 

That completely fell by the wayside.  After the month from Hell I dealt with in December, I figured it would be smarter to just wait and make a fresh start in January.

After reading the Hunger Games, it really slowed down my inspiration to iron out some plot wrinkles. It's hard to concentrate on writing your own story after just having finished someone else's.

I pulled out a pad at work yesterday and started a general sketch of another story that has been bouncing around my head.  Suddenly the ideas began to flow for the one I most want to work on and get finished.  It figures that it was time to head home as these ideas spewed out of my pen, so I was trying to write trigger words on a pad, in my lap, at stoplights.   Of course, it also figures this is the one time I don't get stopped by any stoplights on the way home.

So, I'm re-energized and excited about this project! My goal is to work for a month and in February, print the book out and hand it to Tim to get some feed back.  Then I want to edit it again and start bugging friends to take a critical look at it.

I'm excited! Finally, I'm excited again about writing.

-Kristen

Resolutions

New Years Resolutions.

Is there any more scoffed at idea? We all know what we resolve to do.  Be a better person.  Be more patient, be more kind.  Get in shape (HA).  Eat better.  Cook more at home. Save more money.  Do more volunteer work.

The list goes on and on and on.

We all start out with the best intentions, but it can be hard to stick with, especially since we are trying to change habits about ourselves that are often based on the path of least resistance.  It's easier to choose sit on the couch eating cheetos, rather than to choose to run on a treadmill and eat steamed broccoli.

So my New Years Resolutions?  Save Money, Be Healthier.

Saving money is a high priority on my resolutions list because my ultimate goal is to be able to retire early and do fun stuff forever and ever until I die.  To do this, I have to be even smarter about how I spend my money- which means less randomly frittering it away on junk.  2012- I will save more!

Be healthier means a lot of things- lose some weight (I have gained back 5lbs over the past 2 weeks.  BLAH).  I also mean mentally healthier, which I've already started working on.  I'm taking my Vitamin D3 to help with the seasonal depression, I'm trying my best to soak up as much sunlight and I'm distancing myself from things that may cause me drama.  I want to be stress free this winter!

Do you have any New Years Resolutions?  What are they?

-Kristen

Back in the Saddle

So, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately.

Years ago- and I do mean years, I started writing a novel.  I was fifteen at the time. My computer crashed and I lost it all.  I started over at sixteen and worked on it as time allowed for two years.  Then my laptop died and I lost it.

I started another novel, since I didn't have the heart to try to rewrite the first two.  I worked on it a while and would hit a block.  School, getting married, work, moving- so many things kept getting in the way.  Then I'd start reading it to try to get the creative flow back and it would dissolve in to frantic edits, rewrites, etc.  Then I'd try to write more, but still be bogged down by something that didn't read perfectly (in my mind).

Tim got the information off of the original laptop for me as a gift one year.  I had my original novel back! Oh but it was awful.  Ok, it wasn't awful.  The story wasn't bad, but it was written when I was so young that the sentence structure was overly simplistic and it was just- well, childish writing.  I also leaned too heavily on what I knew from reading, rather than creating a more unique world.  So the rewrites began.

Then I got frustrated, put both novels aside and haven't touched either in two years.  I think I'm ready to pick them up again and finally get them finished.  My goal is to read the notes I kept around about each story, tweak my outline a bit, then just start reading.  No rewrites.  What is the point of having a beautifully edited story that is only half completed?

So- I'm back in the writing saddle. I'm ready to see where this might take me.

Wish me luck! Promise that if I can get it published, you'll buy a copy. 

-Kristen

To sleep-perchance to dream

I've been having really... I guess you would call them busy dreams lately.  They aren't necessarily bad dreams, but there is so much going on in them I don't wake up feeling rested.  Maybe it's not there is a lot going on, but it's that I'm too close to consciousness and I remember too much of them- really I don't know. 

It's definitely no fun though.

Two days ago I caught myself about to start sleep-meddling.  In this case, I was seconds away from ripping all the covers off the bed (where Tim was trying to sleep, blissfully unaware) and taking them in the laundry room to wash them in the middle of the night.

This morning, my alarm went off for work and I lay there drifting in and out of sleep, telling myself I needed to get up.  That kind of extra "rest" isn't going to make me feel any better, but somehow I just could not force myself out of bed.   Eventually Tim started kneeing me (which earned him grunts of not-happy) and I dragged my tired body out of bed.

I seem to go through cycles of not sleeping well.  It's never just one bad dream or one "busy" dream.  It's always a set of them- maybe it lasts a week, then I sleep wonderfully for a while.  Or I have 10 days of not being able to fall asleep at night, then suddenly I'm sleeping like a baby for a month.

I can never tell why these periods of troubled sleep happen.  Sometimes I can break the cycle though, I'm hoping I can do that this time.

-Kristen