Busy busy bee

So finally, I have a moment to sit down and explain why I've been MIA the past few weeks...as the title indeed suggests, I have been super busy the past couple of weeks. Enough that I can barely hear myself think now and it's a wonder I'm managing to keep up with my own schedule. But hey, I'm finally getting some actual use out of my calendar (both the one in my room and the ones on my phone and tablet)...and the smaller one in my purse, but that's beside the point...anywho...
I know I've mentioned it before a time or two about my college group's mission trip fundraiser which traditionally consists of taking various Broadway songs and performing them. My freshmen year we even had a Disney montage which took up the entire stage-including the baptistery! We started on one end with I See The Light from Tangled; people dressed in black came from the back of the sanctuary holding the various glowing "lanterns" and moved forward until they were surrounding our Rapunzel and Flynn. :) We also had Can You Feel The Love Tonight, from The Lion King. Then there was A Whole New World in the baptistery (complete with a platform "carpet" and looping night sky scenery on the projector). Briar Rose and Prince Phillip made an appearance as they sang Once Upon A Dream. And they had the ballroom dance scene from Beauty And The Beast while someone sang Tale As Old As Time. And finally, one of the girls sang Kiss The Girl to Prince Eric and Ariel (the girl playing Sebastian did so well, my mom thought she was lip-syncing).
Obviously, I could go on and on about dinner theater. It's something that I've admired for a long time. At first, it was generally meant as like a date night getaway for the parents, but eventually, they let us kids come watch too and it became more like a family thing and anyone could come. I think I got to see the last two years when I was in high school and I remember my senior year being so excited because the next year I was going to be able to participate. And so my freshman year, our theme was Dance And Romance Through The Decades. The next year it was country themed, and so there was more sassy things and a swing dance that I was able to be in with one of my guy friends. The girls got to have fun with Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me. We had nerds and cheerleaders. You can probably guess which one I was (::hint:: proud nerd, lol). And now this year, we're doing a movie theme. I'm excited to see what it all looks like when it comes together for dress rehearsal. :)
So I've been super busy with constant rehearsals going on, not to mention everything else going on right now. And with all of the rehearsing, I was told to ice my knees afterward to help with the pain from an old injury-which is what I'm currently doing as I write this. It seems to be working, so that's good.
I know the last thing I said on Twitter a few weeks ago was that it had been an emotional, tiring, and busy week. A lot of it had to do with the craziness of dinner theater rehearsals. What was left over had more to do with my Granny passing away...it still doesn't seem real. And it's all new to me because this is the first time I've ever lost anyone close to me. I know it will be a long process to deal with, but thankfully I have some pretty amazing friends around me right now that even though they don't say anything about it, they still let me know in their own way that they care about what I'm going through. That alone helps more than they will ever know. Plus, I know that she's no longer in pain and she's happy and healthy again. :)
I don't really want to dwell on the sadness a lot, or make this post more about that. But this is what the past few weeks have been like. Mostly the reason for my sudden disappearance has been because of super busy rehearsal schedules and not being able to think straight from that, along with a million and one other things on my mind. Hopefully I can find the time to continue Blogging Fridays this week, but we'll see. Almost two more weeks til showtime (ahh!). I know after all of this is done, I'll be free up again to continue Blogging Fridays, but in the meantime, it's just hard to carve out enough time to focus on blogging. Rest assured though, I haven't forgotten about it. And I do get sad when I miss even one week. I had hoped to start fresh this year and not miss a Friday. But I still have plenty of time left to make that a habit.
Anywho, so that's my life for the time being...looking forward to showtime and having my schedule not be quite so chaotic anymore.

     Thinking in circles...
          Liz

The adorableness of a child's logic...

So the other day, my mom directed my attention to this ridiculously adorable moment on this author's Facebook page that she follows...the conversation went as follows...

Breeana Puttroff:
My daughter, finder of plot holes at age five:

Little Goose: "I'm thinking of putting Lilly in a class where she can learn how to speak." (Lilly is her favorite stuffed animal dog.)
Me: "That sounds like fun. Is Martha Speaks going to be the teacher?"
LG: "Mom, Martha Speaks is not real."
Me: "Oh. Okay." (Still *trying* to play along.) "Are they going to eat alphabet soup?" (Alphabet soup is how Martha on the show becomes a talking dog.)
LG: "Alphabet soup is not real."
Me: "Yes it is."
LG: "I mean, it's not alive." (There's a "duh" sound in her voice at this point.)
Me: "Well, no soup is alive."
LG: (exasperated sigh) "I MEAN, since it's not alive, it can't travel to Lilly's brain and make her speak."
Me: "Oh." (Of course. How could I be so obtuse?)
LG: "And if it DID travel to her brain, it would be stuck there, and then, because it's soup, it would get rotten up there, and she would die."

And there you have it...a moment of adorableness in a child's logic...
In the meantime, I am hard at work on finishing the interviews with Kelsey and Derek, and hopefully they will be up within the next week. :)
I am also doing so much brain storming and planning ahead for my April Camp NaNoWriMo next month!!! EEEEHHHH!!!! I'm so excited!!! I'm really hoping they will post some word count widgets so I can post one on here. In the meantime, I have a link set up in the sidebar if you'd like to check out my novel I'll be working on. Right now, all there is to see is the synopsis, but as soon as April starts, I will be posting an excerpt to see as well. I feel like this will be a successful attempt for my novel-finally!! :D I can't wait to see that finished manuscript, and be that much closer to publishing it! And then writing and finishing the sequel this summer! AHH!! I think this is going to be a great year for my writing. :)

     Always thankful for any and all readers (of blog or stories)!
          -Liz

Random Celebratory Post!!

Ok, so this isn't exactly random. I have a point to make here. I have somehow seriously underestimated any number of potential fans of my writing. I know that because this morning, I am transferring some stories from an old writing account to the new one. On the portfolio page, it has your story's title, what genre it is, how many pages, read count, and comment count.
Anyway, I just happen to glance toward the middle of the page to see that ohmygosh, I have over 1,000 reads on one story alone! It's a "short" story (I put short in quotations because my brain insists that short is never below 1,000 words), but still, I'll take the 1,090 reads! It still hasn't sunk in that this has actually happened. It's just...amazing, really. I'm speechless. And I'm a girl! We always have things to say, haha.
But before I go off ranting, there's one person I should thank the most for. And I can never thank them enough for this. I want to thank my God for just being awesome every day. For being there for me when I needed Him most, and for giving me this great talent to share with everyone. I hope any future fame will never go to my head. This 1,090 reads just gives me a mere taste of what that might be like. And I couldn't feel more humbled that that many people enjoy my writing. Thank you everyone, for either reading what I write, or supporting me all along the way in some way. You'll never know how much you mean to me, and how grateful I am for you to be in my life. :)

     Thank You God!
          -Liz