Another Year Has Passed

I hope everyone, the few of you who still are kind enough to stop by here, have had a great year, wonderful holidays, and will have a wonderful 2011.

Once again I find myself apologizing for not keeping up with blogging. Even after receiving Emily's comment :-)

I did finally get my computer back in mid-October. It had to be restored to factory defaults. And while I did save everything before sending it in, and everything seems to be back, it's not the same as it was, and probably never will be again. So, while I can do the basics, there is an underlying layer of frustration while working on it.

I decided to do NaNoWriMo again this year. Free time in October was spent planning, plotting, outlining and further prepping for the massive press of writing to be done in November. I did barely any other reading or writing during October, let alone blogging. Then came November 1st and I was off writing. Long story short :-p , 11 p.m. on 11-30 I validated my word count at just over 50k, winning NaNo for the first time (3rd time's the charm). I didn't complete a novel ~~ in fact, barely got into my story, & quite frankly most of it is crap ~~ but there's something about hitting a goal like that. And after taking December off, I'm feeling the urge to start writing and blogging again.

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Things are the usual with us. Mostly status quo, some ups, and a few downs ~~ some quite deep downs. Kids are good. We have managed to schedule a few good play days into our schedule ~~ easier since I'm at home two days a week and he can be a little flexible with his. So spankings, floggings, and wild sex do continue with some regularity.

Oldest has gotten her first college acceptance letter ~ & it includes a scholarship. We're very proud of her. We should hear from a couple of more this spring.

Son is doing pretty well ~~ except for when it comes to dealing with his dad. He's doing well enough in school, but DH never seems to be happy with it, expecting him to to get the same grades as his older sister and to have DH's same math and science abilities. Son is starting to worry about college and what if DH doesn't like his choices. DH keeps pushing him towards medical, engineering, law, etc., but son, while not awful in these areas, leans more towards creative subjects such as art, design, theatre. Son is quite a bit like me.

Youngest is growing up so fast. She's reaching that age where she doesn't look so much like a little girl anymore. She does well in school, has a best friend who she likes to hang with as much as possible and is still my snuggle buddy.

DH still travels a lot with work ~~ 1 to 2 weeks most months: Europe, North America, Central America, South America, Asia... There was talk of expanding manufacturing in Europe and moving us there, but so far not.

And me ~~ I'm still working three days in the office and two days at home. The commute is still killing me. From March until November, most of my route was congested with road work ~~ it typically took 1.5 to 2 hours to get to work or back home again. One day it took three hours to just get to work. Now that winter has arrived, my commute either direction is back down to just over an hour, unless the weather gets bad. So far I've only had one bad snow drive home that took a little over two hours. Anyway, crazy commute means by the time Friday arrives, I am completely knackered. I've been looking around for something else, since I can't afford to just quit, but there's just not much out there ~~ at least not that I can do at least reasonably well.

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I promise with the next post I will finish up our vacation story ~~ and maybe even share a few pictures.