Power is back up and running for us finally! It went down Monday at 8am and we’ve been without power, water, and sewer until just now around 11:30am.

Naturally this messed up my documentation for my mood tracker since I have never bothered to write it down by hand and I didn’t think to do that for this week.

It also messed up the posting schedule I had just committed myself to last weekend.

Such is the way of life, no?

The morning the power went out, I was working on Tarot prompts to schedule for NaNoWriMo since I felt I had nothing planned. No characters, no plot, no anything. When the power went out, I grabbed a notebook and drained THREE pens just writing everything that came to mind – even if it was just commentary about the mundane stuff going on at the house.

Eventually I did hit upon an idea. I’m going to use various characters that I have role played in online games and the Tarot prompts to write the story. I think it will be easier to run with the prompts if I’m already familiar with the personalities of the characters. So using the two short stories about Toadie and Rhae as a pilot I spent most of Halloween world building so they would have a proper setting to run around in.

I’ve got 52 prompts set up for this. Do I expect to finish all 52 prompts during NaNo? No, but I do plan to make audio-video presentations of the material I write and by planning for 52, I’ll have one for each week. Debating on how much revision I need or want to plan for, but I think I’ll wait and see how I feel when I hit prompt #52. I think it will largely depend on how coherent the overall plot ends up being.

In any case, I’m back up and running and already have two full chapters I need to type up and get word counts for. I guess the next time I get stuck for ideas, I should just reach for the good old fashioned pen and paper.

I also wanted to point out that this week was the final pretrial hearing for the divorce and it has been moved to finalization. So in 21 days, if nothing is appealed, it will be officially over and done with. The visitation agreement remained as it was originally drafted and child support was calculated according to state guidelines. I have physical custody of Little Bear. The boys will not be separated, which was my only major concern.

He also can’t get overnights with Little Bear unless he is living within 70 miles of us, which address my other concern about having Little Bear staying in a motel with him whenever he was on leave. My ex-husband’s lawyer told us both that no reasonable judge is going to allow that – special needs child or not. That’s why he wrote it the way he had. Dad said the 70 miles must be the state’s standard then. Probably is and given how things are spread out in this state, I think a 70 mile radius is both reasonable and fair. Hell, my parents drive out about 30 to 45 minutes to get their bulk grocery shopping done. I think where they go is 36 miles or so away?

I was expecting myself to be more emotional about this – more upset or something – but instead when I got home from court, I just felt exhausted. Stupid tired. Dad said it’s likely because after all of the fighting all these years, it’s just a relief that the bullshit is no longer my can of worms. It’s done. It’s no longer my responsibility to rescue him from the crisis and drama he creates. It’s no longer my responsibility to clean up his messes.

I’m hoping it won’t be long to find the energy I need to rebuild my life into something new.

So for this week’s Chaos Rally I’ve picked out some high energy covers by Leo Moracchioli over at Frog Leap Studios on YouTube. His daughter rocking out with him is still one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen.

May us all be blessed with Light, Love, and Laughter this weekend!