tiffany's spot

51,530 words

     “I hope not. So what’s the plan? And how can I help? I guess. But if that thing hops up and tries to eat me I’m out of here. And if we roll him over and I find one of your kitchen knives buried in the abdomen of someone who was alive and happy yesterday I might just have to call the police.”       “That’s ridiculous. I don’t even own any kitchen knives.”

Izzy Jones doesn't listen when the meddlesome townspeople try to talk her out of buying a run-down house in the countryside. She knows she can fix it up and bring it back to its former glory. But when the roof falls in and odd creatures start coming out of the overgrown, bushy half of her property, Izzy still stubbornly refuses to admit that maybe buying the house was a bad idea. Instead, with paintbrush in hand, she tackles the work that needs to be done. Little does she know that her estranged mother is on her way back to town, and that there is more waiting in the bushes than a ghost dog and a tiny blue fairy. I wrote this synopsis at 12:40 am, so I admit, it's badder than bad. I would also like to point out that there really are no zombies in my story.

I am standing at the island, making Jordan's lunch. I can hear the kids down the hall getting more and more worked up. Jordan is yelling "Get off! Elliot, get off!" Elliot is screaming and yelling "No!" at her. "Stop it!" yells Tennyson. "Stop it Jordan, I am tellling Mommy!" " She's going to start on fire!" Jordan yells. This is exactly the thing a mother wants to hear. I wonder if  the kids have found the lighter that I keep buried in my sock drawer. Maybe they're not in the boys' room at all. Tennyson comes charging down the hallway. "Jordan is choking Elliot!" "What?" "She's choking Elliot! Come!" I highly doubted that Jordan was choking Elliot. It's so not her style. She kind of loves the "baby", even when she doesn't really like her. I follow him down the hall to the boys' room. Jordan is dragging Elliot across the room by her arm. This is both p

I have more than a few words left to write on my novel. Here are my stats: 13000 words left, two evenings to do it in. Friday is the last day of November, but I'm going to be gone all day so it's kind of a bust. I had two goals this month: lose 8 pounds, and write a novel. I am 1 pound and 13,267 words away. Three sleeps until December.

We took the kids tobogganing at the dump hill this morning. I've decided that this winter I'm going to be more proactive in getting the kids active and outside in the winter. It helps that my "baby" is now two. Elliot goes up and down that hill like a champ, riding in the red plastic death sled with the boys and tromping back up the hill on her own. That being said, I may have hid in the van and listened to music out of the wind while my family had fun. It wasn't too long until Elliot decided she didn't need a scarf, mitts or toque, so Steven tossed her into the van to keep me company. At least at that point I could pretend that someone needed to watch over her. The windchill was brutal. The kids lasted 40 minutes. I was pretty impressed. Now I'm writing a novel when I'm not hitting refresh on facebook or checking whether anyone has blogged lately (and no, you haven't. boo!). I've gone from 25000 words to 26000 words already. My goal to

Alright, so I did this really stupid thing. I told myself that I'd give up chocolate until I lost a predetermined amount of weight. It was 11 pounds, to be exact. I have seven to go, and guess what? I REALLY WANT CHOCOLATE. Like really really. I decided this on Halloween night, after eating two small chocolate peanut butter eyeball things (wow, it sounds really yummy when described like that). I haven't had chocolate since. It's been three weeks. Anyway, you know what that rules out? Wagon wheels and 'smore granola bars, as well as the raiding I normally do of the kids Halloween bags after they go to sleep every night for a week after Halloween. Whatever. I've been working on my novel. I actually took a ten day break, which given the fact that the novel is supposed to be written in 30 days is kind of poor planning. Now I have to write something like 3600 words a day to get it done by the 30th. I pulled it off yesterday. I still have 2000 to go today and al

    “No,” Nate snapped. “No arguing. Not now. You move in with me until you figure out what you want to do. I don’t care. But you can’t stay here, and you can’t sell it. So we just flatten everything off and build one hell of a fence around it and keep people out of it forever and just pretend none of this bullshit exists.”     Izzy raised an eyebrow. “That’s your plan? Build a big fence and walk away?”     “No! Don’t forget I’m still a half a mile away from this place.”     “That’s right Nate, you’re only a half mile away from this place. What happens if the magic grows and one day you’re sitting on your front steps and the next thing you know something comes out of the darkness at you?”     Nate paled.     “That’s what I thought.”

    He softened his voice. “I know you don’t like hearing it over and over, but the reason people keep offering you a place to stay is because this house is hopeless. You’ll never have the money to fix it up. It’s falling apart. It’s old, and it turns out it’s haunted, or possessed or something. Izzy, you are insane to stay here when you have other options.”     “Where is that haunted dog anyway?” asked Emma.     “I don’t know,” said Izzy. “He wanders.”     Nate turned slightly greyer. “Izzy, I never saw that dog before you moved here. I honestly thought he came here with you. If he came out of the bush to greet you then he must have come from somewhere. I don’t like any of this. Where is he now? Where is he coming and going from?”     “I don’t know!” Izzy yelled. She tried to focus less on the ever-increasing creepiness of the situation and more on the irritation she was feeling at being lectured like a child. “I honestly don’t know. But really, what I really want to do more than anyt