Wow, what a rush. In a crazy moment of recklessness back in early October, I joined National Novel Writing Month. By joining, I promised to write 50,000 words between November 1 and November 30 or die trying.

It wasn’t as easy as I thought; at some points, “die trying” seemed to be preferable to forcing my brain to figure out what came next and getting it onto my laptop in a witty and original way. Like they say, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” Oh sure, I had written thousands upon thousands of words before—I have several unfinished novels in dusty boxes as proof—but never had I committed to writing so many words in so short a time, let alone be subjected to pressure from The Entity That Is NaNo. I felt I was being watched…and I was. Encouraging e-mails from The Entity guilted me into continuing. The word-count bar graph on the NaNo site seemed to mock me, my actual word count (in orange) falling short of the expected word count (in gray) each day. And the worst thing was being able to compare my word count with my NaNo buddies’ counts.

Peer pressure is an incredible force. But when it is harnessed for good, amazing things can happen. Despite too many days when the kidlet was home from school for various reasons, pies that needed to be made, a Thanksgiving that needed to be attended, and a cold and fever that nearly knocked me flat for almost a full week (eons, in NaNo terms), I persevered, and I “won”.

My aunt asked me what I won. She said it wasn’t worth it if I didn’t get paid. She didn’t understand. I won so much—mainly the knowledge that I was capable of writing an entire novel (even though it’s not done yet, I intend to keep going till it is—and I know I will) and confidence in my own ability. The certificate and the NaNo Winner avatar I downloaded are badges of honor, and I wear them proudly.

And now, at 52,000 words (about halfway through my story), I’m taking a short break to regroup, do some work-for-pay (happy, auntie?), and get to some long-neglected housecleaning. But for anyone who’s interested, here’s an excerpt from my novel. HOWEVER! Before you click on the “Continue Reading” link, you must be aware of the caveats I have set in place.

• Warning! This is a chick lit novel. While it includes no fetishism of designer handbags or shoes (because I don’t see the point, myself), does not take place in New York City, and the main character is not a high-powered career woman, it does contain many of the trappings of said genre. If you cannot abide chick lit, go no further.

• Warning! This excerpt is almost entirely unedited. The main rule of NaNo is to write, write, write—get it all out during the contest period, and go back and edit later. Therefore, it includes bad grammar, bad dialogue, and bad ideas, not to mention plot holes and disjointed thoughts. Not a lot, but a few. If you prefer your fiction edited to within an inch of its life, go no further.

• Warning! This excerpt is missing some key details. For instance, I don’t even mention a geographical location where the story takes place. No town name, no mention of what part of the country. Quite frankly, I didn’t have time to dither over stuff like that. That’s for the next revision. If you prefer your fiction highly detailed in every regard, go no further.

Okay. If you have read the warnings and still want to check out Jayne’s NaNo Folly, go ahead and click. If you like it, let me know by leaving a comment. If you hate it, don’t let me know. (Just kidding—go ahead and leave a comment—I can take it.) Just know that this story will likely change a ridiculous number of times between now and the moment I finally click “save” for the last time, sit back, and sigh “Done”. And to all my friends who encouraged me to keep going, thank you! You rock!

The blue wool socks with white cats on them made her ankles itch. Emmie Brewster knew this and cringed when she pulled them out of her sock drawer, but she was too lazy to dig out a different pair. Besides, she thought, as she always did when she ended up with this pair of socks, having selected them without looking, as if she were pulling a card from a deck for a magic trick, maybe they weren’t all that bad. Maybe she was remembering the itchy feeling as worse than what it really was. Maybe she should give the socks another chance.

Maybe it wasn’t a good thing to have such a finely honed selective memory.

Maybe she thought too much about socks.

She pulled on the wooly socks and immediately knew her ankles were going to start bitching in about ten minutes. But still, she left them on. After all, she thought as she slid along the hardwood-covered floor from her bedroom to her kitchen (doing a little dusting along the way—never a bad thing), these are precisely the kind of socks you wear when you’re going to lounge around the house all Sunday, eat junk food, watch bad television, and essentially waste a perfectly good 24 hours. The magazine ads that showed contented females with their feet up, sipping a good cup of tea or soup, were quite clear about it. And if her real life couldn’t be like a warm and fuzzy magazine ad, at least she could wear warm and fuzzy socks and pretend to be one of those contented females.

Okay, she admitted to herself, envying a magazine ad is pretty stupid. But sometimes it was appealing to want life to stay still like that, and have it filled with greens and golds and fashionable loungewear and chintz upholstery and good stoneware.

Emmie looked around her yellow and white kitchen (past the sink full of dirty dishes) and wished someone would make her eggs benedict. Instead, she settled for unwrapping a sleeve of crackers while she filled the coffeemaker reservoir with water. Over the sound of the running water came the sound of the front door opening and closing.

“Eggs benedict ready?” called a familiar voice.

“You ever knock?” Emmie replied.

“Why would I do that? I’d break my 30-year streak of wacky-neighbor entrances.”

“Good point.” Emmie bent low to peek through the opening under the cabinets and surveyed Trish Campo, her best friend since elementary school, as she took off her wool coat. “You didn’t.”

“You got a problem with my jammies?”

“You didn’t even get dressed to come over here?”

“Sweetie, get with the program—haven’t you seen the teenagers lately? The required outfit for falling out of your house and into a store, doctor’s office, or pizza place, or even just for walking the dog, is your flannel jammies, fuzzy slippers, big-ass hoodie sweatshirt, and a rat’s nest on your head that may or may not be your hair. It’s the latest thing!”

“Sweetie,” Emmie repeated, “you’re forgetting—you’re not the latest thing.”

Trish twinkled at her. “I am if I say I am.”

Emmie couldn’t argue; for as long as she’d known her, Trish always made her own rules, and somehow the rest of the world dutifully followed them. Even now, in their “old age,” which was mumble-mumble-mutter-something past 30, Trish seemed to float on the surface of life instead of succumbing to all the nasty bugaboos that threatened to drag other women under. And that, Emmie thought, was precisely why she still clung to Trish. Trish was her lifeline, her floaties. Trish kept her going. Just as she would today, Emmie knew.

“All rightie. Then tell me this,” Emmie ventured. “You went into the bagel place dressed like that and didn’t care?”

“Oh hell no. I have my pride. And they have a drive-thru window.”

“If you have brought the preferred offering of boiled-and-baked carb products, you and your jammies can stay.”

Trish twinkled again. “I know. I did. And you love me for it.”

“But of course.” Emmie smiled back, but it took some effort. She decided to monitor the coffeemaker so she could stop propping up the corners of her mouth.

“Ugh.” With a grunt, Trish sat on one of the wooden stools on the living-room side of the opening to the kitchen and put her chin on the counter. “Coffee? I thought you’d be whipping up the bloody marys.”

“Not even my best friend vodka—”

“I thought I was your best friend.”

“—can convince me drink tomato juice, at any time of day, but especially not this early in the morning.”

“It’s eleven o’ clock.”

“Like I said.”

“We drink soon?”

“I’ve got the alarm set for high noon.”

Trish opened the fat paper bag and fished around for a salt bagel. She picked at it, scattering salt crystals and crumbs onto Emmie’s stack of bills and unthumbed catalogs. “How are you doing?”

“I’ll be fine once I wallow a little bit.”

“It gets easier, you know.”

Emmie’s voice was nearly a whisper. “I know.”

“How’s your dad doing today?”

Emmie plucked a colorful postcard from off the top of her pile of mail and dropped it onto the counter in front of her friend: the draft sent bagel crumbs flying in all directions. Trish winced as she turned over the postcard. Emmie’s dad was doing just fine, apparently. Today was the first anniversary of Emmie’s mother’s death, and according to the postcard, her dad was in the middle of a “fantastic” vacation in St. Lucia.

“My dad,” Emmie said, “has always been the kind of guy who thought that St. Lucia was in Italy. And look at that,” she gestured at the postcard with a disgusted wave of her hand.

“People grieve in different ways, sweetie.”

“I don’t think he grieved at all.”

“Oh, come on, that’s not fair,” Trish said in a soothing voice. “He was terribly broken up when your mom died. I remember.”

“Yeah…” Emmie murmured grudgingly. He had been in shock for quite a while; when you’ve been married for 45 years, Emmie reasoned, it must be tough to wake up one morning without that person who’d been by your side for so long. “But…it was like he recovered too…quickly, or something.”

“There’s no set timeline for grieving, honey.”

Emmie knew that. Her counselor had told her as much, repeatedly, in the first months after her mother had passed. She had stopped going to the counselor several months ago, once, she realized, she had worked out all her anger—not at her mother’s unexpected death, sudden as it was (her mother had been fine one night, then woke up the next morning, got out of bed, put on her bathrobe, and dropped dead of a heart attack), but at her father’s reaction to it. The counselor had helped her realize that she was only responsible for her own reaction, not anybody else’s. It was tough learning to detach, to untangle her own feelings from others’, especially her father’s, but eventually it started to make sense. Since then, her emotions had evened out a little at a time, until she finally reached a certain level of peace. Until today. But that was why she was going to wallow a little, and Trish, as always was there to make sure she didn’t sink under the weight of it all.

Trish set the postcard aside, took another bite of bagel, made her famous Bill the Cat face, and whispered hoarsely, “Too much salt. Gack. Gack. Coffee.”

As always, Trish managed to jolly her out of her funk. Emmie smiled, without forcing it this time, and pulled some cups out of the dish drain.

- * -

A hand snaked toward her from her left. Emmie’s eyes never strayed from the television, but her peripheral vision caught the movement. Trish knew she didn’t stand a chance, so she decided to be straightforward about it and used her snaking hand to point.

“So about that last Tootsie Roll you got there…”

Emmie’s eyes stayed fixed on the TV. “You jonesing to make a stub the newest fashion statement?”

“All right, all right.”

Emmie sighed and glanced ruefully over at her friend. Coffee and bagels had segued into screwdrivers and a leftoverpalooza that included candy—Emmie was unapologetic about that, even though Trish didn’t even think of giving her a hard time about her menu choices. Emmie heaved herself forward toward the coffee table, seized the candy, unwrapped it, and bit it in half. “Here,” she said, handing the bitten piece to her friend.

“Danke.” As she chewed the gummy candy, she said, “Ee sool wowt, kno?”

Emmie sighed. “I know we should go out. It’s a beautiful day. But I’m…you know…busy.”

Trish swallowed and said more clearly, “Watching design shows? Seriously?”

“It’s educational.”

“You wrote the book on interior design! You could do one of these shows! What in the world could you possibly learn from them?”

“Not to use spray paint to renovate an old lamp, for one thing—especially green. Ew!”

She tucked her right toe into the cuff of her left sock and scratched her itchy ankle. Trish muttered from behind the Sunday paper, “Those socks again? Will you throw them the heck out, please?”

“No! They…” Emmie searched for a reason not to. “They have kitties on them.”

“I’ll draw kitties on your feet for you. Just get rid of the damned socks!”

“No!”

Trish tossed the paper aside and pounced on the socks, yanking them off Emmie’s feet before she could react. “They’re going out!”

“NO!”

But Trish was already up and heading for the trash compactor in the kitchen; by the time she raced after her, Emmie was too late. She listened to the hum and growl of the 20-year-old “convenience” appliance, one that had come with the house and that Emmie hardly ever used, mash her wool socks into last night’s potato peelings.

“You suck.”

“Emmie, my darling,” Trish said, leaning against the counter in front of the compactor as if to prevent her friend from diving in after her socks, “there’s something you’ve never understood about life. If there’s something you don’t like, don’t put up with it—throw it out!”

And Emmie understood they weren’t talking about her socks anymore.

“Did you hear from him this weekend?”

Emmie looked down at her now-bare feet on the yellow and blue linoleum. “No.”

“Even though he knows about your mom?”

Reluctantly, she murmured, “Yeah.”

“So…”

“What?”

“Throw it out.”

And Trish reached over to the refrigerator, plucked a photo of Emmie and her erstwhile boyfriend, Kyle, out from under a red plastic ladybug magnet and shoved it down the sink drain. She flipped on the water and flicked the switch for the garbage disposal.

“Are you trying to destroy all my kitchen appliances one by one, or was that just easier than finding a pair of scissors?” Emmie shouted over the din.

“It’s more dramatic. Never underestimate the value of good drama,” Trish shouted back.

“Drama I’ve got!” Emmie shouted back just as Trish shut off the disposal. She cleared her throat and continued, more quietly, “I don’t want any more drama.”

Trish smiled. “Drama? Honey, you’ve got no drama.”

“Yes I do!”

“A sometimes boyfriend and a selfish father do not drama make.”

“I dunno. Shakespeare made more out of less.”

“Shakespeare, or a Lifetime movie of the week?” Trish laughed. “You know what your trouble is?” Emmie winced. Nothing good ever came after You know what your trouble is… “You’re too safe. Too quiet. You’ve got your comfy little design business—”

“Which keeps me in kibble.”

“And your comfy little house—”

“I thought you liked my comfy little house.”

“And your comfy little life. And nothing much moves.”

“I thought that was a good thing.”

“It can be. When you’re 80.”

“You calling me an old lady?”

“First kitty socks, then real kitties. It just follows. I’d be worried if I were you.”

Emmie turned away from the many-kittied future her friend was sketching and headed back toward the living room. “Well, I’m not. I don’t show crazy cat lady tendencies, and you can’t convince me that I do.”

“Fine. Have it your way,” Trish said, following her back to the couch and seizing the remote.

Emmie grabbed it back. “My house, my remote. My wallow,” she added for good measure. She flicked through a few channels and came across a scene of some stylish women lunching. “Why don’t we ever ‘do lunch’ in high-heeled shoes with a thousand shopping bags at our feet? We lunch at McDonald’s with grocery bags around our ankles; it’s hardly the same thing at all.”

“You want to buy designer shoes?”

“I don’t give a rip about designer shoes. But I feel like I should.”

“Well, according to the status quo, that’s your problem.”

“So if I had an obsession with ugly things I can strap on my feet, I’d be happier and more successful?”

“Mm. And you’d get to drink cosmos.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

- * -

As the shadows lengthened in Emmie’s living room, and Emmie and Trish sank lower and lower into the sofa and the plates and glasses collected on the coffee table, Emmie’s spirits dipped accordingly.

“I dunno,” she mumbled, her wineglass tipped sideways in her hand at a precarious angle. Trish wordlessly righted it. It promptly tipped again, but less so. Trish let it be. “I don’t get it. I feel like I’m missing something.”

“You want your mommy.”

“You know what, though?” Emmie answered, looking up at her friend through a wine-induced haze. “I don’t. I mean, I miss talking to her, but she raised me right—to be self-shuff…shelf-shuff…independent.”

“I know. She was a great mom.”

“She was. And I feel like I’m letting her down.”

“Don’t tell me you want a marriage and kids and all that crap.”

“Not just for the sake of having them, no.”

“Because I did that for the both of us.”

“And you did it well,” Emmie toasted her. Trish had married the boyfriend she had had all through high school and college. She and Rick had two boys, 10 and 8, who were mostly polite and well behaved and only slightly insane—Emmie thought of them as possessing “normal boy-type insanity” which included shouting at the tops of their lungs from morning till night, and leaving lots of Legos around. And they weren’t on any mood-altering drugs. What more could you want in your kids? “But…remember when we were little?”

“Ayup. You had bad hair. I had too many freckles. I still have too many freckles,” Trish murmured, suddenly engrossed in her forearm.

“Remember the feeling we had, that the world was wide open, that anything could happen at any minute? That the world was one big adventure?”

“Yeah…”

“What happened to that? Because now it feels like…things are closing in…and…and…” She drifted off, not sure what she was trying to say.

“Are you going to throw up?”

“No,” Emmie scoffed, slapping her friend’s wrist, not noticing her own wine finally sloshing out of the glass. “But I feel like I missed out on something. Hey!” she suddenly burst out, making Trish jump. “Do you remember Juliet Winslow?”

“Oh my gawwwwd,” Trish drawled, laughing.

“No, no, seriously!” Emmie insisted, refilling Trish’s glass, and her own, although hers didn’t need much to top it off. “Remember her? She had everything. She was…”

“Perfect,” Trish finished for her.

“Like Venus on the half shell,” Emmie agreed wistfully. “Fully formed, a success from the get-go. Barbie doll—blonde hair, blue eyes, skinny. Smart, talented, sporty. Normal family. Everything. Not a flaw, not a chink in her armor. Plus she was nice, remember?” Trish nodded. “Damn, you couldn’t even hate her, she was so nice.”

“What happened to her, anyway?” Trish mused.

“God, I don’t know. That’s what happens when you blow off reunions, huh?”

“Guess so.”

“Where’d she go—Vassar?”

“Vassar, Yale, Cal Tech, something like that.”

“I wanna know,” Emmie said abruptly.

“Do you want to know whether she stayed perfect, or do you want to enjoy knowing that she crashed and burned right after her apex in high school?”

Emmie thought for a drunken moment. “I’m not sure.” Both friends fell silent as they compared and contrasted their high school selves with their current selves, and reflected on Juliet, the high priestess of high school. Then Emmie broke the reverie by lurching to her feet. “Wait, wait,” she said, even though nothing had to be stopped. “Wait.” And she lurched down the hall.

“Are you going to throw up now?” Trish called after her.

But Emmie returned after only a moment, carelessly cradling her laptop. Trish squinted fearfully, expecting her to drop it on the hardwood floor, but Emmie made it back to her seat with the laptop—and her wine glass—intact. She put the glass on the floor and flipped open the computer.

“Are you googling Juliet?”

“Circle-O.”

“Circle what?”

“O. As in ‘circle o’ friends.’ It’s new.”

“I hate those sites. They’re time sucks,” Trish declared. “Stupid apps.”

“But there’s a group for our high school. I joined it but never looked at who else joined it. I wonder…”

And after much typing and backspacing and retyping, Emmie managed to correctly spell Juliet’s name in the search box. Both women peered at the screen expectantly, with bated breath, as if waiting for the revelation of the ages.

“There! There! There!” Emmie pointed to the name. “That’s her!”

“Click!”

Emmie clicked on the name, but no information was visible. “I’d have to link up with her to find out about her.” She hesitated.

“So do it.”

“…I’m not sure…”

“Why?” Trish asked. “She was nice, remember? Why wouldn’t she want to be your friend on here?”

“…I don’t know…”

“Oh for God’s sake…” And Trish clicked on the “friend” button for her.

“Dammit, Trish!”

“She’s just a person, Emmie! And we’re…nosy. Nosy wimmins must be satisfied.”

Emmie and Trish stared at the screen in silence for a few moments, in their current inebriated state forgetting that they were on a Web site, not a phone, and they weren’t going to get an instant reply.

“…Now what?” Trish whispered, as if afraid to disturb the computer.

“Now…” Emmie whispered back, still staring at the screen, “we eat pizza.”

- * -

“How you doing, kid?” Trish’s voice crackled over the phone line, the surrounding traffic making her voice awash in noise.

“Grateful I asked for this morning off as part of my planned wallow,” Emmie admitted, finishing off her third cup of coffee. She ran her hand through her slightly damp, straight hair to fluff it and cursed as her silver ring with all the arty bits shooting off of it got stuck. “You?” she asked, untangling herself.

“Wearing my Audrey Hepburn shades and running errands. This sunlight is too damned bright, baby.”

“Did we really watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s again last night?”

“Better than …When Harry Met Sally….”

“Er.”

“You watched it after I fell asleep on the couch, didn’t you?”

“Maybe.”

Trish sighed into her headset. “We are too predictable sometimes.” Emmie started to speak, but Trish cut her off. “No, you could not possibly fall in love with someone in real life who looked like Billy Crystal, so don’t ask.”

“Okay,” Emmie said meekly.

“Hey, speaking of Meg Ryanish curly haired kewpie dolls, did you get a reply from the Great and Glorious Juliet?”

“Oh my God!” Emmie gasped. “I’d forgotten about that!”

Trish laughed. “No more wine for you.”

Emmie switched screens on her laptop and brought up her e-mail. “Er…oh no…!” She half laughed as she winced. “Juliet accepted my linkup request.”

“I told you she wouldn’t refuse, ya dummy.”

“I feel like an idiot. Or a stalker.”

“That’s only if you start sending her a thousand messages. So you’re linked up on Circle-O. Big deal. You’ll see her updates, she’ll see yours, but you don’t actually have to have direct contact.”

“Right. I don’t want that. What I do want is to be nosy and read her profile…but I can’t. I have an appointment with the Nottings about their living room upholstery.”

Trish gasped dramatically. “Wilma is allowing you to meet with some clients all by yourself?”

“Can you believe it?” Emmie enthused sarcastically. “It’s only been four years!”

Emmie couldn’t believe she’d already been working for interior designer extraordinaire John Wilman for that many years (plus change). Emmie and Kate had nicknamed him Wilma at the first sight of his ginger-colored, flip-front, really really bad toupee that looked remarkably like a certain cartoon character’s hairdo. To refer to him by Fred Flintstone’s wife’s name was childish, perhaps, but John Wilman was an insufferably vain, self-important stuffed shirt, and in their eyes he deserved all the sniggering they dished out behind his back.

He always seemed on the verge of firing Emmie, but he kept her around, Emmie was certain, because he needed to throw tantrums to and about somebody, and that somebody certainly couldn’t be a client. He also seemed to enjoy tearing Emmie down at every opportunity. As a result, the ideas she had been brimming with when she first started working for him had been squelched so often that now she never voiced any opinion whatsoever, even though she had always had an eye for design. Instead, she dutifully followed in his wake—three steps behind, Emmie thought ruefully—and only felt she could breathe on the rare occasion that he let her out on her own, like this morning. So she just couldn’t blow it—one false move, one tiny error that got back to Wilma—and everything got back to Wilma—and he’d make her life a living hell for weeks to come.

“Do you think you can handle the Nothings?” Trish asked, knowing the answer already.

“Nottings, darling. Nottings.”

“They only want beige walls and beige furniture, right? I stand by the name.”

Emmie chuckled. “I think that’s why Wilma is letting me meet with them all by myself. They’re going to choose beige or beige or beige from all the beige fabric swatches I present to them. What could possibly go wrong?”

“Well, off you go to the Nothings, then. Chop chop! Interior design waits for no man!”

“Nottings!”

With a promise to call Trish later with all the details about Juliet, Emmie ended the call, slammed her laptop shut; shoved it, some sketches, and a few fabric samples (all beige—Trish was right) into her bag; and dashed out the door, praying fervently that she wouldn’t call them “Mr. And Mrs. Nothing” to their faces.

- * -

“Hey, baby.”

Emmie skidded to a halt on her front walk, spun on her heel as though she were going to retreat into the house, and raised her brown eyes to the overcast midmorning sky in a silent “why me?” plea to the heavens. She spun back around and said, “Get your butt off my car, Kyle.”

The rangy man leaning against the driver’s side door of her modest Civic didn’t move. “Miss me?” he smiled.

Emmie most certainly did not miss him. He had been gone for the better part of three weeks, with only a text message here or there to even let her know that he remembered her name. Emmie couldn’t believe she’d been going out with this guy for as long as she had—if that’s even what they could call it. Sometimes the past nine months had felt like one long booty call.

And when he turned up after being out of her life for so long, she saw him with fresh eyes and wondered what in the world made her get together with him in the first place. And then she remembered—it was because he had pursued her, unrelentingly, until she had given in. Kyle didn’t care that he was a rebound boyfriend—the first after Emmie had gotten out of a serious relationship. Heck, it seemed that he wanted to use that to his advantage. After all, there’s nothing like a wounded, lonely woman in her mid-thirties. Easy pickins, he probably thought.

Most likely thought—and in just those words, as he thought of himself as a sort of contemporary cowboy. Trouble was, he embodied all the bad traits of the cowboy mythology (beer, whoopin’ and hollerin’, and a touch of misogyny) and none of the good (Emmie was sure he had no concept, let alone knew the meaning, of the word “chivalry”). And Emmie hated country music with a passion.

But for some reason Kyle managed to keep turning up in her life—or, rather, he managed never to leave it, even when she grew a spine for a while and tried to push him out. So she tried again.

“Move your butt, Yates,” Emmie commanded, elbowing him in the side. “I’ve got to get to work.”

“Ow! Sheesh, Emmaline!”

“Don’t call me that. You know I hate that.” Emmie always suspected that Kyle used her full name to make her sound more “country,” to fit into his adopted persona (he was born and raised in northern New Jersey). Besides, only her mother had ever used her full name, and she just didn’t like to hear it come from anyone else, especially him.

“All right, all right,” he drawled, tugging at the denim shirt he had slung over his faded t-shirt and tucking his fingertips into the front pockets of his jeans; his pants were so tight that was all that would fit. It was like his car was a Delorean with a flux capacitor, circa 1984, instead of the obscenely huge white pickup that was parked at the curb.

As she often did when confronted with the 3-D reality that was Kyle, Emmie stopped to ponder, for a second or two, what she ever saw in this guy (and, she had to admit, what she might see in him again sometime when she was affected by a little too much alcohol and a little too much time alone).

“Why’re you being like that?” Kyle asked, sliding over to lean on the back driver’s-side door.

“Oh, gee, I dunno,” Emmie drawled back, putting a thoughtful finger to her lips. “Let me think….It wouldn’t have anything to do with…oh…somebody named Caitlynn, would it?”

“Aw, c’mon!” Kyle laughed, but it was a weak one. “You were giving me such a hard time, I figured we were broken up.”

“Ohhhh no; don’t you try to make this my fault,” Emmie scolded. “I begged off for one night, and you turned right around and found some cheesy little ex-cheerleader at the bar. Not like I care, mind you.”

“Yeah, you care,” Kyle smiled at her.

Emmie glared at him, but he had found the chink in her armor. Dammit, she hated herself when she fell for that grin of his. No, she realized, it was more the way he maintained eye contact—he looked straight into her eyes and held her gaze. She hated to admit it, but it was actually kind of sexy. She felt her insides melt a little, and her expression must have showed the change in her, because Kyle suddenly grew more confident—if that was at all possible.

“I knew it,” he laughed. “You just can’t get enough of me.”

“Shut up,” she muttered, but a smile played around her lips as well.

“Come on, let’s go inside. We can have lunch. Or, you know, not,” he leered at her suggestively.

“I can’t,” Emmie said, and she was sort of relieved she had an excuse. “I have to work. Like you should,” she couldn’t resist adding.

“I’m not on the schedule today,” he said. His brother owned a small used car lot, and he paid Kyle mainly for keeping him company while they waited for customers to wander in. Most of the time they sat around with their feet up on the desk, talking about what kind of changes they would make if they ran the country.

“Well, I have to be somewhere.”

“Catch you later?” he asked, chucking her under the chin. Emmie was never sure if she liked or hated his little endearing gesture.

“Maybe. Call first!” she shouted after him. He waved over his shoulder as he sauntered to his truck; Emmie checked her watch, gasped at the time, and dove into the driver’s seat.

- * -

There was no more welcome sight in the world, Emmie thought, than the vision of her best friend coming through the door of her workplace holding aloft two giant coffees.

“Is he here?” Trish whispered, glancing around the tiny office.

“In the back,” Emmie said in a low voice, accepting her coffee. “Don’t worry about it. He’s counting his color wheels.”

Trish grinned and made herself comfortable on the corner of Emmie’s desk. It was at the front of the room, close to the door, so she was always chilled when the weather got colder; no matter how cute the UPS guy, she didn’t welcome a delivery during the winter months.

“So what did you get up to last night?”

Emmie suddenly found the invoices on her desk quite fascinating. “Oh, you know…nothing much.”

“Nothing much named Kyle?”

“Yeahhh…” Emmie sighed grudgingly.

“So he’s back?”

“Yeahhh…”

“Is he a new man? Kind and courteous, with eyes for no one but you?”

“That…remains to be seen. He’s still on probation, I can guarantee that.”

“So what’d you do? Leave out the icky bits, please,” Trish hurriedly added.

Emmie made a face at her. “Like I said, nothing much. Kyle brought over some ribs and we barbecued them, that’s all.”

“And when you say ‘we barbecued them…’ ”

“I mean I barbecued them…made the salad…set the table…and Kyle opened another beer and threw acorns at the neighbor’s yappy dog. There. Happy?”

“Not really,” Trish said, and there was a serious note in her voice, but it vanished quickly. “So! Did he find the pieces of his picture in the garbage disposal?”

Emmie laughed. “No. That would entail him actually doing something at the sink, wouldn’t it? Like doing dishes?”

“Oh, right. Not something in his repertoire. At least tell me the ribs were good.”

“Eh,” Emmie shrugged. “They were those big, honkin’ pork ribs—a giant bag full.”

“Is he still shopping at that discount meat market?” Both women suddenly stared straight ahead, unblinking, and said in robot-like voices, imitating the non-telegenic owner of the butcher shop, “Pork ribs. Dollar ninnee-nine. Ham hocks. Ninnee-nine cents. Cow tongue. Two ninnee-nine. Come on down!”

They allowed themselves a little bit of laughter, despite the proximity of Wilma, and when they sputtered to a halt and took sips of their coffee, Emmie muttered, “I ate a whole lot of salad, let’s put it that way.”

Trish was suddenly serious again. “Will you please get yourself a better boyfriend?”

“Oh, Kyle’s all right, really.”

Trish gave her one of her patented mommy-looks, guaranteed to drag the truth out of anyone, especially when she raised one eyebrow, like she did now. Emmie suddenly felt the urge to confess that she had, in fact, crayoned on the wall in the front hallway of Trish’s house. Instead, she fussed with her hair; it was in that in-between stage as she grew it out of a short haircut. She had liked her sassy short ’do, she recalled, but decided to let it grow when Kyle had said he liked her with long hair. Actually, he had said he “liked his women with long hair.” She had forgotten that until this very moment. And about a month later Rick had seen him getting cozy with that Caitlynn chick at the bar—Caitlynn, with her Texas beauty queen blowout. And Emmie started to wonder just whose hair, exactly, Kyle had been talking about.

“But you know,” she ventured, “sometimes a little sophistication would be nice.”

“So what’s it going to take to convince you of that?” her friend asked. “Him bringing you a dripping paper bag with cow-tongue-two-ninnee-nine?”

Emmie opened her mouth to retort, but flinched instead when a voice from behind her sneered, “Why are you here?”

Even Trish jumped off the desk as if she were caught with her feet on the furniture by a strict parent. “Hi John,” she said, trying to be friendly. Wilma only sneered more as he dropped a cardboard box at Emmie’s feet. “I was just…”

“…bringing me coffee,” Emmie said brightly. “Would you like some?” She proffered her cup even though she knew Wilma would be repulsed by the fact that she’d already taken a few sips.

Wilma straightened up, ignored the cup of coffee she was waggling at him, and gave her a disdainful look. “Sort through these catalogs, if you please. Toss the old ones and file the new.” Wilma looked Trish up and down. “Will you be assisting? Should I get you a chair?”

“I was…just leaving, actually, John. Got to go. Lots to do!”

Wilma grunted and turned away. Trish gave Emmie a strangled, bug-eyed look and scooted out the door. Once she had achieved the relative safety of the sidewalk, she grinned through the window and put her her hand to the side of her head, her pinkie by her mouth and her thumb at her ear, and mouthed, “Call me!”

- * -

But Emmie didn’t have time to call Trish later that day; for some reason Emmie couldn’t fathom, Wilma had decided to insist that she accompany him to a consultation at a client’s house. She’d been to consultations before, of course, but usually Wilma met with clients alone at first, implying that Emmie’s presence would cramp his style (or, quite likely, ruin his reputation)—in what way, she had no idea. Drool on the floor, perhaps?

So, to prove to him that she could indeed be trusted when on a call with him, there she sat, in the clients’ new, unadorned McMansion, under an echoing vaulted ceiling. She even managed to perch on the edge of their ’80s overstuffed sofa (the first thing to go, she was certain, knowing Wilma’s tastes) without eliciting farting noises from the leather. So far, so good.

She tried to listen attentively to Wilma’s introductory spiel, but she knew it by heart after working for him for this many years. It never changed. No matter who was in front of him—a celebrity (not that there were any big names in their neck of the woods), a ditch digger (not that a ditch digger could afford Wilma’s services), or the queen of England—Wilma always started out the same, with a soft-spoken, gently worded bit about his many years in business (23), his many clients (too many to count), which houses in the neighborhood he’d redone from top to bottom. In that bit he tended to throw in a little bit of gossip to keep his customers interested; dropping his voice to a stage whisper, he’d practically cup his hand around his mouth when he said something like, “The venerable old Mrs. Studdard, in the mock Tudor on the corner? She fought me tooth and nail about getting rid of the rose-colored fixtures in the master bath. But now that her house has been brought into the 21st century, she’s in love with the place. And now she acts like the bidet was her idea!”

Laughs all around, then Wilma got down to brass tacks, telling the poor deer-in-the-headlight couple sitting nervously in the out-of-place Edwardian tub chairs across the coffee table from them (chairs will stay but be reupholstered in damask, Emmie reasoned, coffee table will be on the curb right after the sofa gets pitched) that he was there to help them, to discover their inner style and put it on display for all the world to see in their beloved new home.

This, Emmie knew, translated into “I don’t give a rip what you want or what your lifestyle is like; I’ll tell you what you want and you’ll agree with me.” And the funny thing was, that’s always the way it worked. Emmie never understood why Wilma’s clients, even the ones who were obviously all about pizza and beer and football, meekly went along with everything Wilma decided—especially when what Wilma decided was that they needed more custom made shot-silk draperies in their lives.

Still, this appointment might not go so smoothly; she noticed the husband and wife exchange glances with one another when Wilma broke eye contact to make a few sketches in his notebook. They seemed to be hesitant about Wilma’s enthusiastic brainstorming already.

“Er…” the young husband began, and Emmie already knew it wouldn’t end well unless they rolled over and complied. On a few very rare occasions, when the customer had resisted Wilma’s decisions, Wilma had raised one eyebrow and calmly explained that his ideas were the only correct ones, and if they were going to quibble about every nut and bolt and color choice, they would ruin the vision, and he might as well just stop working on the plans right then and there. Once, much to Emmie’s horrified fascination, Wilma had actually told off the clients and stormed out. They did, however, come crawling back begging forgiveness the next day. Because if there was one sure thing in this town, it’s that Wilma was the interior designer. Lose him, the society ladies knew, and it was downscale from there; you might as well start buying your throw pillows at Wal-Mart.

Emmie stole a glance at Wilma. The eyebrow was already creeping toward the dead squirrel perched on his head.

“Er…” the man began again, but seemed stopped in his tracks by the roving eyebrow.

“Yes?”

“Well, I was just wondering…”

“Will this involve concern over retention of a favorite recliner, or the location of a plasma television?”

The man tried to chuckle, but it came out sort of strangled. “S-sort of. I mean, I just want to make sure the TV—”

“The television will have its place,” Wilma said with a stiff smile.

Yeah, probably the garage, Emmie said to herself. She watched the young husband collapse in on himself a bit, and she knew the resistance was over. Or was it—? Now the wife spoke up.

“You know, we were also thinking of making sure we had a lot of storage space. I have a lot of—”

“Collections?” Wilma finished for her. “Or do you do scrapbooking?”

“Well…both, actually, and we’re hoping—”

“To have children, so you want to accommodate all their baby items and, later, playthings?”

The wife looked relieved. Big mistake, thought Emmie. “Yes, actually. That’s exactly what—”

“We’ll work on it,” Wilma cut her off, and Emmie knew that he had no intention of creating either craft corners or cabinets for chunky plastic squeezy toys and blocks and stuffed animals. Wilma’s designs were, as he often pointed out, works of art. And works of art did not make concessions for bourgeois hobbies like scrapbooking or having babies.

The wife looked a little crestfallen—she didn’t take being dismissed as easily as her husband, probably because the husband naively mistook Wilma’s reassurances to mean his giant plasma TV would actually be allowed in the sitting room, but the wife was better at picking up on the notion that they were being steamrolled.

And suddenly Emmie found her lips parting. She didn’t know what came over her; she knew she wasn’t allowed to speak at all, unless it were to compliment a client on the “wonderful space” that Wilma was about to rip apart and reconstruct, and yet, as if from very far away, she heard herself clearing her throat.

“Well, you know,” she said, and her voice shook a little as she realized the gravity of what she was about to do, “lately a lot of people have been setting aside quite a bit of room for a built-in worktable for their crafts—maybe in the section of your house between the kitchen and the sitting room. And storage cabinets can be unobtrusive if done the right way.”

She blinked and smiled weakly at the couple, trying desperately to ignore the laser beams coming out of her employer’s eyeballs on her right. She could feel her antiperspirant failing. But the couple seemed interested.

“That sounds good,” the wife said. “Maybe we could do something like that.”

And then there was silence as everyone participated in an anti-tennis match, where instead of looking back and forth, everyone’s gaze remained locked onto whomever they were looking at—the couple at Emmie, Emmie at the couple, Wilma lasering off Emmie’s right ear with his death rays. Too petrified to even turn her head a millimeter to look at Wilma, she endured the silence until Wilma broke it. Emmie curled her toes up in her shoes, waiting for the wrath to descend from Mt. Designer.

But instead Wilma said, and almost cheerfully, “I’ll make a note of that.” And he scribbled dutifully on his sketch pad.

No one but Wilma spoke for the rest of the meeting. Emmie felt too light-headed to dare to participate again, so she returned to her observer status until it was time to rise, shake hands, and get back into Wilma’s Lincoln Navigator. Then, she realized with a lurch of panic in her stomach, she would be alone with Wilma, and he could unleash his full fury at her behind the tinted windows and soundproofing, where nobody could hear his scathing reprimands.

She braced herself as she pulled on her seatbelt; when Wilma had settled in behind the wheel and the driver’s side door closed with an expensive-sounding “clump,” she stiffened even more. But Wilma said nothing as he started up the SUV and pulled out of the driveway. He said nothing as they drove back into town. He said nothing as he unlocked the door to the office. Emmie wasn’t sure what was worse—a tantrum or this silent treatment.

Wilma removed his jacket and she scooted back behind her desk to take the phones off forwarding to Wilma’s cell and turn her computer back on. She put her purse on the floor—and when she stood up again, Wilma was mere inches from her, reminding her of the grinning skeletal monster head in Aliens. She froze and closed her eyes.

“Never…again.” He hissed in her ear, and she had no idea what he meant—she’d never be allowed to speak again? What was he going to do, cut out her tongue? She’d never be allowed to accompany him to a consultation again? Then who would do al the measuring, as it was certainly beneath him? That he was finally going to fire her? She should be so fortunate. Then he continued, “Do not undermine my authority. You have no opinion. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she squeaked, and she hated herself for sounding so frightened.

“My business, my ideas, my opinions,” he continued to hiss. “You can have your own opinions on your own time. Do you understand?”

She cleared her throat and tried to sound stronger. “Fine,” she rasped. She clamped her lips shut till he was gone, back to his lair—er, his office—and Emmie collapsed into her desk chair, hating her life.

- * -

Trish tipped her head sideways, trying to get a better view of Emmie from a different angle.

“Sweetie?” she ventured. “Emmie, honey? This isn’t a good look for you.”

Emmie’s new look was quite ostrich-like; after her terrible, no good, very bad adventure at work, she had retreated to her beloved little bungalow, crawled into her flannel lounge pants and sweatshirt (barefoot, as Trish had so cruelly sacrificed her kitty socks to the trash compactor and she didn’t have any other clean ones at the moment), put her hair into a plunger-ponytail on top of her head, and was now face down in the needlework cushions of her Mission-style sofa with her flannel-clad butt up in the air.

“I don’t care,” she wailed, her cry muffled as she didn’t even come up for air.

“Would you care if I said it made your butt look big?”

“No.”

“Wow. You really did have a bad day.”

“I told you.”

Trish plopped onto the sofa next to her friend and patted the underside of her hair. “It’ll be okay,” she said, as if she were comforting one of her boys. “Really. It’s just Wilma. You know how he is.”

“I know,” came the muffled response. “He sucks.”

“He does indeed,” Trish agreed without hesitation. “He always has.” Trish licked her lips tentatively, then said, “Maybe…maybe you should think about finding another job?”

At this, Emmie raised her head. “What?” she asked, as if Trish had suggested the unthinkable. There were stitching impressions on her reddened forehead. Trish tried not to laugh.

“It is possible, you know. To get another job.”

Emmie rubbed her eyes. “Oh God, Patricia, where in the world would I get another job around here? It’s not like the interior designer industry is just chugging along in our little backwoods ’burg.”

“There’s always room for one more,” Trish said with a wicked smile.

Emmie didn’t get it. “What?”

“I mean,” Trish said, shifting to face her, “maybe you should, you know, go out on your own.”

Emmie looked horrified at the thought. “I can’t do that.”

“Oh my God, Emmie, it’s not like I suggested you murder the man, bury the body in your garden, and take over Wilman Designs. People start their own businesses all the time. Why not you too?”

“People go out of business all the time too.”

“I think you can handle it.”

Emmie sighed. “I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t afford it, for one thing.” She rubbed her eyes again. “Wilma owns me. The money my mom left me was just enough to let me work for him without starving to death. Businesses cost money, and I don’t have anything saved.”

“Business loan?”

“They’d laugh me out of the bank.”

“But—”

“Trish, I can’t,” Emmie cut her off with such finality that Trish suddenly knew it wasn’t really about the money. And Emmie buried her face in the cushion again.

Trish started to argue, but just then the door opened, and Kyle entered. “Wassup wassup wassup?” he exclaimed, and suddenly his presence felt like an intrusion, like he was sucking all the air out of the room. “Patty-cake,” Kyle acknowledged Trish with a nod.

“Urinal cake,” Trish muttered under her breath. “Hey, Kyle,” she said, louder.

It was no secret that Trish and Kyle weren’t fond of each other, mainly because Trish didn’t approve of him, so he didn’t like her in turn, and around and around it went.

“Hey baby,” he grinned down at the back of Emmie’s head, “what’s for dinner?”

Trish saw Emmie’s shoulders tense and went to bat for her. “Emmie’s had a rough day,” she told Kyle in her tough-mother voice. “Be nice to her.”

“I’m always nice to her!”

“That means don’t ask her to cook for you tonight. She’s upset.”

“But it’s dinner time.”

“Then go make dinner!”

Kyle laughed as though Trish had just made the funniest joke he’d ever heard, but he stopped short when she augmented her tough-mother voice with her patented mother-glare. Kyle’s mouth flapped a couple of times, fish like. “I can’t cook.”

“Nobody’s asking you for coq au vin, Kyle. Scramble some eggs. You can do that, can’t you?” As Kyle tried to wrap his head around this new notion of cooking dinner and wandered off toward Emmie’s kitchen, Trish leaned closer to her burrowing friend. “Breakfast for dinner,” she cooed, trying to cheer Emmie up. “That should make you feel better.”

Emmie raised her head and gave her a hopeful, weak smile. “Pancakes?”

“Aw hell, I can’t make pancakes!” Kyle exclaimed from the kitchen.

Trish rolled her eyes, patted Emmie on the shoulder, and said, “Maybe eggs. Depends on what the Redneck Chef can whip up without blowing up the kitchen.” She hoisted her purse on her shoulder. “I’ve gotta go.” She kissed Emmie on her dented red forehead and whispered, “Make him take care of you for a change. Do not help him in there. Got it?”

“But—”

“Do not!” Emmie still looked dubious. Trish raised an admonishing finger. “Uh-uh! No helping! And think about what I said before, about your job.”

Emmie fell over sideways on the couch. “Yes, mom.”

When Trish left, Emmie snuck a peek over the back of the couch to see what Kyle was up to. He stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking lost, with a carton of eggs in one hand and a frying pan in the other. At least he found the frying pan, she thought. And the eggs. That was impressive, for him.

When Kyle felt her eyes on him, he turned hopefully toward her, likely expecting her to take over. But with Trish’s words still bouncing around in her head (along with the memory of her dicing up Kyle’s photo), Emmie decided to see what kind of humor the sitcom In the Kitchen with Kyle could provide. It might make the day almost worthwhile, she thought. She ducked back down and busied herself with the newspaper even though she’d already read it that morning.

My netbook has been bitching at me for the past two weeks. Wouldn’t detect the hard drive. I finally learned how to open up the thing and reseat the drive. Put it back together, still doesn’t work. Put in a USB drive, boots right up and hasn’t had a problem since, other than the random shutdowns it has suffered from before.

This little summary brings me to the big story. I decided that a new netbook was in order. I decided I would go to Best Buy and take advantage of the no interest for 18 months credit offer. I went to the store, got the netbook with all the trimmings, went to the register, and the credit application server was down. I had to abandon my things and go home. I then tried to apply for the card at home some time later. DENIED.

How sad is it to not even be accepted for store credit. STORE CREDIT! The bastard child of the sordid credit industry won’t even accept me! Guess my credit is worse than I thought: nonexistant. Maybe Fry’s will help a brotha out. Hopefully I can get a card of sometime before Obama’s CARD Act goes into effect, thus barring me from getting one ’til I’m 21. It stuns me that an American nineteen-year-old is able to smoke, own land, vote, and risk his life in defense of our country, but cannot buy a bottle of Bailey’s on a credit card. A damn shame.

Other than Black Friday, my Thanksgiving break has been fun. Dinners at relatives’ houses, sitting around in a turkey coma, and yet another dinner on Saturday at a good friend’s. My friend who is also an uncle to several nieces and nephews, who we escorted to the playground at the elementary school after their constant demands. We went to the playground I once played on in elementary school. It had been what seems like forever since I had been on the grounds of Valley View Elementary. The majority of the playground equipment I played on was no longer there, being moved either to the less used playground on the other side of campus or banished to the pathetic city park on the edge of town. It was all plastic and sterile now; nothing like the bumpy metal slide that burned your ass in the summer and countless kids fell off of, or the gargantuan (when I was little) spiral slide that also burned your ass in the summer and suffered from traffic jams when a kid would decide to block the way. There would sometimes be at least twenty of us crammed onto that slide at one time. How all of it had changed made me feel old. But it was still cool to see kids enjoy the same little schoolyard I enjoyed. It may not be the best school in the world, but you sure can’t say it’s not a memorable one.

But, life goes on, and it starts with going back to work Monday and hopefully finding credit. Hooray?

Smile is a student at a business school in Stockholm, and right now he is taking a law course. He was complaining about it on facebook and I commented on his status. It ended up with me going over to his place to study ^^ Was actually pretty fun

When we’d finished his assignment and the assignment he had for next week we watched some silly movie on TV and a bunch of South Park episodes. I laughed so much Smile almost got worried I’d die xD When we added alcohol and sleep deprivation to the mix it was even funnier ^^

All in all I had a really good night

There really is a hobby or a subject of interest for everyone. As evidence, I cite an exhibit of outboard motors currently on display in the Potawatomi Inn at Angola, Ind.’s, Pokagon State Park. Now I know absolutely nothing about outboard motors or any kind of motor for that matter. But I certainly enjoyed watching people examine these mechanical artifacts. They were probably engineers trying to figure out the machine’s inner workings. I also enjoyed jotting down the brand names: “Speedster,” “Elgin,” “Caille - The [self-proclaimed] Leader Of All Outboard Motors,” “Johnson Sea Horse,” “Hartford Sturdy Twin,” and a 1939 “Elto - Outstanding Quality at Low Cost.” But my personal favorite, just because of its name and its cute, tiny, compact size was the “Neptune.” This little guy looked small and mighty enough to attach to a small boat and chase fish. Hmmm, is that what you do with outboard motors? Chase fish in a little boat? Obviously, I know nothing about fishing either.

© J. L. Bates and chezjlb.wordpress.com, 2009.  See Copyright Page for complete information.

Dear ‘Sir’,

As a man-of colour, at the momentum blessed side of coming to age 60, I tap these keys in earnest to you, ( AND, those you’ve surrounded yourself with.), on the QUESTION(S) of… What IS YOUR plan FOR those IN, and OF AMERICA ?

# 1.) WHY has your administration left the CROOKS and THIEVES in charge/ control of where your VOTING base “CAN LIVE”?

#2.) WHY do you allow ‘Business’ to continue their culture of intimidation through closing off the CITIZENRY’S many INNOVATIONS ? (Those TINY little things called IDEAS/ AVENUES of PRODUCTION.)

a.)WHY does the “labor”administration allow companies to steal their employee’s “nuggets of gold“, that were extracted from THEIR MIND FIELDS ,when you can see that [eminent domain],in its current forms, only leads to theft by those that implement it on its very short side.

b.) WHY do you continue a “WAR” in a region that WILL NOT allow you to attain the OIL that “bilge-a bird”dangled before our greed mongers ? Russia may have left the area but they, still, have the “trust” of those that steward the surface where [transportation\'s BLOOD] and [cartographical coinage] are destroying AMERICA’S “best and brightest”.

c.) WHY are you KILLING the chance of another “MAN-of-COLOR”, ( instead of creating a new AFRICAN DESCENT.), being elected to lead this nation’s citizenship?

D.) WHY don’t you notice that this is the grade you’ve EARNED thus far into your Tern, ( not a mis-spelling, so far my vote has been FOR THE BIRDS !!!), IN ORIFACE, ( AGAIN, NOT a mis-spelling. There are TOO many heads up the posteriors of those with political diarrhea. ), during this time of needed/ promised direction ?

e.) WHY haven’t you recognized that YOU are the ONLY person that can right the ship during this tsunami of need ? With the fact that you were designated CAPTAIN of this S.S. AMERICA it’s PAST time for you to put your hand on the “wheel” and SERIOUSLY attempt to save the “ship”, passengers, AND crew.

DEAR Mister President, PLEASE, ‘PRESIDE‘ over these ensuing years ! If YOU don’t commence the process now the “PROCESS” will be lost .

Just wanted to say that I’ve finished with NaNoWriMo and would highly recommend it to anyone who catched themselves saying “yeah I’d love to write, but never have the time”. This program causes you to make time, and compete and complete over the course of one month and is so very worth it. I am sure when I actually *read* what I’ve written I will be completely embarrased by it – but what the hell, it was just a lot of fun

Yesterday was Squishy’s baby shower. This baby is a very lucky kid!

Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin saying thank you to everyone who got involved for their support. I get a big fat lump in the throat just thinking about how blessed we are to be surrounded by so many fabulous people.

My parents, and especially my mom went to so much trouble to give me this baby shower. If I told you that she worked through most nights this week just making sure everything would be ready you’ll understand how difficult it is to say enough THANK YOU’s! Tammy and Louelle were my mom’s helpers and a huge THANK YOU to them too, and to everyone who pitched in and helped on the day. And to each and every one of the close to 50! friends and family members who rocked up to support us and make this day special, THANK YOU for all the love (and of course the mountain of presents!).

You guys rock my world…no jokes. What would I do without you in my life? *sniff*

Recently I’ve written a couple of songs.

One of them is for a practical joke, but that’s beside the point.
The point is this: I have created something, and have reflected God’s creative capacity in doing so.

It’s amazing, really. Think about that for a moment, please.

Every time you do anything, you are creating something. And in doing that, you mimic your dad. We are but children, trying to be our Father.

Sometimes, we choose to sully His reputation and His name and act in ways which do not exemplify His Goodness. This is sin.
But when we create that which is pleasing to Him and reflective of His nature, that is righteous work and right living.

Just a little something to think about today.
Good night!

Author’s Note; This post is enormous. If you want the hearty, good stuff; skip straight to the second row of stars. Feel free to tackle this monstrosity in short bursts of energy, if that suits you. And, no matter how loyal you may consider yourself, you are in no means obligated to read the entirety of this post, which remains simply a self indulgent essay piece to soothe my own aching mind.

* * *

I may as well begin at, of course, the beginning, in the ancient history that was early this grey, pearlescent, misty morning. I rose (or, rather, froze) at seven in the morning, to noisy birds of both varieties (shrill, cackling neighbours loading armoire into shamefully small Fiat) and a house that smelled of soup.

I procrastinated until twenty past eight, where I briefly broke the habit to make porridge and pour the dregs of an only a week old jar of honey into it. Back to procrastination until half nine, whereupon I washed, maintained oral hygiene and had a long, long shower. Then, of course, with wet hair and a split-second decision to allay the wearing of a new coat until it can be given the seal of approval by those, the harshest critics, the Chaps.

That sound ridiculous, doesn’t it.

On the bus, I was nervously aware that I was cutting time uncomfortably thin. Not helped by the fact the bus-driver himself was nearing the age of retirement, drove like a pensioner and possesed the most kind and generous spirit in all of South Yorkshire when it came to allowing other cars to pass. Other of the journey’s stomach churning highlights include watching a past-it Goth woman of 40 years fumble protractedly with masses of copper, having a pensioner next to me who smelled of onions and watching a sixteen year old girlfriend and boyfriend with learning difficulties and two small children fail to manoeuvre a pram into a pramspace.

In the end I missed the train by eight seconds. Thank you for ruining my day, pensioner, goth-woman and dense Gary and Stephanie, with Danny and Blake in tow.

So, with the train not coming for another fifteen minutes, I bought a paper, blissfully unaware I’d told Ella I was arriving at Wombwell station. So, I failed to arrive at Wombwell station. Around this time, I caused anger, tears and misery. I read the leading articles, again, unaware of this, and most other things apart from the fact there sat on a bench next to me an elderly man reading the Star, who occasionally diverted his eyes away from the breasts on the page to eye me and tut judgementally, although reading a center-left, compact, upmarket newspaper was a personal insult to his gutter-press reading, nipple-ogling ways. I met his gaze the second time round and snarled slightly. He went back to looking at the breasts, and I read about Russian gas pipelines. I spotted the Crimea on a map, and felt gratified.

The train arrived and I got on it, and immediately found a table seat completely to myself. Rapidly, all other remaining seats on the table were invaded by a man in an inappropriately puffy anorak and his two gawky children, one of whom gazed idly out of the window for the entire with the general demeanour of a bedwetting firestarter. I was unnerved immediately.

Then, Puffy Anorak Man proceeded to whip out a magazine that consisted entirely of Helveticized, captionized pictures of Cranes, Kingfishers and other such cowardly predators, printed on extravagantly glossy paper. Which was fine, I thought. I, personally, have been known to enjoy worse.

He then went on to explain the more intricate details of the workings of a Heron’s mouth, for the entire journey, until I felt as inclined to serial killing as his scenery-observing younger son.

I escaped from the train with a slightly flattened arse and the irritatingly fascinating knowledge that Herons have both inner and outer beaks, for catching and chewing respectively.

The paper was folded, haphazardly. The front page of the Times, by this point, was looking battered and bruised, and the day had scarcely begun. I put on one of those commuter scowls that exhudes “Move Out Of My Way”, and began stalking the drab corridors. Or, rather, I tried to. A few metres inside, two meek looking conductors flanked on either side by 200 pounds of wisened beef in cheap suits, demanding tickets.

I had a ticket. I had a valid ticket. Better still, I had a valid ticket at hand. What was infuriating was the impregnable bottleneck that formed, despite the metre’s worth of gap between them that the crowd of mostly-pensioners could have easily passed through.

Only in Britain would a crowd of people stop and surrender their ticket a second time for no logically justifiable reason, simply to ensure that no-one looks upon them as guilty fare dodgers.

Possessing no such guilt complex, I aimed myself at the parting in the middle of the crowd. Upon passing through the split, an aggressive ticket-mistress spoke forth unto me; “Tickets please”, firmly.

“But, I’m not catching a train“, was all I had to offer before I broke off, aflame. I was, of course, determined to find Ella and save the day, in a shining suit of clunky armour. I paced all the way to M&S, once. Ella wasn’t there. Which was fine, because I could have easily lost her in the haze of pensioners. So I patrolled back to the ticket barrier again. No sign of the fair maiden, unfairly.

Bear in mind I’d had my phone confiscated and the thought I might possibly need it to communicate with another person not near me never truly occurred to me.

* * *

On the way back from terminus to terminal a second time, I pondered Fashion. The topic of thought was how Fashion influences Young White Males; R&B and Dance fans, Dubsteppers, Casuals and Topboys. I tried to have a decent and reasonable discussion in my own head, but my mind inevitably turned to Fashion’s greatest, sexiest enigma; Low Trousers.

The idea of low trousers is simple enough: any Casual Topboy who objects to paying above one pound for a condom (read; “Worth His Salt”) should ideally invest in cord or cotton tracksuits (and, correctly, a crew-cut) two sizes or, (treat this as ironic), four inches too large, and wear them with as much gratuitous boxer short showing as(s) is possible. Not just any boxer short, either, tight-to-the-bone (Boneo..) Calvin Kleins, just thin enough to be seen through, so the faint outline of cheeks are visible to passers by and, behold the tactics, lasses. This is how Fashion is in beaten, broken Britain (haha).

Not that I’m complaining.

I was contemplating that despite this apparent uniform, there can be no way anyone (manyone?) would wilfully go around all day stumbling over their own cumbersome trousers with their cheeks on display through tight and thin boxer briefs.

Then I saw 12 boys doing exactly so, adding evidence to the Clark Theory of Grey Helly Hansen Attractiveness as well. 12-15, of course, I was keeping it legal. A veritable plethora of forbidden lust. The trackies were riding low, beyond low, and the boxers were thinly clinging to behinds. Aware that such an opportunity may never again present itself, I abandoned all previous occupation and did what I had to do.

I ogled.

However, I couldn’t help noticing that, as(s) I’d parked myself behind the Boyish Sex Convoy, a Soldier in The Salvation Army parked himself next to me and started ogling the boys. He bit his lip and salivated a little. In fact, I could see him visibly inflate his chest and adopted an official, important looking gait. We briefly began to make eye contact. And again, and once more. I had to say something, because an understanding had been reache; that boy-love united us, two people presumably entirely different in every other respect. Bearing in mind his knowledge of Christian canon, I decided on what I must say.

“Lo”, I said.

He grinned, enormously.

The timing was perfect and, as we both resumed observing this godly coconut shy, a boy in the middle; crew cut, cute, 14, fell over after his tracksuit bottoms fell to his ankles of their own accord. He floored it, epically. The Samaritan was stunned, I was stunned, everyone behind us was stunned. His friends imploded into laughter. The Samaritan was too paralysed to be a Samaritan and help the boy up. I, however, was not, and I grabbed him by a wrist and hoisted him up into the air. I stood back, with the sole intention of watching him bend over and pull up his trackies.

He obliged. He asked me my name. I told him “Humbert Humbert”. I grinned at him, and he proceeded to make sure his trousers were sufficiently low enough for him to continue.

I rejoined The Samaritan. He eyed me admiringly. Again, taking advantage of his biblical canon, I spoke.

“Suffer the little children, come unto me”.

I winked, and walked away.

* * *

After patrolling Meadowhall countless times, I was beginning to feel a more direct solution to the problem was in order. I wanted to embrace the fact I might not see Ella and have a day in Meadowhall by myself, possibly shopping. Maybe I’d just recline in Starbucks with the Times all day, supping coffee. Perhaps I’d do both.

Try as I might, I couldn’t enthrall my own mind into this state of mind, as irresistable a bachelor cliché it may have been. I had to see her, it’s what I wanted above anything else. So, I called my Dad and asked for Ella’s number.

I didn’t have a pen. So, using my manly initiative, I filled my hand with water and drew the number onto the paper in moisture.

The moisture faded away.

Acutely aware that time was running out, I ran, of course, to Starbucks. Where Coffee Legend Man fixed me up with a pen. So, I called Dad again (payphone) and asked him to read it out again. I wrote it, concentrating on the fact the machine was chipping mercilessly away at my funds, more on what I was writing. So, I wrote it on Tiger Woods’ face.

So, I couldn’t read it without doing a bit of a squint. So I wrote it again and felt just a little bit of White Guilt.

I called Ella and begged, but Ella’s mother refused to budge on the situation. So, I wandered around and read the leading articles and returned the pen. Then I phoned back and begged a bit more until they couldn’t help but cave into my pathos and pity.

So, I caught the train.

And the bus.

Grippingly, nothing exciting happened, apart from when a toddler with ADHD kept on shoving a toy mouse in my face.

All in all, the drama permitted only one hour with Ella (a good hour, of course) before I was back into the cold again, feeling conspicuous next to a dancing Santa with a nasty baritone. I also spent £8.00 on public transport and helped BT out of its economic woe. And I couldn’t have done it without their ridiculous payphone charges.

* * *

This post may, or may not, have been written with the explicit aim of acting as a “Do Not Feed Nick Hine” sign, by scaring off assorted responsible adults, prudent teens and anyone in between. It also may, or may not, have been written in the hope that one of Ella Worthington’s friends may log on and reading it, causing a general awkwardness that will no doubt provide the challenge my life needs to remain fresh, new and interesting on a day to day basis. This remains one of life’s great, final mantras, an unachievable desire of a life thoroughly action packed in all respects. One day…

_{nickhinewrotethis}

Ex-wives, ex-girlfriends, ex-houses, ex-dogs. Sounds like a country music song, doesn’t it? Alas, it is how a relative described his life thus far in a town in northeast Indiana. Now he has his own house and his own dog. Maybe the cycle is broken.

© J. L. Bates and chezjlb.wordpress.com, 2009.  See Copyright Page for complete information.

That’s a question that has taken on new meaning for me this year.  See, I was asked to be “Nitro Turkey” for the Nitro Turkey Trot 10k/5k.  On the surface it seemed to be a simple task but as Thursday approached, I had to wonder what I was getting myself into.

I showed up at the race a couple of hours before the kids’ race was scheduled to start and just sort of stood around watching the organizers get things ready; it was a surreal feeling after organizing and timing events myself for the better part of seven years.  With an hour before the kids’ race I changed into the turkey suit and all of a sudden I was transformed from a coffee sipping wall flower to Nitro Turkey and instantly became a magnet for the crowds arriving.

I had been nervous about doing a good job and ran the whole thing through my mind several times, much like I try to do for actual races I participate in.  “Should I talk or be silent or talk in a goofy booming voice (like AJW’s voice)?”  “Will the suit (my head mostly) stay on if I do something like a cartwheel?”  “Will I be hot in the suit?”  “Will the kids be too jaded and savvy to appreciate a giant turkey suit?”

All the worries vanished immediately and the fun began.  Almost every kid wanted to high five or shake my hand, some wanted a hug, and a couple of little girls latched onto me in a death hug after I picked them up and cradled them for photos.

Bolstered by the anonymity, I certainly wasn’t shy with the big girls either…

Nitro Turkey came in dead last in the kids’ race holding hands with the last little girl who beat the turkey to the line.  All in all, I had as much fun as the kids and was very touched by a couple of the little ones who seemed so attached to the giant, goofy bird.  Over 320 people came out to participate and I believe every one of them left with a huge smile on his/her face.  Brazen Racing does a fine job with their events, paying close attention to the details that make them unique and memorable.

After the race I went home and prepared and cooked the real turkey I had won at last Sunday’s race.  It was the first time I oven-cooked a turkey; I usually deep fry them, which I highly recommend.  Surprizingly, after 5 hours, this one turned out great.  At this point I’m a little tired of turkey all together.

I’mma rise all up in yo face,

don’t tell me that I can’t do such a thing in this place!

E– . . .that’s all I can think of. I’m not much of a rapper it seems!

So, it has most certainly been a while since I last posted here, but not very long since I last blogged. My personal blog has seen no shortage of content, granted said content has been quite uninteresting and repetitive. However, this is not my personal blog, but rather my blog that is meant to entertain!

Yes, by labeling this blog as such I have doomed it to the realm of failure, but I have no regrets! Well, I have regrets just like anyone else, but the act of labeling this blog is not one of them.

BUT THIS IS ALL NEITHER HERE, NOR THERE.

I have returned from my ~2.5 month hiatus, if you will, to inform you all (and by you all I mean no one, as no one reads this. Well, two people have read it. Ever. Once each. Not that it matters, might I add!) that I am undertaking a creative project the likes of which you have never seen!

And will continue to never see, as I won’t be posting it here. Now, you may ask

“Dude, if not here, then where? Where, might I add?”

To which I would reply “Simple dear dude/dudette: Nowhere!”

That’s right, I came to inform you all of something you will likely never see. Okay, so you might see it. But only if you are lucky enough to know me in real life.

It’s going to take a lot of work. A lot of proverbial blood, sweat and [actual] tears (we’ll stick a “maybe” on those tears).

And pencil crayons. I’ll need those as well. This project will incorporate my desire to start writing short stories as well as my ever-present desire to resume my drawing ways, as it were, might I add.

I can’t say that I’m doing this just for fun. I have my reason. Call it a labour of love?

Okay, so it may or may not be a gift. May, might I add. Or may not, need I remind. With that being said, I’ve set myself a deadline of . . . well, the holidays. In and around that time. That’s my goal. If I don’t make it, ah well, ’tis life my friends! I can’t say that it is necessarily a Christmas gift, as I would be inclined to transfer ownership of it, as it were, at any time. There need not be an occasion in order to give gifts from the heart!

I am well aware that this could turn out well, or turn out not so well, both in quality and in the received reaction. However, I will not let that deter me. In fact, let’s not delve into this line of thought any further as this is not my personal blog!

I have rambled on long enough it seems, as I have successfully derailed my train of thought, in the proverbial sense mind you, a most heinous act on my part.

Till next time fellow degenerates!

YES! My Pukifee order is on shipping as of today! Milk is finally coming home! Wooooohoooo! And my husband is all yay too, his two Pukifees are also coming in that package. I hope I get Korean newspaper..

On the flipside, I’m really sick and had the worst night in the history of mankind, semi-conscious with awful chills and weird colorful halos. The day has been better, temperature has stayed relatively low. I’m hoping tonight will be easier to sleep, last night really exhausted me. Also I had to delay all shippings because of this so I have a handful of stuff to send out.

I’m finished with the Christmas swap package and I’m going to beat my husband into finishing his during this weekend because I want to ship both swap packages as soon as humanly possible. Also have to send off the outfit I made for my friends incoming Narae who is finally really coming. I think she ordered her in June or something and now she’s finally in this order that is guaranteed by Christmas. And.. the commission I had and Etsy purchase and I’m sure I’m forgetting something here…

Anyway since all posts are better with pictures, here’s the commission piece (first version is totally available since she wanted adjustments made, this is the final version):

So anyway scurrying off to bed again. Blehblehbleh! But YAY for Milk coming home!

“Ok ramblers, let’s get rambling.”

Here’s the rambling I was going to do a few days ago:

This idea is based on an idea I had a month or so back when I was talking to a friend of mine about how much he missed drama now that he was finished high school. The idea was to get a group of our friends together every little while and take it in turns presenting something creative, whether it be a drama piece, a short story, poem, script, film, song, whatever. So, one person would have the spotlight to show what they’d created and then we’d discuss it, analyse, etc.

I was reminded of it the other day when a friend linked me to a site where people post stories and get them critiqued. So, I wrote her a letter to see what she thought of it, I’m pretty sure we can get a fairly good group together for it; we have a group of friends that are fairly creative: writers, musicians, actors, photographers, artists, etc. Anyway, I’ll keep you updated on what happens with that.

I guess the main idea behind it is not only encouraging creativity and all that, but I really love the idea of people like the Post-Raphaelites, the Heidelberg School or the Dogme 95 Collective; a group of artists who got together to discuss the nature of art at the time, what they liked about it, what they didn’t, what they think should happen with it, etc. A real movement, being involved in actively developing the state of art. It’s obviously a big ask, likely punching above our weight, but whatever.

I’ll let you know how it rocks out,

Your state-of-the-art art encourager,

TDE

I just took the last of the pills I got to get rid of the chlamydia. In three weeks or so I’ll get tested again to make sure I really got rid of the infection. It would suck if I just assumed that I’d gotten rid of it and somehow the antibiotics didn’t work. Would hate to accidentaly infect someone >< or someone more in case I did infect someone before I found out I had it… Even though I think I got it from Frog it could’ve been the other way around. Worst case I got it from Batman and in that case I’ve had it since may-ish.

I guess this early on a Saturday you probably don’t think about writers block. Usually (now that the kids are older) I am sleeping in at this point.

The journey begins however with changing what you’ve done to do something new. that which we have done is oft repeated but seldom understood.

We are creatures of habit. When the kids were little I got up when they go up. When I was a school teacher I got up early to get to school and be ready for the day. Now, ideas don’t have bedtimes and I stay up later (when I can – its hard to beat 20 years of training).

But enough for today. These rambles lead no where and I’ve got places to go.

.doc

yesterday we celebrated with a yummy (but slightly expensive) buffet at straits cafe @ rendezvous hotel! had fun chitchatting and eating with tony, shoban, guang, ham, edsee, pam! gosh it was hilarious. first of all tony and his alfalfa, basically it’s this moss like thing that tasted like grass. pam was throwing him eye-rolls and grimaces when he was eating it like some bovine organism. and the disgusting durian creme and puff. oh god if i ever have the pleasure of eating (forced, tricked, accidentally or otherwise) anything with durian in it i swear i will use one whole bottle of listerine in one sitting. then we watched a movie called gomorrah at cathay picturehouse (it was between that and christmas carol 3D, but since pam’s 18 we chose the former m18 movie LOL). it apparently won the top prize at the cannes film festival (plus certified 91% fresh via pam’s rottentomatoes), but it turned out… as i quote the birthday girl “this movie was such a milestone for me” well. i still prefer the heavily-stylized 40s american mafia movie a la the godfather. gomorrah was too hyper-real imo. :/ anyway have fun in malacca girl!

edit:

birthday girl!

fewd!

edsee laughing at at tony eating his alfalfa

group shot! slightly blurred. (and my face looks like the full moon lol)

————————————————————–

anyway i’ve finally gotten down to listening to the fame monster. gaga is a genius. perhaps i should consider turning from a free-thinker to joining a pagan occult that worships her, LOL. i’m joking, i’m joking, don’t stone me. anyway alejandro is my favourite on the album!! best thing is, it samples czardas (the very hungarian gypsy tune we learned for guitar) at the start. and i love the intro of dance in the dark too!!

hmm i got john mayer’s new album battle studies. spent the whole morning in bed listening to it. i gotta say it’s my favourite album by him yet. the whole thing feels so raw, unpretentious, and intimate. especially love friends, lovers or nothing and the title track, heartbreak warfare. and i shall leave you with the former! the lyrics are really meaningful imo (i’m sure many of us will have felt like this at some point in time or another). the perfect album for single, lonely souls out there, heh:

anything other than yes is no,
anything other than stay is go,
anything less than i love you is lying

Wow..what a day! I was up until 4:30 this morning shopping online for almost every item I wanted for the family for Christmas! I only wasn’t able to get about five things online but then went to the store this afternoon and got every one of those too! My biggest problem this year..and almost every year is the adults gifts! It is so hard to buy gifts for all the people you love who really don’t NEED anything but you really want to get them SOMETHING to show how much you appreciate them being a part of your life and how much you love them. Is this a sad thing to say? I am still looking and I hope to find those perfect gifts for the ones I love before December 25th! This afternoon I took all the gifts out that I have already gotten and put them all in piles by who they are going to on my bed and it was covered! I then wrote down everything so that when it comes time to wrap I don’t get anything mixed up or it doesn’t get forgotten in the end. I even put post-its in the bags or boxes of items for each person with their name on it! I have a LOT of wrapping to do and I am hoping to atleast get started this weekend. The items I ordered online still need to get here but I also added those to the lists so I really don’t forget who gets what! Now lets just hope I don’t loose the lists!! I know I am insane but I figure this year it may help me keep it all a bit more organized than the years prior. The past few years I have been wrapping gifts on CHRISTMAS EVE!! I have been up until 2am wrapping gifts to just let the kids tear them open a few hours later. Here’s hoping that my savings because of the sales and free shipping deals pays off in the end!

If you watch the History Channel specials about the White House, you will learn about “Presidential garage sales.” Can’t you just imagine it? Haggling with Michelle Obama over an original portrait of George Washington or something ridiculous.

While the show has been amusing and informative, I can’t help but see a continuation of a common theme I have seem as of late, probably because of the approach of the Christmas season. i understand that in politics and international diplomacy, there is a lot of stock put in appearances. I am not trying to suggest the White House look shabby or rundown. However, I really must wonder about the expenses that the constant perfecting of the White House incurs. The grounds staff, a constant kitchen and pastry room, cleaning services, etc. I wish that the White House might set an example for a country of such differing incomes by allowing the grounds to become more “natural” (overgrown yes, but doesn’t that also have a measure of beauty?). Or perhaps having a volunteer group come in and make dinner occasionally – some students from a cooking school or something similar.

I’m sure these are very impractical, but I thought I’d write them down.

I got out of school for Thanksgiving Break on Tuesday. I had four assignments due that day – ugh. It was so nice to leave campus for a while. My mom and I now have wireless Internet, thanks to my grandparents. It’s going to help us out a lot, since my mom is planning on going back to school, and she’s still trying to find a job.

We went to Ohio on Wednesday. Alex was coming up to my town to meet Nick and get a few games he requested, but since I wasn’t going to be there, I left a note and a mix CD on my front door and told him to stop by my house. I got a “thank you” text from him, and that was the last time I heard from him for two days because his phone died and he left his charger at school. It worried me a bit, but he called me today.

Thanksgiving with my grandparents wasn’t bad. I love them, but in all honesty, I’m terrified of my grandpa. He’s a military man, and he always seems so stiff and, a “downer,” if you will. My grandma is nice, although sometimes I get so frustrated with her “hovering.”  She likes to watch over my shoulder while I cook, and during our visit, whenever I dug out one of my four knitting projects, she always met me with a dozen questions.

I feel really bad because I probably come off as selfish and rude to them. I don’t mean it like that. I just hate being the only grandchild and I hate a quiet, tight-ruled, religious household. I was horrified to see that they own a book by Bill O’Reilly. We’re so different, our generations, and that’s difficult.

But Thanksgiving still went well. I read The Graveyard Book, finished a scarf for Alex’s mom, and worked on a pair of corseted fingerless gloves I started back in October. We watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade (Alan Cumming followed by Cyndi Lauper was the BEST part!), and the food was good. We weren’t going to have mashed potatoes, but I wasn’t having that, so I made the mashed potatoes myself. I also made a pumpkin-pear pie for dessert that turned out well.

Things I am Grateful For:

• A loving family, despite my flaws and theirs.
• A charming, wonderful, caring (and patient) boyfriend.
• Good friends to turn to when I need advice, support, and a good laugh.
• An education, a roof over my head, food in my stomach, and a bed to sleep in every night.
• I am (as far as I know) healthy, and so are my family members.
• For life, love, truth, and beauty – even in the darkest of nights.
• Hope that things, no matter how bad they seem, will get better.

Mom and I left this afternoon and came back home. We ate chili and watched Choke. It was an okay movie, but I love Sam Rockwell and his weirdness. My boy called me. I was glad to hear that he had a good Thanksgiving. I can’t wait to see him Sunday, because this upcoming week is going to be a long one, and I don’t know if I’ll have much time to spend with him.

The good news: Only a few more weeks, and the semester will be over. Finally.

Well, I’m sure it’s no suprise, but I let Dooce beat me in the race to the top of the blog list on this site. I kind of suck at keeping up with this blog. But I swear it’s going to be different this time! I swear!

Of course, it’s not going to be different this second. I am just really tired and considering that whining will not engage anyone but the Child, I think I’ll hold off until I can get you a real post.

Potential topic? What WOULD Jesus Do, and why do his followers have to ask?

Interigued? No? Ok, well, maybe something different then….

Good night!