February Sweeps - Day 6

You know, I probably could have written more last night, but I didn't.  Today, I SHOULD do better.

But it snowed during the night, and it's still coming down, and the roads seem a total mess, and the mailman I just spoke to (he had snow tires on his vehicle) said that the plows are out but it'll be awhile before anything is accessable.

I sent a photo to Big (who'd been up for four hours and was surely already complaining about the heat) and he said, "You should take your AT-AT out there* and take a picture."

So I did.  But dang, that Walker is so big and unwieldy, I feel like I already had my exercise for the morning.  I may have actually harmed myself, leaning over my chair and trying to pick the thing up while pressing my ribs into the armrest.  It's the exact same place where I came down on the handlebars last year while trying to be young and ride my nephew's scooter (jeez, of course I would be too big for one intended for an eight year old.  Duh).  Maybe I actually cracked a rib that afternoon, and I recracked it today.

Regardless, it would bother me for the rest of the day (ooh, and the next).

Great.

Shoot, Valentine's Day is nearly upon us.  I had vowed to do a special episode of my show for it.  I need to get to work on that, or this crappiest-day-of-the-year will have beaten me once again.

So, yesterday, I was going to introduce a new character into my "Dead & Breakfast" series.  She's someone that I alluded to in both "The Old Man & Me" and "Three-Time Visitor" (when the characters refused to do what I had wanted them to), and because she's significant (to me), I wanted to come up with a name I really like.

So I went on Facebook and asked people to suggest names.  It was interesting which folks put their wives' names and which just pulled a name out of a hat, and which people put their own name.  While I've never liked my own name, I do have a handful of favorite names that I would've branded some poor child with if I had had some, but I've never used one of them in a story (I still don't think this is the right time for that one, though).  This girl has to be really damaged, yet kind of wonderful beneath it all (like the one I based the wife, Marin, on in "Journey Into Another Dimension"), and Mason will (hopefully) discover that along the way.

Gosh, I love writing sometimes.  I have so little actual power in life, and yet in these stories, people can want and think and speak and feel whatever I breathe into them.  I only wish I could do it better, and that anybody cared.

But I can't get melancholy . . . that way leads to madness.

Instead, I'm going to go out and take those pictures (I put the Imperial Walker and two of it's little nephews out in the yard, and waited for some snow to coat them before taking a photo), see if they look good.

There's really not much snow on the ground.  The flakes are tiny, dandruff-sized bits, and that doesn't pile up so much.  I'll leave these out there all day, though, and we'll see what happens.

I like this one a lot, because I got down close to the ground, and they look much, much bigger, like I'm one of those crazy Star Wars fans that built a large replica in his backyard.**

I was asked (surely, for the last time) to do a reading for a popular fiction podcast the other day.  I recorded the story, edited it, and sent the file to the editor.  To my mortification, he sent it back, saying it was riddled with errors.  Somehow, I had sent him the unedited version (which is absolutely NOT possible, seriously), which includes multiple retakes, and the moment when I fall asleep right before the end.

To say I was embarrassed is an understatement.  But what's worse is, when I went to send him the correct file . . . the edited version of the story is no longer edited.  All the mistakes, relines, and profanity is back.

I've said before that doing a project a second time is pure agony, even if it was fun the first go-round, but this one is particularly enpissening.  I just finished it again, and boy, I don't know if I even want to listen to it now, just to double-check to see if there are still mistakes.  Maybe it's better this way, to not ever be asked again.  Ahh, glass half-full.

I don't feel like I did much useful with my day.  I didn't have work or have to take my nephews to their practices, but I was feeling really down on myself and worthless, despite vowing that I would try to face February with a positive attitude.  And unfortunately, I put on an Adele song ("Don't You Remember") just now, and I cried again.

But instead of going down to Wallaceville to hit the nearest liquor store, I forced myself to get in the car, brave the snow, and head to the library.

Before I got there, though, I stopped at the bank, to deposit an embarrassingly-small paycheck, and as I was at the ATM, I looked over just in time to see a big, heavyset dude slip on the icy sidewalk and fall flat on his back.  He was walking with (I presume) his wife, and I felt sorry for him as I saw the wife try to help him back up, but nothin' doin'--the guy was just too big.

I am not proud to admit that I immediately thought, "Well, if I go help him, one of the cars behind me in line (for the ATM) will get upset with me."

It was a small person's thought, and after I had it, I drove forward (so somebody else could use the machine), put my car in Park, and took off my seatbelt to go help the dude.  At that moment, a waiter came running out of the restaurant next to the bank, and he came up alongside the big man and his wife and helped the guy stand up.  It seemed clear the fallen man was hurt, and the waiter--who didn't even have a coat on--helped him walk over to a place where he could sit down, the wife on the other side of him.

Now, a normal person would (probably) witness this and think, "See, there is good in the world, somebody who will drop whatever they're doing to help somebody in need."  That's probably what you would've thought.  But me, I thought, "Goddamn you, Rish.  You just sat there, when you could've helped that poor fat guy.  No wonder nobody loves you.  Now go find a bridge."

I won't continue to tell you what the voice said (it can be kind of brusque), but it did really bum me out.  And I wish I had been faster and more selfless, since I was closer to this unfortunate man than the waiter was.  And I had a coat on.

But I'm still here.  And next time, I'll move quicker.

So, I did end up going to the library, and while I did not want to write long, I did start, then spend a while typing something up from a notebook.  I found some notes from the story I'm trying to produce in audio next, did a search for it in the master document, and when I didn't find it, I thought, "Okay, this is a scene I can write."  So, I wrote on it for a thousand words or so . . . and felt fine about it.

And then, when I tried to paste it into the manuscript where it belonged . . . I found that I had already written that scene, a year ago, just with different words and a different tone.  Ah, what a waste.  But I'm still going to count the words.  Wouldn't you?

I also wrote a bit more right before I went to bed.  I don't know if anybody wants to read these stories, but I sure want to write them.

And with that, I'm feeling a little bit better about today.

Words Today: 1,536
Words Total: 7,179

*Rhymes with Ratbat, by the way, not with Katie-Katie.

**As opposed to a crazy Star Wars fan that would spend an ungodly amount for a two-foot tall AT-AT toy.  At least it was used.