Okay, so I was chatty, then silent, then chatty - dramatic! - and then silent again.  I'm sorry, very sorry - last week was just a lot to handle.  No, my father's health isn't great - and I'm not supposed to know anything so I'm not going to talk publicly about what I'm not supposed to know.  There has been Other Family Drama, resulting in me turning rather anti-social.  I think after a few crazy weeks I need some down time, without the crazies or the distractions to sort of recharge.

But wait! This is me we're talking about - I hardly know how to do nothing, ya know?  Last week was almost an experiment in just that.  Oh wait - no it wasn't! 

Monday I did spend solo, warding off the world, cleaning, doing grocery shopping, etc.

Tuesday was Cover Girls, a monthly book club up in Plano my friends and I trek up to attend because it's just awesome.  I made cake-pops, which there are pictures of them in my Flickr.  I also made some book-pops with Dakota Cassidy's new book My Way To Hell done as a flag.  Super cute.  Check out my bakery success, fer serials.  Somehow, I'm not quite sure, but I wound up as the Teachers Pet at this event, lol.  The organizer, who turns to my friends and says, "I don't remember names, I'm sorry," proceeds to call me out of around 60 women for opinions and things.  It was funny and Certain People poked and prodded at me all night, but we were all laughing about it and really I didn't care.  Hey, it's flattering to get noticed!  You're lying if you disagree!

Wednesday was dance - but sort of a big night.  My dance school was featured by Groupon.com and Wednesday was the first night people could redeem their class voucher.  400 people signed up for the class!  400 people!  There are now two beginner classes on Wednesday.  I'm getting kicked up to the Intermediate Class that meets afterwards.  Sunday instead of just having Aliki's class, there will be two additional beginner classes taught by Neenah.  That's a lot of additional classes!  That's a lot of people!!

Thursday - Writers Date Night - and Cid forgetting the power supply.  It was a very beneficial night as I plotted out a new WIP and worked on some additional writing stuff I'm doing.

Friday - I think, don't quote me on this because I cannot for the life of me remember - I spent alone!  ALONE! HURRAY FOR ALONE TIME!

Saturday was dance class again - this one seriously kicked my butt.  We worked on floor work, and how to gracefully get onto the floor while dancing.  It's freaking Wednesday and my whole body still hurts.  The worst move we did was getting down on the floor, sitting on your legs.  Raise your butt up off of your legs just enough to clear your heels, and then move hips in a circular fashion while making your arms look pretty.  There are all sorts of directional changes and other things to do.  It also hurts like hell after not using those muscles seriously for a year!  We also did fifteen minutes of arm drills.  I didn't think this would be that bad.  Arms? Pshaw!  O. M. G.  The rest of the day I spent groaning every time I got in and out of my friend's car.  We went shopping in the pm for clothes.  I lurv shopping, and I lurv making people be my personal barbie dolls - because I never really played with them as a kid I guess I just like reliving that portion of my life now, right?  Did lots of great shopping, had dinner with some other friends and hung out for ages talking and whatnot so I got home uber late.  Now, I cannot just get home and go to bed, I have to like, unwinde and stuff, so I check my email and - So a few months ago I wrote lots of short stories and submitted them.  Haven't heard anything so I just accepted the silent rejections and moved on with my life.  Waiting in my inbox was a contract for a short story I'd written and submitted.  A contract to be published - and paid!!!!  I text'd tons of people, heck, you probably already know yourself but it's still fun to blog about!

Sunday was all about being at home and writing and reading and knitting and watching movies.  Really productive in some areas, I will say.  Started a new knitting project I'm excited about and will probably share pictures of later.

And this brings us to Monday - which was a random celebration of my impending published status and going out with the belly dancers to support Aliki dancing at Stratos.  Stratos is probably becoming my new, favorite restaurant, sorry McAllisters!  It's just a fun place.  Dance floor where the dancers dance every so often.  Amazing Greek food; I ate flaming cheese!  The waiters are almost all super cute.  And you get to dance!  Even on the tables!  Aliki got a bunch of us up to do a Shakira routine with her that we pretty much improved.  We did Greek dancing and some other line dancing - the only thing we didn't do this time - dance on the tables, lol.

So now we're at today - and today is another shutting the world out day, but only because there are books coming in on order today I'm crazy about and Must. Read.  The rest of the week is dance, writers date night and RA, so my live moves on in an ever persistent pendulum of crazy!

Okay, I simply must figure out a reason to make these, if only for the fun bit about popping the balloons!!!!

In other news.... um..... I'm writing. A lot.  Did I mention I was going to do the Story a Day challenge for the month of May?  Well I am.  So far it's spawned two chapters of a middle-grade fantasy and a big chunk of a longish short story named after the main character, Pele.  I'm actually posting these rough drafts as I go in the spirit of the challenge, so if you decide to read them, please understand they're very uber rough.  I'm also still writing on my novel and I've sort of picked up writing a little fan-fic.

This boils down to: Cid is writing a lot.

It also means Cid isn't all that interesting, so she talks about herself in 3rd person and imagines her life being narrated by Jessica Stiles.

Okay, not really, that was a book reference to Going in Circles where the character deals with some circumstances by imagining her life is narrated by John Goodman.  The book is fantastic and I review it here.

So what's on the slow-cooker for me?  Well... this week I think not a lot.  I'm watching a lot of Dexter, the tv show with the serial killer, in preparation for another novel I want to write.  I'm subjecting my temporary roommate to it, and I'm sure she wants to clobber me by now  ~__^  She gets the patience award in my book.  The Red Pyramid comes out today; it's written by Rick Roiden, the same guy who wrote The Lightning Thief.  I'm thinking I'll camp out at BnN and read it tonight but buy it next week when he's doing a book signing in Southlake.  I make perfect sense in my head!

Last night was the book club meeting I completely forgot about.  I'm sort of glad I didn't read the book.  I'm also sort of planning on not reading the next book: Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  Sorry, just... not interested.  And now I believe I will eat lunch; it's cooled down enough I can eat it and not burn my tongue off!

Ps - yes, my dad is doing great - thanks all for your well wishes and all!!!

[EDIT]

I had to add this because it was just too good to pass up! 

Yes, more book talk.  So almost right after I posted my last blog where I bemoan my writing - I read Janice Hardy's weekly Re-Write Wednesday blog entitled, The Frankendraft.  Now, this actually helped me to see that my story isn't buried, it's still plainly obvious - to me of course - and I don't see it as having some of the other bits she talks about - so maybe there's hope for me yet!  It's a little encouraging at least!  However, yesterday was all about indulging in a semi melt-down/pity-party about how terrible I was doing and woe is me, I should be doing something else!  I laid down around 11 on Wednesday night, got comfortable - and then - EUREKA! I had a brilliant idea I should have had ages ago when writing the first draft. I even twittered about it! And then I promptly cuddled up to my pillows to go to sleep.  Except then I was too consumed by the idea to do anything else.  In short, I got up and wrote until 2am.  I was very tired, please excuse the randomness as I tend to keep a blog in edit until I feel like posting it. This one happens to cover three days.

On another topic... I need to get my bangs trimmed, but the idea of sitting down in a chair while someone waves scissors around my head gives me nightmares of what happened last time.  They're just bangs - right?  I'm not ready to trust someone with the rest of my hair; I just want my bangs trimmed. Oh - well then I think I might need an eyebrow wax too.... Blarg - being a girl is expensive!!!

So I'm still reading through The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and I keep wanting to scream at it.  I find myself not caring about the MMC and really only about the bits on the FMC - unfortunately 3/4's of what I've read are about the character I don't particularly care about. Grrrrr!  At least last night she came into a more prominent role.  I'll save my other thoughts for my book review.  [edit] Finished last night. I want to burn the book.

I'm currently sitting at my desk wondering what reason I could have to try making Bakerella's new Oscar Cookies. OMG they look so YUMMY!

And yet more book drama - Macmillan takes a shot at Amazon in an add for a new book with the bottom text saying Available Everywhere Except Amazon!  Other book publishers are joining in on the whole mess and a friend and I have started a GoogleWave to keep a semi organized chronicle of all the stuff that's going on because - well - I'm a drama whore.

OMGOMGOMG - This just made my Friday! Robin McKinley shared the new cover of her upcoming book, Pegasus.  I'm super excited!!!!

I cannot pretend the weekend started out well.  Um, okay, so at the beginning it was fun but stuff happens, eh?  Friday I got off work and went and read The Last Olympian at BandN before going home.  However, I couldn't leave BandN without Redeeming Love, the book club book actually having being bought and since it was on one of those so very temping Buy 2, Get the 3rd FREE tables, I also got Maus Book I and The Zombie Survival Guide. They did not have Lament, which someone got me interested in, but that is probably for the best.  I am convinced the BandN by my apartment isn't the best.

My friend was supposed to go to a movie with me but we both got finished with what we'd been doing so late it just wasn't practical so we mutually decided - some other time would be better.  I then get in a heated argument with one person - okay, it was heated on my side.  Things were being launched at me that were personal and I got angry and said something I shouldn't have. No, it wasn't profane, just inappropriate - I was just rather upset.  A friend enters the conversation and starts telling me to be nice. Me - when I was the one standing up for myself.  This isn't the first time this person has pointed fingers at me when things turn heated so naturally it only made the situation worse because yet again I was of course the bad guy here for standing up for myself.  I think me being a girl and getting stupidly emotional about stuff is much to blame.

Saturday - ug - I woke up at 7:30.  My body really wanted to be up, but I was still rather exhausted.  Oh well.  I got up and went to Wal-Mart where there were hardly any people before noon and the cashiers were even standing around without lines.  It was rather incredible!  I bought all of the things to make cake-pops and was startled by actually finding lollipop sticks and five different colors of melt.  I was very thrilled that for my first attempt I wouldn't have to go searching around.  Anyways, enough about cake-pops. I have a whole blog devoted to the endeavor after all!

The youth group volunteer meeting was good, and I sort of met some of the other people but mostly talked to Brandy who I met Wednesday night.  I didn't stay for church; just wasn't feeling real well and for some reason I started feeling really depressed.  Don't ask me why; I can only assume it's due to female chemistry and bits from last night.  I know I take things too personally - it maybe my biggest fault.  Being told some of those things - if irrational - stick to me and I'll just have to deal with it.  If I weren't the way I am I wouldn't be me so I'm sure I'll be fine, that night just sort of sucked.  Worked on the cake-pops some more before abandoning the idea of finishing them and instead started Redeeming Love. Right now, 100+ pages into it - I hate it.  I really want to just put it down and not go on.  There are other books on my shelf of to-reads that I know I'll love.  That are on my master list of very important things to read in 2010.  Oh well.

Sunday - woke up not feeling well but I have cake-pops to do so took some medicine, had a small sit down breakfast and got to work!  The cupcake pops get the most layers so I started those first with the brown.  Learned I probably made those all too bit but I salvaged many more than I lost so I guess it all works out.  Home Group was good - apparently I missed the big church wide fast thing as well as getting the book we're going to be working through.....oopse.

Started feeling more sickly Sunday night and today's not been a whole lot better.  The day sort of passed in a blur.  I at least finished The Dreaded Book.

Okay, so I've been sort of drooling over Bakerella's amazing cake-pops for a while now.  I know at least one other person who will be trying these at some point - but this weekend will be my first foray into this!  Since I'm not exactly sure what I'm going for, I snagged a all the candy melts they had.  Here is what I am equipped with.

• 1 box red velvet cake mix
• container of cream cheese icing
• 3 packages of 50 count lollipop sticks
• 3 packages of 50 count candy bags
• 2 square cake boxes
• 2 sheets of styrafoam
• 1 glitter sprinkle canister
• 2 Valentine seasonal sprinkle canisters
• 1 huge multi-pack Christmas canister (probably just use the red or green plain sprinkles)
• 5 different candy melts (white, red, rose/pink, dark chocolate, milk chocolate)
• an ice cream scoop
• oil
• eggs

....and I think that's it.  I'll be following Bakerella's instructions, which you can find on her various kinds of cake-pop pages.  I think I'm going to make one small experimental batch and then try for cupcake pops because she says those are easiest.

I tried showing off the candy melts in the cup but it just looks like blurry, red goo....  I like the cupcake-pops, they're super cute and are easier to decorate even if you have to dip them more often.