Caterwauling

I am still feeling like shit. Hooray. The throat, she is scorching.

Put in about six hours of work today (otherwise known as “a half-day”) and snarfed and coughed my way through it. I got my voice back, though, along with a nice backache and migraine to boot. Joy.

Talked to my best friend tonight. Her little girl Alex was shrieking “Aunt Dawn! Miss you Aunt Dawn! Love you Aunt Dawn!” Cutest thing ever. I love that kid so much.

Shan and I laughed so damned hard over so many things that the voice I just got back is gone again. No matter, because it was totally worth it. It’s weird that she called when she did, because I was feeling crabby because I’m weakened (I am a horrible sick person — I hate admitting defeat to a freaking battalion of germs). It’s like she knew that I needed her, and likewise, because she told me immediately after I said hello, “You’re my lifeline. I’m so glad you picked up.”

Awww.

Anyway, I got inspired after talking to her, and here I present the fruits of my newly regenerated creativity. …

15,000 / 50,000 (30.0%)

Ah, ’tis the season to be sick, and I am not immune. I have my annual case of laryngitis — joy and rapture untold, I say. But what I don’t understand is all the body aches that go with it.

The craptacular thing about it is that I’m at home and *could* work on my novel. But I can’t even sit upright for more than a few minutes (damn backache), so that’s out.

I did get some good news on the homefront. Mom called (and I couldn’t even butt in, as I have no voice. I am starting to sense a pattern that she really likes to call when I’m forced to shut up!) and said she’s moving. Yay! We hate where she is now. She’s going to leave practically everything behind and take off for the new place later this month.

It’s a real, bona fide house. Just renting. Problem is, there’s no fridge, stove or washer, which — wonderful — those things were stolen from our storage unit just last week. The ones she has now came with the place, as did the rats, mice and spiders. All of which, she’s happy to leave behind. 😉 So let’s add that to our wish lists for Santa (appliances and furniture, not bugs!).

Christmas will be very different this year, but in the best of ways. Last year it was a sad one because I was broke and they were broke from trying to help me keep my car. Last year I had a slight bit of an obsession with knives, to boot. But this year, it will be another poverty-filled holiday, but one in a place that she sounds like she’s in love with. And I’ll order food, damn it. To quote Babs in “The Prince of Tides,” “Just because I don’t cook doesn’t mean I don’t know how to eat!”

And don’t think Mamacita hasn’t taunted me that I’d be able to have my own bedroom and that I should just move on back to Pittsburgh when my building finally gets evicted. Heh. Here’s to hoping we get her through HER move before I have to deal with mine!

10,000 / 50,000 (20.0%)

Now maybe I can go nurse this damned laryngitis that I seem to have acquired today. I’m at a great stopping point — if I keep writing, I’ll probably end up murdering someone. And not necessarily someone fictional. 😉

Took my hungover happy ass to Wallyworld today for kitteh supplies. Couldn’t get a cart; carried all and back is aching.

Was 47th in line at the Express counter; some motherfuckmenot CUT IN LINE WITH HIS CART. Yes, jumped right the fuck in front of me. I don’t know how many items he had, but his total was $127. Which would be how many stitches he would have needed had my hands not been numb from the litter and food I was clutching.

After realizing he had edged me out of line and NOT accidentally, I looked in his face and said, “You’re not FUCKING serious!” He ignored me. Fucker. So I slapped the litter onto the floor and kicked it into his heels every time he moved forward; that brought me joy. It’s the little things. 😉

*Updated to give away music and to note that I’ll be sporadically adding miscellaneous drunken rants at random to the end of this post. Like having a conversation at a bar with me. Lucky you! Only, you don’t get to hook up with me, because I am the only one at this bar tonight. So, not-so-lucky you. 😉 *

Let the debauchery commence!

That’d be two bottles of riesling, a bottle of merlot and a bottle of chardonnay.

If I’m still alive after this, I have a whole freezer full of Skyy, Tangueray, Irish Mist and Kahlua.

If this doesn’t help my novel, then nothing will!

UPDATES

10:25 p.m. Eastern:

Half a bottle of Merlot? Gone. Cheeks? Flushed. Ability to sit upright? Not bad so far.

The nicest thing I have to say about my novel? The words are in consecutive order. All sentences have a subject and a verb — just not, oftentimes, a point. But hey, nobody ever said all 50,000 words had to be COHERENT!

10:30 p.m. Eastern:

I foresee posting some songs tonight. And opening another bottle really, really soon. …

11:45 p.m. Eastern:

Who wants tunage?!?!

12:12 a.m. Eastern:

I stopped with the family at the Starbucks in Breezewood, Pa. I had my first gingerbread latte of the season, after being told just yesterday in Virginia that the holiday stuff wasn’t yet available. Hah. In addition to my gingerbread, the manager brought out sample cups of the eggnog latte for my mom, grandfather and me. Mom hates coffee, so I had hers. 😉

This November is goddamned mystical compared to last year. And even in and of itself. Last year, I didn’t get any of my beloved seasonal holiday coffees because I was so broke. It’s amazing how being deprived of life’s pleasures, big and small, not to mention life’s necessities can screw with your head.

I’m one of those people who takes pleasure in the details — warm, 71-degree days like today, driving with the sunroof open, having not one but both of my favorite lattes today, meeting my family (from 250 miles away) at a halfway point for lunch, a nice bottle of red wine, driving through the Appalachians and seeing oceans of trees and leaves in myriad colors.

During my drive to work — after the Pentagon exit from I-395 , specifically, where the ramp crosses over and drops down onto the George Washington Parkway — I always, always take a moment to look at the Potomac River, the Washington Monument, Kennedy Center and, now, seven trees in a row to my right that are just bursting with orangey-red leaves. Every day, I smile at that juncture. I can’t help it.

Unfortunately, the leaves are crisp and bland this year — lots of old chewing-gum pinks and burnt-sienna shades. No firey reds or lemon yellows or day-glo oranges. No, it’s like I want to take a bottle of baby oil and moisturize the brittle leaves — anything to make them look healthy.

I had a funny experience today. I am always playing with the truckers when I’m driving — they see a young(ish) lass in a tiny blue sports car with a vanity plate (do any of them REALLY know what a blog is, though? I’m getting sick of people mispronouncing it and asking what one is), and honk and flirt.

I had this one truck that was with me for probably a good 50 miles, between Bumfuck Egypt Maryland and Breezewood. We kept passing each other, kept honking as we did it, kept waving. I couldn’t see the driver — my little car sits a couple inches off the ground — I can’t see over my sunroof to catch the face of an 18-wheeler’s driver.

But before I blew off the road in Breezewood, I very obviously stood up and stuck my head out the sunroof (at 45 mph. Nobody ever said I did smart things!). And I would SWEAR it was a chick!

No big deal — I’m easy like that. I honked and waved, and off I went to see the family. It was just nice to have a friend on the road and not somebody trying to mow me down and kill me.

Speaking of which. …

Note to assclown drivers:

You wanna ride behind me and high-beam me when I’m driving 85 mph in the slow lane? Fucking DIE. When you want to blind me, I’m gonna flip down my mirror and ride my brake till you get smart and pass me. Which, good luck — I am one of those bitches who will speed up just so you can’t get in front of me. Also, I just LURRRVE when you DO pass me and you have to slam on your brake because I wasn’t the one driving all granny-like. Suckers.

1:04 a.m. Eastern:

I keep leaving Woo Hoo! comments all over the blogs of other drunken writers tonight. Like, woo hoo! Look what a couple of $20 bottles of wine does to me. Do to me. Fuck grammar — I don’t fuckin’ know. I know, I know — no correcting. But nobody said I couldn’t question!

Was just over at Suzanne’s and saw that she FINISHED NANOWRIMO. Like, done, fini, blew the 50K words the hell outta the water. Congratulations and HOLY SHIT. I only have like a bajillion more incoherent stupid-ass fucked-up thoughts to write. Hooray.

She had a great counter that i so totally have to steal. So that you can see my non-progress as it’s not happening:

8,903 / 50,000 (17.8%)

1:15 a.m. Eastern:

Fuck.

I hate Chapter Three. Fucking abhor the fucking thing. It’s like “factdump.” It’s “Yeah I guess I need to set up this future shit so I might as well have everybody all talk to each other and shit so whoop-dee-fuckin’-doo let’s have everybody discuss their widdle iddy biddy feelings. FEELINGS! ARGH!!!

I hate feelings. I hate being vulnerable. I hate making my beautiful, wonderful lead character have to make herself so raw and exposed — she’s so me, so controlled, so detached, so blase on the surface.

There’s a small-potatoes character who is her enemy. Somebody she helped to put in jail. Somebody she detests with every fiber of her being. I was telling my mom about this mysterious character and she said, “Oh, you must have named him X.” And I was all like, “Yeah, I know you’re psychic and all, but Jesus H, you know my book character names?” and she’s all, “Um, if you’re torturing this character, all I have to do is look at everyone you’ve ever known for possible names.”

She’s right. She’s always right.

The names mean things to me. I don’t just arbitrarily pick character names. Everybody and everything has a place.

The thing I’ve always said about having kids when you’re my age or older is that you can go through baby names websites for 10 months and you cannot come up with the name that you love — the name that you don’t associate with ANYONE you’ve ever known in your day. I joke that that’s reason enough to not even want to have kids — you’re going to name them after someone who annoyed you on a minor level as opposed to a major level, if you can.

But my character — ah, my Stephanie. I love her. Love, love, love her. Her name is the only one that hasn’t changed since the book series inception in 1988.

That came from my fucking French classes. Gah. We were all forced to pick a “French” name — I couldn’t just be Dawn. Worse, I couldn’t be some fucking TRANSLATION of Dawn, even though my name is present in EVERY GODDAMNED MOTHERFUCKING LANGUAGE THAT WAS EVER CONCEIVED. Like, sunshine and shit, ya know?

But no, I couldn’t even be something dumb like Aurore, because we had a Fucking French Foreign Exchange Student named Aurore.

Now, tell me, Why the FUCK would an exchange student come to Armpit America, USA and take her own language as a for-credit class? What a waste. Snotty French Bitch. Probably wore crepes as tampons, she was so stuck-up.

But I became Stephanie. I hated that, though. My dumbass teacher had to say it with accents and shit. “Stay-fon-EEEE” was what she would call me. Dumb freaking asshole. She had a Polish last name — who the hell did she think she was, making me all Fake French when she was a pierogie with hands and feet?

Ah, that reminds me of Darvin. I adored him — we were French Class Fuckups. Seriously, both of us were so smart, we drove Pierogie Lady nuts. And we always had our heads together. Everyone thought we were dating. If he didn’t have an infant son, I probably would’ve gladly gone along with it (I always had a thing about not dating guys with kids — long story).

But God, we talked all the time. He always called. That drove my grandmother nuts. I never really wanted to know why.

Anyway, Pierogie was asking “la classe” what the French term is for a social error. Now, I knew it was a faux pas. I’m sure Darvin did too. But when she called on him (I forget his French name), he didn’t respond because he wasn’t paying attention and none of us were quick enough to respond to the fucking fake names we had for three years with her.

So she got his attention and asked again. His answer? Fucking brilliant.

“Fook Oop.”

We sat together, and it took everything in me to keep from grabbing him and making out with him. I loved it. (Fook Oop = Fuck Up)

Some chick named Cindi (with an I. We had tons of fucked-up Cindy spellings in school. We had a few Cyndis — after Cyndi Lauper. Not by birth but by choice. Sweet Jesus.) sat on my other side, and she poked me and, in a stage whisper, asked, “Did he just say FUCKUP?”

Which everyone heard.

Ah, I guess I did apparently have fun in high school. Who knew?

1:42 a.m. Eastern:

Good lord in heaven, I’m watching “Laguna Beach.” And I’m almost into it.

Novel? What novel? I haven’t looked at it in HOURS.

2:13 a.m. Eastern:

Stick a fork (or anything, really) in me — I’m done.

‘Nite all. See ya again next year!

It’s rare lately that I even see, let alone experience, random kindnesses. But I just did. And I’m still a little stunned.

It’s no big deal, really. I just decided to grab a donut at Krispy Kreme (mmm, chocolate-iced, kreme-filled) and I paid for it. But I had been hoping for some sort of holiday-themed donut instead of my usual. And after I’d paid, I saw the sign for pumpkin spice donuts. Mmm, punkin. …

So I asked the girl if I could add two donuts to my bag. She said sure and gave them to me and walked away. I held up my money and said, “How much was that?” and she smiled and said, “Don’t worry. Enjoy.”

And at that moment, I smiled at her and said to myself, “I wonder if this is because I gave that homeless woman those bills that I’d had tucked above my sunvisor today.”

I don’t know — I’ve always believed that bad things come to those who deserve it. But perhaps it works on the small-scale kindness level, too.

In any event, that punkin donut? The best I’ve ever tasted. 😉

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of Sexually Transmitted Disease. The disease is contracted through dangerous and high-risk behavior.

The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim and pronounced “gonna re-elect him.” Many victims contracted it in 2004, after having been screwed for the past four years. Cognitive characteristics of individuals infected include: anti-social personality disorders, delusions of grandeur with messianic overtones, extreme cognitive dissonance, inability to incorporate new information, pronounced xenophobia and paranoia, inability to accept responsibility for own actions, cowardice masked by misplaced bravado, uncontrolled facial smirking, ignorance of geography and history, tendencies towards evangelical theocracy, categorical all-or-nothing behavior.

Naturalists and epidemiologists are amazed at how this destructive disease originated only a few years ago from a bush found in Texas.

Thanks to D2 for the giggle!

Mom just called to tell me that our storage bin had been broken into, probably last night.

She’s devastated.

I am in my writing bubble, so life is all zen-like and shit. Which is probably good, because she was Freaking. The. Hell. Out.

We’ve moved a million times since I was a wee lass. We never owned a place, just rented. We’ve gone from the projects (back in the day, when they weren’t totally tragic) (oh, and like WOW, I’ve never admitted that, so holy shit and forget I said all that) to a duplex to a house to them being in a tiny townhouse and me not having a place to go if everything falls apart.

Which it damn near did.

But in any event, we had gorgeous, gorgeous things to put into this series of abodes. My grandmother? Impeccable taste. Simply wonderful. We didn’t have money, but we made sure to get the best that our meager money could buy when we were in need of something. Not to mention, the artsy stuff she created. God. Porcelain statues that she’d made for fun. Things that are all we really have left for her, save for my personality being a damn-near exact replica of hers.

In any event, the shit we could manage to fit into the storage space, well, there it was. Emphasis on WAS.

Sounds like it was an inside job, as to get out of the storage unit, you’d have to climb a fence. But with a $3,000, huge black-lacquer REFRIGERATOR on your back? Please.

I’m trying not to think about the family heirlooms that were destroyed and/or taken. She said nothing’s salvageable — whoever did it had a rocking-and-rolling good time destroying what little our family has to its name.

Fuckers.

But what I said to my mom is to be grateful that we’d finally gotten my grandfather’s guitar out of there. Thank god that it was the storage unit and not their apartment that was violated. Thank god they weren’t IN or NEAR it when it happened.

Everything else? We’ve been living without it for five years. Sad, sure. Tragic, no.

I’m trying not to think about what was lost or about the thugs who did it. Karma will anally rape them someday, no doubt. And we will be stronger and have even nicer things to replace the things my grandmother had tried to leave behind for us. Maybe someday, we won’t be dumb enough to leave them in storage but, rather, I’ll get a nice place that we can call home permanently.

Because long-term is a word we’ve never really known — in a good sense, anyway. But it’s high time that changed.

Like I told Mom, now she can quit paying all that damn money and be so stressed out by all the shit — she can pick up and move at a moment’s notice, which is what she’s always wanted to be able to do.

I’m not sure when I got so rational, but maybe my blood-pressure medication is finally working. 😉

I was perusing the NaNoWriMo site last night, and while most people had word counts of zero and even up to 3,000, where I’m currently hovering, I saw bloated counts anywhere up to the 8,000 range.

Seriously, that was Day Two. Did some of these people REALLY start writing after midnight on Nov. 1? If so, when do they sleep/work?

I’m hoping I’ve hit sort of a groove — the words are coming more easily this morning. For now, anyway. 🙂

I just wanted to send lots of luck and love to my blogging buddies who are on this psychotropic hayride: Barb, Buckethead, John, Pratt and Ted. And to those without blogs who continue to encourage me (and/or kick my ass — whichever I need), I wish you all the best as well during your writing journeys.

If anyone else out there is imbibing in this madness, drop me a comment. Otherwise, put on your cheerleader outfit and shake what your mama gave you in support of us!

If you’re so inclined to add me as a writing buddy (thanks, Barb, for the idea!) over at WriMo, I’m dcwriterdawn. And if you want a normal, coherent blog post that has nothing to do with noveling, well, hang in there. I have to come up for air eventually. 😉

I JUST hit yesterday’s word count for my NaNoWrimo fiasco project.

Just got home and snarfed down some crap food for sustenance. It’s now 8:45 p.m. Eastern and I’ve got 1,700 words to write. But first, I need to figure out WTF to write.

I’m so happy, I could just shit.