At times, the web is such a glorious, mesmerizing, complete and utter waste of time. I count the moronic genius of Someone Keeps Stealing My Letters, the strangely intimate yet completely divorced from reality game of playing with magnetic letters on the fridge. It would be even more fun if this was the poetry version, where bits of phrase could be swapped around. A browser-based, multi-user Flash… game that isn’t really a game, you could spend a lot of time trying to write out your fridge opus, if those other cretins didn’t keep stealing your vowels.
Strange world, that that kind of thing is entrancing.
I am hereby giving up on NaNo month. It sucks, and it’s only my competitive nature that thinks it’s awful — I already know I can write and write garralously. It’s just that I can’t seem to this month. The first eight days of the month were sucked up with my sister in the hospital, and subbing for Mom and work, and driving back and forth into the city every spare moment — a good 55 miles away — to see her. And then there’s the good old Cybils, which has a reading list now of 57 books that I’ve got to have read and reviewed by the middle of December… and then, there’s ye olde Thanksgiving Pageant, which I’ve done absolutely bupkus work on today, and I was meant to pull together the bulletin and type up all the names of the kiddies taking part (our Woodrow Wilson is Ukrainian. With his heavy seven-year-old accent, that should be a hoot.). The feather that drops the building is a surprise visit from the Outlaws (aka in-laws), and if you know the history there, you comprehend the “OY.”
Oy. I surrender. Just lay me down and count me dead. Wake me up when it’s all over.
So, with apologies to all the nice people (okay, all the blood-thirsty, evil, competitive people who lured me into this knowing I’d have to quit and they could dance on my grave and prove once and for all that they’re better than me at everything) who got me into NaNo, I’m going to have to do the best I can and give it a lick and a promise (another weird phrase of which no one knows the origins) but I doubt I’m going to make it. Which depresses me, for some bizarre reasons. What? I can’t do everything and be good at all things, all at once? Woe is me.
Another happy note from my agent, who (still) hates me, but no new news on the final edit for my novel from Knopf. I don’t doubt that my editor is still on her honeymoon — along with my 8 weeks pregnant sister and everyone else. Can we say “jealous?”
It suddenly occurs to me that I never did have a honeymoon. I guess we counted our trip to Holland seven years later as our honeymoon, and probably our cruise to Alaska also counted, but frankly, anytime you’re a.) traveling with other people and b.) become nauseas sans partying and libations (thank you, November seas) it shouldn’t count toward anything remotely celebrating a marriage. Unless you’re being altogether too literal. (Those seas WERE rough. Stuff slid. Fingernail polish tipped out of bottles. Dresses were ruined. Tears — well, okay. No tears. Just a lot of swearing and people breaking their hips in the dining room. Ugh. No more cruising with the over-80 set. EVER.)
But anyway, back to the no honeymoon thing. I guess it’s fitting. After all, the Welsh word for honeymoon is mis mêl (honey month — retrieved from Wikipedia), and ostensibly, the lore says that the first month of marriage, during Babylonian times or something, the father of the bride supplied the groom with all the mead he could stomach. Since my father has given nothing to mi esposo but grief, well — no honeymoon for us. We’ll just vacation, thanks.
So the thing is? I need a vacation. I’m going to plan for this. It’s going to have to be a.) something where NO ONE related to me is within a seventy-five miles, b.) something which is expensive enough to be fun, but not so spendy that I’m worrying about our (dubious) savings c.) and it will need to be during the time when the work on the house gets on my nerves the worst — I’m thinkin’ right about the time they start tearing out the carpet? Is the time to go to Paris or something. (Why Paris? Yes, I hated where we were in France. I’m not partial to dog doo on the sidewalk. But Mac may actually have to go to Paris for WORK. In which case… okay. I can stay off the sidewalks.)
This sounds like a plan. And now I will go down and put dinner in the oven because my vacation has not yet begun …