Funny Things My Brother Said #3

Playing Mario Kart:

C: Oooooh...nearly fell off then! But guess what? I was hanging to the...EDGE...OF GLORY!

While I was saying goodnight to him in his room:

C: I'll miss you.

Me: What?!

C: I'll miss you, when you go into your room! We're hanging out now, but then you'll go back into your room and leave me all alone in here. I'll miss you, that's all I'm saying. 

Doodling:

C: I'm an artist. I'm being expressive. 

Me: Uhuh.

C: I know what expressive is too. It's when you let out all of your emotions and feelings onto the paper. 

Me: That's right.

C: Here, tell me what you see in this picture...

Eating the cakes we made: 

Me: The marshmallows were a great idea.

C: Yeah, that was totally my idea. 

C: I'm not going to my dad's tomorrow. I want to go to granny and granddad's. 

Me: How come?

C: I just miss them! I want to spend time with them, ok? I've hardly seen them lately. 

On the phone to mum:

C: OK mum, what's your point?!

*listens to mum*

C: I know, you already told me that! *Rolls his eyes at me* 

Sat watching TV

C: I managed to find a John Lewis advert that wasn't cut down. Are you jealous?

later on...

C: Laura! Come here, there's something you have to see!

Me: What is it? 

C: I can't tell you, it'll ruin the surprise!

I go downstairs. He presses play on the TV remote, the Coke Christmas ad plays.

C: There you go, you've finally seen it. You can be excited for Christmas now!

He's cheeky but you can't help but love him!

Happiness Project Preparation

So like I mentioned a couple of days ago, I'm starting preparations for my Happiness Project, which I'm starting on 1st Jan 2012. I'm spending the next month and a half figuring out what I want to focus on and how, and my specific resolutions for each area. For anybody who's interested in starting their own project, I advice visiting The Happiness Project Toolbox  which was set up by Gretchen Rubin to help people get started. As well as being a good place to plan and document ideas etc, it's also a good place to see other peoples' projects too. (After looking at the ideas boards, I ended up with 58 commandment ideas because they were all so awesome. I had a hard time narrowing them down).

However, narrow them down I eventually did. I didn't manage to get to 12 just yet though. I managed to get down to 20.

1.  Be Laura. Love Laura. Respect Laura.

2.  Stand up for yourself; you are your own responsibility.

3.  Lighten up. Let it go.

4.  Do it now.

5.  Just breathe.

6. Think before you speak. Be honest; no excuses, no lies.

7.  Focus on the positive.

8.  Be polite and be fair.

9.  Take the high road.

10.   Work hard, play hard.

11.   Don’t settle.

12.   Change the things you can.

13.   Everything happens for a reason, have faith.

14.   Keep an open mind. Don’t judge.

15.   You can’t Sky+ life.

16.   Cut yourself some slack. Forgive yourself.

17.   Listen.

18.   Tomorrow is a new day.

19.   Put in more than you take out

20.   Make every moment worthy of your ‘Best Bits’ montage. 

       I think #20 is my favourite, even though it's probably also the most embarrassing. Watching reality TV, I've always been jealous and wanted my own best bits montage, set to an awesome song. I like to believe that we'll all get one when we die. (Laugh all you want, you know it'd be totally awesome!) 

    

     This list will most likely change before January, but I thought I'd share it anyway. If anybody has any suggestions/ideas, drop me a comment! :) I'd also love to know what your own personal commandments would be! Let me know! 

Funny Things My Brother Said #2

Discussing what he did at school:

C: In art, we made propaganda posters, then we did comic strips. I made a comic strip about people going into a bomb shelter, but one person needed a wee and there wasn't a toilet in the shelter so he went outside, then a bomb fell on him and he died.

Me: That's not very nice!

C: *Rolls his eyes* I know it's not nice. World War II wasn't nice, you know! 

C: I think the Chinese guy fancied you.

Me: What? Why?

C: Because he kept looking at you! Ooooooh!! *Wiggles eyebrows suggestively*

C, as I can imagine lots of nine year olds do, sometimes uses words in the wrong context. I say 'randomly' and 'casually' a lot, and recently he's been saying them too.

C: I'm just randomly stood at the window, trying to get fresh air.

C: Teachers are so sarcastic. Mia's Bs were dodgy in handwriting today, and miss just said they were fine! She was really sarcastic.

Me: Do you know what sarcastic actually means? 

C: Yeah, it's like when I tell a joke and you think it's rubbish but then you laugh in a really stupid, sarcastic way.

Me: Well....yeah, pretty much. 

Funny Things My Brother Said #1

So this is my first official post documenting all of the hilarious/ridiculous/baffling things that my nine year old brother says. From now on, I'll call him C.

C dressed as Grandpa Joe for his school's Roald Dahl Day.

On our way to Dr Who Live last October

C's extremely clever, especially for his age, funny, cheeky, and never ever shuts up! People say I can talk, but I've got nothing on this kid. His favourite things include history, dinosaurs, Dr.Who, art, grey wolves, chicken noodles, any other food, sleeping in weird positions, and the colour yellow. His hero is Ben from Outnumbered, and he sometimes likes to think he actually is this character. We might not get along all the time (the age difference is confusing for him!) but he's extra special and I wouldn't have him any other way. Anyway...without further to-do:

C is on the PC. I'm in my mum's room talking to her. Suddenly C skips (actually skips) into the room:

C: 'I've found you on twitter! *hehehehehehe* I've found your actual twitter! Come and look, there's pictures of you on there! Of your room!' 

Me: 'I know, I put them up there!'

C: Oh. *goes back into my room* Oh my God! There's pictures of you on google! Look! There's me! I'm on there!

He keeps looking while I get on with stuff. A few minutes later, to himself.

C: *hehehe* I love being famous. I love being on google. 

General update-y stuff.

Howdy. Aw, it makes me happy to see my spiffed up blog. Anyway...

NaNoWriMo


As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm (slightly) taking part in National Novel Writing Month. I say slightly, because everyone who knows me knows that I have the attention span of a squirrel and so writing 1667 words a day, every day, probably wasn't going to happen. I've gotta admit...I'm a little lot behind schedule. I'm on 7,310 words and I've got 16 days to go. Probably more than likely not going to finish. Apparently if I write 2512 words a day from now on I can finish in time. I don't write every day though (cos I'm lazy) so if I want to finish I'll have to write a lot when I do write. I prefer it that way anyway. Once I get into writing a scene, I won't stop until I've finished and I'm happy with it. If I don't finish, I'l be disappointed, but it won't be the end of the world. It is my first year, so I'm taking this as my 'practice run' (yeah I know, excuses, excuses!)

I'd been planning this story for a while though, so this month is just a way to get the writing of it off the ground. I'm going to carry on writing the 'zero draft' as quickly as possible, even if I don't finish it before the end of November. Then I'm going to edit the hell out of it and turn it into a first draft. Then decide if I want to continue with it, or file it away foreveeeeeeerrrrrr. I love the story though, and I'm a bit in love with my characters. Even the minor ones. I have all of their stories and backgrounds planned in my head, and I know what motivates them to do whatever it is they do in the story. The main character is extremely similar to me, which is making me feel a little vain, but aren't all main characters thinly veiled versions of the author in some way or another? I'm certainly learning a lot about myself as I write how Sarah (my protagonist) reacts to certain situations.

I've been posting snippets of my story (I don't have a name for it yet) on my tumblr. You can find them here, if you're interested!

My Internship 
I'm going to write a post about my internship on book blog, as I think that makes more sense! Again, you can find it here if you're interested! Which of course you should be, because I am extremely interesting! ;)

Happy 2012 Project
I'm starting to plan my Happiness Project for 2012. I've mentioned this before, obviously. The idea is based on Gretchen Rubin's book and blog The Happiness Project. 

(Clicking the picture takes you to Amazon)

I'm doing my own version, obviously with much different goals than a married mum of two from NYC. Brilliantly though, Rubin offers 'Happiness Project Tool Kits' for people starting their own project, so that will be lots of help. 

Blogging updates 
I've made several half arsed vows to myself and others to blog more regularly, but as well know by now, I'm exceedingly lazy, and so I often forget/can't be bothered to blog. Or maybe it's just that life as an unemployed ex-student is rather dull and not worth blogging about. Hmmm...I'll say a mixture of the two.


Anyway, this time I actually am going to start blogging more regularly. Promise. PINKY PROMISE. Ooohh. Can't break a pinky promise, or...bad stuff will happen.

Regular updates and reports on my Happiness Project will be happening, at least once a week.

I will also be introducing a feature called 'Funny Things My Brother Said'. I've seen quite a few bloggers/twitterers I follow do this with their kids/other relatives and I always enjoy reading them. Then I thought well hey, my brother is hilarious. He says funny things all the time that make me think 'I'll have to remember that one...' I sometimes post stuff he says on Facebook/Twitter, but I think it would be nice to keep track of them all here. An additional benefit, other than the happy memories, is the amount of material I will collect to humiliate him throughout his teenage years. I'm so a great evil big sister!

So yeah, hopefully those two features, along with any random musings I may include, should hopefully get me blogging more regularly!

Any other general/random stuff

• I have an induction into Berkley and Scott on Wednesday. It's a catering services employment agency...thing. They work with hotels/restaurants etc and send them staff to work at events/functions. Hopefully I should get quite a bit of work out of that over the Christmas period. Yay, money. It's always good. Helps buy Christmas presents. 
• I'm volunteering to help out with the tea/coffee counter at King's Church. This will hopefully stop me being lazy and make me get out of bed and go every week, instead of deciding that I'd rather have an extra couple of hours in bed. It will also hopefully help me meet new people and make some new friends. I'm not the most confident person around people I don't know, and having something to do always makes me feel more comfortable. 

Aaaaaaaaand I think that's about it. I need to go write a post on my book blog, and then get to writing a bit of my story before I crash out! 

Busy, Busy, Busy November!

Dear family and friends,

I feel the need to apologise in advance for neglecting you in the month of November. You see I have quite a lot on this month, and even though most of you will be glad of the peace and quiet that the lack of me and my chatter will bring, I feel the need to excuse myself nonetheless.

NaNoWriMo

Tomorrow (well, technically today) marks the start of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). 30 Days/50,000 words. An epic challenge. One I can't wait to start, and will probably want to end in about 4 days time. I have my story all planned out though, I know my characters inside out. I've had a fun few weeks naming them and coming up with their personality traits, but now the hard work starts. As long as I can put my editing OCD to one side and can accept that I'm basically going to be splashing shite onto countless pages for the next 30 days, I should be ok. The point isn't to write a masterpiece, or create a work of art. It's to create the 'zero draft' of a novel, a basic structure of a story on paper to go back and edit and perfect afterwards. For someone like me, who puts everything off until the last possible minute, NaNoWriMo and its pressure is perfect. It is giving me the tight deadline that I always work best under, and making sure I actually finish what I started, unlike the several half written stories lying around in folders on my pc/in notebooks etc.

The Writer's Coffee Shop Publishing House

Of course, just writing 50,000 words this month would be too easy, wouldn't it? I also start what promises to be an amazing marketing internship for The Writer's Coffee Shop Publishing House (TWCS) tomorrow. It's an absolutely amazing opportunity and I cannot wait to get stuck in. My main role is to help get publicity for their three UK authors. I've 'met' (over skype/ email/ chatrooms) some lovely people from the company already, and they've all made me feel really welcome on the team. I will probably tell you much more about it when I've got settled in and know what I'm doing!

On top of these two awesome things, I hope to get a job. I REALLY NEED A JOB. I miss having money. Whoever said money can't buy happiness is a big fat liar. Money might not be able to literally buy happiness, but having some money certainly helps! I also miss leaving the house...something I tend not to do a lot in my current unemployed state. I think it's just a huge shock to my system. I've never been unemployed, not since I was 15. I didn't work during uni term time, but I've always had summer jobs. So now it's like WOAH...what the hell is happening?! Hopefully it won't be too long now. Some employer will take pity on me and give me a job. Let's hope.

Anyhow, I am officially rambling. It's 2am and I've been up a rather long time. As you can tell, I have a big day tomorrow, so night all and I will update soon!