Perforation Problems

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...