NaNoWriMo, and Why I Am Late...Again.

I feel like I'm beginning to fall into a habit of this. 

Before i explain to you why I'm late this week, I also have an announcement to make. 

So, this month, I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo, which is a program exactly like the regular NaNoWriMo, except for the fact that it's in the summer. I'm writing a book and I'm really liking it, and it's been taking up a lot of my time. 

I wanted to do it in April or whenever the first one was, but I couldn't manage it because I was still in school and I had a bunch of other stuff to do to get ready for the hot summer months. 

But I'm doing it this month. It's super exciting and fun and if any of you are writers, I suggest you check it out. There's a children's/teen's website called The Young Writers' Program at ywp.nanowrimo.org , and there's another program for 13-113 that's just plain-ol' National Novel Writing Month at www.nanowrimo.org . And for summer there's www.campnanowrimo.org .

It's super fun and free and you can participate in it at any age. In YWP and Camp NaNo, you set your word count goal, which is the number of words you aim to write in 30 days, though in the "real" NaNoWriMo, the set goal is 50,000 words. 

It's not nearly as hard or daunting as you think, because if you write a certain amount of words a day, you reach your WCG in no time at all! 

Anyway, if you want to try it out, you can do novels, biographies, screenplays, scripts, poems, songs, or even sentences if you want! All that matters is that you write and have fun. Check it out. It's amazing. 

NOW! To the excuses for why I didn't post and my updates on the 4th! ^-^

In my defense, I did have a very impromptu-ly crazy Thursday/Friday. 

So, as you who live in the Land of the Free, also known as that fat lazy country with those unrefined savages, or The United States of America, know, Thursday just so happened to be Independence Day! It's been that way for, oh, about over two hundred years. 

The Fourth of July is kind of an important day for us rebellious, independent US of A citizens, and hence we do stupid things, like throw big parties with lots of meat and potato chips and yummy drinks. And set off big, explosive, colorful and sometimes terrifying tendrils of flame to show our excitement and joy over our freedom and liberty from other countries. 

The only drawback from these parties and fireworks is when you're sitting there watching the show, and your neighbor, who's joined you for the big, delicious celebratory party, accidentally puts the firework in upside-down. 

And so it explodes about 20 feet away from you, shocking and scaring everyone there, making you scream as you feel the shockwave and see the brilliant burst of color that has exploded all too close to you and your friends and family, and setting off the car alarm of your best friend's brand-spankin'-new bright white Toyota Tundra. 

It was an awesome and exciting experience, and since my boyfriend decided I needed to be comforted, and wrapped his arms around me, it was also sort of cute, too. 

After the party, two of my friends slept over, totally ruined half of my makeup doing blind makeovers, and stayed half of the next day, when I had to clean the house and help prepare food for a get-together we were having with some of our closest friends. 

They stayed until ten, and after a long argument between my friend Brianna and her mother, she was allowed to spend the night. And we watched Les Mis. And we wrote, since we're both aspiring authors. And then fell asleep. 

Yesterday was Saturday, and I don't really have an excuse for not posting, and I was even going to post, but in the morning I had to return canopies and chairs to my neighbors that they had let us borrow for the party, and then I was reading all afternoon. 

I finished my book at 1:30 am this morning, finally went to bed around 2am, and then woke up at 11:28 to discover my family gone to 10 o'clock mass.

So here I am, two days late after a crazy weekend, happy that I broke my record for how late I've slept in ever because I'm not nearly as tired as I have been for the past week. 

I guess a good night's sleep solved all my problems. Anyway, my mom and dad are taking my siblings and I on a surprise outing, so I guess I'll see you all next week. Though I probably won't post until Saturday, since I have a birthday party to attend. 

At least I let you know this week, right?

....Right? 

;)

Keep Calm and Endeavor On,

~Adalyn

Excuses, Easter, and Everything in Between!

Well here I am again. For the third time. Trying to write this post. Safari has decided to make like Sebastian and crash all the time. I will explain.

Excuse #1 for why I haven't posted in weeks and weeks: My ancient and beloved laptop Sebastian committed suicide and murder all at the same time because he took all of my novels, ideas, lists, bookmarked websites, and passwords to the technological graveyard with him.

And I don't like using Safari for Internet because its slower and harder to type by a million and because of reasons stated above.

The first time it crashed, I was trying to insert a picture. And then it crashed and I lost everything. The second time, I had given up on the picture and was trying to insert a link. So I went to go copy it from YouTube and when I came back, there was this little error code and it said something about looking for a group of bloggers with similar problems.

For moral support, I guess?

But now I'm using my brand-spankin'-new blogger app! And if you're seeing this, then it worked!

So that's one excuse. Excuse #2: Holy Week and piano and school and friends and really just life in general have been moving so slowly and so quickly at once.

Lent seemed to fly by, and it's already Easter Thursday! I sort of miss Holy Week. It's the most eye-opening time of the year, I think. The beginning of a new life, a life open to God and life eternal.

I seem to be moving pretty quickly. Usually I'm slower than this. Maybe it's just the fact that I'm text-typing instead if real-typing.

It's harder to punctuate and spellcheck this way. And I can see much less of my post, so it seems like my sentences are really long, even when they're not.

Oh, well, it's better than leaving my beloved blog to die in that cybernetic graveyard we talked about earlier. At least I can salvage it.

But anyway, on to Holy Week! It really started for me on the Tuesday before Easter. My church had an absolutely gorgeous service called Tenebrae (pronounced TEN-eh-brey), which involved singing, readings, and the symbolic putting out of candles. We sang my favorite Lenten song, maybe my favorite choir song, period.

It's called Miserere Mei Deus by Allegri. It translates to "Have mercy on me, God." It's a beautiful piece with five parts, and it's got the sort of bittersweet sound to it that sends shivers down your spine when it's sung a certain way. That's how we sang it.

You can look it up if you want. I won't put in a link because the ones on YouTube just don't sound the way ours did. Standing in the middle of the action, in media res, so to speak, you hear things differently. We took it slower, softer than all the ones on the Internet. It was more sorrowful, somehow. More...repentant.

Tenebrae was probably the best way to start Holy Week, the Easter Tridium.

Then, on Holy Thursday, I sang with our choir again at the evening mass, and it was also beautiful, although in more of a serious way. The Eucharist was removed from the tabernacle and we all processed in to the Hall, the fellowship area, where our priest led a short benediction and then left. The Hall was a place of 24 hour Eucharistic adoration after that. You could come at any hour of the day or night and pray there, in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

What the priest does at that point of the liturgy is reposition the Blessed Sacrament in a different tabernacle and place a veil over it. When he positions the veil over the door of the tabernacle, it is a sign that Jesus has left the earth. It always stabs at my heart when I see the veil over Him. It really makes you feel that he was gone, dead.

Can you imagine? After seeing who you believed to be the savior of the world, the Christ of prophecy die suffering and pitiful...can you imagine still trusting that he would rise again in three days time? What faith you would have to have! It's nearly unbelievable!

I don't know what I would have believed. After following Jesus the Nazarene for three years, maybe knowing him for longer...can you imagine watching him tortured, scourged and beaten, forced to carry his murderers' tool, the wretched and blessed beam of wood he would give his life on. For us! Us, the poor, pitiful, frivolous sinners!

Watching him nailed to a splintered and bloody piece of wood, raised on the future symbol of his power, and bleed and bleed.

I've never seen The Passion, but whenever I think of Our Lord's passion and death, that's how I picture it.

I don't mean to be gruesome, but that's how it really happened. I won't apologize for the truth.

Back to the point, that stab in my heart made Good Friday all the more real. We got to sing the Miserere Mei Deus again, but it was more intense this time, a desperate plea for mercy rather than a humble sorrowing for sin.

Both times it was beautiful, though. What we do on Good Friday is at one point in the service (not a mass because there is no consecration of the Eucharist), everyone walks up to a large crucifix the priest is holding and takes a turn kissing it. The feet or the hands or the head of our crucified savior.

I always touch my lips to his feet. It reminds me of Mary Magdelene, washing Jesus' feet with her tears and drying then with her hair. Anointing them with oil and kissing them because of her deep regret for her sin. It makes me feel even more deeply the hallow emptiness in my soul on that day, knowing that it was me and my sins that put him on the cross. But it's a good emptiness, repentant.

I cried.

But the sorrow of Good Friday just made the Easter joy all the more wonderful.

I woke up at 6:15, still a child at heart, I guess. I'm the one in my family who wakes up my silly and sleepy older brothers on holidays. They never seem to want to get into the spirit of things.
It's annoying sometimes.

Anyway, that's why I wanted to insert a picture before. I got a new hat! Here it is!

I hope that works, anyway. If it doesn't, I will never post a picture again. :P

So I got a whole new summer wardrobe (sort of), and lots of my favorite candy. Then I spent the rest of the day chilling with friends and family. Our cascarone fight will never be forgotten.

So...you've basically caught up. I'm in the fourth quarter of eighth grade and looking forward to summer. Also, my braces are supposed to come off soon, hopefully by the end of June. I have VBS and summer camp to look forward to, and I'd rather so it with a straight smile.

It's really only my front teeth that are messed up, because they closed a space and one of them isn't perfectly aligned with my other teeth. But soon, the orthodontist says. Soon.

So anyway, now that you've read my über-long post, can go and live your perfectly different life.

Have fun, God bless, and happy Easter.

Keep Calm and Endeavor On,
~Adalyn