Tag: Covid-19

Camp NaNo – Word Slayer

How many of you have heard of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month? (Yes, I’m talking to you as if you were sitting right here with me. And I expect you to talk to me too! That’s what the comment section was made for). For those of you who’ve not heard of it, it’s a great way to get a story out of your head and onto paper in one massive brain dump. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write at least 50,000 words during the month of November. That’s the average length of a novel. It happens every year, and is attempted by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. It began in 1999 and has expanded every year. Now there are even a couple “Camp NaNo” events, in April and July, that allow you to set your own word count or editing goal.

I’m in the middle of the July Camp NaNo. Since I’ve been trying to get this site up and running, I decided my goal should be to write at least 20 blog posts, with a total of 15,000 words for the month. I’m not there. In fact, I’m nowhere near.

After having written over 50,000 words a month for the last five or six Novembers, even last year when I had Covid-19 in November, a goal of only 15,000 words seems pretty easy. Well, let me tell you, it’s not! Trying to come up with 500-750 publishable words a day, five days a week, is not nearly as easy as I thought it would be. It should get better as I start wrapping my mind around the concept a bit more, but for right now, my brain is more warped than it is wrapped.

While my eventual goal is to produce a Distractifying! post every day, I’ll be happy with whatever I produce to begin with. Once I get into the swing of things, I’ll set up my own, personal Camp NaNo’s to keep me going each month. I’m determined this time, to do whatever it takes to stay in the flow.

Café Squirrél

With all (or at least most) restaurants and eateries struggling due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s no wonder business is down at Café Squirrél as well. But in it’s heyday this place was jumpin’!

What place? Where? Do I have to reserve a table? You ask. No, no need to call ahead. In fact, it’s not really a place at which you would want to eat. What it is, is squirrels in my neighborhood who all seemed to want to use my property for their larder.

Over the years before the Café fell on hard times, I found walnuts stashed on my car near the windshield wipers, a small pumpkin or gourd tucked into the corner by my garage door, the above pictured stack of tortillas stuffed in a bush, and this, a hotdog bun balanced on the outdoor water faucet.

Each year around Thanksgiving my Aunt sends a very special gift, a box of very expensive candy. It’s a tradition that’s been going on for years. It’s the best old english toffee in the world! For some reason, the mailperson won’t put the package inside the door, so my Aunt calls me to let me know when the package has been mailed because of an incident that happened a few years ago. Yep. You guessed it, Café Squirrel was open because I didn’t get home from work until after the squirrels had spread $25 worth of old english toffee all over my lawn. For the next couple days they were pretty hyper for the due to the sugar rush.

My property has not been the squirrel pantry that it used to be, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. When it was happening, I was pretty upset. Not was it an encroachment on my space, but they were making a mess. But it was pretty funny. The little guys were rather inventive when it came to putting up their wares.

I don’t know if they’ve just moved on to another location. My yard might be yesterday’s news. Or if the quality of the garbage in the neighborhood has gone down and driven them away. One way or the other, I’m sure they are still eating well. They certainly don’t look like they are wasting away. They will figure out ways to eat well no matter what we do. They will not go hungry.