Blog 5/18 & 5/19

5/18

I took my nephew (13) to his baseball try-outs this afternoon.  I didn't think it was particularly hot, but I was a smelly, sweaty mess by the time the hour and a half had expired.  Honestly, I can't imagine a homeless dude would smell worse than I do right now, but instead of taking a shower before I went to the library, I mowed the front lawn instead (thus increasing my stenchitude by a factor of two).  Oh, and I just farted . . . when you thought it couldn't get any worse.

Here at the library, you have to log on to use their computers, and the second you do, a timer at the top center of the screen begins counting down how much Time Remaining you have.  You can move the timer, but you can't get rid of it, and it serves as a constant reminder that there's a deadline, that you need to go a little faster, and of course, that you need to save your work and send it to yourself before the counter gets to zer--Oh, it logged me off with two minutes left on the counter again!

That was just an example.

I have said before that I thrive with a deadline.  Whenever I am asked to do a part or read a story for another podcast, I always want them to give me a date that it's due by.  Otherwise, I'll forget, and the time will pass like you-know-what going through a goose.

Take today, for instance: "Balms & Sears" is sitting at 44,114 words right now.  And that means that, if I write three hundred and thirty words, we'll be at the magical number of 44,444, which pleases my OCD like nobody's business.

Unfortunately, I couldn't leave well enough alone, and wrote the darn thing past 45,000 words before they started flashing the lights.  Sorry, guys.

Writing or Exercising: Both

5-19

PHANTOM MENACE came out twenty-three years ago today.  Huh.

Best moment in film history.

I disappoint myself to admit that I skipped school on that day, 

So, I sat down at the library, and --oh, profanity alert--fudgin' "lizardface" started to report me to his imaginary friend, before I'd even turned on the computer, this time calling me "Sigmund Freud."  I guess that's my codename, which I suppose I prefer to the other one.  But still, it struck me as particularly offensive today (for some reason).

Usually, I just ignore the fucking guy, but today, I stood up and said, "You know, I can sit somewhere else, no problem," and moved three rows away.  To my surprise, one of the other library patrons heard me and thought that was pretty funny.  I guess everybody's been called something by that crazy asshole a time or two.

So, before I write, I went running last night, and turned on my music instead of YouTube, and almost immediately came up with a scene I should write in my story, one that I could set up at the beginning, and pay off right before the end (where I currently am in the narrative).  But now . . . I cannot remember what it might have been.  Isn't that the worst?*

I had a couple of items I bought months ago from Target in my car, and keep forgetting to return them.  They used to have a really good return policy, but they've really clamped down lately, and sometimes it's almost as hard to return something there as it is at Walmart.  But I happened to have the receipt to these two items, still in the bag, which is good because it should make the return easier, and bad because those receipts expire, and every time I got home from Target WITHOUT returning them, I'd hit myself.

But today was the day, because today was the day that receipt expired, and I jetted off to Target before my mom went to work and I'd have to watch the four year old . . . and I forgot the return.

But since I had to take my nephew to his baseball practice anyway, I made sure to grab the bag and put it there on the passenger seat of my dad's truck (it has a carseat in it and my car does not).  So we headed over to Target, and even though the receipt said we had to get them returned before 5/19, the girl at Customer Service (who was eight years old) said that the receipt had expired.  I wasn't happy, but I was aware that I had waited until the absolute last minute, and wasn't going to make a stink about it (these were two Star Wars action figures I'd purchased for $19.99 each). 

But she got on the radio and asked her manager if she could take them anyway, and did one of those "no receipt returns" on my driver's license . . . and to my surprise, they now ring up for $24.99.  And that's what she gave me.  So, I guess it pays to procrastinate.

Writing or Exercising: Writing

*Kind of like when you have a dream, and can't remember it the next morning, or a great idea in the middle of the night, and it's completely gone by the time your alarm goes off, or you go to the library, and a mentally ill man tells his invisible FBI contact that you've shown up again and are up to no good?