NaNoWriMo vs. Heartland

As you can see, I did okay on NaNoWriMo. By the skin of my teeth, I managed to get in 50,466 words in the month of November. I'm not going to lie: it could have been more. A lot more. But things happen, and well... Okay, this happened:

I'm not sure if I mentioned it before or not, but I somewhat recently visited my brother in Canada. (Where the entire household was in quarantine for 15 days and I got to homeschool my newly acquired niece and nephew. And holy shit does it suck to cross borders right now. Do Not Recommend!) While I was there, he was somewhere in the middle of Heartland Season 1.

The funniest part of this is that his girlfriend and I sort of began our Heartland immersion in a kind of casual manner. We'd be playing our games while the show was going so we could just listen. Then it got to be that during meal times we'd decide to turn on Heartland. Then, all of a sudden, it became a ritual. Lunch time: 1 episode of Heartland then back to work. But come dinner time: we started on Heartland and just kept going into the night.

In the two weeks that I was there, we finished all the way up through season 3. This is important.

When I came home, I had to first figure out if Heartland was available on the USA side of Netflix (it is, but only up to season 11). Then, I decided I had to watch the episodes of season 1 that I had missed.

Now here is where I screwed myself over.

I watched those episodes in my mom's room. On her TV. All snuggled up in her bed while she was napping right beside me.

Then she woke up.

She started watching.

She got hooked.

This same woman, once she gets hooked on a show, can binge entire seasons in a few days (ahem, Supernatural, I'm looking at you). So I did the only logical thing I could. I knew I wasn't going to be around for the next week and told her that she could go up to the end of season 3, but she better not start season 4 without me.

Dear reader, we will now refer to the next NaNoWriMo chart available:

See those first two days? I was still in Canada for those. November 3rd was my plane ride home, which accounts for almost hitting 3k words. The two days following I was still home for (and where the Heartland immersion began with my mother). Again, I was out of her presence for the next nine days. When I returned home, my sister was visiting so my evenings allowed for decent writing time. Then my sister went home, and the marathon truly began.

By the time November ended, we were almost done with season seven. Or we were already in season eight... I can't remember.

Suffice it to say, this was not one of my better NaNoWriMo experiences, but it also wasn't my worst. And compared to the time I get to spend with my mommy doing something we both really enjoy (and are way too invested in) it's well worth the sacrifice. P.S. Netflix, you think you could upload seasons 12 & 13 to the USA side sometime soon? I think we're about to catch up way too soon...