Despite the very best efforts of the kittens (and trust me, they gave their all), I was able to sleep in until almost 9 in the morning. Usually the kittens start romping, which means that invariably they either stomp on, or near, one of the two torties, both of whom tend to prefer to lurk underneath the covers and thus provide prime under-cover-moving-target-monsters that, if you are a kitten and feeling frisky, must be pounced on Right This Moment. And then, once pounced upon, the tortie in question (and despite their extreme personal distaste of each other, in this both torties are perfectly in synch) must throw a hissy fit of epic proportions, launching out from underneath the covers to holler at the offending kittens to quit it, and since one of the very definitions of kittenhood is to be completely oblivious to all consequences of one’s actions (a personality trait that Rupert in particular has taken to heart), this response only invariably leads to more pouncing, and the end result is usually the human in the middle finally gives up in disgust and instead gets out of bed and goes upstairs to make coffee.

Anyway. The point of that long ramble was that this morning, this did *not* happen, so I took advantage of it to have a rare morning of sleeping in. There was leftover pie brought home from last night’s birthday dinner at my parents’ house, so Richard had some of that for breakfast, while I had leftover cookies instead, because the pie in question was cherry and long-term readers know of my aversion to all things berry/cherry related.

There was brief talk about maybe going grocery shopping, or some other sort of useful outing. But instead Richard went off to a write-in after lunch while I stayed home and made pretzel dough and started yogurt and pet the cats and also occasionally poked at my novel. And then later we both headed off to yet another write-in. I thought briefly about skipping it and staying home to either bake something, or try to put a dent in the two huge cases of apples still sitting on the kitchen counter, but I knew that my chances of getting a significant chunk of writing done would be markedly higher if I was somewhere other than home, so off we went.

And it turned out that going was a good thing because over the course of the day (despite distractions of the cat/kitten/baking variety), but mostly during the few hours at the write-in, I managed to churn out almost 5,000 words, which not only means I’ve once again caught up to where I needed to be by end of day (according to the official Nanowrimo Progress Chart), but also puts me a little over. Plus, I got to use the phrase “you are the harbinger of doom” in a writing project for the very first time in my life, so really, it’s a win-win all around.

Nanowrimo update: 12,0008 words total. Still not entirely sure what my overall plot is, but the story is progressing nonetheless, so I am thinking that this whole ‘avoid all semblance of pre-plot-planning’ concept might be working out better than I’d hoped.