Tag: Family

“Remember the night we broke the windows in this old house? This is what I wished for.”

Sara Mazariegos

When I was in seventh grade, at the start of middle school, I decided I wanted a nickname. The trouble was that I didn’t really have a nickname, so I tried to test one out by only telling one of my classes — Intro to Foreign Languages — to call me Shelly. I didn’t count on one of my classmates in that class being in one of my other classes… She approached me and said something like, “You told us to call you Shelly in one class, but you don’t go by that name in this class.”

So, Shelly never really caught on.

It’s funny how I don’t remember the girl’s name. I remember her as Spoilsport. 😝

Growing up, I always wanted a nickname. My name is so short that I don’t really need one. I invented all my own nicknames. Other ones are Sar Bear, Sar Bear Extraordinaire, SBE (all the same, and all used by a specific friend group but 100% invented by me.) I also got one friend to call me Pizza for like a year. And Luis just reminded me about the time when I was twelve and told a friend’s visiting friend (from England!) that my nickname was Gadget. I was big into Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers at the time. This friend’s friend went along with it because he’d just met me and had no reason to question me. My friend called me out on it right away. Curses! I still think it would be so awesome to be called Gadget.

But Sara, stop trying to make “Gadget” a thing. It’s not a thing.

Speaking of nostalgia, I finally started clearing out my emails in my main inbox. I had nearly a million (I know!) so it’s, uh, past time for this. I went all the way back to my oldest emails in 2009 and I’ve been working my way through, only keeping emails I want to keep for sentimental purposes. I’ll probably eventually still delete many of the literary roleplaying game ones, but for now, they can stay.

I found the Facebook notification from when Luis added me, back in January 2012. 🥲 And his messages on a dating site (after we met in person, at a Nerdfighter gathering!) Those will all definitely be kept in my virtual shoebox.

I don’t know why I’ve been so nostalgic lately. It might have something to do with the fact that the future is looking more scary…

Anyway, in writing news, I got to 74,000 words yesterday. It’s going so well, it’s almost boring to blog about, haha! Everything’s falling into place, unlike last time I attempted writing this novel. I’ve deviated slightly from my outline, but only because other ideas came to me that move the story forward in a better way. I’m looking forward to being done (tentatively on Monday!) And then I can read the thing, after a Christmas/New Years break.

Do you hang onto anything because of nostalgia? At least emails don’t take up space in my house, though I only have so much space in my inbox.

Nostalgically yours,

“Georgie, don’t you ever get tired of just reading about things?”

Sara Mazariegos

I got into work on Monday after a nice, relaxing four-day weekend and my cousin Alex texted to tell me he was able to get Luis and me tickets to Universal Studios Hollywood for when we plan to be there! Fancy!

I also looked at my calendar and decided to take two extra days off the week of Christmas. I would have only worked on Monday and Friday that week, and that’s just silly. Those two plans started out my week with positive vibes.

We had a nice Thanksgiving time. I even managed not to eat too much, and I discovered I no longer hate green beans. Luis is always teasing me about my hatred of vegetables, but it’s not like I never eat them. I’m just picky about the ones I want to eat.

Now we’ve kicked over into Christmastime thoughts. We’re going to host Christmas Eve at our house, for the Guatemalan tradition of opening presents at midnight. It’s going to be cute to see the cats’ reaction to people being in our house with food and wrapping paper. Leo might be all over everyone. We’re not going to set off fireworks, though. That’s illegal in Maryland. Then, the next morning, we go over to my parents’ house for more Christmas festivities. My parents book us a hotel room so we can stay for the night and not have to rush back home late on Christmas. It’s fun how these traditions have kind of just taken shape over the last few years.

Thinking about the holidays is helpful while writing my novel. As it’s inspired by It’s A Wonderful Life, it takes place during the holidays. I reached 60,000 words yesterday, with help from my old draft. I used as much of an old chapter* as I could, tweaking it here and there to make it fit this new draft. I’m a fan of doing that. Maybe I’m a rare breed of writer who actually enjoys revising?

* And it’s an important chapter!

“Oh, why don’t you stop annoying people?”

Sara Mazariegos

First of all, a photo of Boo Radley so you know who she is since I’ve been talking about her so much. This is not a recent photo. She doesn’t want to be seen with her cone on. She’s embarrassed about it. But she’s hanging in there.


On Monday, they removed some of her stitches from her ear and tail. They will see her again in two weeks (with her brother Leo who already had a checkup appointment scheduled) to remove the rest. She hates going to the vet, but the medication that sedates her really helps her relax. (She still swiped at the vet once, to let her know she was done with her.)

Daily writing prompt
If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?
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I’ve thought about this before, though it’s not sleep I would skip. I love sleeping. If I didn’t need to be at work for eight hours, I’d have more time to write, which would make me happy. I’d mostly write, but I’m sure I’d end up watching Internet videos. I wish I had more balance, so I could work but also write.

Thanksgiving is coming up on Thursday (and Friday if you go to two separate meals like Luis and I do.) People always talk about the awkward conversations or the big arguments that happen on Thanksgiving when families get together. Fortunately for us, we don’t have a lot of family members who disagree with us and pick fights. Our extended families don’t come over for Thanksgiving, which means things aren’t as stressful too. I can’t imagine having everyone in my family over for the holidays. A lot of people like it, I guess, but… No thanks. I’ve rarely done that.

I have vague memories from when I was little of spending Christmas in Tacoma, Washington, with my extended family there. Grandma accidentally bumped the tree, and it almost landed on my head. I know this from stories I’ve been told.

Having the holidays with the family we usually see is nicer and easier, so it doesn’t feel like such a performance. Better to see the extended family at other times, when we can focus more on seeing them and less on making a bunch of food or decorating. Then again, a lot of the time we’ve seen them has been at weddings…

For my writing update, I reached 50,000 Words! 🎉

I enjoyed writing the scene I wrote yesterday. It helped me easily get to this milestone. Hopefully, the rest of the writing will go as well as writing the first portion. It’s currently 56% finished, according to Pacemaker.

After today (overall goal: 52,000 words) I will have a mini break for Thanksgiving and then I’ll jump right back in.

I plan to fill myself with sweet potatoes, as I do every year.

Every old sock meets an old shoe.

Sara Mazariegos

No video today. This week has been insanely busy, for good reasons and bad.

My husband Luis’s grandfather passed away on Tuesday at the amazing age of 98 — two months shy of 99. We’re fortunate to have spent time with him in November when we visited Guatemala.

Luis’s phone has also been dramatic this week. His Pixel wouldn’t turn on, so he took it to a place to get it fixed; they kept it to “fix it”, then gave it back two days later saying they couldn’t. So he got a backup phone to have while Google works on receiving his old phone and replacing it. It’s been a lot of extra stress he doesn’t need. 😢

Meanwhile, on Sunday, we celebrated our twelfth anniversary of the day we met (our “Meetaversary.”) We went to two of the Smithsonian museums we went to on our first date and we got some pizza. Have I mentioned I love pizza? When we got home, we watched You’ve Got Mail which I hadn’t seen since it came out. I liked it a lot more than the first time, primarily because of how quaint it is nowadays. I wish they’d pointed out how slow the early Internet was!

In writing news, things have been chugging along well. I’ve been finding more magical cohesion in my plot. Things are starting to tie together and everything has some kind of payoff. So that’s good. It feels amazing. Some of it was semi-unconscious, too. I wrote things in and then realized they helped further something else I was planning.

It’s funny how it’s difficult to explain some of this writing stuff. You’ll just have to read my novel someday and see for yourself. 😉