I used to hate the time change when R was little. It took us so long to get back on track, to get our schedules returned to something sensible, for him to not be over-tired at bedtime and awake too early in the morning. Now I’m really appreciating it. All last week I had to keep negotiating with the dog, who somehow has a really phenomenal internal clock.

I would point out the sky to her and say, “Look, it’s too dark to go for a walk now. I cannot see to clean up after you when it’s this dark outside. We have to wait until it’s light or be bad neighbors.”

And she would put her paw on me, and look at me earnestly with her deep brown eyes and try to transmit the thought, “What’s wrong with you, my beloved person? Do you not see that it is 7AM and time for us to be out sniffing other people’s garbage?”

Now it’s light at 6:30 and she’s still comfortably asleep when it’s dark. The fact that I can’t get used to the time change and am waking at up 5-something every day is but a minor burden. Although seriously annoying as I lie in bed telling myself that I should be asleep. There should be some good riddles about sleep, being one of those things that you aren’t aware of when you have but miss desperately when you don’t.

Anyway, yesterday’s word count was a lot higher than the NaNoWriMo site thinks it was, because the way they do word count is really annoying. You can’t easily post your words for the day — it always wants to know your total, as if you’re guaranteed to be working in one big file. I don’t work that way. I keep lots of separate little files. But it makes it seriously inconvenient to try to track my word count on their site if I want to count all the words I write and not just the ones that I keep. I bit the bullet yesterday and changed my total to not include the words I deleted, so it thinks I wrote something like not quite 1300 words, but I am pretty sure I wrote more like 3200. In other words, a really good word count day, even if that’s not obvious to the NaNoWriMo site.

A fairly terrible diet day, however, and oh, I am paying for that today. I don’t know why my brain, appetite, and body can’t work together to make healthier choices for me, but yesterday was not a day of healthy choices and today is a day when everything hurts. Shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers, and on down. Ha, which I suppose is not everything, but simply every joint. I shall endeavor to be grateful for all the spaces between the joints that don’t hurt. I suspect it won’t be easy, but it’s worth a try.

Lots of plans for today and, happily for me, a pretty clear chapter destination. I feel like the section that I’m working on will be fun, interesting, and take a fair number of words, so yay, words galore. As far as the NaNo site goes, I’m already 4000 words behind so not much chance that I’ll catch up today. I’ve never had a 4K word day in my life and today has too much going on, so it’s not going to be the first time. But I am going to aim for 2K and maybe I’ll make it.

First things first, though — it’s 6:52 and the dog is stirring. A nice brisk walk to get the creative juices flowing… well, no, that’s not usually how it happens. First a slow saunter around the block, watching as B leisurely sniffs every corner of grass and waddles along. Then a nice brisk trudge with Z.

Random side note: “pick and choose” is the weirdest phrase. We’ve apparently been using it since the 1400s but how does it make any sense at all? Once you’ve picked, haven’t you by definition chosen? I wonder if it came from harvesting, like first you pick all the apples, then you choose the ones you want? But it’s redundant in modern English and yes, I wrote it yesterday, then had to waste precious writing minutes pondering it and questioning whether it made any sense at all and why I had it in my head and then looking it up to figure it out. Bad me. But I’m going to try to eliminate it from the default word choice list in my brain, because it makes no sense.

And now, really, truly, time to walk the dogs. Goal for today: words! May all your November writing goal writing flow beautifully today. 🙂