That's My Bix!

Yea tho it is January, I will schlepp myself to the website and update. Even though I have not even an ounce of originality in my entire gross national product of a body (hi, Slimfast? You taste like loose leaf paper. You’re making me salivate when I hear Ovaltine commercials and my god, one of the quickest ways to gross myself out is to imagine the texture of Ovaltine powder, how it is somehow powdery and also oily and then think about how they used to have BEEF listed as one of the ingredients) I will come here and post when really, the best I can manage is a Ross-from-Friends-like “Hi.” (see above re: originality).

Let’s see, when last we left our intrepid heroine (or “plucky girl detective” which is a phrase used on the back of a chick lit book. It’s funny now, but the sad thing is that they were totally serious. And yes, the front of the book featured shoes and feet. Seriously, Chick Litters! Stop being shoe strumpets! Fricking schlock tease!), she was still trying to come to grips with the fact that she doesn’t have enough time in the day and also the vague ennui associated with being a two Chrysler household. And then, it all changed. Not the time thing (you’d think you’d save time, drinking your meals out of a can, but I’m still waiting to be awarded with a basket filled with hours, and yet, no) but rather the Chrysler thing. Esteban’s own brand of ennui involved his truck, or rather that the great hulking mass of a truck he had owned for several years was on loan to a sans car friend for something like four months, and then, less than a week after its returned, it threw itself upon its transmission. Or something. I don’t know. Mechanical things. He made me take pictures of the truck, that’s how morose he was about it, and despite claiming that he would buy a new truck “in the spring” he has filled his free time with searching for an adequate replacement. I really can’t blame him, though. The thought of driving a Chrysler Concorde doesn’t give anyone a hard on.

So after much hemming, much hawing and then a really annoying incident where he came into my office, slumped in my reading chair and then sighed as though the weight of the world pressed upon his fragile brow and then continued to sigh periodically as I was trying to finish a project that was already, through no fault of my own, really stupendously late, he managed to select a truck, drive it and buy it. It was sort of surreal, because I wasn’t very involved in the process, other than to tell him that if a new truck made him happy then yes, he should go buy a damned truck.

I’m not fond of trucks in general. In theory, I tend to think there’s no real reason we need a truck, because we’re urban professionals and not, say, sheep ranchers or junkyard owners (although sometimes, the resemblance to our garage and the yard on Sanford & Son is really eerie) and we live in a post WWII bungalow with a paved driveway and not, say, the Yukon, but man, the several months sans truck (not to mention the several months when we had to borrow our truck back from the person who was borrowing it) were really a pain in everyone’s collective ass. Apparently he’s right and we do indeed need a truck. But don’t tell him I said that, because right now, he just feels spoiled and I wouldn’t want to ruin it for him.

Everyone needs to feel spoiled once in awhile.

Speaking of which, it’s De-Lurking Week. According to my statistics, about 1% of the people who visit this page actually say something on the comments (less now that I’m trying out Haloscan, for some reason), so I invite you to unpack your adjectives and tell me one or all of the following:

What’s the best movie you watched in 2005? The best book you read? The best album? Which song are you currently addicted to? What should I make for dinner tonight? Should I cut my hair off? These important questions are in your capable hands.

It occurred to me this morning as I drove to work and decided that the driver of an obstinate SUV was an idiot and then did a habitual check of their bumper to see if they had a sticker indicating their voting preference, that a lot of what I say on this page can be pretty inflammatory against Republicans. In fact, some of what I’ve written can be downright insulting and that I tend to over-generalize when taken out of context, and when I mentioned this to Jake, he replied ‘The stuff you write doesn’t require context.’ Um, ok.

Sometimes, I’m truly appalled by what comes out of my mouth (and apparently, fingertips). I certainly don’t think all Republicans are stupid or bad drivers, but rather that when I see a bad driver sporting a Vote for Bush sticker, it seems to confirm my assumptions about them. Which is sort of like saying ‘Some of my best friends are black.’

This wasn’t prompted by anything, just that I’m embarrassed for being an ass, at least in my own head. I really do respect the political views of others, especially when they are well formed and fully thought out (something I suspect most aren’t) and don’t dislike people because they choose to vote Republican and in fact, socialize with some hard-core Conservatives.

And there are also idiotic Volvo drivers sporting Kerry in 04 stickers too. But I would be lying if I didn’t also mention that they break my heart.

I’ve been doing a lot of shopping recently. I have ordered jeans (all of my jeans got together and declared a suicide pact last week. If two pair hadn’t backed out at the last minute, I would be wearing skirts every day, like some SUV-Driving Bush-voter) and shoes off the internet, purchased book shelves and lamps and a custom lighting fixture and an entire little universe for my office, and bought a ton of post-holiday clearance stuff. (Note to self: do not buy holiday cards until 2010. You are totally covered.)

I got completely exasperated by my shoe mound at the bottom of my pitifully small half of our matchbox of a closet, so I bought two shoe organizers. The first was for the shoes in my regular rotation, so I can now fit an amazing fourteen pairs of shoes in an orderly fashion at the bottom of my closet (nine pairs on the shoe rack, the tall boots and the very flat shoes off to the side, and then my regularly worn (orange Pumas, ox blood Docs, pink and black All Stars) lined up on an angle in front of the rack.) This method also assumes that my black Docs and my new Operation Hottie shoes will pretty much always live on the rug in the kitchen, where I kick them off. And then another fifteen pair are hidden in a hanging organizer in the cleaning closet outside of my bedroom door. I’m thinking of annexing this closet completely, but just don’t have the time right now to figure out where to put the rarely used mops and vacuum cleaner (thanks to the cleaning service, who brings their own stuff, or apparently come equipped with magic wands) and concoct a story to explain to Esteban why there are now purses where the light bulbs used to be. The man already believes that I have a shopping problem. Of course, it’s only a problem if you don’t have space for the stuff you buy. More closets, no problem.

As mentioned above, yes, I am half-heartedly engaging in Operation Hottie-type movements. Or perhaps interpreting them through dance and scarves. Athletic scarves. So far, my leanings have involved black bean burritos for dinner, using organic beans and stashing away my unwrapped gift box of Esteban’s cousin Debbie’s Christmas Cookies into the back of the pantry where hopefully I will forget them until they have crumbled and look too grody to eat. And yes, it is a bit 1981 in here, thanks for noticing.

I refuse to give up the morning mocha that is undoubtedly applying untold millions of fat cells directly to my ass, so instead of eating food, I’m opting for cans of vaguely foodlike slurry that the evil diet industry has labeled a ‘shake’. This isn’t because I don’t believe one can lose weight on actual food that involves chewing, but rather because I am goddamned lazy and just want to open my yawp and be fed like a baby bird (sans the regurgitation please). It would be better with, say, fruit and Special K, but at the moment, the planning for that is requiring too much effort, so yeah, shake it is. I needn’t even mention that shakes are frothy cold delicious things made with ice cream and fresh strawberries and all the fat in the world and that I have known shakes before and you sir, are no shake. But that joke is as old as New Year’s revolutions.

Which this is not, by the way. I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions. I think they are stupid, because if there is something you want to change about yourself, you should just start at the moment you realize it has to happen, and not wait for the clock to strike twelve or your resolve will turn into a pumpkin. In this case, I steeled my determination right after we all got sick from mysterious circumstances and I divested myself of several pounds in the most efficient way possible, mostly because I felt very nervous eating anything for several days. Too bad they don’t put a non-cramping version of e.coli in one of those shakes, because damn.

Right now, I’m torn between buying a treadmill and joining a gym. I hate to be lumped in with the Resolvers and also sort of hate sweating in front of other people but there are oh so many choices of things to play with at gyms and I sort of love lifting weights and seeing muscles emerge from where there were none. However a treadmill would give me absolutely no excuse to avoid exercising and then I could do it in the mornings when I’m half-awake and unable to formulate any good excuses.

I am poised to make a decision, however. At least until I get a cramp from standing in this position too long, and then get bored and go check my e-mail.

This is for Gwen:
From my in-laws, I got refills of the make up I adore, some travel organizer thingy for my products (I destroy these, usually when something explodes, and need a new one every year), a very soft throw so that I can snuggle under it while sitting on the chaise, a jumungous Barnes & Nobel gift card, a box of fancy truffles and I am probably forgetting something. Mark gave me several books, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, some great Thomas O’Brien stationery, two photo albums and some white chocolate caramel corn that Esteban has already inhaled. My sister gave me Demeter’s Honey perfume and some more DVDs off my Amazon wish list. My mother gave me a very strange photography book and also a Barnes & Noble gift card. I know that I’m forgetting something crucial, but that is the bulk of it.

Esteban gave me a second battery for my big camera (nothing makes me more insane than the battery suddenly giving out at a crucial moment), a diamond and sapphire necklace, Gosford Park on DVD, and several books, including The Contortionist’s Handbook by Craig Clevenger, where he noted that he was disappointed to find out that it was a novel and not, say, a How To guide. I gave Esteban Serenity, Eddie and the Cruisers, and Pulp Fiction’s Collector’s Edition on DVD, a remastered Johnny Cash CD collection, a Johnny Cash action figure, a Dorkathalon book that he had purchased himself the week prior (buying things that were on HIS OWN WISHLIST because he is stupid), and a very old and impressive bottle of Glenlivet. I might have felt bad about blowing our $100 spending limit on the scotch, but since he blew the limit as well, even before he looked at the necklace, I don’t.

In 2004, I made a contribution to the Democratic National Committee and since then, they’ve been dogging me left and right. Every day, I get an e-mail from John Kerry, from Howard Dean, from another guy that I don’t remember. I’ve stopped reading them. They are just so cheery, so ‘Don’t Stop Believing’. If I’m to read between the lines, are all of the nation’s liberals thisclose to slicing their wrists? If they are anything like me, they have done a Pontius Pilate on the whole matter. Thinking about the state of affairs just makes me too angry. It doesn’t stop me from getting a little smug when I’m driving and I see a car make an asshole or stupid move and then notice their Bush/Cheney bumper sticker, as though that confirms everything. I reserve all commentary now for political profiling, because the alternative is to assume that it’s only a matter of time before we’re living in an Atwoodian dystopia and you just know that I’m going to end up in a freaking scarlet burqa. If they don’t round up all the hippies and their children beforehand, that is. If I suddenly disappear, you’ll know it’s because Utne Reader had their subscriber’s list impounded.

Esteban has been out of town all week, and to celebrate, Tilly decided that she has pneumonia. I spent my holiday going to the pet store to buy a new pet carrier, because our ancient plastic one is so permeated with the scent of animal fear that she gets distraught just looking at it. I wanted one of those cute bags with the mesh inserts that are all the rage these days, because it seemed like it would be easier to handle than the big boxy cage, and since it would be fabric, it wouldn’t be so cold for her. I ended up with a quilted pink and black thing that was ridiculously expensive for something that isn’t actually leather, but it drew raves from the receptionists at the vet, so I guess it was worth it. Tilly was fooled by it once, but now it’s probably tainted with the memory of yippy Jack Russell terriers. Tilly’s x-rays looked good (and wow, she’s 13? When did my little girl grow up?) but they gave her an anti-inflammatory and also some antibiotics. Tilly has the tenacity of both her owners combined, so I get the joy of giving her not one but two droppers full of what must be really foul stuff all to myself. I can usually trick her into taking the first one, but by the second dropper, she’s ready to plunge off the side of the counter backwards, as she has had enough of that particular brand of bullshit. But since she has only had one scary asthma-like attack since she started the medication, I think it must be working. The downside is that she is always warily eyeing me, won’t come when I call her and disappears whenever I am in the kitchen (where the medicine is). I have now blown my one Trojan Horse of canned cat food, so now it’s just a battle of wills. Or whether or not she decides to smother me in my sleep.

I have the January hatred a few days early. Also, the beginnings of a cold. I’m hoping it’s just allergies from the furious amounts of hair that Tilly loses while I’m trying to shove an eye dropper down her throat rather than Death Throat, which usually rears its ugly head around this time of year. However, my spirits were bolstered by spending most of last night on the phone, chatting with Mare. It was a delightful way to spend an evening. We probably could have gone on for five more hours, had it not been past both our definition of an appropriate hour. As Mare commented, thank goodness for this thing called the internet, and also planes and telephones because it allows friends to forget for a moment that we are all so scattered around the globe.

Also, not only did she make the coolest holiday card I received this season, she made me tilt my head and say ‘Awww’. Sarah, you are awarded honorary title of The Sweetest.

A few years ago, when I was working on a freelance assignment about women in fantasy football, Esteban, a dallier in the game, declared that I should participate in the game myself so I could draw upon that for the article. I agreed, not really connecting that I had to write the piece long before I would have to draft. I ended up doing my first draft from the very magazine in which my piece appeared, but no matter, the glorious Congested Hedgehogs made their debut. I’m always sort of half interested every year, really only still in there because Esteban enjoys the husband/wife togetherness thing and I sort of like proving that women aren’t dumbasses when it comes to football. I have had a decent standing each year, and I think my team has made the playoffs every year, or most of them, anyway (fucking me in the draft, but whatever). This year, Esteban predicted that, based on my protected players, my team would do well. True to prediction, the Hedgehogs went to the Superbowl, despite early injuries to my studs Priest Holmes and Javon Walker, as well as Tony Gonzalez’s distinct lack of initiative.

The Hedgehogs’ Championship opponent? Esteban’s team.

When I was writing that article, I would have loved to have had an anecdote like this. If only. Ah well. I was feeling pretty good. The previous week, the Hedgehogs had a 40 point game, and Esteban’s team was truly awful. Maybe I’d be the first female in the league to get the Championship. Either way, Phil (Esteban’s opponent in the previous round) was shut out of the Bowl, despite crowing about his potential victory on Monday morning, before Todd Heap scored two touchdowns and allowed Esteban to beat Phil by one point. The fact that our household had a winner no matter how it went down was just gravy.

On Christmas Eve, Esteban was bragging to his uncles about how I was about to kick his ass. I was cautiously optimistic, but said nothing. And then Corey Dillion and Todd Heap felt like they had something to prove, handing Esteban the glory and me, the agony of a sucky draft position with nothing to show for it.

However, this also means that I get to spend the next several months calling Esteban a wife beater, so it’s not all bad.

The Holiday Cards are done. Just in the nick of time. I managed to go to the post office without hyperventilating too much, taking in one of the little Alumni CD surprise packages (um, heh, surprise!) so that they could weigh it (Erica, that was yours!) and then sell me the stamps I needed so that I could reduce the amount of time needed to actually be in the post office. I seriously wonder if I’m not becoming afraid of crowds. I managed to do all of my Christmas shopping either online or during one marathon Saturday early morning session at Target, just because I hate standing there, overheating in a wool jacket, dealing with the fact that during the holiday season everyone forgets the standards of public etiquette and turns into rabid packs of feral dogs and/or feces-throwing howler monkeys.

I am so scrooged out right now, you have no idea. I just want to hide in my living room, watch our Christmas DVDs and wait this shit out, like it’s nuclear winter or something. Luckily, Esteban is all festive and perky and promises to wrap everything tonight while we get drunk on Tom & Jerry’s, so hopefully I’ll be all God Blessh Ush Everyone by early evening.

While I was making a quesadilla for myself, I started rearranging the kitchen. Esteban set up a card table in the kitchen back in August, when he wanted to work while I was watching television (because of course he can’t possibly work in his own office). The card table has been there for months, a gathering place for boxes and things and whatnot, pissing me off every time I look at it. Apparently, the quesadilla was a call to action, as I got started on it and then, after eating the delicious quesadilla (secret: use a quality Colby/Jack and a few crumbles of Queso Blanco and then sprinkle with Adobo seasoning), I returned to the kitchen and then finished cleaning off the card table, disassembled it, moved the antique enameled table to the wall, moved my hibiscus tree (in for the season) to the windows, moved the other table under the phone, moved the plants over to the new little freezer, and then brought one of my Eames chairs up from the basement so that we could ostensibly sit on it to put on and take off our shoes, but really, so that we’d have a place to pile the coats until I come up with a solution for that.

Esteban, of course, hates it. The man hates change. It’s frustrating. He claims ‘I did not agree to this chair!’ because he is delusional. Meh, it will just be there for two months and then when I move it, he’ll grumble that I’m always changing things and he loved that chair and it was perfect and blah blah blah.

But the new kitchen arrangement makes me happy and I can’t believe I waited so long for Esteban to deal with the card table situation. I should remember the whole Esteban/Weetabix conflict of priorities. When he says that he’ll put something away, I assume he means sometime that evening or possibly that week and what he really means is ‘sometime within our natural lifetime, most likely when we sell the house.’

There’s a Christmas mad-lib going around the office, and my coworkers had to ask me what a noun was. And then what an adjective was. And then an adverb. I patiently explained and provided examples in kind. Then one jumped in and started singing ‘Conjunction Junction’ like that was supposed to help. I countered ‘That’s ‘and’, ‘but’ or ‘or’, which are conjunctions, not adjectives nor adverbs.’ She retorted ‘Well, I’m glad SOMEBODY’S going back to school for this!’ to which I replied ‘You learn that in grade school, not graduate school.’

But seriously, how can someone not know what an adjective is? Isn’t that part of the autonomic nervous system? Breathing, heart beats and Strunk and White’s Elements of Style? Can I get a witness?

Speaking of school, I just got an e-mail from the admin in my graduate program. Apparently, I agreed to participate in their student/faculty reading series, as long as he scheduled me in the spring rather than in the fall, since my fall was similar to that of Humpty Dumpty’s in that it was great but my crown still hasn’t quite recovered.

I think I had hoped that he would forget or misplace my name at some point. I sort of really very much a lot hate to read my writing aloud. I know. It’s ridiculous. I have a background in drama. From my first step onto the stage to play the Virgin Mary in my Sunday school Christmas pageant at age 4, I’ve spent a huge amount of time working in theatre. I was in so many plays during my childhood and early adolescence that I can’t even remember the names of all of them. I was the president of the damned drama club in high school. At one point during my senior year, I was in four plays at one time, which involved a death by fire equivalent of time management and I think may have introduced my addiction to schedules which are packed to the balls. Some schedules apparently have testicles. Mine do, anyway.

But the main difference here is that when you are acting in a play, you are usually not emotionally invested in the work. You want the play to succeed. You want to do well. You want everyone to fall in love with you and with drama, maybe just a little bit. But the very fact that actors regularly change the wording of the piece tells me that they are not as engaged in the work as they would be if they had written it. The writer chose those words specifically. If they are like me, they rewrote that line probably a dozen times, changing the words, playing with syntax. If they are a little bit of a drama queen, they might say that they bled a little onto the page. I would not say that, personally because my god, then I’d have to hide in shame forever.

I know what to do to make something sound good. I know how to have dramatic presence, how to play to the back row and sell it like the rent is due. But as soon as it’s my stuff, my hands turn to ice, my voice starts to shake and I start feeling like I’m taking too much time and so I start rushing, tumbling over words in a monotone because I don’t want to grandstand or make more of the writing than it is, and then wishing like anything that I could just skip ahead to the last paragraph and be done. And while I can be fearless about almost anything, reading my own work is exposing something very vulnerable, like chewing ice with an exposed nerve ending.

That having been said, it’s a good thing for me to do. If I can think of something to read and then practice it (instead of going in cold and not thinking about it ahead of time, as I did during Jessie’s reading at Journalcon this year, then being waylaid by the ishy feelings as soon as I opened my mouth) and maybe desensitize myself, it will be ok.

I think the crux of the issue is something I was discussing with Doug earlier this year. I think that writers have two modes of operation: either they are attempting to quell something in their brain or they are trying to expose it. Are you writing with the door closed or wide open? I am stuck firmly in the latter category. There are things in my fiction that I would never say to anyone, and yet, there I must stand, at a podium and say them to an expectant audience. Fucking hell. No wonder writers become alcoholics and drug addicts.

I have marginal success with the stuff that is more comedic, so I might wimp out and pick one of the funny stories. Or maybe I will have written something really great and not scary and that is so good that everyone who hears it achieves the highest peak of Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs and therefore experiences self-actualization and therefore forgets that my voice was shaking. Either way, if you’re in the Milwaukee area on March 2, I will be reading at Von Trier’s. Reading, out loud, to people. If it starts to go badly, I may stash a dagger so that I have an out, but there it is. Either some marginal fiction along with great stuff (my classmate’s and the faculty member’s) or a little seppuku. Good times.

For those of you who have been waiting with bated breath for information about my last story in class. Some of this might have been on the notify list, but since our class ended up being so small, instead of a standard two stories, we had time to workshop three per student. Thus, after I limp-wristed my first story and then pushed through a second, shorter than the Average Weetabix Novella of a Short Story, I was a little out of steam creatively. I figured, meh, what the hell, I had a few weeks. I could marinate on it. And then I had freelance stuff. And then Chicago. And then, hooboy, the story was due in two days and I had nothing, not even an idea. Crap.

I thought about several I had simmering on the back burner in my brain, and also looked through some scribbles in my paper journal, most of which were weird prose poems about winter and cold and the harsh, unyielding landscape of January. I started writing, using a setting from one story idea, and then pulled forward a plot from another one, and by the time I needed to leave for school, I had six pages that established setting and main characters. Lovely. And then I got sick, a sneezing horrible sinusy mess. I stayed home from work and slept all morning and then, couldn’t really justify going to class when I didn’t go to work. I wrote an e-mail to my professor and then, as proof that I was currently stuck, I attached my draft in progress as well as suggested that I hand in something else for workshop, something that wasn’t still amuck with verb tense shifts and crazy paragraph transitions (and also, once I left the confines of high school typing class, my pinky finger decided that, as God as its witness, it would never hit the TAB key again, so the formatting was still a bloody mess) and the bottom of the document had a bunch of notes to myself that would mean nothing to anyone. I really don’t know WHAT I was thinking, exactly, but really sort of rationalizing that I didn’t have anything to hand in anyway and that I would sit at home and work on my story instead. Except that what really happened is my professor printed off those six pages and distributed them to the class and told me that I could read the ending aloud in class during workshop.

In my head, I heard a voice’ you just bought yourself several additional days.

Hi. I suck.

As you know, I really hate being late. It makes me want to cry, but at the same time, this creative thing, facing the fear of marring something that is perfect inside your head’ it’s really hard. Oh my god, I just read the last sentence and I can barely hear myself think over the whining.

For the next few days, I worked on the story, got some furious writer’s block over the weekend, and then sorted it out during the hazy moments between the sunrise alarm clock’s yellow glow and its traditional ‘final call’ alarm. When in doubt about a character, kill them off. I would have made a great soap opera story editor, let me tell you. And then it was Tuesday and Meh Race and I figured, meh, I knew exactly how the story would end, and honestly, most students turn in actual first drafts for workshop, not the pretty close to final polished drafts that I end up turning in. If we hadn’t such a tiny and supportive class, I never would have felt comfortable to leave myself open that much, but with this crew, I felt ok about it. Besides, I could just get to school early and finish it up on my laptop. Perfect. Brilliant. No problems.

And then, when I got to work, I hear about the snowstorm. When I left for work, it was crystal clear, and when I walked in from the parking lot, the skies looked a little furrowed but nothing too unusual for December in Wisconsin. However, five minutes after taking off my coat, I looked outside and saw a veil of fluffy white flakes. My teammates warned me about the snow. I checked the radar. There was a giant cloud of ugly that stretched from North Dakota to exactly three feet off away from my office building. Another coworker was watching as one, two, three, four school cancellations popped up on the TV in as many minutes. Clearly, this was not good. Then my phone rang. It was Esteban, telling me to not go to school and that my professor would understand. I was sitting at nine pages by then, mostly because I kept distracting myself by going back and fixing glaring problems within the first six pages and then the subsequent three. I was nowhere near the climax or resolution, but I did have it worked out in my head, which was a good thing. In reality, I didn’t want to blow off the last class. I sort of wanted that finality. I had missed the last class of fall semester in 98, when a gas station rug slipped out from under my feet and I cracked my patella. That had been one of my workshops too. I never did get any of the responses. I still wonder what they said about me. I mean, about my story. Which was me, so same thing.

Again with the crazy writer shit. Sometimes, really, I take myself entirely too seriously.

So when Esteban called and said ‘I don’t want you to drive.’ I hemmed. Then I hawed. Then I tried diverting him with my breasts, which didn’t work very well because we were on the phone and I was at work (I am totally kidding because farting and revealing breast twice in one week at work will get you fired.) I finally wanted to get off the phone and devote more time to staring futiley at the big cloud of evil swifting over my route to Milwaukee and said ‘Fine, I’ll think about it.’ In Weetabixese, ‘Fine’ means ‘I’m going to do what I want anyway but thank you for your concern/anger/confusion’. In fifteen years, Esteban has become very fluent in Weetabixese, enough to serve as a translator in the UN, if ever the need should arise. He told me this one night in bed, and I had no choice other than to bite him for it.

Five minutes later, I received an e-mail.

‘If you are going to be a stubborn mule about this, you will at least let me drive you down there. I worry about you but if you’re going to die in a ditch, at least you’ll have me there with you.’

I do not even want to hear anything in the comments section about what a sweet man he is. He’ll only get an even more inflated head. And also, he called me a mule, he does not deserve your praise.

I responded and said ‘Fine! Get ready, because I’m going to leave early and try to beat the worst of it. If we get there early, we’ll park in a Starbucks and work.’ Then I packed up my stuff and headed home. Already the roads were getting greasy. I got home and listened to Esteban make several additional ‘This is stupid, you’re stupid, we’re being stupid’ comments until I told him that I didn’t want to listen to his ‘I told you so’ for the rest of the day, so if he wanted to come along, then he had to stop being annoying, since he wasn’t going to change my mind. I was leaving exceptionally early in deference to the driving conditions and I wasn’t willing to allow the beginnings of a snow storm completely stop my life. I am, after all, a ninth generation Wisconsinite. Stupidity is intertwined betwixt my DNA.

We got on the highway and yes, the roads were sort of nasty, but not nearly as bad as I drove a few weeks earlier. Esteban and I cranked our seat heaters up and plugged in some good music on the iPod until we passed the ginormous flag after Sheboygan, which is when the alternative radio station comes in. The snow petered out after Manitowoc, so my plan to beat the cloud in the south was a good one. By the time my professor called to tell me that she hadn’t heard that classes were cancelled but maybe I shouldn’t drive down, we were already exiting in Mequon to visit the Caribou and the frou frou grocery store. By the time we got to the Starbucks near campus, the snow had started in earnest, so we found a nice little table in the back, sat down with some hot tea, and I started tapping out the rest of my story, while Esteban worked on his analysis whatsits and whonows.

It was a very pleasant way to spend the early afternoon. There was some annoying chatter between grad students (typical Muffys squealing like they were 18 rather than 28) and one fuckhead who was taking up three spots at the laptop table and didn’t even have a laptop that needed to be plugged in (very annoying and I can see why there is Starbucks rage). I typed and typed and typed and whenever I got stuck, I could look out and watch a branch making a swooping pattern in the accumulating snow. It was exceptionally wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that the words accumulated along with the inches of powder, and by the time I had to get ready to leave, I had eighteen pages and a finished draft. Nothing like the threat of deadline to stoke the creative fires.

Esteban parked, content to wait for me in the comfy Bux, and I hopped back into the car and drove to campus. Class went well, and I had to read the eleven additional pages aloud, but luckily, it went really quickly. There were some verb tense problems (I had this urge to write it in present tense for some reason, but kept lapsing into past tense’ which tells me that I think it needs to be in past tense, since I kept reverting) and a few sections of clunky writing, but in all, I felt pretty good that the bulk of what was inside my head made it onto the page. Or, rather, screen. The class had a mixed reaction, coming up with some very good suggestions and questions that I need to sort out before taking the story anywhere, but in all, I think it went well. The professor excused me after my section was done, as she was very worried about my drive home, and I was off to retrieve Esteban from the Bux.

As it turned out, she was correct to be worried. Normally my drive home takes a little under two hours, but it was nearly double that. The visibility was crap and the roads weren’t great, but once we hit the northern counties, the roads weren’t even plowed. Esteban tried going around a car at one point and came excruciatingly close to sliding back into it. The semis were blasting by at 75, but then we’d watch them suddenly slide two feet to the right or left as they’d hit chunky spots in the road. It was rather nerve-wracking and we were glad when we finally hit the plowed area of the Green Bay city limits. At some points, I was seriously wondering if it had been worth it, but since I have now learned that my 4.0 GPA is secure for one more semester, no harm, no foul.

A few nights ago, I had another sleep talking incident. Apparently, I sat straight up in bed. Esteban asked what was wrong and I replied, ‘This is my bedroom. And this is my bed.’

I didn’t remember it until he told me about it, but then I only half remembered it, like a dream. However, it made me start laughing so hard that I passed out for a few seconds again, the whole time thinking that it reminded me of something that a two-year-old would say. If I know our sleeping arrangements, Esteban was being a bed hog and I was trying to reassert my right to the bed.

Even in my crazy sleep talking, I’m all about challenging the patriarchy.

Now that the semester has finished and I am caught up at work (and as caught up as I can be with freelance stuff), I suddenly realized that holy crap, the day we celebrate Jesus’ birthday slash Chanukah slash Saturnalia slash Whatever You Call It is coming up and fuck me, I have done absolutely nothing. Tree? Nope. Wrapping theme? Nope. Cards, the kind that are normally done over Thanksgiving weekend? Half way there. But I have stamps. Half the stamps. Oh man. Why am I writing an entry instead of working on everything?

So yeah. Have a great week.