Distracted By Something Shiny

So I am feeling better than last week. My back pain is down to a 5 from the 8 to 10 it was the last time I posted. My PT said my muscles were really banded back there. The biggest issue now is how bad I want more pain pills. For a few nights there I got to experience what it felt like to be pain free again and it was glorious and I want to be able to feel that again, but I can tell how easy it would be to fall down that rabbit hole. Boo that.

Anyways, I thought I'd review one of the books ceitfianna left here for me and The Nephew. This one is called Escape From The Overworld: An Unofficial Minecrafter's Adventure. It is based on the video game Minecraft, which I know very little about, but I know enough about video gaming to get this book. In it a character from Minecraft gets sucked through a computer into our world and makes a new friend, an eleven year old girl who is routinely bullied at school. She takes him around to see her world without realizing she has left her computer on and it is letting monsters from Minecraft into our world. Then she has to rise up with the Minecraft kid to save our world and close the portal and even gets a chance to best her bullies. It was fun and cute and read a lot like those Fic-For-Kids I write for The Nephew, some fanfic for kids who play Minecraft. Hell, if I could get the thumbs up from Marvel, I could start publishing those Avengers fic I have written for The Nephew, damn!

Unfortunately, it seems The Nephew has already read this one. He dropped by unexpected and I had it sitting out and he said, "Hey, what's that book for?" And I said, "Never you mind!" Then he said he'd already read it and I said 'no way,' that it had just been released and he probably had one of the other ones. I asked his dad though and he was like, "Oh yeah, we have that one. We bought it the day it came out. That's what happens when you are a gamer kid with a gamer dad." I'm still putting it in the bag of books for his birthday though and he can pass it on to a friend or to his school library.

It was a super cute, fun book and anyone who has a kid into gaming should really buy it! Hell, adults who are into gaming would enjoy it too.

So, now that it is the end of the first month of 2015, how about I put up my word counts for 2014? lol I stopped putting up my monthly counts last year just because I was so sick at the beginning of the year, but I continued to keep track of what I was writing, if not weekly, at least throughout the month. So, here it all is!

( Numbers under the cut! )

Just a few things to point out…

16 Fandoms written in.
3 New Fandoms this year - Agents of Shield, Power Pack Kids & Roller Team.
Top 3 Most Written in Fandoms were The Hobbit, The Avengers & CW RPS.
My Least Written in Fandom was Hawaii Five-O.
My Lowest Monthly Word Count was 0 words in April.
My Highest Monthly Word Count was 15,350 words in December.
Finished 2 major WIPs that had been languishing for more than a year - the Jeff/Jensen & Jared/Misha fics.
Wrote my first Tim/Raylan and Kirk/McCoy fics ever.
Wrote 4 Fic-For-Kids.
Completed 21 stories this year. 12 of those were done in December.
53,300 words written in 2014!!

Now, onto 2015, wherein I am determined to finish that fucking Sterek AU! And maybe write that Hunger Games Primrose fic I finally figured out an outline for.

We babysat The Niece and Nephew Wednesday night, while their parents went out to dinner. My niece does this adorably cute thing where you ask her for ‘nuggles’ and she puts her head right up to yours and puts one arm around your neck in some weird hug/snuggle combo. It's too cute. Also, she kept giving my mom her little toy balls and then my sister would ask, “Can I have one?” and The Niece would give one to my sister and then immediately take it back and give it to my mom and give my sister this sly little smirk like, ‘I tricked you!’. She totally knew she was making a joke.

So I played with The Nephew and first we watched trailers for movies we are excited for; the new Godzilla movie, How To Train Your Dragon 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy. Then we ate dinner while we listened to the Lego Movie soundtrack that my sister downloaded for him. Also, my mom brought over over mini-chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles for dessert! And then we played Legos.

( Our Lego play, with pictures, under the cut )

The Nephew’s parents showed up just as we were ‘setting sail’, but my sister took pictures of our ship for us. I think Vitruvius and the Master Builders would be proud. That is my nephew’s imagination at work there!

I spent five hours straight one-on-one with The Nephew on Saturday, which was exhausting…but you know what I love? I love that we have geeky things in common. Like I got online and showed him the new trailer to The Hobbit and he was so excited. He said, “Those barrels were just sitting there empty so the dwarves decided to go for a ride.” And a while back he told me that he didn’t know what Godzilla was, so we watched some video clips on youtube. Then the other day he was at the video rental store and they had an old VHS of the Godzilla remake and he spent one dollar of his own money to buy it for me. While I am a fan of the old giant monster movies, I’ve never had the desire to see the remake of Godzilla, but dammit, I’m watching this movie because my boy pulled money out of his own wallet to buy it for me! He also bought the original Star Trek movie (the original original) for himself because he knows all his aunts love Star Trek and he wants to know more about it.

So, we were making cover art for his second story in ‘The Experiment’ series and we got about halfway through and he lets out this great big sigh and says, “This takes a long time.” And I went, “I know! This is why I tell you to stop bugging me when I am working on a story for you! It’s hard work, man!” That time I prompted him to write me a fic, he told me that writing is too hard. And now he tells me that making art takes a long time. I resisted the urge to yell at him, “Our creative muses own us! We bleed for our art! Get use to it!” The cover art called for images of some X-Men and also images for his original characters, Roller Girl and Roller Boy. We were searching Google images and scrolling through so he could point out which ones he wanted to use. Pro Tip: Don’t search the term ‘Roller Girl’ with a 7yr old in the room. He thought it was hysterical that I yelled out, “Oh crap. Not appropriate!” and then clicked away as fast as I could and then did it again when I searched ‘Roller Skating Girl’. We finally got a good selection off just the term ‘roller skating’ but by then he had dissolved into a fit of giggles.

Also, he is such a good big brother. The Niece was in a pretty good mood until the last hour and then she got tired and realized this wasn’t her house and we weren’t her mommy and my sister didn’t know what to do to make her stop screaming. So The Nephew comes over and starts singing and doing these little dances for her and she immediately stops crying. Her face was like, ‘Hey! I know this person! That’s my brother!’ After that, anytime she would start fussing again, he’d get down in her face and do silly voices and jump around for her until she stopped. Eventually she passed out on my sister’s shoulder.

Anyways, I’ve got a fic ready to post tomorrow and then I’m off to Chicago on Friday for the weekend, so you guys have a great weekend too!

So, my sister claims she actually works at her job, but then she comes home and shows me what she has been doing with her time. Like making up a royal schedule for if Fili & Kili were Kings Under The Mountain. Yes, King(s) plural, because they would have to rule together, because they are BROTHERS!

The Royal Schedule:
Breakfast
Braid each others hair
Royal blah blah blah
Nappies
Snackies
Wrestling
Go here to see more, as it only gets better from there.

She also sent me this picture of a Bag-End Litter Box and I WANT!! But apparently you can’t actually purchase it. /pout/

( Picture Under The Cut )

We also had a very serious discussion here at FanGirl Central about whether or not Dwarves have knots and alpha/omega relationships. I’d like to say it took us awhile to go there, but sadly I’m pretty sure that topic was broached within hours of the first Hobbit viewing. Yeah, we’re a classy bunch. But then again, come on, if it makes sense anywhere, it’s among the dwarves, what with so few females and the whole ‘other species’ thing going on. Idk if it has happened in the fandom yet, but there is MPreg out there already for The Hobbit. Though the general opinion at FGC, concerning Thorin being pregnant, is that it does rather impede all his ‘being majestic’ time. Being majestic is his number one job requirement, after all.

Also, The Nephew was talking to my sister about The Hobbit the other day but he doesn’t know any character’s names except Bilbo so he called Gandalf, ‘that one real tall guy who gave Bilbo his sword’, and Galadriel, ‘that guy’s lady friend’, and Lindir, ‘that guy’s friend who ran up and told them that the dwarves were leaving’. Idk why that amused me so much, but it was all kinds of adorable-awesome.

To Sum Up: I got my hair cut today! It took for-freaking-ever, well beyond what it should have and I will not use that stylist again, but it looks really cute and feels so good not to just have a mop of hair weighing me down. So, accomplished!

I have failed you guys on awesome stories of The Nephew lately, so let me share one now. So he came to stay for a few days over his Christmas break. At Christmas dinner he asked my sister if we were taking him to see The Hobbit. My brother tells him that he will discuss it with us, so my sister says, “We’ll see what you’re dad says, buddy.” About an hour later, The Nephew comes into the kitchen, sidles up to her and goes, all quiet and conspiratorially, “We are going to see The Hobbit, right?” He knows who the sucker is! My sister replies, “Of course we are,” in a similar conspiratorial whisper.

But the next day, her car broke down and it also started snowing like a freak storm. We decided to wait a day. In the morning, my sister wakes up with the flu. The Nephew was so forlorn. My sister had bought him a Bilbo-costume for Christmas and he loved it! He put it on and posed for pictures, trying to imitate what the movie posters look like. He even wore it to breakfast at the local Big Boy. Here he was in his costume and thought he wouldn’t be able to see the movie. In swoops The BFF, who took us to the movie while my poor sister stayed home and emptied her stomach.

I told him upfront that he had to sit for the whole movie and he actually did very well for a six year old. I mean, he talked through the whole thing but I only had to tell him to sit still the one time, so that is pretty amazing. The poor BFF got the brunt of his questions and comments and she deserves an award for how she helped out with him that day.

And now, his amusing reactions throughout the movie. ( Spoilers for The Hobbit behind this cut. )

I think perhaps the next piece of fanfic I write him will be a Hobbit story. I even have an idea in mind!

My Thanksgiving weekend was really good actually. ceitfianna came down on Wednesday afternoon and we spent a good three hours just talking; about fandom, writing, TV, her new job. Then when my sister came home, we decided to go out to eat. After, my sis had some cooking to do for the next day, so we put on That 70s Show and just hung out while she cooked.

On Thursday, we went to my mom’s for dinner. She was excited both to be hosting her first holiday dinner in her new house and also that I brought a friend along. While we were there, I actually got to see her cat, Whispa. She is a kitten of Zippo and Papa Bear, so that means she is Roo and Buddy’s (my current cats) sister. I haven’t seen her in so long because she always hides under the bed whenever someone comes in the house. But my sister dragged her out and as soon as Whispa saw me she reached out one little paw for me. It’s been around 8 years since I lived in the same house as her, but she always was a total sweetie.

( Here is a picture of Whispa. )

Thursday night we watched our traditional Buffy Thanksgiving episode and then my sister wanted to watch the Demon-Giles episode, since Giles is her favorite, and ceitfianna wanted to watch the episode where the Initative tries to kill Buffy and Buffy is super badass.

On Friday we went and saw Red Dawn - (oh, I have things to say! I have things to say about another movie we watched this weekend as well, so I’ll save that for tomorrow’s post). At any rate, if you want ridiculous fun with hotties and guns, this is the movie for you. The BFF came with us and afterwards we played some movie trivia game and we all got a little silly. Then we watched another movie, which I will talk about later because it was very interesting.

On Saturday my sister and I went to my dad’s, where The Nephew demanded my attention every second and also loaned me some comic that he would like me to read, so we can 'call each other and talk about it'. Fanboys FTW, right? It was a Spiderman comic, so the boy has good tastes. That night we watched X-Men: First Class and I still see the Darwin/Alex every damn time.

ceitfianna went home on Sunday and I have just been chilling ever since. I got really tired Wednesday night, got some nasty vertigo, which usually only happens when I am exhausted or sick or something. After that I tried to pace myself better and I don’t feel nearly as wiped now as I thought I would.

Honestly, one of the better Thanksgiving weekends I have had in a long while. Oh, and we put the Christmas tree up and got in the spirit by watching ‘Elf’. And last night I watched the Leverage Christmas episode, so there you go. How were all your weekends?

I am sitting here right now with the TV on low volume so I don't wake The Nephew who is asleep on the couch. But I have to leave the TV on low to watch the weather because it is weird outside right now. It is kind of blowy and stuff but it is also like really light out - way more light than it should be at this time of night and also green. Like really green looking outside. Very strange. And I am a little concerned because The BFF just got in her car to drive 30 minutes home.

I am probably jinxing it to say that we haven't had the sirens go off yet this year (or if we did it was during that strange weather we had at the end of March/beginning of April, so it hasn't been for a long while).

So the TV is on CBS and suddenly Hawaii Five-O comes on and I am just struck by how unbelievably hot all these people are. Just...hotties. All of them. I want to do bad things to them. Okay.

Anyways, I really just popped in to tell you all that The Nephew is writing his own fanfic now!! OMG. It is too cute. One of the stories was like, "Iron Man is fighting Lex Luthor. Iron Man is hurt bleeding really bad. Now Batman is here. He fights The Joker. Now Batman is shot in his leg and goes to the hospital. The legs on Iron Man's armor falls off." (that was a rough version from my memory, but close enough. After all, I don't reprint people's fanfic without their permission. LOL My nephew has fanfic!).

It is so AWESOME!! He is writing his own fics, you guys!! He draws little pictures on the front of the paper and then writes the title and follows it with a "This story is by..." And on one of them he even wrote "For: *my sister's name and my name* - if they were Hulks, they'd be my favorite Hulks."

You guys! On his X-Men fic I wrote him, my dedication at the top said, "If he were an X-Men, he would be my favorite X-Men of all because he is my favorite person of all."

HE IS WRITING HEADER INFO AND MAKING STORY ART FOR HIS FANFIC!!!

I want to squeeze him all up!! MY FANBOY!!

The Nephew’s birthday is on Sunday. This means Sunday is Mother’s Day, The Nephew’s 6th birthday and my 2nd LJ anniversary. His party is Saturday. They are having it at a park so here’s crossing my fingers that is doesn’t rain and that it isn’t as cold as the last time. It is a robot theme party, so my sister made a giant robot costume out of a box. (yes, there will be pictures). The last time she turned a box into a robot he was 2 (maybe 3) and he was terrified of it. I hope he thinks it is awesome this time because I am worried he is too old for robot-boxes and my sister will be so disappointed if he doesn’t love it.

( Here I brag about my nephew and The Avengers story I wrote for him. )

I’ll try to put the fic up on Monday. Also, Sunday is my LJ anniversary and I will be doing the Fictional Story Meme where you all leave me little stories about some crazy adventure the two of us got up to together (hence the fictional part of the meme). Now I am off to bed early so I can get up for the birthday party. Night all.

So, here is an awesome story about why The Nephew is so awesome. And why fanboys own my heart.

( How he made his first fanfic prompt ever! )

So…I wrote him his first fanfic ever based off his idea about Jean and Xavier vs. Magneto. I even got The BFF to make fic art for it, so it had a cover for him to see when he opened it up.

My little fanboy and his first fanfic prompt. I’m still all hearts just thinking about it. Now I think it may be time to help him write his first very own fanfic. Don’t you think?

Also, the other day we were on the phone and I was asking him how to beat Bowser on Super Mario Party 8 (in the Super Star level) and after he explained it to me and I said, "I tried that but I die before I can get him enough times," - The Nephew says in his serious Little Man voice, "Listen, you just have to keep practicing and try your best, okay?" <3