connect

Much as I love my solitude, I’m quite aware that I need to be with other, like-minded people now and then to a) stay sane, and b) improve my work. So after I drop my daughter off at a church lock-in (gosh. I hope it’s OK if she’s there as her friend’s guest. Will they kick her out if they suspect she’s an atheist?), I’m meeting my bestest local friend and writing buddy to debrief. The past couple of weeks have been … odd. I think we both need a fix of each other’s original brand of sane creativity.

I have done no work on the novel today other than opening the files I need. After my friend and I wear out, I’ll come home to do some focusing.

I keep forgetting that I have that Nielsen TV diary to fill out. The kid and I had the television on yesterday for a total of about two hours and 25 minutes. She watched a thing called My Fake Fiancé. I surfed the web and worried about the Kirby sweeper sales guy on my porch.

In honor of vacuuming, I have decided to give away the crappy Eureka I bought a month ago and just do a better job of maintaining my excellent, old sharp. So I bought $11 worth of bags for it today, which I suspect I’ll fill up within two months if I actually clean my house the way it needs cleaning.

This gives me an idea for a scene in the novel, which means I have to leave right this second.

(Oh, wait! Email from Diane Frank (a poet and sweet teacher). She’s offering her workshop in person this summer! I would love to meet her but have a sense that I might not be … positive enough for the group she would gather. Still, the cost is amazingly low! Fuck. I just can’t. Fuck.)

(reminder: this is not a blog; it’s a journal.)

list

on my desk:

two boxes of magnetic poetry words
a plastic container that held dry Honeynut Cheerios
a bottle of water
coffee cup
five crisp $1 bills from the Nielsen TV rating company
a $20 bill
my iPod
box of envelopes
financial statements from last month
three No. 2 pencils & a pencil sharpener
my modem
a stray fine-point black Sharpie
instructions for my shredder
dust

bits

worked through my middle of the night panic last night and pushed myself back to sleep, but only after I had caught the cat on the kitchen counter at 2:30 a.m. trying to steal the cherry PopTarts out of the box I’d forgotten to put back in the cabinet.

I know better than to leave out food.

I am tired. The Kirby “home care” salesmen who stopped by my house and that I was chump enough to let in because, well, I’m a chump, sucked away my energy and self-respect.

At least I didn’t buy that $1,200 vacuum, not even for $800. It’s not in my budget.

My new Eureka is busted, though. Will have to figure out what the hell is wrong with it.

Oh, crap, now that I’ve mentioned “vacuum,” I’ll get house cleaning hits and vacuum salesmen hits.

I’m a lousy housekeeper. I do not visit FlyLady.net because that site intimidates me and makes me feel guilty for enjoying my clutter.

After I get my daughter to school, today will be all about catching up with myself. How? Writing, bill paying, a little grocery shopping (very little).

I need to do some surgery on my novel.

Really, what I need to do is take what I have and send it away to friends who want to read it, but I’m certain I’ll lose their respect, certain that they’ll say, “So this is what I’ve been waiting for all this time?

Must. Not. Think. That. Way.

Also need to make hotel reservations for White House trip, lodging reservations for August wedding.

I think that vacuum salesmen who thought his machine sucked up all the scary dust mites in my house just raised all the dust on the Earth, and all that dust is sitting in my lungs. I feel like crap this morning.

Poor kid, though. His supervisor left him here to give me the demonstration (I thought he was going to clean one small spot on my carpet. I wonder what my face looked like when he hauled in that huge box and began to assemble something that resembled a NASA rocket. And the machine does contain NASA designed parts).

His own cell phone had no signal, so he had to keep using my house phone to try to call his trainer dude, who wasn’t picking up. Called the main office (in Cincinnati), and they couldn’t reach the guy either. After the impromptu and for him unsuccessful in-home demonstration, my salesman sat on my front porch with his huge boxed up machine for an hour. He’d already spent at least an hour and a half showing me every gadget that came on the thing (kid and I were starving. We’d been about to go to dinner. I have NO idea why I didn’t just say, “Get lost.” Well, I’m a chump, that’s why. I only opened the front door, which I NEVER do, because I thought I saw a police car parked out front. I was wrong).

I ended up making the kid a sandwich after I’d taken my daughter out for junk food. I mean, really, he was famished, and it was 9 p.m.

Just for fun, I’m going to write the word “bifocal” here. (it’s a wordpress stats thing)

(reminder: this is not a blog; it’s a journal)

more process

What I will do next is take a shower. it’s part of my creative process. While I work shampoo through my hair, I’ll think about how I will describe those scenes that don’t seem to fit into the “novel-that-will-not-be-finished [GASP] but-will-not-die” for the outline I am creating/designing to push me toward an ending.

I think briefly describing what’s going on will help me hold onto what my focus should be at this point in the novel. Will help me decide if I need to cut those scenes, save them for later, include them in another story.

I will reiterate for myself: it’s really all about Geoff and Lily. Once I resolve their “battle” (or don’t resolve it if that’s how it needs to go), I can figure out how to weave in the subplots.

Interruption.

open

7:12 a.m.: Road pavers started their stuff so early this morning that I wanted to dig a hole in the floor of my bedroom, crawl in it and sleep until June. June isn’t all that far away.

I like waking up my daughter when she is here with me instead of making her wake up to an alarm. I like watching her face adjust from sleep to wakefulness, so beautiful.

Just as I went up the stairs to her room, the garbage guys were trolling down the alley in their big, ol’ truck. I watched out her back window as the team of two grabbed my can, tore off the lid, dumped garbage into truck’s body, leaped onto the back of the truck. One hollered to the driver, “Hup!”

“Why do they DO that?” my kid asked. “It’s so annoying.”

“They need to let the driver know they’re ready to move on,” I said.

“But it’s so annoying! They need to stop that.”

7:31 a.m.: Just shooed a large truck away from blocking my driveway. I think the driver was once a member of ZZ Top, sunglasses and all. He was quite sweet about moving, said he was just parked there waiting for things to get rolling.

Instead of coming back home right after I drop the (very slowly moving) kid at school, I’ll go directly to my polling place and vote for those two levies that will raise my mortgage because of increased taxes but will help bring our vocational school into modern times and will ensure that our main school district has operating expenses (that one isn’t a new levy). The concern is that people around here will refuse to vote “yes” for any of the levies because they are strapped or unemployed and about to lose their homes ….

But we need our schools. Even if I didn’t have a child about to enter high school in this district, I’d vote for the levies.

Speaking of my child, what the hell is she doing? We should be halfway to the school by now (which is only seven minutes away).

7:54 a.m.: Took a different route to school. It took half the time. Three years of this and I’m just now figuring that out? Voted. The poll workers were raving about my long white hair, complimenting me. I heard, as I stepped into the voting booth, “It looks good if they take care of it like that.” It’s depressing to hear from an older woman, “You don’t see older women with long hair like that these days.”

I am now officially an older woman.

I can’t even express how much that depresses me. Fifty doesn’t feel old to me. My face must be sagging and crumpling before my eyes except that I rarely look into the mirror for fear of watching my face sag and crumple.

Older woman. Crap.

It’s still before 8 a.m., but only just. If I want to exercise, I need to eat a little something first or I’ll feel sick. I have already planned today to death, and inside the little schedule I’ve drawn up for myself, I see only about an hour for writing before I pick up my kid from school.

Better get going, then.

(reminder: this is not a blog; it’s a journal.)

TV diary

I vaguely remember receiving a post card from the Nielsen TV ratings company a couple of weeks ago informing me that my family had been chosen (randomly, I’m sure) to fill out one of those ratings diaries, and I’d be hearing from them soon.

Today the diary arrived with instructions and five crisp, new dollar bills. We’re not supposed to fill the damned thing out until our start date, which is Thursday, May 7, but I can tell them right now that all my kid watches is House MD reruns, and barring the occasional glimpse of something ridiculous like Medium or a reality television show I refuse to admit to watching (not American Idol.), I mostly watch Music Choice, which means I tend not to watch television at all.

I do watch films, but lately, the novel has pushed that urge right out of my head, too.

I have no idea what’s on television these days. Someone mentions a new show, and I give them a blank look. Shows that I’ve never heard of are already appearing as reruns on TBS or Lifetime. OK. I guess I channel surf a lot when my kid is at her dad’s, so I see these shows popping up (nearly wrote “pooping up”) here and there.

This TV diary thing is going to be a waste of time, but the five crisp dollar bills are there to glare at me and make me feel guilty if I don’t fill out the damned thing.

I’ll donate them to the Salvation Army or something.

I have about 40 minutes to get a little work done before I pick up my grumpy kid. The street is quiet, and I did manage to nap, so I’m no longer dripping with exhaustion. Weird dreams, though. I really hate the dreams I have when I nap during the day. This one involved the street crew digging up every shred of green in my yard and my yard guy coming by to weed whack the dirt and to tell me as he waited in my kitchen for me to find the check I had written for him that vanished as soon as I signed my name to it that I was going deaf. He grew a head taller than he actually is.

(My yard guy isn’t really a yard guy. He owns his own business installing those underground fences for people with pets. He does a few old people’s yards here and there. And mine. He’s an amazing man, and in my dream, I liked him. While he appeared taller than he actually is, I felt shorter, as if I were stooped over with age, too gray. My mother shrank once she reached her 60s, though she didn’t hunch the way I do even now. I have a decade or so before I become truly short.)

I can’t see the words I’m typing.

There. The glasses help, but not that much. Stupid bifocals.

signs

woke up in the wee hours of the morning again. bad habit. hot. achy. worried. about what? not quite sure. Oh well. Got up, did little things, went back to sleep at 5 or so. Alarm went off at 6:05. Yeah. Feel like shit. Kid was in terrible mood this morning. Sometimes I am relieved when she acts like my concept of a typical teenage girl, but, meh, this morning not so much. she just didn’t feel good, and I was shaky and nauseated from lack of sleep. she had no patience for my fragility, though she kept her mouth shut around her irritation. she’s an amazing kid, really.

city appears to be prepping our street for road work from main drag to second main drag. great. must find alternate routes. can’t find any information online about what the crews are doing or how long the work will take. hate calling city about this shit because I always get some cranky man who barks into the phone and acts like I should know without being told.

too tired to focus. must nap. so far, it’s quiet out there. looks like rain will come down soon.

rain
rain
rain

Licking County has its first case of swine flu. Licking County is right next door. I see no reason to panic. I will live and let my kid live. We’ll wash our hands, try to stay healthy (sleep would help)…

so tired.

so much for working today. some days, it’s hard enough to trudge from house to car and back, to wash a dish, make a lunch, try not to annoy the brittle package of adolescence. Trying to write a novel on top of that? Creativity and imagination will be elusive on this day. trudging. Hm. that feels like the wrong word.

there are no right words in this post.

I will nap. It’s all right to nap.

process

Thinking about the novel:

“Ultimately, it comes down to me and you, kiddo,” Geoff tells Lily. He’s been telling her this for months now (in my writing process. in the novel, this will take one or two scenes). This “declaration” should have occurred years ago, but I (as their writer) wasn’t quite there yet. Ultimately, it will come down to a scene/conversation/negotiation. One will flee or fight. One will laugh. One will win….

No, actually I’m pretty sure there won’t be a clear winner. I think I know how they will leave it. Slightly ambiguous, a hint of “non-resolution.”

It’s been a good weekend of focusing on direction, keeping myself inside the characters’ minds, trying to figure out where the mess of a plot has been taking me. It’s not as much of a mess as I keep thinking it is though I know I’m about to get to that point (am sort of rewriting) where things get seriously out of control. I’ll blame that totally on National Novel Writing Month. I love NaNoWriMo as a starting off place for stories, but maybe it’s not such a good idea to let it take over a novel already in progress.