At Dawn

So, I lived up to my blog's name Thursday. Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve morning, actually.
My alarm went off at 5:30.
I left the house by 6:15.
I arrived at the barn some 7-9 minutes later.
I got to drive the truck. That was fun. :-) It was cold and wet and rainy and very very windy. It was pretty much the front end of the storm that brought the sleet and eventually snow through Tulsa.
It was before the sun came up. Actually, the sun didn't really come up until a few moments before I left the barn at 7:30.
Why would I wake up at 5:30 am on Christmas Eve to get out in that horrid weather by myself in the dark, you ask? [Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just hoping. Or maybe you're a person of average intelligence that has read some of my blog before, or you know me, and you already surmised my reasoning.]
I went to ride my beast. I had just gotten into a good habit of riding at least 5-6 days a week, and I didn't want to lose too many days when I went to Missouri for Christmas. And we had to leave the house before noon [so we wouldn't get stuck in Tulsa with all this LOVELY weather! (/sarcasm)]. I also wanted to get it over with before the temperature dropped. It was supposed to drop from low 40's to low 30's and below at 7:00. But I think it waited until 8:00. Which was just as well, because I spent 30 minutes longer than I meant to at the barn since I didn't get to the barn right at 6, as I had planned.

So, there I was, out in the dark at the barn with the wind howling. I jumped Koda in the indoor. Obviously, we had to go to the indoor so that we wouldn't get soaked through in the awful rain. He was a brat at first, mainly because [okay, this is a guess here. but I'd like to think that I know my horse well enough to say this] the weather was freaking him out when it made the doors creak on their hinges and the rain pound against the roof and walls. I was a little creeped by it too, just because it was dark out, but I locked us into the indoor and once we started trotting I was much more comfortable with the whole alone-in-the-beginning-of-a-storm-in-a-metal-structure-in-the-dark scenario.
Well, it wasn't completely dark. There were lights inside. But outside it was still dark, so you get my drift.

Anyway... we jumped. A lot. It was fun. :-) Once he got his manners back. We jumped pretty high too. About 3'2. Though the third time I had to get off to put the pole back up I remembered why I usually don't jump that high without Kim. But we got it. He was good about it. We did lots of tight turns with three jumps set up in the indoor. :)
And so, add in 4 hours of travel, several hours of watching REAL TV channels [not just the basic channels we have at home], and insisting to my Grandpa Pat several times that no, I wasn't freezing without socks on and that in fact, I was a bit warm all over, and there was my entire Christmas Eve.

NaNoWriMo on fictionpress.com!

So, my NaNoWriMo story is on my fictionpress account... here: http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2737067/1/California_Widow

So far I have written exactly 5,280 words. In case you're wondering, that is the amount of feet there are in a mile! I learned that because my math teacher taught us to say "five two-mate-ohs" in a mile. Five tomatoes! Isn't that clever?
Haha. Wow. I needed more than seven hours of sleep last night, obviously. Well.. I must get back to my homework so I have time for my daily 1,667 or more NaNo words today!
And I'm glad that the very few who read my very short excerpt seemed to like it! So you can go check out my fictionpress. haha.
Tina

NaNoWriMo Excerpt.

Ahh.. the first day of NaNoWriMo!
Daily word count: 2,723!

So... Here's an excerpt from my prologue.... in case anyone out there is actually interested:

The rainy New England day fit Lacey Jefferson's mood perfectly. Her husband Jonah was about ready to join the wagon train to California. He wanted to work the mines! She ran her hands through her long blonde hair before wrestling it into Jonah's favorite up do. Lacey looked at herself in the mirror, hardly believing that she was already twenty four years old. Twenty four, and about to become a California widow. That's what they were calling the women these days, wasn't it? When their husbands would run off to chase the gold, these women were left alone as if they were widows. Widows because of California and that darn gold rush. Lacey was quite happy with their station in life, and couldn't understand why Jonah had to leave them to make it better. She could only hope she wouldn't become a widow in the true sense of the word before she and Jonah were both at a ripe old age. In their mid eighties, at least!

That is the first paragraph of the prologue!
Does it have anyone intrigued? It shouldn't give away too much, but should hook the reader's attention right away! I'm very picky about my beginnings. :)

Tina

More NaNoWriMo Goodness.

So. At the moment I have a headache and should be sleeping, but I have to write this out or I shall a-splode. :) I've decided that the more I talk about NaNoWriMo the more I will be guilted into completing my daily word count [which is 1200, by the way!] because I know ALL of you will be disappointed if I don't. [And I know all of you means about 5 people who probably don't really care if I can write 50,000 in a month, but I'm convincing myself that I'll be seriously letting down about 100 of you!] Plus, the shame and humiliation of letting the project die off after a week or two, AFTER having said all of this about my excitement, should keep me on the right track. :)

Anyway. I've decided to bare my writer's soul to the world and share what my novel will be about. I'm extremely sensitive about letting people I actually KNOW [as opposed to the anonymous people on, say, fictionpress.com] see my fiction works... But if I'm going to attempt to get my finished product out in the world I might as well start with a tentative working title and synopsis, yes?

Working Title: California Widow.
Intrigued, are you? Good. haha. This working title chose itself. I did not. If you don't get it, you probably never will. I wasn't even sure I actually liked the phrase.. if you can call it that.. especially for a title. But those two darned words just would NOT go away. They wouldn't let me think of any other title, so ta-da! Zee title eez here!

Synopsis:
Lacey Jefferson was a widow. But she wasn't just any widow. They called her a California Widow, because her husband was off on the other side of the country, caught up in the gold rush. It was Jonah Jefferson's plan to make himself a modest fortune so that he could better care for his wife and daughter. What Lacey didn't know was that her California widowhood turned into true widowhood a year ago. When she decides to hitch a wagon ride west with her daughter Becky to go find Jonah, what will she find instead?


If you're thinking it sounds like a historical romance novel... then you would be correct. haha. I'm going to attempt to make it as non-cheesy as I possibly can. Because I love a good romance novel that manages to be as non-cliche'd as possible. And cheesy & cliche' usually go hand in hand with these things. :P

So.. even though I haven't gotten ANY feedback on my blog AT ALL for the past... 3-5 posts... tell me what you think! ..or not.
Tina

The Perfect Morning

I had to kick myself out of bed this morning, and it took until AFTER I already got to the barn at 7:45 for my contacts to settle and me to see completely clear. However, I still managed to get tacked up on time and almost completely warmed up before Kim came down from the house. I had opened up the indoor arena and turned the lights on, but Kim asked me if I was ready to jump. I jumped at the chance [pun intended... which makes it not as cool, but oh well] and we went outside. It was pretty much just misting at this point. I finished my warm-up by cantering in the big arena.

Side note: I LOVELOVELOVE Koda's canter after the Lurena Bell clinic. I'll have to post once or twice about that. It was this past weekend.

So, we did a tiny bit of gridwork in the dressage arena to get both Koda and me thinking about jumping. Then we went down to the stadium. It started raining a little bit harder, almost a legitimate rain at that point. Koda momentarily freaked out about a new log, which was out of character, but we jumped it without an issue. We also jumped the barrels, the bullseye, white picket fence, tires, coop, rolltop, brick wall, polkadot panel, and the other white panel as well as the double. Yesh.
My boy's still got it. :)
Kim was pleasantly surprised and impressed. An exact quote: "this is the type of thoroughbred you want." She was referring to the fact that Koda picked up almost everything immediately after about 10 months off. The footing was kind of iffy. Once when I asked for a lead change I felt him try, but he didn't and Kim and I both suspected it was because of the footing. It was kind of slick since it was, you know, raining. It was definitely a legitimate rainfall by the time we were done. Kim was huddled up in her jacket, hood over her head. haha. I was in a long-sleeved t-shirt thats about two sizes too big and a pair of summer breeches. It was great.

Pretty much the SECOND we walked under the roof of the barn, the downpour started. I mean... the heavens opened up and it rained BUCKETS. So I put bigeloil on Koda's legs, took a picture of the funny looking dry spot on his back where the saddle had been, cleaned his crib collar, and put him up. I had to close the indoor, then went to starbucks.

When I got to starbucks in Target, the barista waved at me. haha. After he was done with the guy's drink in front of me, he just started making my drink without saying a word. :) I didn't even have to clarify what size I wanted. :P Which the last few times he asked just to confirm.
Then the two guys that are always sitting in the round table next to the counter started talking to me. The first time it was a comment on my breeches: "So, you ride horses? Do you do that jumping thing?" The second time it was on a rainy day: "Isn't it a bit too wet to ride today?" My response was, "Oh, we have an indoor arena." "Oh, that's nice."

Today I walked in, my front was soaked from riding, and I'm sure I looked a fright with my hair all plastered to my head and no make up on, but I didn't really care. I'm still happy at how great Koda did! My long-sleeved t-shirt was plain grey, so it was really easy to see the wet spot that pretty much took over my whole shirt. And the front of my breeches were dark with water too. As Lee [the barista that knows my order by memory now] started making my drink, one of the guys goes,
"So, what happened to that indoor arena?" I laughed.
"I didn't feel like riding in it today."
The other guy speaks up, "I was gonna say... that must have been one big leak in the roof."
I laughed. "I felt like jumping today, and all my jumps were outside."
"Does your horse ever get a break?"
"I try to ride six days a week. So he gets one day off. Plus we're getting ready for a show next weekend so I'm trying to ride as much as possible."
"Wow, working people at least usually get two days off," said the first guy.
"Where is the show gonna be, the fairgrounds?" asked the second.
I laughed at the working people comment. "Its going to be out in, um, Okeemah." I always forget what its called where Doug lives.
"I thought there were only rodeos up in those parts."
"My trainer married a cowboy that lives up there, and bought some land next to his. So we're probably the only english spot for quite a few miles."
"I bet."

For some reason, that conversation made me smile a lot. haha. It was just amusing to have that convo while I was waiting for my drink - that I didn't have to order - while I was standing there soaked. And the funny thing is that these guys look like they're in their thirties. Shouldn't they be at work? But I guess some people would say I should be in school, so... whatever. :P haha.

Tina

NaNoWriMo!

What, you ask, is NaNoWriMo?
It is the abbreviation for National Novel Writing Month. During NaNoWriMo [and if you want to make it EVEN shorter... NaNo] the main goal is simple: to write one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month's time. Of course... this means no editing, no back-spacing, no re-reading or correcting. The only thing that matters is quantity, not quality.

My inner perfectionist is going to get whacked over the head with my laptop. But this is a good thing! Haha.

I already have my novel idea [haha, pun not intended... until I realized what a great pun I'd just made!] set up, and my pre-writing is pretty much done. On http://nanowrimo.org my username is dappleddakota [obviously]. Right now I'm trying to come up with a plausible way to actually show up in person at one of the write-ins that's going to happen in Tulsa. I know of one that will happen exactly 11 minutes from my house [I mapquested the location!] on a day of the week that I could potentially attend.. But would my parents go for it? I'm not sure.

One thing is for sure... I must also keep up with my schoolwork! That will be the challange. Anyone interested in doing this with me??

I'm going to expect to have one craptastic nanonovel by the last day of November... I wonder how long it will take me to edit?

Tina

Mandibular Hypoplasia, Pt I

So. This is a little story about a condition called mandibular hypoplasia. We'll call it MH. When I was a tiny girl, I had a normal face. At one point, both of my jaws were growing together in harmony. Then something happened. My lower jaw [the mandible] got tired and stopped growing. However, my upper jaw was still going strong. When my upper jaw stopped growing, my bite was still off and there was a huge gap between my front upper teeth and my front lower teeth. Unfortunately, my orthodontist could do nothing about it. My teeth were as fixed as they were going to get with braces.

I had to have surgery.

It took seven months to get the surgery scheduled. In this story, the insurance company is the bad guy [booo!]. Anyway, after getting denied several times we just said oh well and did the surgery anyway. So, we went to the hospital at 5:30 in the morning. I changed into that weird paper gown and nearly froze to death while waiting to be pushed to the operating room.
At this point, MH began to get very scared. He wasn't going to last much longer!
The first anesthesiologist [haha! SCORE! Spelled that right on the first try..] was kind of odd. She asked me the same questions I'd already been asked at least two times that morning [is my name spelled correctly on my arm band? is my birth date correct on my arm band? had I eaten anything past midnight? had anything to drink past midnight? had I ever had a known reaction to anesthetic? was I allergic to any medicines? was I currently taking a daily medicine? do I know what surgery I'm going in for? etc, etc, etc.]

A different nurse came in to start my IV. My mom had to leave the room while she was sticking me. It actually wasn't bad at all. She found a vein, gave me a shot to numb the area, and I hardly felt a pinch at all. Though the saline solution they ran through my veins made me even colder for a bit.
This nurse repeated the questions the first lady had asked. Then she left.
Finally, my surgeon showed up, as well as a very pretty anesthesiologist. I bet she wasn't any older than 26-27. They repeated the questions AGAIN [what is this, now? 5 times?] and had to make an addition to the paperwork to state that they were going to, indeed, take out my upper wisdom teeth as well. [Double whammy! My lower wisdom teeth were taken out over a year ago.]

My surgeon is a very nice man. He's a great Christian and very nice. However, at that moment, while I was laying on the little gurney bed trying not to freeze or have a nervous breakdown [I wasn't scared of the surgery. I was nervous about waking up after the surgery. Pssh. Who cares what they do to me while I'm passed out under anesthetic?!] I wasn't too fond of my very nice, smiling surgeon.

And the pretty anesthesiologist made me spray nasal saline solution up my nose, which choked me when it went down my throat. [And believe me, if I'm bothered by a nasal spray, its bad. I used to take a nasal spray daily for my allergies.] But she apologised. So I forgave her.
Then they stole my glasses so I couldn't see, gave them to my parents, and wheeled me down to the operating room.
Next installment coming soon. :) haha. I know y'all are just waiting on the edges of your seats!
Tina