June Sweeps - Day 497

At the cabin (yet) again.  This time, it was my mom, my brother, and me.  We stained the middle deck, I went over the top deck again (it still doesn't look perfect--the places where we sanded away flaking paint are a totally different color than the places where we didn't), and my brother is spray-staining the outside and above the deck.

It's pretty cool today--about seventy out--but on Thursday, when I was here, it was in the forties.  That's the thing about this place, you look at the temperature in the city and subtract twenty degrees.  I brought my laptop, and am sitting, resting, while my brother is preparing his paint sprayer for another go.

He'll want me to hold the ladder once he goes up on it.  In the meantime, I went for my run last night, fully intending to think about writing--whether a new project or one that is stalled--and I totally forgot about it.  Seth Meyers does this thing on Fridays where he runs Corrections for all the little misstatements and flubs he made during the week.  It's actually my favorite thing that he does because he pretends that he's happy to address the complaints, and then usually gets really angry at some point in the segment, which I can't quite identify as real or an act (or is the "I want to fix everything I get wrong, so the show is perfect" the act?).  And then, most brilliantly, he'll sometimes (or maybe every time, and I only catch it every once in a while) throw in a deliberate error in at the end of his correction, just to piss of the pedants.

I find late night talk shows endlessly compelling and bizarrely romantic.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In June: 1316

I wish that I had enough confidence in myself and my work that I could throw in subtle, dark stuff in more shows, like saying, "I really should take more care in my appearance, iron my clothing, get a haircut more often, match my wardrobe, throw stuff out once it starts getting ragged.  After all, I'm only HALF Mexican."  But I don't dare.

My brother worked insanely hard on the cabin, long after my mother and I were done and getting food.  I've mentioned my brother before, and his lack of hunger, the fact that he can go all day without eating and it never really occurs to him, much less bothers him.  I suppose everybody is different, and there are people much less hungry than he is, just like there are folks way more hungry than I am.*

He went up on the side of the cabin on these wobbly metal ladders and first sprayed, then resprayed, and then cleaned the windows, all with me standing around "securing" the ladders, which really meant just standing there, looking up at him, wondering how, if I was getting sunburned where I was, he wasn't on fire up there.

Then, it was time to go.  My mom and I drove up together, and my brother drove by himself.  If you think I'm a solitary person, going out to the cabin alone (or doing stuff alone) as often as I do, my brother has me beat by far.  I wonder if it ever bothers him.**

Push-ups Today: 60
Push-ups In June: 1415

I am thinking, writing-wise, a little bit about the "Lara and the Witch" story I started on, where Lara has to go on her first "adult" mission, despite just being in high school.  I was toying with her becoming attached to this boy who discovered a magical tome with spells written in everyday English, that the local witches are thinking needs to be eliminated.  She wants to help the boy, who is drawn to Lara because she's the only girl he's not able to instantly dominate, due to the power he's just come into, but he is becoming rapidly corrupted by the magic, and Lara knows that, if she's not able to steer him toward moderation and secrecy, that Old Widow Holcomb and her pals will take his life.  I like the idea of a scene where Lara is getting through to him, and the boy is recognizing that maybe he's gone a bit to the dark side, and then she mentions the consequences if he doesn't change his ways . . .

. . . and that pushes him totally in the other direction.  "Why don't you leave them and come with me?" he says, holding out his hand.  "What do you mean?" she asks, already considering herself on his side.  He says, "We'll get them before they get us, kill every single one of them.  Together, we'll be doing the world a favor, ridding it of a bunch of witches.  What do you think?"

I even think it would be fun if she started to fall for this boy, despite the truly ghastly things he's been doing--like making the teachers he doesn't like humilate themselves or go streaking, causing a massive, school-wide foodfight, forcing the football team to play pick-up games to the death, and making the cheerleaders do crazily dangerous pyramids and potentially-deadly routines--and she's sure that she's immune to his witchcraft, since she's been given powerful charms to keep her from his influence.  

But is it slipping?  Can he really be that charming?

Boy, I'm starting to think I ought to go on to this story, just so I can find out the answer.

Anyway, I got almost no words written for the day.  I wrote a bit at the cabin, then went on my run, and having gotten up early and worked out in the sun, I fell asleep a bit earlier than I usually do, and it didn't occur to me to write a second time.  Sanderson I am not.

Words Today: 170
Words In June: 8872

*I don't think I mentioned this in my blog, but last week, I got out a quart of ice cream from the freezer, and put on the Slender Man documentary.  I had only intended to eat a little of it, but by the end of the doc, I had eaten the whole thing.  Talk about horror.

**He has said, though, that he'd like to move to some tiny, isolated town, where there are no neighbors and nobody will ever bother him, and I'll bet, when he retires, that he does just that.  His idea of a happy ending, I guess.