In Which I Get a New Bestie

What's this? A visitor? At the library? Pony, is that you?

It is you! Oh, you make every day so much better when you're around. I'm so happy you've come to stay.

What's that? You're not here to stay at the library, but you want to come and live at my house forever and ever for always and you want me to pet you and hold you and love you?

That can be arranged.

I'll knit you a little sweater when we get home. In the meantime, you can hang out here at my desk and help me get some work done. Remember, we frown on book-eating at the library, so try to snack on some publisher catalogs instead.

Don't know anything about Pony? He's featured in Kate Beaton's The Princess and The Pony, a picture book released this year, as well as on her website, Hark! A Vagrant. If you know her work and are already in love with Pony or if you are so obsessed you defied Kate Beaton's advice and have Pony tattooed on your lower back, you can order one here. 

Good Morning

Today I woke up to find that The Bloggess had found my church shoe buckle story funny enough to retweet, which is the high praise. Also if you haven't read some of the other hilarious / embarrassing stories people have been sharing with her, read this post from her blog.

!!!!!!!!

And if you can't remember this story from my childhood, read a longer version here. It is simultaneously the funniest and most embarrassing thing I have ever done in church (or anywhere else). It continues to haunt me almost two decades later, even though my mother stopped telling the story as soon as I asked by bursting into hysterical tears at my grandmother's house.

When I crawled out of bed, my neck had locked up and hurt like mad. I carefully took out the heating pad, trying not to move my head, and then figured I'd get cleaned up before I curled up to relax my neck muscles.

I grabbed my shampoo bottle, LUSH I Love Juicy, and opened the lid. It is one of those lids that open when you press down one side and close when you press the other, like a seesaw. When it clicked open, it spat several droplets out, one on my arm, a few in the tub, and one in my left eye.

I Love Juicy is made of fruit juices. Also other things, but lots of fruit juice goes in there. It's a bit acidic, which makes the whole clarifying thing happen. Unfortunately, when you get an eye-full of citrus, pineapple, and various other juices, you FEEL it. It was like the time I cut a bunch of chilies and then took out my contact lenses. It was like I imagined an eyedropper full of  sulfuric acid would be like. I half expected there to be a chunk of eye missing. My eyes teared.

I tried to flush my eye with water, but I forgot I had the faucet on hot, so I scalded my burned eye before I managed to turn the handle to cool. I also used up half a bottle of eye drops flushing my eye out. It was the sort of red of the apples stereotypically given to elementary school teachers. It took me over a half hour to manage to keep my eye open. Almost another half hour before it stopped feeling like my eyelid was made of sandpaper.

Now, of course, I want safety goggles for the shower, and I'll never trust this particular shampoo bottle again. Stupid life. Stupid burned cornea. And what was I thinking, not having a white button-down shirt? I would so have worn boots and black pants and an eyepatch and gone to work as a pirate today. The kids would've loved it.

Naturally...

Well, I am sick of zombie references and dystopian books...so naturally I'm writing one for NaNoWriMo. In my defense, this will be less about actual visible zombies and more about human nature, and less about dystopia and more about hilarity. Also my protagonist is not going to be the savior of all people. She is going to be socially awkward and an accidental survivor.

I have had mixed success with NaNo. Lots of my issues come from the "no plot no problem" side of things. I find that I tend to get lost on tangents when I write if I don't know where the story is going, and sometimes endless tangents can take over longer stories instead of being humorously charming the way I pretend they are on this blog.

Please don't disillusion me...I choose to believe you love my tangents.

Tangents are awesome for word count. Deleting them means a day of work is all gone. That's fine when I'm not doing NaNo. I don't mind getting rid of things that don't matter. But when I'm looking at a daily word count goal, I get bitter and keep things in that should go, especially since the whole point of NaNo is to WRITE and not edit.

Here's what I'm doing this year: I'm editing. Yep. I know.

Editing will probably make this more work for me. It will probably suck, be frustrating, maybe even make me throw a small tantrum in my bedroom with only the non-judgmental face of Kate Beaton's Fat Pony looking on (the Fat Pony is my desktop background). But I know me, and that means editing has to happen.

Speaking of tangents, there were three of the sickest people in the world at the library this morning, and I probably have tuberculosis now. Thanks so much, Random Mother, for bringing your sick children to the library to touch all the toys and cough up mucus on the computers. I'll think of you next week when I have bronchitis during my vacation.

I wish I could give that ecard to the mother on her way out. But that would be unprofessional. Instead I'm just leaving it up on my computer monitor REALLY BIG to see if she reads it.

Back to NaNo: I'm also using a technique a few writer friends use, in which you get a sticker on your calendar when you make your word count goal. Also I am bribing myself by giving myself a preward (like a reward, but given BEFORE you do a thing, not after) of a Fat Pony stuffed animal from Kate Beaton's TopatoCo store. Because nothing motivates me like the Fat Pony. I love that pony. SO MUCH.

Basically I wake up in the morning because I can look at the Fat Pony book some more. The Fat Pony is my spirit animal.

I'll let you know how NaNo is going this month by complaining a LOT about deadlines on Twitter! Also my daily tea consumption will probably quadruple.

Are any of you doing NaNo this month? If you are, let me know how your book is going! I love to commiserate with fellow deadline sufferers.

Now, I'm going to go bleach the computers. I hope your Monday is going better than mine.