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I slept in this morning. Cordelia demanded that I stay in bed while she got up and got ready for school. She was really adamant, so I'm not sure how she'll deal with it on Wednesday (dentist appointment) and Thursday (volunteering at the school library) when I absolutely have to get up with her. Also, our house is small. Cordelia's alarm is quite loud enough to wake me (mine and Scott's never wake her. I guess she sleeps more soundly than I do). I don't have an easy time just going back to sleep, and I'm not sure I like losing two or so hours of the morning.

I ended up not going to the Girl Scout meeting yesterday. Cordelia was reluctant to walk to the meeting by herself (it would have been a route she's never taken before because construction at the school means people can no longer walk around the building), so Scott drove her. Scott loaded the car with things to donate while Cordelia was at the meeting. He couldn't get everything into the car and still have room for me and Cordelia.

When we went to pick up Cordelia, the troop was still preparing food over the fire. They hadn't yet finished anything, so Cordelia was understandably reluctant to leave. The woman running the meeting (it was her house where the fire was) offered to keep Cordelia after the meeting so that we could run our errands, so we did that.

We stopped first at the library. There were two books for Cordelia; both Catching Fire and Mockingjay had come in immediately after I put holds on them. I was surprised by the speed of that. There was a CD for me. It's Christmas music, so I'm kind of reluctant to listen to it, but, then again, I like Christmas music even if it is out of season. I'll just make sure I listen while Scott and Cordelia aren't around.

We dropped the donations at the PTO Thrift Shop. They're probably going to throw some things out because I think there were stuffed animals in at least one of the bags and they specifically don't take stuffed animals. At least, they'll be glad of the clothes. Those are in pretty good condition. Some of them, Cordelia didn't wear at all.

After that, we went back and got Cordelia then went for bubble tea. I went the heavy caffeine route and had a tiki tea which is half milk tea and half coffee. I probably shouldn't have bothered to have it flavored. I can never taste the flavoring with that no matter which one I chose.

Saturday, we took the ornaments off the tree (we actually took the tree down while Cordelia was at Girl Scouts yesterday). We put aside all of the unbreakable ornaments, and we'll probably get rid of them. I feel a little bad about that as they're perfectly good ornaments, just kind of dull. They were excellent while Cordelia was small because she'd have to really work to destroy one. Dropping it or knocking it off the tree wouldn't do it.

Amazon has some ornaments on sale that I'm considering buying. I don't know anywhere local where I could find similar items, or I'd go for that option. Adding these would strain our storage capacity, but they're very pretty.

We completely forgot one thing we'd meant to do on Saturday-- Recently, the long time partner of one of our local friends, evalerie, passed away, and the memorial was on Saturday afternoon. We had every intention of going, but it completely slipped our minds what with Scott sleeping until after 1:00 (the memorial was at 2:00, if I'm recalling correctly). We wanted to be supportive for the family.

(no subject)

I'm still working away on the Fandom Snowflake Challenge.

I haven't managed to do Day Four yet-- That requires talking to someone new. I've decided to comment on a fic I loved when I read it years ago. It's on fanfiction.net, and, at that time, I didn't have an account, so I couldn't leave feedback. I've had the window open to comment for days, but I keep failing my morale check.

I haven't even started the challenge for Day Six. That is to make a new fanwork. I don't have any ideas that are brief enough, and I'm afraid of starting yet another story that I can't finish. I so seldom write short things, and I don't generally write fast, so something longer would be quite a commitment.

I'm skipping Day Eight altogether because I'm not comfortable asking other people to praise me.

Days Seven, Nine, Ten, and Twelve, I'm still working on, but I've done Day Eleven. I'll post that later, hopefully when I have a couple of more days done to post with it.

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I just did one of my exercise programs, Body Electric, for the first time in two or three months (I haven't done it reliably since before my grandfather's funeral). I'm too exhausted to do Sit and Be Fit which comes on immediately after Body Electric. I can really tell that I've lost strength. Things that would have been, if not easy, at least possible back in October were too much today. I don't think there was a single exercise I could do all the way through without stopping to rest. I stepped back the weights, using three pounders where I would have used fives and twos where I would have used threes, and that didn't really help.

Sit and Be Fit is a lot easier than Body Electric, so I might have been able to do that anyway, but I'm very shaky, and I thought I'd better work my way up. Maybe I should have started with Sit and Be Fit instead of Body Electric. But Body Electric does me more good, I suspect.

Now I just have to keep it up and start walking on the treadmill in the basement.

(no subject)

Day 7
In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. (More than one is okay, too.) Tell us about it, tell us why you love it, give us some examples and recs. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

There's something that fascinates me about time travel fic, specifically fix-it time travel fic. I love the idea that history is malleable when it becomes the now. I don't generally care if the time travel is intended to produce the same story as canon (fixing things that were worse than canon) or if it's meant to try for better results. I don't even care if the fix it attempts work or make things worse as long as the repercussions of the meddling seem plausible.

I've mostly seen this sort of story in Harry Potter and Naruto, but I don't see why it couldn't work for other fandoms. I haven't read any new time travel fics recently (largely because I haven't been reading much fic at all. I need to remedy that).

I highly recommend Deadwoodpecker's Backward With Purpose and its sequels (not all of those were complete the last time I checked). This is a Harry Potter fix it fic that starts from a world where things went considerably worse than they did in canon.

I'm sure I've got links for other time travel fics. I just no longer remember most of the titles and can't bring myself to follow all of the links I've saved off. I'm afraid I'd fall into the rabbit hole and never come out. Then again, it would probably be a good thing to start updating my recs site, and that requires following those links and rereading those fics.

Day 11
In your own space, post a rec for fannish and/or creative resources. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I've got three resources to recommend.

First, metanews, metanews, metanews. This is a newsletter that collects links to meta posting around the web. The link finders, of which I am one, do some searching of DW, AO3, Pinboard, and those meta blogs we've found out about. We're currently looking for someone to look for meta on Tumblr (we had someone, but they haven't been able to continue), and we would like someone to look for meta on LJ.

writethisfanfic is a writers' community. Every day, there's a check in post where writers can talk about their progress and support each other. I usually do check in posts for one week every month. The community is fairly quiet right now.

ushobwri is a writers' community. There are three posts a week, an inspirational post on Monday, a check in post on Wednesday, and a snippet post on Friday. This community is fairly active.