Then I saw this Flash Fiction Friday #29 thing — I always come to these things late, as yesterday’s Free Gisch contest will, well, attest — and a story started taking shape in my head. After many stops and starts, and wanting to alternate between killing my kids and killing myself, here it is.  I suppose I failed the challenge; I didn’t post it before 9am PST.  But in the end, I don’t care.  I finished the challenge, and that’s more important to me.

I’m not entirely sure I like it, and I didn’t read through it as heavily as I do my other bits of flash… the huge number of stops and starts on this thing saw to that.  But done is done, written is written, and garbage is only garbage if you consider it so.

Call it a writing exercise, and be done with it.  I am.

(( *** STORY BEGINS *** ))

BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT

“I said that you don’t have to believe me, and I certainly wouldn’t…if I were in your shoes.”

Cassandra said that every Friday morning at nine sharp. That was when we met to go over the List for the following week. Someone once told me she was obsessive-compulsive, but I’ve never heard about anyone with the disorder who only needed one repetition once a week. I dunno, I’m no expert. But it seems a bit far-fetched to me. It could be true, I suppose. Cassandra’s a strange one. You never know how she’s going to act or how she’s going to be dressed when she shows up to the weekly meetings.

Today, she’s gone with 50s housewife chic: hair sprayed into place with some shellac-type fixer, one prominent curl on her forehead. Fire-engine red dress, with short sleeves and tiny white polka dots. Her shoes match her lipstick, and her lipstick matches her dress. She’s even wearing a frilly white apron and thick rubber gloves. All that’s missing are the scrub brush and oven in need of cleaning.

Someone, one of the recruits finally allowed access to these meetings, asks her what we won’t believe. The veterans, myself included, all roll our eyes. You’re not supposed to encourage Cassandra. Let her take contracts, yes. Tolerate her presence, yes. Encourage her, no.

“I can teleport to anywhere in the world,” she says with an impish smile. The recruit looks startled, glances sideways to the guy who obviously mentors him; the guy shakes his head slightly and the recruit looks away. That’s why we don’t encourage her.

The ancient printer we’re gathered around spits and crackles and hums into life. Vito, eldest of us all, has the privilege of removing the List from the tray. He clears his throat, rustles the pages and all conversation ceases. We wait in respectful silence for him to start calling out the contracts.

“Contract for the CFO of Aztech Incorporated,” he says. “Half a million.”

“Time?” someone in the back asks.

“Up to two weeks.”

“I’ll take it,” two people say at once, and immediately begin arguing heatedly. One has a pregnant wife who needs a C-section; he needs the cash. The other already has three kids with three different women and he has to pay child support; he needs the cash. The first punch is thrown almost before initial arguments are done.

Gather a group like us together every week, with our line of work and the amounts of cash thrown around; events like this are more common than you’d think.

Vito waits for a moment to see if anyone else will toss in a desire for the contract. When no one does, he waves a hand and the brawling duo are herded to the side to work it out in private. He speaks another name, another deadline, and another amount. There are no fist fights over this one.

Contracts continue to be picked up. Eventually the two brawlers have decided which of them is getting the half a mil one. The winner collects the file folder and his blank passport. The loser, nursing a broken nose and a black eye, takes a contract for a lesser amount, and doesn’t look happy to be doing so.

He’ll get over it, or he’ll kill his competition. Our kind play for keeps.

Vito says “Archibald Sniever, head of Rombach Pharmautechnologies.” Then he hesitates. “Retracted,” he continues before anyone asks what’s wrong. “This contract will pass to our Western European branch.”

Cassandra bounces up beside me, her curls bobbing by my shoulder. “Why?” she asks.

Vito turns his infamous Medusa stare on her – the kind so powerful it can turn someone to stone – but Cassandra proves immune. Vito sighs. “It’s for a target in Paris. The deadline is midnight.”

I nod. Paris is at least a ten hour flight, and it’s already noon. Better that it go to someone who can get the job done. We’re ragtag, but we do have a reputation to maintain.

Cassandra doesn’t seem to care. She just says, “I’ll take it.”

Vito doesn’t blink. He just goes onto the next contract.

Louder. “I said I’ll take it!”

Vito ignores her, hands out another file folder.

“I’ll take it, Vito.”

I sigh. She does this every so often; she wants something she can’t have, and she’ll only get louder until Vito has her tossed out on her ear. “Cassandra, it’s an impossible contract,” I say. “Let a local take care of it. You’d never make it there in time.”

She stares at me, then gives me a Betty Paige smile, bright and cheerful and slightly sinister. “Nothing’s impossible,” she says, then turns and flounces away.

I take a local contract for thirty grand. It’s low-key, low-grade, but I’m not feeling all that adventurous lately. The wife’s had her gallbladder out, and she needs me around the house. And it’s not like we’re hurting for cash. I had that big operation down in Sao Paolo a couple of months back; still lots left over from that payday.

I don’t see Cassandra again, but then, I’m not really looking for her.

* * *

On Tuesday, my weekend copy of Le Monde arrives. The wife doesn’t understand my obsession with world news; I have subscriptions from everywhere. Of course, I can’t really tell her why I want them. She thinks I’m in diplomacy – in a weird way, I guess I am. Just not the way she’d think of it.

I’m in my office looking for mentions of my colleagues’ exploits when a “Local News” column catches my eye:

PHARMACEUTICAL CEO ASSASSINATED

Revolutionary cancer drug trials suspended until replacement rep arrives

The article is brief, details very little, only that one Archibald Sniever, Chief Executive Officer of Rombach Pharmatechnologies was shot and killed at close range during a meeting to discuss human trials on a new cancer drug some French doctor patented. In the ensuing panic and inevitable stampede towards the door, the assassin got away.

I glance at the picture accompanying the article; it looks like it had been taken just after Mr. Sniever hit the ground. I can’t see the body, but there are people panicking and screaming and running. If I squint just right, I can almost see the high velocity spatter on the woman beside the empty chair.

Something else catches my eye, and I blink at the paper. The image is grainy and blurry and hard to make out, but there, in the front row, is a face I recognize very easily. 50s housewife bob, puffy sleeves and frilly apron. I haul the magnifying glass I confiscated from my son after I caught him burning ants out of my desk drawer and look again.

I said that you don’t have to believe me, and I certainly wouldn’t… if I were in your shoes.

Jesus Christ. That’s Cassandra.

I can teleport anywhere in the world.

What the fuck?

* * *

Friday rolls around again, and brings with it another gathering. I still have an active contract and it’s bad form to take another before the first one’s complete. But I can’t help myself. I have to know if Cassandra is going to show up, and what she’ll say if she does.

I hunch into my sheepskin jacket, waiting for the printer to spew out its List for the week. There are new faces here today, and some old ones are missing, even taking into account those out on active contracts. Such is the way of things. Such is the way.

Vito has an announcement before the printer starts hissing. “We did not complete a contract,” he says, and there’s an immediate rumble of discord that disappears when he raises a hand to stymie it. “A rival beat us to it; our European brothers report that their assigned member was found unconscious in his hotel room.”

And just like that, Cassandra’s bouncing at my shoulder again. She waves above her head a file folder, a used passport, and the probable murder weapon.  “I took care of it for you, Vito, just like I said I would.”

Nobody who was here last week knows what to say to that. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Vito completely flabbergasted. But he does what he’s supposed to do and he takes the items she’s handing him, placing them in the box with all the other bits of incriminating evidence. “Thanks,” he says, and he sounds uncertain.

She giggles.  No one can sound that much like a child without being a little unhinged.  Then again, no one ever suspected Cassandra of being sane.

In the silence that follows, Cassandra speaks her expected line. This time, it isn’t a raw, wide-eyed recruit who asks her what she means, what wouldn’t we believe.

It’s me.

She turns to me, wide-eyed at my daring at first, but then with a Betty Page smile and another coy giggle.  She bounces on her toes, and her curls bounce with her. “I can kill people with only my mind,” she says with an impish grin.

Someone laughs. Another person snorts. A third says, “Yeah right.” But me? I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt.

See him? I want to say. Sweetheart, I’m living with him. But I don’t, of course.  It’s all about the secret identity, David tells me.  If random Joe Q. Everyman on the street knew who he was, everyone in his life would be open to attack. Including me.  And the last thing I want in my life is for the Razor or Captain Beak or Dead Kennedy to come after me, snatch me off the streets and torture me for all three of David’s secrets.

So instead of telling her just who the Mask is, I light my cigarette and blow a lungful of smoke into the air.  “I didn’t know he liked frozen yogurt.”  I don’t know how I manage to keep a straight face.

“Neither did I!” Good Christ, she’s actually bouncing in place and clapping her hands together like a happy toddler.  Don’t get me wrong; I love my boyfriend and I tolerate the superhero gig, but I don’t think he really needs this much enthusiasm when he’s not even here.  “Chocolate raspberry! With sprinkles!” Her eyes go wide and she sucks in  a breath so quick I think for a moment she’s having an asthma attack. “OhmigodIhavetotweetaboutthis!”  Her BlackBerry comes whipping out of her pocket so fast that, if I didn’t know otherwise, I’d suspect she had superspeed.  Within seconds, she’s tweeted about the experience.  The sighting.  The encounter.

If Jesus wore red tights and a glittery papier-mache mask, I guarantee Hannah’d be in church every Sunday.

Hannah tucks her phone back into her pocket and thumps back against the side of the building with a dreamy sigh.  “He’s so cute,” she says, tucking her hands under her chin.  “He must be a playboy millionaire, with a Jaguar and a private jet and…”  She trails off into incoherent babbling about fast cars and mansions in the Hollywood Hills.  She’s probably drooling too.

I roll my eyes and stay silent on the issues of superheroes and money.  As cool as David’s invulnerability and ability to fly are — and trust me, they are — they’re somewhat impractical for cash flow, and McDonald’s was the only one hiring.     It would break her fucking heart to learn that the Golden Mask has a dayjob at the Golden Arches.

I’ll tell David about this later tonight, if he makes it home in time for dinner.  Christ only knows if whatever nemesis-of-the-month he’s currently chasing will be courteous enough to finish the fight by five.  I doubt it; villains are so rude.

I stub out my cigarette and readjust the nametag on my Walgreen’s vest.  My break was over five minutes ago.  There’s still two hours on the clock and I have bills to pay.  Lots of bills.  That are all past due.  David’s too proud to ask his buddy, the rich-as-hell Quakemaster, for a loan, and I don’t know the guy well enough.  We’ll make do; David’s up for promotion to manager in the next few months and I can pick up some extra shifts.  “David’s planning to barbecue tomorrow after the game; y’wanna come?’

And just like that, her nose wrinkles in distaste.  She gets along with David, for my sake, but she doesn’t really like him all that much.  Most days, the irony amuses the bejesus out of me.  Today, I’m too tired.  Being up half the night worried sick that Doc Mayhem or Mantis Face or the Wrangler has finally found a way to kill your boyfriend will do that to you. “As long as he doesn’t start talking about the war in the Middle East or the government or teabaggers,” she sniffs.

“I’ll pass it on.  See you after work?”

“Nah,” she says.  “I’m going to go to the park.  Queen Corona’s supposed to be making an appearance there.” Her eyes brighten at the mere prospect.  “Maybe I’ll see the Golden Mask again! OHMIGOD that would be awesome!”

I sigh, toss her a wave and head back inside.  I know without a doubt, she’ll buy one of our thermal green-earth bags before she goes home, and I know without a doubt there’ll be a chocolate raspberry frozen yogurt in it when she takes it to the park.  With sprinkles, no less.

I’m ringing up an old lady with a million coupons when it occurs to me that David doesn’t like sprinkles.  He hates them.  In fact, the last time he had them was…

Oh Christ.  He got hit with the Reverso-Ray again.

Or the Evil Twin Beam.

Or the Personality Matrix Exchanger.

So help me, if he got himself split into two separate people again, both of him are sleeping on the fucking couch.

Since I was a teenager, I’ve been hearing that the world has become a global village.  Zimbabwe might as well be next door, with the communicative, informative, connective qualities of the Internet.   Australia is down the street hosting a barbecue (Must have barbecues on the brain.  Jesus, what is my neighbour cooking out there?  I smell herbs and spices and roasting bread… God I’m hungry now…) in the middle of a snowstorm.  Did you see the kangaroo being chased by the lion in the community park? Watch out for those reindeer herders — they owe the Bushmen some money, and they’re getting shirty about it.  Also, France is having all sorts of questionable types over til all hours of the night, we’ll need to keep an eye on them.

Alright, so maybe it isn’t quite as ridiculous as that, and maybe my idea of a village is a little skewed.

Where was I again?

Right. Porn.

No, wait.  That wasn’t it.

Ahh, right.  Blogs.

Blogs cover literally everything under the sun — and some stuff that is beyond the sun, in the case of space exploration and aeronautics journals.  Want to find like-minded people to complain about politics?  There’s a blog for that, left OR right.  Want to read recaps of your favorite TV shows?  There’s a blog for that, no matter if it’s House MD or The Price is Right. Got a favorite game designer or book writer you want to worship from afar?  If they’re smart — or atttention whores — they have blogs.

Blogs feed into that whole “global village” motif the Internet’s been kicking off since its usage became as widespread as it has.  A lot of people I know, a lot of people I consider friends, I met online through bloggery.  I’m not an incredibly social person when it comes to face-to-face interactions — some undiagnosed disorder professionals inform me I probably have that I couldn’t really be arsed to do anything about at this point in my life — but online, I’m less self-restricted. Less inhibited.  Less dwarfed and intimidated by that whole social contract people, even strangers, are expected to have with each other.

John Gabriel of Penny Arcade has a Theory.  (That it’s a demon, a dancing demon…)

A Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.  It goes like this:

On the internet, in the blogging community, you will find a huge community of self-flagellating, malfunctioning piles of what passes for humanity, pathetic wretches who can only get their kicks from trolling, flaming and CAPSLOCKING their way to fame and fortune.   Sometimes it seems these people, and their vitriolic venomous blogs, are the only people shitting up the internet.

But the reverse is also true.  There are just as many helpful, funny, friendly and wonderful people on the internet.  They even have just as many blogs as the Fuckwad Brigade.  You just might have to dig a little deeper to find them.

Maybe get yourself a blog, pick a topic (or range of topics, or lack of topics, as the case may be) and join them?  What, you want advice now on blogging?  Jesus, do I have to do everything?

Self-Interest Is Best

The only promotion you can count on is that you do yourself.  No pimp is going to be out selling your sweet, Lycra-hugged endtable ass to potential customers.  At the most, you might get a buddy or two to nudge their neighbours with knowing smirks and tell them, “Yeah, you should tap that.  Bitch is freaky, if you know what I mean.”

The easiest way for you to promote your blog is to get a Twitter account and familiarize yourself with the appropriate hashtags for your chosen field of bloggery.  For example, if you’re posting a serial story on a regular/semi-regular basis #writing and #weblit (and probably a few more genre-specific) are probably best.  There’s the ubiquitous #blogging tag, travel tags, gaming tags, tags for games (like #wow or #warcraft)… Hundreds of thousands, probably.  I’m pretty sure that popular hashtags are what people are referring to when they talk about something “trending”, butI barely pay attention to that sort of thing.

I’m not “down” with the “trilogy”, yo.

Also.  Hashtags.org can give you the lowdown on tags you’re considering using.

And while you’re at it, you may as well do some research online about webrings and listing communities your blog would fit into.  Email the webmasters of these sites and/or fill out the forms to get your site listed.  No one’s going to give you a free ride on the promotion train.  You need to get out there and advertise yourself, or no one’s going to find you.

Poppin’ Tags

I never know what to tag my posts.  Hell, half the time I don’t know what Twitter hashtags I’m using either.  I’ve had this problem longer than I’ve had an online presence; three words to describe a school project?  Uhh… dull… umm… dumb… err…. done?  Does that count?

To tell you the truth, most of the time I have to go back and edit my posts to put in the tags.  They slip my mind and it’s only after I’ve hit the “Publish” button and am looking the post over again that I realize it is tagless.  I also have problems knowing how many tags are enough, and how many versions of them I should be using.

But tags are going to be part of how your peeps find you, so you should at least put a couple in there.  Writing about getting away to Bogota this weekend?  “Columbia”, “vacation”, “Bogota” and “cocaine” might do you.  Did you write a post like this one and include something widely known and very specific (like John Gabriel’s GIFWT)?  Then you should probably use that phrase as a tag.

Fuck You, Blog Stats

Forget these things exist.  That dashboard WordPress is telling me I have?  Yeah, I’m doing my best to ignore it, like I’m trying to ignore the smell of barbecuing ribs drifting in through my open living room window.  (Damn, it smells good. Why didn’t I get an apartment with a balcony?)  It’s not easy to do.  But I don’t really need to know that something I wrote has 34 views, or only 2.  I don’t need to obsessively be refreshing my stats page, wondering if there’s going to be another view by the time it reloads.  Sometimes, they’re downright depressing. If you want to be a blogger, you need to pay very little attention to your stats, because they’ll swing between impressive and depressing with little warning. And nobody wants to continue to do something that depresses them.

—-

And that pretty much constitutes my entire experience with the bloggery.  A lot of the time, I don’t bother self-promoting as much as I should be; my lassitude, it is mighty.  Plus I’m easily distracted.  And I’m addicted to online gaming (another blogpost for another time).  And I like to avoid anything that might constitute actual work — I want to be a writer, after all.  I’ve got that whole stay-at-home-mom dealie to fill up all my “work” “needs”.

And speaking of Lassitude… I really should get back to her.  She gets angry if I’m away for too long.

Semi-coherent rambling over.

What’s that, you want more?  Well, go get your own blog.  And get off my lawn.

(My actual Lassitude. Yes, it’s a dancing chicken.)

Also, apparently I like it when leprechauns fuck unicorns.

And I teach people how to paint shotguns.

In all honesty, the search terms people are finding me with (with which they are finding me?) aren’t the most horrific or whacky I’ve seen.   In fact, do a Google search in the Blogs category for “evil spirits trepanation”, and you’ll probably come across Terribleminds.  And now, probably this blog.

Language is freakin’ weird.  That is all.

Every week, Chuck does a column called “Painting With Shotguns“; it’s a catchall column where he talks about the miscellaneous things that have caught his attention throughout the week, and things he thinks his readers should check out.  The column itself isn’t what’s important, the title is.

See, this week, the title caught my attention in a way it never has before. I started to wonder exactly how a person would go about painting with a shotgun, and what kinds of situations might arise from it.  Me being me, I couldn’t do a story about a Gallagher-style artist who shoots paint-filled watermelons.  No, my mind went darker places, and my fingers on the keyboard followed.

This story is not lighthearted.  In fact, it’s downright disturbing.  You can find it after the jumpcut.

Remember, I warned you.

===================

Painting With Shotguns

The exhibit is not going well, and not even three glasses of Madeira helps with that.

The crowd’s thinned down to a bare handful of the ignorant nouveau riche.  They mill about, sipping their wine and talking about light and shadow and color schemes.  They know absolutely nothing about art, but they like to sound informed. The true aficionados have long since departed, disgusted with the meagre offerings I’ve set before them tonight.  I can’t say I blame them; if I wasn’t required by the gallery to be here, I’d have left already too.

Robert Jansen of the Sentinel is circling the diminished crowd with a wineglass in hand, slowly but surely making his way towards me.  I grind my back teeth.  Once upon a time when I was nobody, Robert wrote rave reviews about my work. Once upon a time, he called my style “innovatively mind-blowing”.  Since I’ve made a name for myself, he’s turned into an asshole with a grudge.  In the last two years, he’s questioned in print everything from my ability to paint to my fashion sense and table manners.  He thrives off causing me misery.  He has to love every single minute of this.

The smarmy grin as he finally approaches begs me to slap it off his face.  “Leslie,” he says, like he’s not already planning on tearing me to shreds.  He takes my hand and pretends to be a gentleman when he kisses it.  “Wonderful display, darling, as usual.  It’s a pity so many of your patrons seem to have called it an early night.”

I paste a smile on, so bright my cheeks hurt, and resist the urge to snatch my fingers out of his grip. “Hello Robert.  The crowd does seem a bit thin tonight, doesn’t it?”  I laugh, a high tinkling giggle fuelled by the wine sloshing around in my stomach.   “It’s a collection of experimental techniques.  I suppose not everyone appreciates them.”

His grin widens, canines winking at me under the fluorescents.  I imagine myself snatching one of the heavy sculptures from the nearby table and beating him with it until his head is nothing but a bloody, toothless ruin.  “What’s not to like?” he says.

I only have to pick up the paper the next morning to know what he thinks is not to like.  And it’s everything.

***

I slap colors on the canvas, smear them around.  It’s a lacklustre attempt and I know it.  But I need to paint something.  I’m not even close to destitute yet; I won’t need to resort to peanut butter and carrot sticks for a long time to come.  But I’m tired of the blank surface mocking me.  I need to do something with it.  I need to create.

When I’m finished, I hate it.  I loathe it with every fibre of my being.  It looks like a kindergarten art project done by special needs children. But fuck it, I think.  There’s a market for everything these days, even juvenile offal like what I’ve just produced.  The true patrons of the arts wouldn’t give the canvas a second look, but thankfully the true patrons are not the only customers I have these days.

One of the ignorant sheep will pay to hang it on their wall.  So I keep telling myself.

***

The show is an unmitigated disaster.  Somewhere along the way, the advertising the gallery paid for was screwed up.  The date is wrong on half the flyers around town.  The time is wrong in the newspaper ad.  It’s not even on the list of events for the gallery’s website. The radio is the only medium that gets it right, but no one listens to the radio anymore.

The paintings are awful, and I cringe every time I see someone looking at them.  I doubt I’ll get a single sale, even from the sheep.

Of course, Robert shows up, like my own personal demon manifest and determined to make my life a living hell.  I suck back my glass of wine and resign myself to entertaining him.  And entertained he is.  There’ll be another review in the paper tomorrow, telling all the world that I’ve lost my edge, I’ve lost my spark, I’ve lost my drive.   How I have become a peddler of garbage and tripe.  How mainstream and inane I’ve become.

I toss back a fresh glass of wine in one swallow and grimace.  It wouldn’t bother me half so much if it wasn’t true.

***

The canvas leans against a wall in my studio.  Weeks ago, its blank face mocked me.  Now, the riot of colors streaming across it mocks me.  Kindergarten art project.  Maybe I should have put some macramé and macaroni noodles on there.  Maybe cheap pasta and scraps of yarn would have made it sell.

Enraged beyond even a bottle of Chablis’ ability to mitigate, I snatch up my box cutter and slash the canvas into ribbons of riotous color.  One canvas doesn’t sate me, I move onto others.  Half-finished projects, fresh canvases waiting for inspiration, a print of the first painting I ever sold… They all fall under the sharp edge of the X-Acto, fluttering to the floor like the wings of butterflies.

When the rage passes, I clean up the mess I’ve made. There are pieces of canvas everywhere.  Somewhere along the way, I laid into my stack of Sentinels and shreds of newspaper litter the floor.  I scoop the nearest batch towards me with a hand.  Resting atop the pile is Robert’s byline; there’s a wide slash cutting through his picture.

I stop, stare. I hold my breath as I feel it coming.

Inspiration — so long absent from me — strikes hard and fast.

***

His eyes are wide and wild, and he keeps making muffled sounds against the gag.  There will be no smug grins today, Robert.  There will be no cunning little jabs, no backhanded compliments, and certainly no disempowering barbs. He struggles against the knots, but I was not a Girl Scout for nothing.  He won’t be wriggling himself free any time soon.

I hum to myself as I position the canvas behind him.  It takes a long time to get it exactly right, even longer to drape tarpaulins and drop clothes around the area.  I don’t know how messy this is going to be, but I’ve never been fond of too much cleanup. He continues to thrash around as I set up my project, but my knots and the sturdiness of the chair prove to be stronger than him.

I come around to the front of him and pick up the Mossberg leaning against the stool.  I sit down, hook my foot around the leg and consider him thoughtfully.  His eyes are rolling frantically and his skin is a sickly ashen color.  He shouts something at me, but all I can hear is a muffled “Nnnngh!”  It’s the most inspiring thing I’ve ever heard him say.

“People who can, do,” I say, and his eyes roll around to me.  “And people who can’t become nasty little cockroaches who take pleasure in tearing other people down.” I tap his forehead; he flinches back.  “Like you, Robert.  You’re jealous of everyone who creates because you can’t. And when they hit a dry spell, well… you take unholy pleasure in that.

“Do you remember when you called my work mind-blowing?  No?  That’s alright, darling,” I say, patting him on the shoulder.  “I’m going to make you a part of the centerpiece of my newest collection.  I’m going to call it ‘Painting With Shotguns’, and it will blow your mind.”

The scariest sound in the world is that of a shotgun ratcheting shells into its chamber. Robert screams, one long continuous “NNNNNGH!”  It’s music to my ears. I check the canvas one more time; the angle looks good.

“You shouldn’t have turned on me, Robert.”  I set the Mossberg against my shoulder, take a deep breath, and blow his mind right through the back of his fucking skull.

I also blow a hole right through the canvas, but that’s alright.  I can patch that up with a new lining and some repair putty.  A few careful touchups with paint, and no one will ever know the difference.

***

I spend a week going over the canvas with a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass, removing stray bits of bone and strands of hair. It streaks the design, leaves tiny dots and strips of white in the rust-red.  I’m not sure I like the effect, but finally decide to leave it as is.

It looks much better when I coat it with a protective layer of Shellac and frame it with poplar.

***

The show is a blinding success.  The paintings are fairly flying off the walls; an hour to go and twelve of the fifteen pieces have little SOLD placards hanging under them.  I watch as a hostess walks away from a patron; she moves to one of the three unpurchased paintings and sets another placard under it.

A minor bidding war has erupted over “Painting With Shotguns”, the centerpiece of the collection. “The colors,” they’re gushing. “The textures, the boldness. I must have it.” They’re salivating, frothing, falling all over themselves to win it.  I pause at the edge of the crowd long enough to hear the latest offer.  It’s a five-digit figure, and not a low one.  I smile and move away.

Julie Ryder of the Herald is circling through the crowd with a wineglass in hand, slowly but surely making her way towards me.  I track her progress, and make a note to keep an eye on the papers tomorrow.  She’s always been a more moderate voice than Robert was, is usually more forgiving in her reviews and critiques, but you never know when they’ll turn on you.

This second flash installment weighs in a little longer than the first one, at around 950 words.

Back by popular request — here’s lookin’ at you, Julie — I give you the second installment of what I’m now calling Dead Unicorn Bridge.

When we left Mason, he was investigating the possible suicide of a unicorn named George who had either thrown himself or been thrown off the Brooklyn Bridge.  The hotdog vendor, an unnamed dragon with questionable adherence to health code standards, gave Mason a lead to check: the unicorn’s live-in virgin, a girl named Sunshine, who’d left George the previous week for a guy she met online.  With this information in hand, Mason returned to his car, hoping against hope that his elven partner would still be inside it, instead of out chasing butterflies and talking to flowers.

The story continues after the jump.

The car was empty when I got back to it, and it had been for some time, judging by the time stamp on the parking ticket lodged under the windshield wiper.  Ivy was a good cop, and she’d saved my ass once or twice, but she got distracted easily.  Tell her to stay in the car, and she’d have every intention of doing so… until she caught sight of the smallest bit of greenery.  Then she’d be off to play with dragonflies and commune with dandelions, or whatever the fuck it was elves did with nature.

I snagged the ticket from under the wiper.  Blocking a fire hydrant, hundred and fifteen dollar fine.  I crumpled the ticket in my fist and looked both ways to make sure there weren’t any meter maids around before I tossed it into the gutter.  The only thing scarier than the gangbangers in this neighbourhood — redcaps and trolls, mostly — were the meter maids.  Even the ogres didn’t fuck with them or their scooters, and there wasn’t much that intimidated an ogre.  It was a futile gesture, tossing it away.  I’d end up paying for it one way or the other, but small acts of rebellion always made me feel better.

I wandered down the street, checking abandoned lots and alleyway gardens for my erstwhile partner.  I found her sitting amid a pile of abandoned tires and rusty tin cans, playing with butterflies.  An honest-to-god ring of lillies and crocuses had sprung up in the dirt around her, and vines were crawling across the tires.  I knew if I checked, grass would be starting to grow under her ass too.  If I hadn’t seen it a hundred times already, it would have been practically magical.

“I told you to stay in the car,” I said by way of greeting.

Ivy smiled radiantly at me and, despite myself, I felt my irritation slipping away.  She was blonde and ethereal, a real looker for sure — all elves were — but Ivy had this quality to her, this verve, few people elf or not possessed.  One smile from her, a look, a touch, and she could diffuse a raging giant hellbent on having spine and spleen for breakfast — I’d seen her do it, one of those saving-my-ass situations a year or so back.  “It is a lovely day,” she replied.  “And the car was stuffy.”

I hated when she had reasonable excuses for not being where she was supposed to be.  “Then you crack a window.  We got another ticket because your ass wasn’t planted in the driver’s seat.  I’m not going to have any points left on my license at this rate.”

She tilted her head and the smile faded a little.  The sunlight suddenly seemed dimmer.   “I am sorry, Mason,” she said contritely.  “I will pay the fine.  Do you wish me to speak to the traffic court judge on your behalf? I can explain things so that you are not adversely affected.”

She would too.  She’d talk to the traffic court judge, and she could probably get me a hundred extra points added to my license in addition to all the ones I’d had taken away.  She was just that good.   Hell, she’d talked me into quitting smoking, something I’d been trying to do for ten years before we were partnered.  And all it took was one crinkle of her pert little nose and a concerned, “You are killing yourself, Mason” to make me swear off cigs forever.   I sighed.  “Forget about it,” I muttered. “What’s a couple of points and a hundred bucks between friends?”

Just like that, the sun and the smile were back.  She reached up and tugged me down to sit beside her.   There wasn’t as much dirt now, the grass had grown an inch through it.  It was probably my imagination, but the air smelled fresher down here too.  “Tell me,” she said, propping both hands under her chin and looking for all the world like an attentive kid, “how did the conversation with Nerzxaxthyvaurixalartimusylyx go? Did he have the information you were looking for?”

To me, he was just the hotdog-selling dragon, because my human mouth kept tangling up somewhere on the first X.  For her, the dragon’s name tripped off her tongue like honey and silk.  “He gave me a name and a reason it was probably suicide,” I said.  “George had a virgin, dame named Sunshine, who left him a week ago for some guy she met online.  Nerzil… Nazgul…the dragon said it was a real knock-down drag-out fight when she walked out.”

Ivy frowned a little.  “Did he say where she went?”

I shrugged.  Damn, the grass was soft.  The past few days’ sleep deprivation were catching up with me.  If I didn’t get off this patch of green soon, I was going to pass out.  “Naw.  He seemed to think it was our job to figure that out.”

“A virgin named Sunshine might not be easy to find in a city of this size, Mason.”

“Yeah, the thought had occured to me too.”

“I can perhaps narrow the field for us,” she said, and unfolded her lithe frame from the grass.  I clambered to my own feet beside her.  Ethereal-looking or not, she topped me by a good three inches and I was over six feet tall.  “But I will have to check with my contacts.”

I blinked, and my stomach sank.  Ivy didn’t have many contacts, and those that were could only be found one place.  “Aw hell,” I groaned, knowing what was coming next.

“Mason,” Ivy said with another of those gut-twisting smiles of hers, “would you be so kind as to drive me to Central Park?”

I said, “I’ll be fine. I’ve been through it before. Twice, in fact. I’m what you might call an old hand at this baby-having business thingamabob.”

They said, “Why are we even bothering attempting to hand you medical advice you might need?  You obviously know what you’re doing.  Silly us; we’ll just go along now and hand out free enemas to our next ten patients.  Carry on then.”

I said, “Pip pip and tallyho.”

They said, “Eleven on this floor alone.”

I said, “Huh?”

They said, “It’s something of a subtle joke.  Just let it sink in; you’ll get it eventually.”

… I’m sorry, where was I?

Right.  Digging into my whine and cheese platter.  Join me, won’t you?

Last night, I almost went out to have a cigarette.  While this might not seem like such a big deal for a lot of people, I quit smoking (after cutting down to a maximum of 2 a day) well over two months ago.  I have nic-fitted, I have craved and I have lusted… but I have not given into the demons of nicotine addiction, no matter how dichotometically disgusting and nummy Rick smells after he comes back inside from his cigarette. I have quit, and for once in my goddamn life, I’d like to stay that way — quit.  I like having a normal lung capacity.  I like being able to climb stairs without losing my breath.  I like not needing to venture into the teeth of a screaming snowstorm because I’m twitching for a nasty habit.

But last night… Sweet Jesus, I really wanted one.  I mean, I really, really wanted one.

Yesterday was hectic as it was.  Mom was on her last full day in Newfoundland (she went back to Moncton this morning), so she and Nan and Pop were here to get the last round of photo ops and taking the last chances to chew on and horse around with the grandkids.  Jason’s music lesson didn’t go so swimmingly as usual, due to the center using his usual room as a catch-all storage facility.  There had to be at least 8 drum kits’ worth of crap piled up in boxes around the room; a non-autistic person would have had a hard time doing anything in there.  Imagine the distractions with my son, who is not only austistic, but four.

Cue dinner. Which could have gone better.  A lot better.  It was mac and cheese, which the kids usually love.  But for some reason, they didn’t want to eat it.  Especially Thomas, who thought that whining and trying to maul the cat was a more appropriate use of his time.  So we figured, “fuck it, it’s bedtime soon anyway” and we threw Cars on the new DVD player my mother bought them for Easter.

Thomas decided that he didn’t want to go calmly and quietly to bed if he didn’t have a specific toy car with him.  Now, before I get into describing how teeteringly close this kid came to being sold to a band of roving Gypsies last night, I should mention that one of the rules for the kids is this: no toys at bedtime.  They can have a book and their stuffed animals, but no cars, no blocks, no freaking Avatar toys McDonald’s foisted off on us a couple of Happy Meals ago… One book, and their “signature” stuffed animal.  (Jason has a frog, Thomas has a pig).

Well, young Mr. Carroll decided that, last night, this rule would not apply to him.  He had snuck in two cars, and when I discovered them the second time I was tucking him in, I promptly removed the offending cars from the room.

HOLY SWEET MOTHER OF FUCK BEGINNING OF WORLD WAR THREE.

A screaming-filled hour and a half later, after engaging in at least two shouting matches with Rick (because we were both at our wit’s end) and on the verge of a nervous fucking breakdown, I did something I shouldn’t have done.

I caved.

I crumpled like a hundred-dollar prom dress kicked under the motel bed.  I threw his cars back into his room while babbling something incoherent that might have been “uncle!”  and went to weep in a corner. And miraculously, the banshee wailing and the angry screeching stopped. Thomas proceeded to play quietly with his cars for ten minutes, and then he fell asleep.

But I shouldn’t have caved.  Because the rule was “no toys in bed”.

But ohgodblessedmotherfuckingquiet….

In the middle of all this, Amber woke up.  By the time Thomas shut the fuck up and went to sleep, she already horked up a load of formula all over Rick and started looking like she wanted to drift back into sleep after she’s cleaned up.  So I settle down in Rick’s chair while he goes off to find a new shirt and let her curl up on my shoulder.  And I’m rubbing her back, I’m patting her.  I’m talking to her in a soft, soothing voice… and then she gurgles a little bit and does that Exorcist thing I was joking about in my last blog post.  All over the chair, down my back and in my hair.

The only good point was the fact that, in her projectiling onto Mommy, she managed to avoid throwing up on herself, which let us avoid having to do a major clean-up of her head, ears and onesie for the second time in less than half an hour.

It didn’t help that my back was aching like a sumbitch.  Or maybe it did, because the Demerol I took for it (my last one too, goddammit) knocked me right the fuck out on the couch even before CSI: Miami came on. Rick let me sleep for three hours before he woke me up to tell me he really wanted to go to bed.  So I sent him to bed, alone, so he could get some sleep while I continued to crash on the couch with the bassinet (and baby) on the floor beside me.

As much as I like my couch, having my not-quite-two-week-old daughter next to me, waking up every half an hour to protest the lack of a nipple (synthetic, pervert) in her mouth is not really all that kind to my sleeping habits.

But whatever.  I’m slowly adapting to three hour catnaps … in the middle of the night … while everyone else is deep in REM sleep … Of course, it means I’m asleep on the couch at ten PM.  TEN PM.  But whatever, right?  Right?

Needless to say, I did not get any writing done last night.  Hell, I didn’t even get any World of Warcraft done last night either, that’s how rocky it was.   And this morning, carrying over the excess baggage from last night, I was in no mood to even begin to try.  But I did.  I cracked open VIGIL, a short story I haven’t even looked at since before Amber was born, and attempted to finish the first draft.

I got another fifty words written before I gave it up as a lost cause.  I became so frustrated with it, I considered scrapping it entirely; thankfully, I came to my senses before I got spiteful enough to delete the file.

Then I tried to continue outlining SOULBINDER.  Which was another lost cause this morning.  Every time I got into a groove where I thought I could actually get some serious work done, something would interrupt me.  If it wasn’t that goddamn owlcam Chuck linked in his post this morning, it was the kids.  If it wasn’t the kids, it was the phone.  If it wasn’t the phone, it was the maintenance guy finally coming to fish the toothbrush out of our toilet — don’t ask.  Just don’t fucking ask. If it wasn’t the maintenance guy, it was the kids again because it was time for snack.  If it wasn’t the kids, it was Amber needing to be changed and fed… you getting the message here?

So I hit a low.  The lowest low a writer can hit.  The “why fucking bother” low.  The “I’m never going to get this done” low.  The “it’ll never happen” low.   And when you get those lows, you might as well fling yourself off the Creativity Cliff, because your “muse” just committed suicide and wants you to join her in the sweet embrace of Hades.

Then I looked again at an article Josh of Blue Ink Alchemy tweeted about this morning.  (Or retweeted, I can’t recall.)  “How to Avoid Writing Your First Novel”.  Sure, I made some jokes about already being pretty damn good at avoiding writing my novel when I brushed the article off this morning, but for some reason, I went back to it and reread it.  Then I tracked down the book it mentions on Amazon, and read through the available material on the site.

One sentence in particular struck me.  It’s something I’ve known for years, but it just struck me again today:

Know this: Everything in your life is incompatible with writing, and always will be.

It was an epiphany.  A moment of perfect clarity.  Everything in my life — kids, husband, bills, housework, phone, appointments — it’s all incompatible with writing.  And nothing will ever change that.

So what’s the trick then? I’m not 100% sure, but I think it might have something to do with finding the time in between changing diapers and cooking lunch, after the kids go to bed and before Lost comes on.  Five minutes at a time might not be optimal, but you do what you can when you can.  You do what you gotta do when you gotta do it.

The book promises it can show me how to finish my first novel in six months, by writing an average of three hours a day.   I’ve ordered it from Amazon, and since it has to cross a border to get to me, it should reach me at the end of April.  In the meantime, I’m going to try to avoid hitting those lows again, because Jacob H. Christ, they really do suck donkey balls.

And I’m tired.  I’m tired of both ends of the spectrum.  I’m tired of cheering on my friends who are getting books published — even though I really am happy for them — and I’m tired of listening to all the same old excuses from wannabe writer friends who think that dreams are enough to market their ideas.  I know I can finish a novel.  I know I have interesting stories.  I’m just tired of sitting here in the middle, feeling like too much of the wannabe and not enough of the isdoing.

Just gotta keep telling myself, everything in my life is incompatible with writing.  Except for those five minutes in between changing the kid and mixing booze with narcotics …. I mean, making dinner.

I’m beyond fucking tired.  I’m so far beyond fucking tired, I’m into hitherto unknown lands of lassitude and lethargy.  I wake up with enough energy to just barely get out of bed, and somehow manage to stumble into the kitchen so I can caffeine up in the hopes that it’ll help get me to my next cup of tea. I stagger through the day, so goddamn unimpressed with the fact that the sun’s up and the kids are awake that I can’t even properly express myself.

Needless to say, I’m going to ramble a bit incoherently now.

See, I had a baby.

A girl baby.

Her name is Amber, but I call her Peanut.

And she’s the most adorable baby ever. Which makes it absolutely impossible to say “no” to her.

Here.  Let me show you.  After the jump.

You see?  How the fuck could you say no to that?  She might as well have a frickin’ halo on her frickin’ head.  And therein lies the problem.  You really can’t say no to a newborn.  My other kids?  Hell, I say no to them all the time.  No, you can’t draw on the wall.  No, you can’t have cookies for supper.  No, you can’t build a death ray with which to take over the world.  “No” is a fairly easy word to say, and it’s frequently heard in my house.

But newborns don’t understand the concept of “no”.  They also don’t understand the concept of “didn’t we feed you an hour ago?” and “Jesus Christ, it’s 3:45am; where in God’s name is her pacifier!”  And that’s cool, most of the time.  It’s those times when you’re doing unimportant things like trying to sleep when it becomes an issue.

But it could be worse.  Rick  has some idealized notion of the boys when they were Amber’s age.  He seems to think that they were both really good sleepers, and really good burpers and that we never had a problem with either one of them ever ever ever.  If I’m being fair and impartial, I say my memory tends to skew things the other way: I remember them being malicious little devils who would only sleep if they were up in my arms, who firehosed whoever was changing them every chance they got and who spewed formula like that chick from The Exorcist far more frequently than they digested.

The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.  But fuck it, this is my blog and my memory.

Amber’s a good baby.  She eats, she poops, she sleeps.  She wiggles around as she tries to learn about this big, scary world she was abruptly shoved into.  She doesn’t spit up a whole lot.  Her plumbing works, her hearing’s fine.  Her eyes are focussing more and more.  She likes falling asleep on chests, listening to our heartbeats.

She’s a week old today.

(Yes, she’s a St. Paddy’s Day baby.  Call her any derivative of “Patricia” at your own damn risk though; Rick’s a bit touchy about that.)

As adorable as she is, though, she’s my last baby.  Despite my Irish origins and the fact that my extended family is what, in polite society, is called “fucking ginormous” (maternal side alone? grandmother had 11 siblings, grandfather had 13, 22ish of which survived to adulthood to more-or-less have decently large families of their own), I’m done with kids.  The pregnancy was not fun.  The labour, despite the fact that they gave me the good shit, was intensely painful — moreso than the previous two were (and those were both drugless).  Pregnancy-related gallstones, heartburn that would have killed an elephant, and enough creaking bones and ligaments to supply a haunted house’s soundtrack… yeah. I’m done.

Two boys and a girl.  I’m done.  Family’s complete.

And someday in the near future, I’ll manage to sleep and write something that isn’t a semi-legible ramble.

But eventually, all good things must come to an end and when 8:00 rolls around, we simply have to get out of bed. The kids are awake, they need to be dressed, some semblance of nutrition has to be offered them. Beds have to be made, carpets need to be vacuumed, dishes need to be done. Websites need to be looked at and tea/coffee needs to be drank. Pre-K cartoons have to be turned on, because they’re not going to play themselves. Nosiree. The day has to start, whether I want it to or not.

Lately, the beginning of the morning is something I’ve been dreading. Everyone – including me – is getting sick of hearing me say this, but I’m now 40 weeks pregnant, and doing anything after being supine or immobile for long periods of time (like oh, say, 7-8 hours of sleeping) means a bunch of snaps, crackles and pops that wouldn’t go amiss in a bowl of Rice Krispies. The ligaments in my pelvis have been stretched and twisted to hell and back, so movement is actually painful until they loosen up again. Normally, this distracts me away from doing anything but the bare minimum.

But this morning, with the added bonus of an extra 5 instances of Rick-beating, I couldn’t help but notice how goddamn beautiful it is outside today. Yesterday, a light dust of snow fell. This morning, it looks bright and cheerful and warm and hopeful and sunny out my window. It’s enough to make me want to spring clean. Or maybe that’s just the nesting instinct finally kicking in. Sadly, there are too many chemicals I can’t sniff this late in the having-a-kid game, and there’s a weight limit to how much I can lift now. And it’s been nice, watching Rick run around and be my housebitch for the last few months… but on days like today, when I really want to clean something, I either can’t because of inherent risks or will not be allowed to, because I married an overprotective Southerner chock-full of testosterone and the sort of manly scent Old Spice claims to be able to wash away.

So I have to settle for some internal spring cleaning, and with that notion, today’s been set aside for me to winnow out the cobwebs and reorganize the disused and dusty corners of my brainpan.

What Makes A Word Count?

I realized this morning that when I’m tallying up the amount of writing I got done in the run of a week, I don’t count any blog post progress towards it. I don’t count my finished posts, the ones that actually see the light of the Cesspool. I don’t count the half dozen posts-in-progress that I write as the fancy strikes me, that may or may not actually make it to being published via WordPress. I also don’t count character profiles or outlines or handwritten notes about my current WIP. I don’t count jot notes I scribble down for short story ideas and vague, nebulous notions that may turn into seeds for future projects. I don’t count mindmapping or brainstorming or my index cards or anything.

I don’t count Twitter posts, but I think that’s okay to exclude.

But really… Why is this? Are all these things that happen to be other-than-story not words? Is there something inherently wrong with them that I feel I have to exclude them from my progress meters, either public or internal? I don’t know, really. It’s going to take more thought – and more caffeine – than I currently have put into the problem at the moment. But the mere act of coming to this realization has given me another, more powerful epiphany:

I write a whole lot more than I think I do.

It’s this sort of mindset that I have to train myself to follow now. I write more than I think I currently do. So instead of kicking myself because my wordcount meter to the far right over there for Soulbinder remains at 0, I should feel some form of accomplishment for having ten pages of brainstormed notes, or jot notes about the main characters, or very rough flow charts showing the main plot points. I should be happy that I wrote a 1.5-2.0k word blog post and published it.

Progress is progress, and words are words.

Except for tweets. Those don’t count.

The Daily Grind

With two autistic kids, you’d think the word “routine” would be engraved on my fecking eyeballs by now. And to some extent it is… but again, this seems a morning for revelations that really shouldn’t need to be revelations.

My morning routine, that thing I’ve sunk myself into without even realizing it lately, has been helping me out with the writing thing. I get up, I dress and feed the kids, I straighten whatever in the house needs to be straightened, I make myself some tea and grab some toast or yogurt or cereal, and I sit down to read a few blogs while brainfooding. Chuck’s blog in particular has been something of a source of inspiration of late: it’s the first I check in the morning, and since he’s usually blathering on about writing and inciting internet discussions on the topic, it sets the tone for the rest of my creative day.

Mornings are best for me, I’ve come to discover. I can write from about 9am on, when the eldest retreats to his bedroom with his ABA therapist and the youngest settles down with some juice and some Blue’s Clues (or Caillou, or Dora, or Toupie and Binou), to 10:30am, when the morning snack break necessitates my attention being elsewhere for a time. While an hour and a half isn’t exactly a whole lot of time, it’s the quietest time of the morning usually, meaning I can get a fair amount of work done, which will then be continued in fits and spurts when I have five minutes, or half an hour, throughout the rest of the day until the kids go to bed at 8pm. For example, it’s currently 10:20, I’ve been typing this post since about 9:30, and as of this moment, there are well over a thousand words written.

That’s a lot of words for an hour; I’ll have to remember to count them.

So far, I’ve managed to make a routine out of the couple of hours of my day which, given how hectic life can get, is something of an achievement. Much of the rest of the day isn’t so much routine as it is waiting for the milestones to happen, and cram in what can be crammed in between those times. It doesn’t need to be a strict, must-stick-to-this-or-the-world-ends routine, but I really do need to organize my time in a more appropriate and helpful sort of way.

Prioritize, Prioritize, Priori…. Ooh! Shiny Distraction!

The words are over here, folks. Look to your left. Your left. No, that’s the right.

Still the right, dude. Try the left.

Stop staring at the breasts and finish reading, dammit!

Fine. Stare at the boobs. I’ll wait.

Done? Good. Can I continue? Awesome.

Distractions are a pain in the ass, as much fun as they might be to indulge in from time to time. I check my email a handful of times a day, I log into World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online once or twice a day, I turn my instant messengers on a couple of times a day. Currently, my big distraction is Twitter, and allllll the links I see tweeted about. Discussion forums and comment threads on frequented blogs are a distraction, even if they’re making me write.

Talking to my husband is a distraction, when it’s about bullshit things like how Haim died before Feldman.

Watching the TV shows I missed the night before because I was watching Lost is a distraction. (Damn you, NCIS: Los Angeles, for sharing that timeslot.)

After a certain point in the morning, checking other blogs is a distraction.

Hand-in-hand with routine-izing my time, I need to cut down on the amount of distractions I allow myself to indulge in during the course of a day. Or at least set aside some time for Distraction Hour within that routine.

Staying On Target

I’ve run into this one over the last week, as I realized that Soulbinder will likely not be a standalone book – and I realized this when the characters I was setting up as secondary supporting cast started triggering off ideas for subsequent novels. And like I promised myself I would, like I’ve advised others to do, I’ve only written down vague notions for these stories, choosing to focus instead on developing and outlining the first novel, with an eye to hinting at the secondary characters’ future stories.

This also means making smaller, more understandable targets. I’m currently trying to convince myself that 100k words is not at all an insurmountable goal. And I’m doing it by telling myself over and over again that it’s only 20 chapters of 5,000 words each. Breaking it down like that has been helping me stay focussed on my current project: I know I can write 5,000 words. I’ve done it before.  And 5,000 words is a lot less scary than 100,000.

Another method of breaking it down into smaller goals is often used by NaNoWriMo participants. Over the course of 30 days, they write a novel of 50k words. If you’re writing every day, that’s 1,667 words a day. And that’s not so bad, really. I’ve already written more than that for this blog post.

My brain also needs to get used to the idea that writing perfect on the first try is likely not going to happen. In fact, it’s going to take a lot of crap, a lot of weak writing and a lot of plot holes in order to get a story. Retraining my brain, disciplining myself, to avoid self-editing or editing as I’m going, is going to be difficult, but it’s something I need to do in order to stay on target and keep my eye on the goal.

Dealing with Shiny New Project Syndrome is going to be a bitch though.

Spring Cleaning

In the end, spring cleaning is all about clearing out the useless shit you’ve been storing up over the winter. It’s about dragging out the stuff that’s gathered dust, the stuff that’s been shoved under the leak in the ceiling and has gotten moldy. It’s about ridding yourself of the excess baggage you couldn’t get out to the Dumpster to toss earlier. It’s about making every corner of your domain sparkle with lemony-freshness.

Polish up what’s worth keeping. Reorganize the sock drawer. Shuffle the photos into albums instead of having them in boxes. Pinesol the mildew out of the corners.

Throw away the rest.

Which is what I’m going to do.

Right after I finish watching NCIS.

But I digress.

So there I am, asscrack of 8am, yawning my way to a chair in the waiting room and hoping I can manage to be a big girl and hold my pee long enough to get this over with, when on Peachtree TV pops up an infomercial for some company called Youthology. A fairly attractive blonde who reminded me of Tea Leoni begins talking very seriously to me about how age, lifestyle and the sun are going to gang up and rape my face like it just dropped the soap in the prison showers. I’ll get crow’s feet, laugh lines, saggy dark circles under my eyes. I’ll look years older than I actually am.

But maybe I’m in my mid-20s to mid-30s and I’m unconcerned with the effects aging has on my skin. That’s fine, she tells me, and the sort of dismissal that’s in her tone I usually reserve for big-eyed children trying to steal my chocolate. If I’m unconcerned with lines, crow’s feet, and becoming a wrinkled, dried up old prune, then I can just ignore the next half hour of television, because she’s going to talk to everyone who’s not me.

If I could change the channel, sweetheart, I would. But this is the Ultrasound waiting area TV, and I don’t want to ask for the remote, since I’m sitting on a baby sitting on my bladder, and I’m afraid I might piss my pants if I stand up before I’m called in.

And for the next 1/3 of the program (approximately 10 minutes until I’m called in), I watch this Tea Leoni lookalike and a so-called doctor stiffer than a 30-hour erection talk about this miracle skin serum they’ve developed that can virtually erase all signs that you’re a wrinkly shrewish spinster crone, at least around the eyes, within 90 seconds of application. They continue to insist there’s no camera tricks, and all the shots they keep on screen are in real time. Look years younger! Magically erase all signs that hard drug use and endless nights of drinking have ravaged your eyes in a minute and a half! Glamour! Pretty! Beauty! Age is bad! Age bad!

Age is bad.

And that’s the prevalent theme running through our Western commercials, magazine ads, movies, billboards, reality TV and glitterati gatherings like the Oscars. Age is bad, especially if you’re a woman. Any lines on your face will detract from your sexual attractiveness, and if you don’t sweat the jagged cracks running through your skin, no one’s going to want to hire you, no one’s going to want to fuck you, and no one’s going to want to marry you and give you babies.

And it’s all a crock of shit.

Folks, I’m 29 (or will be in a week), so maybe I don’t have the years under my belt to really comment first-hand on this. But I found my first grey hairs this year. And not just one. No. A whole fucking colony of them, creeping in under my bangs and at the nape of my neck. My husband has had silver lightly sprinkled through his hair, and he has for years. He, currently, has more of an aging crisis than I do (which he claims is because I haven’t hit 30 yet): he insists he’s 28. And he’s been insisting this for 5 of the 7 years we’ve been married. At first it was cute, then it was annoying. Now I just ignore him when he starts talking about how he’s only 28. It’s easier that way.

My mother started going grey in her late 20s; so did my grandmother. Mom’s in her mid 40s and, under the dye and highlights, isn’t even half-grey yet. Nan’s solid white now, but she’s in her mid-70s; she didn’t hit completely grey til her late 50s/early 60s.

So I think I’m good to be a brunette without chemical help for awhile yet.

But I also have two kids. I have two kids who are under the age of 5. I have two kids who are under the age of 5 who are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. I am having a third kid, who by all accounts is a girl and, if you haven’t heard me say it already, girls in my family tend to be fucking evil incarnate. I should know: I was one of them.

And I married Rick.

And stayed married to him for 7 years.

I’ve earned every single one of these grey hairs.

Every.

Single.

Fucking.

One.

As my kids grow up, stress is going to leech more of the melanin out of my hair. Laughing with my husband (or at my husband, same thing, really) is going to give me lines around my lips and eyes. Playing with the children outside, smiling at their antics, or even yelling at their misbehaviours… all of these things are going to take their toll on my skin and face. I’m going to get more grey hairs. I’m going to have laugh lines. I’m going to have crow’s feet. Sitting with them when they’re sick, or waiting up for them to come home from their first school dance… these things are all going to give me dark baggy circles under my eyes.

So I feel sorry for you, Ms. Tea Leoni Lookalike. I really do. When you talk about how “maybe I don’t care about the effects aging will have on me”, you sound so snooty. Like there’s something wrong with me for wanting to age gracefully. Why should I feel bad for not seeing anything amiss with wearing the history of my family, my husband, my children, all the good times and bad, on my face like a badge of honor?

Of course, this is all conjecture. I’m only 29, after all. By the time I start going quickly and solidly grey, I might care. I might have a small pharmacy of anti-aging, age-defying and youthology products in my bathroom. I might care about laugh lines and crow’s feet. I might be frying the shit out of my hair every six weeks to frantically cover the invading grey.

But I doubt it.

I intend to age, gracefully or otherwise.

If I have to kick and scream to do it.