Little scenes

I set myself the job this morning of filling in some of the holes in the text. I described a few incidental characters, and realized that I hadn't done a good job of describing Salvatore, so I did that, too. I also added in a scene where one of the cabin boys (a chipmunk named Ally - when this one gets hurt later on, his replacement is another chipmunk named Theo. I don't think we ever get a Simon, though) explains some aspects of ship life to Annarisse. I finally gave the second mate a name, and as I go through the book, I'm going to have to add in some descriptions involving him, the carpenter, the sailmaker, and some of the mice gunners. (There are thirty-two of them, so I didn't bother to name them all. During the battle of Rocksbarren, there will be bloody mice parts raining down on the ship from the cannon fodder manning our guns.)

Basically, I have the body of the book done except for a few scenes. This is just fleshing it out. With the next book, I'll do more of this stuff before I start, for continuity's sake. The only big problem with doing it this way is that eighty thousand words is unweildy. I scrolled through sixty-five pages of stuff last night to find a scene I'd skipped. Also, I've now got a situation where the main doc is going to differ significantly from the component-parts docs I had before.

I'm going to go work out, get my hair cut and my eyebrows waxed, and give Piet some time to relax, maybe not in that order. Ah, Saturday.

Dice (an Elizabeth story)

In order to understand this post, you must have one crucial piece of information about our family. My husband and I are inveterate role-players. For the uninitiated among you, that means we own large numbers of dice. Some are the usual little cubes with pips on them that you'll find with any board game. Some are cubes with digits instead of pips. Some have four sides, some eight, many have ten, a few have twelve or twenty or even, in one case, thirty-four. My dice box is a big hexagonal make-up box, silver in colour, a gift at Christmas from sassy_fae and etherlad. I have about sixty different dice in it. About half of those are ten-sided.

Elizabeth loves my dice box. When we have people over to role-play, she will sit in my lap or someone else's and play with the dice. One of her first hundred words, back when we were still counting the new ones, was "dice!" She loves rolling them, throwing them, and fiddling with them.

Well, this morning, Elizabeth decided she wanted to play with the dice. "Boite! Dice pease, Mommy!" And she plopped it down on top of the newspaper. The news being supremely uninteresting this morning, I agreed to open the box. She proceeded to take out one white ten-sided die. She rolled this, quite expertly - it went about ten inches and came to rest in the middle of the table. "C'est un cinq!" I told her. "Cinq, six, sept!" said Elizabeth. Then she picked out another die from the box, a six-sider this time, and rolled again. "Deux!" I announced. "Deux, trois, quatre!" said Elizabeth. Then she looked back at the first die. "Cinq!"

She took out fifteen or so dice, one at a time, spending several minutes with the lovely marbilized purple ten-sider that is my personal favourite. "Purple! Purple dice!" she told me, before rolling it. "Quatre!" said I, and she said, "purple quatre, cinq, six!" Once she rolled a die and it rolled right into the pocket on the front of my pygamas. She laughed and laughed. "Mommy, dice poche!"

Shortly after that we played the Ramasse game, otherwise known as "clean up!" As she put them into the box, she was counting, in English this time. "Two, three, four, five, six! Two, three, four, five, six! Eleven, fourteen! Three, four, all done!"

She's so smart. :)

I've been bad. . .

But it felt so good!

I spent money on clothes for the first time since October. I'm actually quite proud of having lasted this long without buying so much as a pair of socks. But I was in Lindor today and they had their big winter sale on. I could have spent a lot more, but I chose to be very, very picky. So I came out with one pair of pants and a really pretty top in a slinky, clingy fabric that I love. The pants were $59.99 when I tried them on last fall, and I couldn't afford that, but I got them today for $34.97. They don't even need to be shortened; the only reason I try on pants in that store is because their petite sizes are an inch shorter than everyone else's, so they actually fit. That saves me ten bucks. The top was $15, regular $30. I'm happy.

I also got my hair cut, got my eyebrows waxed, and took the pants I bought in January with a gift certificate to be shortened. (My lovely, nearly-new sewing machine is sitting in the corner of the living room looking very forlorn. I just never get around to doing that kind of thing. I'll do some more quilting in the summer, or at least I'll finish up the baby quilt I started. In the meantime, new pants will be fixed at Stitch It.)

That should hold me until April or May, when I'll need to buy a few things for spring/summer. Last year's new purchases are all too big, which is a nice feeling but expensive when you do it every year, in one direction or the other.