Perforation Problems

Something I'm realizing tonight as I write, here at 3:23 in the morning on a random Tuesday, while Michael sleeps in another city: There's something about 3:23am, something quiet and still that lets your brain work, and you start to see that sometimes what you're writing about ends up not being what you're writing about at all. You've heard people say that before but it's never actually happened to you, until now. And you're still so, so far away from what you're writing being a finished product, and you're still worried people will hate it or hate you for writing it, but you also start to realize it doesn't matter. Right now, in the moments before you get too sleepy to make any more sense, you don't even care about it being published or that anyone ever reads it. That's not even the point. The point is that you're bringing it into being and in the process you're unearthing pieces of yourself that start to make sense. And now ...

Sarah and I are about halfway through our cheese enchiladas at the Mexican restaurant in Fountain Square when I hear someone tapping on the window next to our booth. I am immediately on guard and ready to pretend like I didn't hear it, just like I pretended I didn't hear "Girrrlll, somebody's been eatin' some cornbread" on the street in OTR last week. I keep my gaze focused on Sarah as she talks. Her words slow almost infinitesimally until finally she gives in and looks at the tapper, and I have to give in, too. There, standing at the window is a man maybe in his early 40s, wearing a bright yellow windbreaker and holding the handlebars of a bike. He points at Sarah's food and then at himself, and then makes motions with his fingers like he's putting food in his mouth. Before we even can react, he shakes his head as if exasperated with us and leaves his bike to walk towards the restaurant entrance. "Ah, fuck," I think I only said it in my ...

I just finished day 3 of NaNoWriMo, and it feels good. Great, even. I've got 5, 192 words. None of it is actually something I'd show someone – it needs a lot of revising and filling in the gaps, but it's out there! Revising is for December and beyond. I've been timing myself each time I write, which helps me keep myself relatively focused. So far I've been able to get my 1,667 words done in under 2 hours each day. Not bad, and not that huge of an undertaking, really, when you think about it. Every day has been a bit of a mental struggle, but I think the more I do it, the easier it'll be, just like when I was writing blog posts each day. It's great. I feel really great. So far so good. I think what feels the best is that I'm making it a priority. For the first time in awhile I feel like a writer.

NaNoWriMo starts on Sunday, and I'm trying to gear myself up. I want to take this seriously. I want to put writing first and not let it slide to a lower priority like I have been pretty much all 2015 so far. Sarah and I went to see David Sedaris last night. It was the second time I've gone to one of his readings – he's hilarious and self-deprecating and completely unconcerned (it seems) with what anyone thinks of him, which gives him a freedom and rawness in his writing I envy. I think to write things that matter you have to let yourself be a little raw and impolite and politically incorrect and unapologetic. I know he probably still cares how he comes across to people, but he's not let that stop him from writing what he wants without watering himself down. I get way too concerned with what people think of what I write, which means to avoid any chance of being criticized or not liked I just never show anyone what I write. That works, except it's kinda not the poin...

I’m sitting on the stairs, looking at the orderly vacuum triangles in the new carpet at 4424 Mulligan Way, waiting for the chimney sweep people to come do an inspection and cleaning. This is hopefully the last of the steps we need to take to sell this house – we’ve painted the walls, ceilings, and trim, refinished the cabinet hardware, fixed the lighting, gotten new carpet, ripped out bushes, completed a bunch of minor fixes, agreed to a new roof…it’s enough to make you want to pick a house and swear to live in it for 50 years just so you don't have to deal with selling it. I’ve noticed that, if I let myself, I turn things like this – goodbyes to places or inanimate objects – into more dramatic moments than they need to be. If I let myself I can get way more nostalgic than the situation warrants. But this is one of the places where I fell in love with my husband. It’s a place where I spent happy days and nights, where I worked on my master’s thesis on the couch, where I spent laz...

I bought a hibiscus tree early this summer, thinking I'd create some kind of backyard oasis. I never got that far, but it does bloom very prettily, even if it does sit kinda slanted in its pot. Last week I brought it inside to see if I can make it last the winter. So far, so good - it still has blooms and hasn't wilted over in depression. This means I now have 10 -- TEN -- plants inside that are not dead.  We spent the weekend camping with my parents at Shades State Park. It was pretty much perfect weather for camping, warm enough for short sleeves and the trees beautiful shades of red and gold and orange. I have an image in my head of hundreds of yellow leaves floating down through one of the ravines we hiked, looking like fall's answer to the magic of winter's first snow. We took the dogs with us, and Clyde led the way like he was a practiced trail dog, instead of a dog who spends 90% of his day sleeping. My mom's 8 month old puppy was a bit more reckle...

Lest you fear I missed my blog post yesterday, let me put your mind at ease and tell you I wrote in my journal instead, sitting on my apartment stoop as I waited for Amanda to pick me up. Such city living! I was going to type it up here later, but when I reread it this morning it sounded pretty whiny and pathetic, so I'm going to spare you all. I had an off day yesterday. I woke up feeling fucked up – I remember half waking up in the middle of the night, straight up terrified of something, my heart racing in my ears and my stomach twisting. I fell back asleep, but the anxious feeling didn't really leave me all day. This week has been a bit much. But today is another day, my cold is getting better, and I've got the morning to devote to writing  – minus one client call that should be easy. And I just had a cookie for breakfast. Yesterday I found myself trying to paint flowers on a bowl, exactly the kind of detailed, focusing, mind-quieting work that my mood needed. My f...

When you've lived in the suburbs your whole life and you move to a city, even minor things like finding a place to buy cold medicine turn into a big deal. Where's a CVS? Can I walk there? If I can't walk there, is there parking? How do I walk there without finding myself on a scary street? Do I even know what the scary streets are yet? Am I being a giant baby by even worrying about scary streets? I'm hoping these anxieties are just from never living in a city before and that they'll go away as I become more street savvy. Last night I was packing Olive & Clyde cards, planning on sending off both a Bloomington retail order and our first bulk Christmas card order, when I realized I had some problems. 1) I did not bring my printer, assuming that I'd buy a cheap one off Amazon to keep in Cincinnati so I wouldn't have to take my bulky printer back and forth all the time. 2) So, I can't print labels, or the inventory sheet I need for the retail orde...

I'm sitting here in our new Cincinnati apartment, waiting on Michael to get home and fending off Clyde, who either really wants me to pet him or really wants to eat the used Kleenex in my lap. I am at the start of what I think will probably be a pretty heinous cold – last night was hours and hours of the "I can't breathe" feeling, and when I woke at 6am, there was no falling back asleep. So I went to CVS and spent $40 on various cold medicines and vitamin C gummies. We should be well-stocked for cold season. I missed the last three blog posts – Saturday we had a wedding, Sunday we moved, and yesterday I worked all day and then went to a wine class and a late night dinner. Then the snot basically incapacitated me. But no fear and no failure! Here I am getting back on track. Cincinnati is good so far. I had a few moments where I just wanted to go home, like in the middle of the first night when the upstairs neighbors seemed to be stomping around in circles draggin...

Michael and I went out for Mexican tonight to celebrate his last day of work, and I grilled him for possible blog post topics while we were waiting on our food. He's good at coming up with ideas. Actually, he's a pretty good writer / story teller, too, though he wouldn't say so. So Michael said I should write about my reading challenge for the year. At the beginning of 2015 I set a challenge on Good Reads to read 100 books. I don't know how many books I read in 2014 because I wasn't great on putting them in Good Reads right when I finished them, but I know it wasn't anywhere near 100. MAYBE 50.  So far I've read 62 books this year. I'll probably be at 63 by the end of the weekend, but I'm still behind my goal. I'll need to read 37 books in the next 11 weeks to make it – 3.36 books a week. It's doable, especially if I stick to short, low effort books (cough, romance novels, cough), but I don't know if it's going to happen, espe...

I'm typing this post on my iPad as I try to get 6,000 more steps before bed. Step type type type step type type type. I'm trying to get back in the habit of writing every day in preparation for NaNoWriMo in November, which I'm going to try to do for real this time. Last weekend at the Indiana Author's Fair Sarah and I were talking to her friend who has now published three books, and she said she wasn't ever able to finish anything until she did NaNoWriMo. I'd already been thinking about trying it for real, but that kinda cemented my decision. It's going to be hard, though. 1,667 words a day, every day. And random lists and paragraphs about how I don't want to write don't count. It's been a crazy couple of weeks. Michael is leaving his job and joining a brand new company in a different city, we're trying to sell his old house, we're about to start this crazy "live in Cincy during the week, Indianapolis on weekends" thing, and...

As I sit here Clyde is staring at me and whimpering in the most pathetic way, because all he wants with every. fiber. of. his. being is to go outside to chase the raccoon I dragged him away from an hour ago. Fall is Clyde's favorite time of year. He loves spending his evenings outside no matter what season, but most nights he'll be scratching at the door to come in for bed around 11pm or midnight. Once the temperatures start getting cooler, though, it's not unusual for Michael or me (okay, usually Michael) to have to go out and make him come in so we can go to bed. And it seems like he's more interested in other animals in the fall – squirrels that he ignores in 90 degree weather now get chased up trees when it's 60 degrees. A few nights ago, Michael heard Clyde's high-pitched, frantic barking and went to investigate, assuming he'd treed some poor creature or chased a deer to the fence. Instead he found Clyde engaged in an intense battle with a black, ca...

The other day I was driving down 70 towards Fountain Square for my weekly writing session with my friend Sarah, feeling that feeling you only get when you’ve finished an annoying, tedious project and suddenly your time is yours again, no obligations to anyone else, nothing to dread. The sun was shining, life was good, my hair felt non-tangly for once…I felt great. Until a couple hours later when I looked at my work email to see that the client with the annoying, tedious project had discovered something new that would require me to change what I had done. I still had an hour left of writing time with Sarah, but now I couldn’t concentrate. I tried not to read the entire email, but as I sat there with my blank page open, all I could think about was how I had something looming over my head again. It probably wasn’t going to be a big deal, but I wasn’t going to be able to relax until it was finished and off my plate.  A few years ago I read an article about life advice from people a...

I'm at Starbucks today, where I just got my free drink with my rewards membership. This rewards membership is the best thing ever and a master stroke of loyalty marketing. Last year I tripped all over myself trying to get 30 stars so I could get the gold card, and now I live for the days where I get enough stars to get a free drink. You know why? Cause when I have a free drink I don't get my normal skinny caramel latte. When I have a free drink I splurge on a VENTI SKINNY CARAMEL LATTE WITH AN EXTRA SHOT. Which today I learned they call a TRIPLE VENTI. I now feel very hyped up, and it's awesome, and I'd do it all the time if it wasn't like $6 a pop. This makes me think that if it were easier to get drugs, maybe I'd do it. Who knows?? Being hyper like this reminds me of being a preteen, and how my friend Katie believed orange foods had a chemical impact on her mood. She'd shove Cheetos in her face and laugh maniacally, and I thought it was the best thing ...

So, I think I've settled on the topic of my first "novel." NOVEL. Even as I type that I have second thoughts. It feels like a really serious thing to have decided. Is it what I should be writing about? Is it something I can do well? Am I going to succeed at this, or fail? If I fail, does that mean I stop completely, or do I try something else? It could be a year before I actually finish this one. What if it sucks and then I have to just put it in a virtual drawer and forget about it? BUT. The thing is that I actually have to write something. And I feel reasonably good about having enough to say about this topic, and I can vaguely see the shapes of it coming together in my head into something that will mean something to people. If I do it well. If I succeed. IF IF IF IF. I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Fountain Square right now, writing with my friend Sarah. It works well because whenever I mention the "IFs" she just says, "It doesn't matter ri...

Most days both Michael and I end up walking around the house to get our 10,000 steps for the day. I'm not sure that's what Fitbit had in mind when they developed their little trackers, but that's what happens when you spend most of your day on a computer – suddenly it's dinner time and the sky is growing dark and you're 7,000 steps short. So you walk in circles around your living room. I have a circuit laid out that my feet know so well I can follow it while reading a book and not have to look up. Around the kitchen island clockwise, counter-clockwise around the dining room table, then down the hall, then back in a circle around the coffee table. Then repeat. I've done this millions of times. Around and around and around. Michael's path is different. It probably says something about the way our brains work. He goes in a straight line through the length of the house, from the side door through the living room, down the hallway and to his night stand. Then tur...

Somehow At some point I forgot the sweetness of words The gems in your mouth The slow perfect shape They became coarse and mechanical Functional  Awkward Purpose-full And pulled out of my skin like plucking hairs from my eyebrows Or like someone said in a book I just read Like pulling glass out of your penis I wouldn't know that part but I can relate But tonight I'm remembering what it's like To close your eyes and say a word Two words Three Softly Full of wonder

I started out today thinking I would write about the dreams I had last night, because they were the kind of dreams that make you believe you might have actually traveled to another world in your sleep. Time seemed to move at the same pace as it does in real life, and everything felt so fleshed out and concrete. Except there were dinosaurs and a vampire. A sneaky vampire. But it wasn't scary. I was like the leader of defense strategy. In the first dream, which seemed like it lasted hours and hours, I was in a giant building and dinosaurs were attacking. Attacking UNSUCCESSFULLY, because I was building up reinforced walls and hiding people behind a secret door. But I knew that at some point I wouldn't be able to fit any more people back there, and I'd have to leave them to die. Leaders of the Dinosaur Defense have to make hard decisions. I could do it. Also the dinosaurs were bright blue and red. Then the dinosaur dream transitioned into a vampire dream, where I was in th...

Here's a question for you: If you say you want to be a writer and yet never seem to be able to make yourself write anything, are you more in love with the idea of being a writer than the actual work itself? My brain says yes, but I don't want that to be the case for myself. I've always wanted to be a writer. I feel so happy when I'm actually writing and when I've actually written, but it's been really difficult to get myself there the last 6 months. I sit down and start something and then become overwhelmed with how hard it is, how I don't know where to go next, how there are flaws in my setup. I never get anywhere, even with the simplest plot. I can't even decide what I want to write. It's paralyzing. It's like my brain is numb. I could make lots of excuses – I'm out of practice. I'm worried about making money, so I spend more time consulting than writing. Now that I'm supposed to be trying this for real, the pressure is cripplin...

Sometimes when you're on a diet and you've been really good all week, you get to a point where you're forced to shove three cookies in your face in a span of two minutes. This is no ordinary food craving – this is an uncontrollable compulsion you feel leaching into your fingers, your tongue, the roof of your mouth. COOKIE. COOKIE. COOKIE. COOKIE. There's nothing you can do about it – just gotta give in. Or maybe it's just me. I did read an article once that was about willpower – studies show that willpower really is finite, and if you resist something earlier in the day, you're less likely to be able to resist sometime else later. You only have so much willpower to go around. When I'm really watching what I eat, my entire world revolves around deprivation, so sometimes that willpower just snaps. The good thing is that now instead of running with that feeling for an entire evening, I can usually keep it to the two minute cookie feast and then I move on. ...

Someday in an imaginary world where sugar counts as a whole grain and buttercream frosting is a vegetable, and where there are no recriminations, no consequences, no reasons to feel guilty that you're shoving cookie after cookie into your face, I will join the Cheryl's Buttercream Cookie of the Month Club. And every month, delightful concoctions will appear at my door, marking the passage of time with their seasonal sprinkles and appropriate cutout shapes, and there shall be cookies, all the time, everywhere. Never again will I say, "I wish I had a cookie." It will only be, "I shall go get a cookie, because I have many." Cookies will abound and be plentiful, and everyone will be happy. Ah, such dreams for mortal men! The glory.

This post might be a little jibbery, if you know what I mean. I'm in Starbucks, where I just got my free venti latte from my rewards card. I haven't been drinking as much caffeine since I stopped working in an office and I don't think I realized that until this exact moment. I left the house for some new scenery, hoping it might get my writing going. There are more people here than I expected – and an interesting mix of people, too. A kid drawing in a book while his mom and her friend talk. A man in dad jeans with his HP notebook, sitting back with headphones in and his hands clasped in his lap, his eyes focused on something on his screen as if in a trance. Students working at a table, laughing and playing with their phones. A woman in a suit with Toms and Spotify and Luna music stickers on her laptop. And a girl who from the side looks like someone I know, but she won't turn enough for me to be sure. It's been almost three months since I started working for mys...