Friday...and the sun is out!

Here we go, Friday morning, and oh, what to post, what to post! Coffee is brewing--the fact I'm even awake before 9 am on a school professional day is just weird. The small people in my house are all still asleep, so other than the cat, who is having a total freak attack in the hallway right now because something is itching his back where he can't reach to bite (no, it's not fleas--too cold, too early--he has this skin thing, like, nerve damage or something), it's quiet. Niiiiice. So I should be able to get lots of work done, write amazing things, extricate adverbs, and solve the problems facing whatever line in the Canucks offense/defense that made them go into a dangerous overtime period last night against the LA Kings. (Princess and I watched Vampire Diaries, so we only heard the hoots and hollers coming from the basement where Husband was watching the game. I guess it was a close one.)

Now I've spoken too soon. My Best Work, otherwise known as Bueno, has emerged from the bedroom. One down, two to go. But he's a good boy, so he'll find something quiet and perfect to do while I finish rambling. But first, coffee! 

I started reading Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--bought it last year, the movie comes out today, no time like the present to start nibbling on it. Did you know the author died, though? Dude, that sucks! That totally freaks me out! What if I see my book(s) through to the end of edits and then die before the first one hits the shelves? That would blow. And I worry about stuff like that. In fact, I obsess about it. Do other people do this? Do you obsess about dying too young? My doctor laughs at me. I go in to see her and ask a million questions--and I know way too much about medical stuff from years of being in the medical field--and she giggles. She says I'm not overweight, my cardiac risk factors are low, I don't eat a lot of red meat, I don't drink or do drugs... But I also despise exercise. And vegetables. Ewwww. If someone held a gun to my head while I sat in front of a plate of broccoli and gave me the choice, "Eat or die," I'd tell them to pull the effing trigger. Not. Gonna. Eat. It. I had an evil stepmother once who force-fed me cold stew and broccoli, and I thanked her by promptly puking it all over her kitchen sink. :o)

But back to the dying stuff--I go through the (dead) people in my family and try to figure out when and how they died, how old they made it to before kissing the ring of fate. And it's a crapshoot. Who knows, dude... I try to do that "live for today" garbage, but it makes falling asleep at night really hard. I get panicky with worry. I don't want to get old. I don't want gray hair and wrinkles or saggy boobs. It's super hard. Does anyone else do this? Am I just getting old? I think I need to get a new tattoo or something.

What I really need to do is the dishes in the kitchen sink so that I don't feel guilty when Princess comes up and sees them--I told her I'd do 'em last night but I didn't, being the lazy cow I was embodying--and then I need to get back to reworking the third draft so I can move onto putting more pages down for Book Two. I miss my old schedule: kids to bed, Husband to bed, leave the house for my favorite coffee shop parking lot, write (long-hand...horrors!) for a few hours, watch the periphery of the car through the electric side mirrors to make sure the Resident Schizophrenic isn't coming too close to ask me for money (again), watch the young Persian guys with their souped-up cars and slicked back hair (it seems around here that the Persian kids are like the Guidos/Guidettes of "Jersey Shore"), watch the Korean kids in their all-nighter study sessions, some with tutors, all with mothers asleep in their leased cars in the parking lot while waiting for their kids to finish up, watch the naughty Korean kids (girls usually) sneak around the side of the building and power-puff their way through a cigarette, turn on the car to warm up the interior (remember, I'm in Canada--it's COLD at night), write a few more words/scenes, blush if it's a scene with a smooch in it, make some notes for later research, swallow the last of my now-cold tea, drive home with a smile of satisfaction and a feeling of warm-and-fuzzy in my belly (which has nothing to do with the peppermint tea and occasional doughnut I consume while in said parking lot), and fall right to sleep. Maybe that's why I'm an insomniac now. Maybe not putting down fresh words is making me crazy, like my brain is constipated or something. My brain needs an enema. Eureka! 

I like this: "Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia."  ~E.L. Doctorow 

Wow, that makes me feel so much better. Now my voices and I can go do the dishes.