Thoughts on April

Hello, hello, hello! It's the beginning {ish} of a brand new month! I've always thought of April as a sweet quiet peaceful month, especially since it follows March which is usually riddled with major winter storms. April is the month when it rains, when the mountains get all lovely and misty out, when life starts to wake up, and when the flowers start to poke their tender heads up and unfurl their delicate leaves and blossoms. April is also an important month to me personally because two great guys I love are born in it. My kid brother turned fourteen on the 3rd {post about that coming soon....hopefully}, and my darling husband will turn twenty-three in exactly seventeen days. I can't wait for his birthday to come so I can "go all out" and help him celebrate his special day. Plus it will be his first birthday as a married man. *winks*

So, on the agenda for April is, first off, Camp NaNoWriMo. This is gonna be a great session of NaNo {unless I run outta caffeine} because I get to set my own word count goal. I'm using April's session of NaNo {and probably July's also} to rewrite The Cleveland Mysteries Vol. 1: The Lost Rubies. My best friend has turned into my own personal author counselor/editor/the-mean-person-with-The-Stick and together we're gonna tackle the task of bringing the first two books up to date and on pace with the third book in the series. We've worked up some great ideas to help the plot flow along and add more drama and adventure. I like to think of one of the ideas as "dead grandma." You'll just have to wait and see why. *evil grin* I'll be doing the actual rewriting while she'll be checking my bad spelling, making sure I'm dropping enough hints/not dropping too many hints, and making sure I keep on track and stick to my deadlines. She's great and I really appreciate her taking the time outta her busy schedule to help me with my Cleveland project. I'm officially in her debt and must think of a great way to repay her someday.

When I'm not working on my rewrite {which is not as often as I'd like you to think it is - I only just finished the first chapter yesterday!}, I'm mentally planning my husband's birthday. Now, I already ordered his presents that I couldn't get at Target or Kmart {Amazon, you are so handy sometimes!} and they're sitting all cozy like in a forbidden-to-the-husband cabinet, wrapped up and waiting for his special day. We still have to go to Kmart for socks and underwear though. And then I still need to find him a super cute special birthday card. That aside, I have to take inventory of the decorations left over from my birthday in October and see if we need to get more balloons; they're handy for keeping him occupied. I just hand him the bag of balloons and say, "Would you blow these up and hang them around the house please, darling?" and it'll be at least twenty minutes before I see him again. *smiles* The birthday dinner will be an interesting deal. He likes chicken {I don't much} so I'm gonna shoot for getting him some fried chicken from the local market. They make really good fried chicken. The cake is what I'm currently puzzled over. I want to get my sister to make her famous 15 pound quadruple chocolate cake {seriously, it's huge and it takes seven people who normally devour cake in two days a whole week or more to eat the leftovers!}.But then I sometimes want to just get a cake mix and make it myself, because I don't want a whole lotta leftover cake laying around in the fridge. And then, on my really tired days, I just want to get him a random cake from the store bakery and have that, but they're so sugary. And that's usually when I revert back to my sister's yummy chocolate cream cheese frosting and delicious rich cake. And it doesn't help that his only preference for cake is no coconut and no carrot cake. *exasperated look*

So my two major projects, Clevelands and husband's birthday cake, aside, I'm also still "working" on my secret project. I was originally hoping to have it finished by his birthday, but I may have to readjust that mental daydream. I took a short break from it and then got all excited about the Clevelands. Now I'm wanting to switch gears again and keep working on my secret project. What I need to do is figure out how to work on two writing projects simultaneously without frying my brain. On top of that, we've had a bit of a bump with our food stamps. *headdesk* Oh well.

The weather has been gorgeous lately! Last weekend it was all wet and rainy, and yesterday it steadily rained all day long. Ooh, I just love weather like this! Now driving in it is a little bit of a different matter. Also, I'm attempting to introduce my husband to the classic mysteries I grew up with. I've made him watch a few of BBC's Miss Marple and Poirot shows, with a few Cadfael mysteries from the library patiently waiting for me to put them on and override his objections. Next on my list of mysteries to share with him will be the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes, the classic adaption of the good old detective. After that, I'll either force my poor husband to watch every single episode in one of the above series or fall back to watching chick flicks. A pity my local library has such a small selection of good chick flicks, adventure movies and BBC shows in general.

In the reading department, I'm currently reading Murder With Mirrors by Agatha Christie and loving it. I may have just found my favorite Christie novel! I have two more on the shelf waiting for me. I also have a Christian historical fiction review book coming eventually and I'm trying my best not to go out and buy all of Julie Klassen's books that I don't already have {which would be about four books}. I'm so miffed that my library doesn't have a single one of her books and they're exactly what I'm craving, aside from Agatha Christie mysteries. *pouts* Maybe I can pace myself till October and then buy myself the books as a birthday present to me. Hmm, yes, I like that idea. Plus if I do that then I'll have spent the birthday budget and my husband won't be able to do anything scary like get me all kinds of stuff. Then again, if he gets a job job, then that plan won't work. Hmm......

Anyway, that's about all I have to say for now. Catch ya later!