Last night, I reached 36,000 words. To celebrate, I thought that I would give you a little piece that I wrote about reaching the half way mark:

So, I would say about now we are mid way through my diary. I have to say that I’m quite surprised with what I’ve found in here. I thought it was going to be worse, more embarrassing than this.

I went to visit my dad in Markham on November 20-22, 2009 in Markham, Ontario. I went through my old bedroom closest to see if I could find any more juicy details to add to this novel. I did.

I found something so juicy, that I decided to leave it where it was. I found my other diary. I totally forgot about this one. How could I have forgotten that I had another diary pre-this one?

When I opened the first page of the diary and I didn’t like what I see. I saw scribbles, wet tears, messy writing. I think I know what this diary was about. This was the one about being bullied.

I don’t know if I’m ready to open this diary up yet or not. This one is very personal. I don’t mind talking about my trails and errors trying to find a boyfriend, but this one I find too personal.

At this back of this diary, there are lots of pictures of guys that I had crushes on. This is the book/diary that Britt found out that I had that crush on her brother.

What do I do? Should I go back and get this diary and add it to this one? Should I not open it at all? I know in advance that there are things in there, that I would rather not read again, but then again, I’m curious.

This pre-diary to this current one, would explain things like why my dad wanted me to tell S.B to fuck off or maybe how I first got my crush on Johanthan Taylor Thomas.

This is a question I’ll have to ask myself once I’m done going through the first diary. I’ll have to think about it.

32,012 words.

That’s how many I’ve written. I’m surprised that I was able to make it this far. I still have 7 days left to write my novel. I think I can do it.

Wish me luck.

I’m sure that you’ve seen on of these cats before. Maybe in your Chinese food take out restaurant, or in a store window. These cats are extremely popular.

On Wellington Street West, there is a pho restaurant that A. and I go to. I think it’s called Noodle House. It’s pretty good. When we went there, we noticed that there was a giant lucky cat, but with it’s left arm moving up and down. We thought it was really weird that it was doing it and started imitating it. 

Since then, we’ve been fascinated with these cats. What are they all about? They’re kind of cute looking, if they bring good fortune, maybe we should get one.

We bought one this weekend. It looks like the one pictured above. I took a look on wikipedia this morning to find the history on these things and this is what I found:

The Maneki Neko (招き猫^?, literally “Beckoning Cat“; also known as Welcoming Cat, Lucky Cat, Money cat, or Fortune Cat) is a common Japanese sculpture, often made of porcelain or ceramic, which is believed to bring good luck to the owner. The sculpture depicts a cat (traditionally a Japanese Bobtail) beckoning with an upright paw, and is usually displayed—many times at the entrance—in shops, restaurants, pachinko parlors, and other businesses. Some of the sculptures are electric or battery-powered and have a slow-moving paw beckoning. In the design of the sculptures, a raised right paw supposedly attracts money, while a raised left paw attracts customers.

Maneki Neko come in different colors, styles, and degrees of ornateness. In addition to sculptures, Maneki Neko can be found as keychains, piggy banks, air fresheners, and miscellaneous ornaments.

To read the entire entry, please click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneki_Neko

We bought the cat with the moving left arm. I’m still not 100% sure what kind of lucky it’s supposed to give me. Good fortune and bring in customers I think. Either way, good fortune can never hurt.

Now all I have to do is figure out where to put it in my place. Does anyone know about where I should be putting this cat in my house?

Hello,

I’m still here. Just recovering from my weekend. Will write more soon.

J.

Things around A and J’s house have been pretty status quo lately. I’ve been really busy trying to finish reading Eat. Pray. Love and writing my novel. I feel so behind. I really need to give it another push tonight.

While reading and writing, my knitting has been pushed to the side lately. I really should get back into it. There is a pattern that I would really like to do for my mom for Christmas, I just need some time to start it.

This morning the internet was down and my computer wasn’t working. I was in a bit of panic this morning. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to pick up where I left off in my book. Luckily, when A. woke up, he took a look at it and restarted the computer. Thank goodness it worked!

While the computer was not working, I start reading my next book. I am now reading a biography of Guy Liliberté. He is the creator of Cirque Du Soleil. I’ve only read a few pages of this book and think that (a) his ex-wife is nuts and (b) I love the saying within the first couple pages of the book. It says:

Pure entertainment is not an egotistical lady singing boring songs onstage for two hours and people in tuxes clapping whether they like it or not. It’s the real performers on the street who can hold people’s attention and keep them from walking away. — Andy Kaufman.

Christmas shopping needs to be done this weekend. Christmas crafting has not even made my radar yet. Although, I am looking forward to A and I’s advent calendar this year. Hopefully we’ll come up with some good ideas.

The holidays. Got to love them!

Have you heard this song fireflies? A. likes it and made me listen to it. Now I can’t stop hearing it on the radio. It’s playing right now.

I’m really looking forward to this weekend, I’m going to visit my dad and do a bit more Christmas shopping. My goal for Christmas shopping is to have it all done before December 1, 2009. I think I was able to do this last year. I’m going to plan to do it this year too. This way I can fully enjoy the holiday season and have fun doing the advent calendar.

My novel is coming along. I gave it another 5,000 word push last night. I won’t be able to write again until Thursday. So I hope that I’ll be able to give it another push then too.

Tonight, we are hoping to visit friends that just finished building a house. They built a house! That’s incredible. I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product. I hope that she emails me back to confirm that we can meet up tonight.

Other than that, not too much is going on.. Just a bit of this and that.

Tonight is the night. I’m going to give another big push to my novel. I can do this. I’m a little behind, but I CAN DO THIS.

I’m still motivated. I still think that I can reach my goal. I’m still trying. On Saturday, I was able to write about 18,000 words. I’m not quite at 50,000 yet, but I still think that I can do it. Wish me luck.

This weekend was pretty fun. After months of counting down to the day on Facebook, friends of ours moved into their new place in Kanata. It’s a cute new home. Congrats guys! You guys did great!

One thing that I would have liked to have done this weekend that we didn’t. Is go see 2012. Have you seen it? What did you think? Maybe I’ll try and go see it later this week, while everyone is going to see New Moon.

My mom is Las Vegas right now. I hope she’s having fun. It’s her first time there. I told her, not to buy new shoes before going, she bought new shoes, I hope they don’t hurt her feet. :s

This weekend was nice, I really wish it was longer. Need more sleep. How was your weekend? Did you do anything fun and exciting? I read that the Ottawa Vintage Clothing Show was on this weekend, what did you buy?

Finally, I reached my first goal for NNWM. Today, I got up to 10,000 words for my novel. I’m so happy, but I’m only a 5th of the way there.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m writing about reading my childhood diary. Some of my entries so far have been pretty fun to read, but today I reached one that made me a little embarrassed. I wrote about saying something mean to someone and knowing deep down that I didn’t mean it, but encouraged someone to say it anyway. Bottom line, I think I just wanted to fit in. That’s a pretty terrible reason though.

This makes me so upset, because I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of those types of words. I was just talking about a similar situation a few diary entries earlier. Why would I encourage such a comment to be said to a friend? It doesn’t make sense to me. There is no way in hell that I would ever say anything like that to anyone , why would I have laughed and encouraged those comments? So frustrating.

I guess this is one of the challenges that I having with writing this novel. The things that I wrote in my diary are personal. They are my thoughts, my views, my feelings at that time. It’s all me and how I felt when I was 13 or 14 years old. Bottom line is that I’m responsible for my younger self.

IF I was to publish it, would I leave this diary comment in or take it out? I don’t know.

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t able to write about 25,000 words this morning, but was I able to write about 2,500. It’s better than nothing right?

Will try again this evening.