April 2018 Monthly Wrap Up

I’m sitting in the laundromat so now seems as good a time as any to update. (Wifi at the laundromat? What a time to be alive!)

A lot has happened since I made my executive decision not to finish my daily blogging challenge for April:

1. My mom visited for two weeks. We went to Santa Barbara, one of the many (!) overlooks on Mulholland Drive, and met a cousin neither of us had met before. We also had dinner with one of your favorite new authors and mine and pre-gamed for a trivia night. (My mother has no interest in trivia so left after pre-gaming.) It was a great visit.
2. I went to the LA Times Festival of Books. I met so many wonderful authors for the first time: Gayle Forman, Rick Riordan, Jason Reynolds, Mary H. K. Choi, Aminah Mae Sofi, and some others I can’t remember now. I also saw some of your favorite YA authors and mine on some excellent panels and added soooo many books to my TBR. Everybody I talked to kept calling the event Bookchella, and it was accurate. It was reader nerd bliss.
3. The elimination diet is going along, slowly. I lost about two weeks of reintroduction time because I ate something that disagreed with me and had no idea what it was. (I did not prepare adequately for the Festival of Books, basically.) Anyway, I have learned that I am definitely, 100% lactose intolerant and that I can tolerate avocado (and like foods) in small amounts. Same with cauliflower (and like foods), though less of them than avocado.
4. I have spent the past two weeks nesting because my daughter will be here for the summer. After being on my own for nine months, I’ve had to do some things to  make my apartment hospitable to two people instead of one.
5. I still have spring breakitis, I think. (Part of it is that at this time last year, I was completely done with teaching for the year. What a difference a change in school makes.) This is my way of saying I’m way behind on grading. Still, my post on selfish teaching holds. Grading has been a lot easier since I’m doing assignments that I want to read.
6. I signed up for TSA Pre✅. I am sure this is the best decision I have made so far this year.
7. I have very strong feelings about the Jane the Virgin season finale (SO STRONG), so I hope that writing this blog post will kick off some blogging mojo so I can talk about it here. Because I do want to.
8. I really hope Kevin (Probably) Saves the World doesn’t get canceled.

I made some goals for the month of April, so here’s how those went.

1. Post my list of things to do before I turn 40. I did not do this.  I don’t know why since I have it pretty much drafted. Actually, I do know that part of it is that I don’t want to call it a bucket list, and I was waiting for inspiration of something else to call it. The title of this book has given me an idea. So I really should have this done by the end of the month.

2. Revise at least one of the scripts I’m working on. I worked on this and finally made some hard decisions about where both of them need to go. Basically, I need to (a) accept that I’m a drama writer and (b) switch both of my scripts to one-hour format.

3. Stay off FB and Twitter. I lasted until April 18-ish. The thing about doing a FB fast (especially) is that it’s a lot harder when most of your friends live out of state. I felt like I had no idea what was going on with the people I typically keep up with, which was fine when I saw them at work and church, etc. It’s a far different thing living all the way across the country.

4. Buy an ottoman for my living room. ✅ (I bought this one. I just need to set it up. This is part of the nesting.)

5. Do some creative writing every day. I have also come to accept that this is an unrealistic goal for me, especially during the semester. So I am committing to writing at least one weekend day a week instead. I also need to remember to put a sticker on my calendar for every day I do a writing related activity (e.g., outlining, etc.) even if it doesn’t add to my word count.

My goals for May are to:

• Post my list of things to do by the time I’m 40
• Write at least one weekend day a week
• Change the battery in my wall clock
• Finish my revision

I read three books during April:

• The Summer of Jordi Perez (and the Best Burger in Los Angeles) by Amy Spalding (YA)
• Thick as Thieves by Megan Whalen Turner (YA)
• Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (middle grade/YA)

I liked the two standalones and that’s all I’ll say about that. I did tell Reynolds I loved the ending of his book at the festival and he said, “Great! Please tell my mom because she hates the ending.”

Long Way Down and Thick as Thieves are both on my #MustRead2018 list, so progress there. None of my books count toward the Read Harder challenge.

Still ahead of schedule for my Goodreads challenge, so yay for that. I can’t wait to see what next month holds.