So far so good

I'm pleased to say that my novel-writing experiment is progressing apace. I've crested 11,000 words now, and will start chapter 8 this evening. This is HUGE, considering that this book hovered at 1 chapter for over a year, then lifted off to 5 chapters before being iced for some five years or more. The book has been in my head all this time, getting turned and tumbled and smoothed, but I never had the courage to show up at the page. It's still a hard moment when I open that file and look at the blinking cursor... but I've managed to keep pushing forward. Five days. Just 25 to go.

Friday night Grayson's best friend, John, spent the night. It's the first time John has stayed here with us in Norman. Generally he and Grayson get together when G is at his dad's place in OKC. Grayson was very excited about having his friend here. The first thing he said to me when he woke up Friday morning was "It's JOHN DAY!!" It made me realize that I probably need to make more of an effort to help him get his friends over here on the weekends.

I'm afriad the boys were up waaaay too late. I didn't mean to let them stay up so late, but I fell asleep myself just before midnight and woke an hour later to discover they were still up watching the Disney Channel in Grayson's room. Oops. Bad mom! I marched in and put them summarily to bed They were up again before 7 a.m. Naturally. If it was a school day I'm sure Grayson would be a rock at that hour.

I myself slept terribly. It got damned cold last night. Don't know if I've mentioned that at present we have no heat in our house. Back in June our airconditioner died and -- since we have no landlord because our rental house is in receivorship -- the property manager opted not to replace the fried AC blower unit, but instead bought and installed three window units. Okay, fine, but now it's five months later and the weather is getting colder and the unit is still fried.

It seems the lawsuit still has no clear end in sight, and, as there's no such thing as window heaters, the receivor is now going to be obliged to replace the unit. We've had two companies in during the last week to make estimates. In the meantime... brrrrr! Last night the temperature got down to 33 degrees! I got up in the wee hours and threw extra blankets over the boys. Then a few minutes later I got up again and put on an extra layer of clothes, and was grateful for three warm dogs to cuddle up to.

Hopefully they'll get the heater replaced before it gets much colder, or we'll have to start sleeping on the floor in the kitchen in front of the oven.

Yesterday, I took the boys to the new Osteology museum in OKC. It's run by Skulls Unlimited, the folks who prepare and provide skulls and skeletons of animals to museums and other scientific institutions all over the world. The showroom isn't huge, but it's chocabloc full of skeletons! They have a giraffe, a humpback whale, a hippo, several two-faced callf skulls, a platypus, ant eaters... hundreds of skeletons. It's a very cool place to take a couple of ten-year-old boys. And we were the first ones in the door, so we had the place to ourselves, the boys just ran around, looking at everything. It was really fascinating.