Blogging every day is made much easier by doing NaNoWriMo because I always have a topic on my mind: word count and whether I made it or not. I didn’t make it yesterday. Drat! But it was a busy day and I was out of the house a lot. I hit 1200 words in the morning, which was great, but when I got back to the house and tried to settle in to writing, I couldn’t kick my brain into gear again. I decided I’d write in the evening, but instead I went to sleep at 9. Nine! I wish that meant I was back on a normal sleep pattern, but instead I was awake at 3. I finally fell back asleep around 4:30.

The most annoying thing about that was that if I’d been awake at 4:30, I could have gone outside to see Venus, Mars and the moon line up, with Jupiter in the same vicinity. I did go out at 3:30 or so, when I remembered, but it was too early. The moon was nowhere to be seen. The night sky was lovely, though, and there was a little bit of fog in the air, which made it feel spooky beautiful.

It was strange being outside so early, though. I’d been woken up by a nightmare, which was some sort of mix of Jurassic Park with the zombie apocalypse — zombie dinosaurs in a kitchen, maybe? — featuring the Vlog Brothers being mildly heroic and rescuing trapped children. I wasn’t young enough to be rescued by them so I was going to have to find my own way off the island. I woke up as I was trying to decide whether to open the walk-in freezer that might or might not have a zombie raptor trapped inside. Not a particularly fun dream, although it sounds a lot more fun in retrospect than it was while I was in it. But I didn’t stay outside in the spooky beautiful night, because hey, zombie dinosaurs. My grill made a noise — probably a mouse living inside it — and I scurried inside and locked the door behind me.

Even though I didn’t hit my word count yesterday, I had a lot of fun writing. For the first time, possibly ever, I really got into the NaNo spirit. No tinkering, no tweaking, no polishing, just one word after the next. Well, all right, that’s not quite true, but minimal polishing. In particular, I let the em dashes fly. I normally try to be careful about how I use em dashes. My instinct is to use them all the time, everywhere, but I pull myself back and try to limit them to one phrase set off in em dashes at most every several hundred words. Yesterday, it was em dashes, em dashes, and more em dashes.

Today is going to be the same, I hope. I’m still in the scene that I thought would be fun to write, and it was, so that’ll be a good starting place for today. I’m in a little bit of the murky middle at the moment, though — I know this scene, but after I finish it, I’m kind of vague on what happens next. It means I’ll probably slow down a bit. Given that I’m slow already, compared to the NaNo pace, that’s probably not good news. But that’s okay. If it weren’t NaNo, I’d be pleased with my daily word count this week, so I’m going to do my best to break my goal of 2K, but otherwise not stress about it.

Last night’s dinner: ham and a baked sweet potato. I bought these white sweet potatoes from Trader Joe’s and I’ve eaten them mashed a couple of times, which was pretty good, but yesterday was the first time I baked one. Much, much better. If it weren’t Saturday, I’d be headed back to TJ’s today to pick up some more, but the parking there is a nightmare on Saturday, so I’ll try to make it sometime next week. But it was so good that I ate every single bit, including the skin, leaving none for poor Bartleby, who adores sweet potato. Fortunately, he whimpered at me which alleviated my guilt, since one of my basic rules of parenting/dog parenting is that whiners should never be rewarded for whining.

The ham was from CostCo, purchased because it looked like an absolute bargain of a protein: I chopped it up and put it into the freezer in packages with enough for maybe three or four meals for me, and I’d guess I will be eating it for months. I’m sure it’ll average out to less than $1/meal. (With no carbs in my diet, I need plenty of protein.) Unfortunately, I realized belatedly, after I got it home and started chopping it up, that it was cured with nitrates which I’m not supposed to eat. At the moment, I can’t possibly tell if I’m reacting to nitrates — way too many other things that I’ve eaten that I’m not supposed to — but I’m hoping that once I get back on track, it doesn’t turn out to be a trigger food. I’d be very sad to have my freezer filled with protein that I shouldn’t eat.

Good luck with words today, fellow writers! I hope we all catch the current.