Last night I hennah’ed my darlin’s head.  She suggested gloves, but I was all manly and stuff.  Besides, the gloves were at the other end of the house, and who wants to walk that far to keep his hands clean?  It’s just skin.  It’ll wash.

Heh.

45 minutes later her hair was covered in the slop, and so were my hands.  Washing it off, I found that I had a lovely burnt orange complexion on my hands.  And fingernails.

And it doesn’t come off.  Not with soap, nor salt scrubs, nor anything.  I look like my mother was frightened by a yam when she was carrying me.

Far be it from me to fail to admit when my lovely is right.  I just sent her:

• Oomp loompa doompadah doo
• I wouldn’t be orange if I’d listened to you
• Oompa loompa doompadah dee
• My hands look like yams for the whole world to see
• I put a henna mudslide on the head of my love
• Refusing to consider wearing protective gloves
• How bad can it get? is what I asked of you
• Then stuck my hands in the staining green goo!
• Oomp loompa doompadah doh
• You have the chance to say “I told you so!”
• You knew I’d turn a bright orange hue
• Like an Oompa loompa doompadah do!

Me:  Let’s go to bed.

Shannon:  Good plan.  You kept me up way too late last night.

M:  I kept you – you kept me.

S:  How did I keep you up too late, Mr. Pokey-fingers?  I was rolled over and going to sleep.

M:  Well, yes.  Obviously.  You know what that does to me.

S:  <stunned look>

M:  I mean, I’m only human, and if you’re going to lie there and do nothing, quietly going to sleep, what do you expect is going to happen?

S:  Are you ever aware of the noises that come out of your face?  When your mouth is open, do your ears close, or do they just not process?  I’m only asking because I’m curious.

9:03 — Home 30 minutes

Very tired the last couple days.  Tomorrow, I will rise and type and break and type and lunch and type and so on.  I need to feel like I’m still doing this.  I don’t want to taper off.

It’s even possible that my poor sleep has been because I haven’t been typing more.  That’s frightening.

Tonight I had to do the thing every writer dreads.  I’d slipped several hundred words of really lovely dialog out — it sparkled, it danced, it toyed with the reader’s expectations while delivering more than was promised.  It was subtle and witty and had flair and flare both.  And it took the scene in entirely the wrong direction.  It would, in fact, have led to sensible behavior that just doesn’t work in an adventure or romance based story.  Since mine is both, this was a problem.  I ranted to Shannon, since doing that frequently produces what I will call wisdom from my mouth.

“The problem is that, from the beginning of that block of text, the scene goes awry.  It’s great dialog, though.  I hate to lose it.  But it’s in the way, and the only way to get the scene back to where it just has to go is to start both characters in the scene’s starting position, and if I’m just going to recurse the scene I should cut the words and –”  I clapped hands over mouth.

“What?”

“No.  Noo no no no no.”  My words were probably muffled through my clasping hands, but the meaning carried on my wild rolling eyes.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?  You’re just going to stand there hiding your chin and doing the potty dance, scaring the cats ….”

“I have to murder my darlings.”

“Maybe you can save them for later.”

“No, they have to go.  They were so young and vital….”

“Well, do it quickly, and it won’t be so bad.”

“If you had to kill me, would you mind less if you did it quickly, or would you still feel badly afterward?”

“Depends on why I’m killing you.”

“Let’s say it was the cat, instead.”  Then I went and murdered my darlings.  They didn’t look accusingly, just held expressions of love and respect for me, accepting the wisdom of my choice on their behalf.  

I can still see their faces when I close my eyes, all those innocent words….

I had a floating holiday that needed scheduling, so I did that — use it or lose it.  Selecting December 12 arbitrarily for the occasion, I requested the holiday.  There’s a notes section, though, and it’s always dangerous to leave those unattended around me.

Notes:  Feast of Ma’arrat al-Numan - During the First Crusade, Crusaders breach the town’s walls and massacre about 20,000 inhabitants on this day. After finding themselves with insufficient food, they resort to cannibalism.

I sometimes wonder what the supervisory staff thinks when they read my leave requests.

Yesterday there were three micro-naps through the day, and by the end of the second one my brain was largely back to what I will loosely call normal (but actually mean at median functioning for me).  My posture improved, my energy was soaring in small fits, and I was optimistic again.  All was well, as well as all could be, with the exception that the rash that had broken out under my arms was still present, if improved.  I voiced these observations to Shannon, who was driving us along a road lined with fields of clover.

“…so it’s all much better except for the armpit hives.”

The moment sang with a crystalline chime that I hadn’t heard for ten days, and I was beset with visions of what an armpit hive must be like; I pictured skeps on legged platforms, clustered at the corners of the fields, armpits (sans shoulder, sans arm, some hirsute, some shaven, one with a tattoo) hovering industriously over the clover, buzzing to and fro.  I saw armpits back at home base, shaking and spinning in tight circles to communicate to the other armpits where the deodorant fields in flower might be found.  There were pitkeepers (not apiarists, but axillarists) with hooded coveralls and cans of smoke coming round to harvest the hives.

It’s lovely to be healthy again.

I don’t recall how it came up.  Something my coworker said about her teenager needing large sums of money to stay entertained.  However it came up, I related this:

Back in the day when I was a teen — you couldn’t go uphill to school both ways because gravity and inclined surfaces hadn’t been invented yet —

( Read the rest of this entry » )Crossposted from Epinepherine & Sophistry

We go now to seek one of the Big Five game animals of the suburban veldt — the beanbag chair. Michael has been forced to the kitchen chairs or the floor when all three of us sit, and that isn’t tenable.  We have our porters, our skinners, and have practiced the lore of the region and the calls for our quarry.

We fully anticipate bagging our trophy this morning.  The sport of Men is yet practiced in distant Hillsboro.

A short documentary explaining where creative juices come from.  Gotta get me a case or two of that.

My writing partner and mentor and friend, Lisa, has indicated that these must be my next fashion accessory. Obviously, she doesn’t understand that Shannon prefers yarn that looks like this … which would make for some oddly-hued ears.

Last night I smuggled two twenty-something women into the men’s room of a bar. I don’t know that they were awe-stricken, but they were impressed with what I had to show them, at least to a degree.

I took them to the men’s room twice. The second time with another man present.

I considered walking from the Max stop to work; it’s just a dozen blocks, and snow was falling sort of slant-wise, and I like walking in snow. But…I’d have to cross the Hawthorne bridge, and the slant-wiseness of the snow told me that there would be wind, and my hat would very likely be blown off. “Mebbe,” I muttered to myself, “mebbe blown off into de treffik, mebbe into de river. Und eny plen vere hyu lose your het is a bed plen.” So I took the bus, instead.

I love the inside of my head. Jägermonsters live there.

In other news, I am so utterly pleased with how easy, organized, and modular my plotting has been that I just spent money buying Flying Logic Pro Version, at the very generous discount available to anyone, good until the 20th. You should buy a copy, too!

…I don’t know that I’ve ever been this enthusiastic over a commodity that wasn’t a book.

I am going to develop all of my stored procedures and custom views solely in LOLCODE.

So.

Othello went to the pokey. He was stupid, vandalised and carroused, and was caught and tried and went to the Place For Bad Boys, and has to serve five days work crew, and community service.

I was all right, supportive and like that, and, when he was in the Big House I was all angst-y. “My son! Ah! My son! Lost, lost to a world where he is just another dissident, taken from his family, lying, alone in the dark, with no one to love him!”

Bridgette snickered. “We don’t know that….”

His 48 hours were, eventually, served (I think it took just about two days), and he climbed aboard a bus to come visit us for a bit. We collected him from the station and stopped at Red Robin for dinner, where the Muse of Clever Thoughts That Get My Ass Kicked visited me. I excused myself and went to the bathroom, and thence visited the hostess station up front. I passed a few pleasant moments with the staff there, and told them of my son’s terrible plight, and that he was just freed of it.

Well, almost.

I told them something like this: “My son has been living with his mother and stepfather and, well, they sent him off to parochial school. Uniforms, short hair, school ties, like that. Well, my wife and I have just gotten him out of that, but we’d like to just sort of welcome him home a bit. I saw the balloons you’ve got for the kids, do you suppose you could have our waitress…?”

Heh.

The wait staff was horrified. None of them knew what parochial school was. I told them it’s like a military academy with lots of bible study. Horror renewed, they suggested that they have a birthday sunday that is a freebie, and balloons, sure, since this is sort of special like a birthday. I visibly stifled a tear at their concern, and thanked them, smiling wanly through moving emotions that were fighting to play across my features. I am certain that each of them felt wonderfully altruistic when I left; they made me so happy, and for so little cost to themselves.

Heh, hee. Hee. Oh, let me rest a bit, to giggle.

[Giggling follows, with an explanation to Bridgette as to its cause]

Snicker.

Okay. Right. I rejoined my family, warm with the knowledge that I had done so much to make so many people feel good about themselves [giggling again], and that I’d done the Boy a good turn at the same time. I sort of prepped him for it, obliquely.

I told him stories. Allegories, pertinent to his particular situation in life, and illustrating high moral points that might instruct him in his behaviors, and make him a better person, and more worthy than before. I told him about going to a strip club with Lothario, where, insufficiently monied to hold the attention of the dancers, I had told the ladies that approached me that, if I’d had money, she (whoever she was at the moment) would have been my choice for a private dance, but my friend at the end of the table had just come on sabbatical from seminary school, and we were a little worried about him; he was drinking heavily and, ah, misbehaving. About half of the ladies went to cling to Lothario, each in turn, while the others stayed with me to pass the time, since I was so pleasant to them, and one even rubbed my shoulders. Othello followed the story, but failed to see how it applied to current events. Youth today. So slow.

I waxed a bit, telling Othello how horribly I felt for him, cast into durance vile, held apart from those who loved him (Bridgette snickered), fed only the lowest foods, and separated from the fair sex. He nodded somberly, and I pointed out that our waitress was a likely sort, pleasant to have about in a sort of ornamental way. And that she seemed to think he was cute — he got just soooo much of her attention.

And, by the way, son, I told her you’d just gotten sprung from parochial school. Oh, here she is.

She brought him a sunday, and balloons, and welcomed him home, touching his shoulder and gushing, sighing deeply as she talked about “what you’ve been through!” She paused, and looked puzzled. “What is a parochial school?”

Othello foundered a bit, tried to look embarassed and flustered and pleased and daggers at me all at once without cuing the waitress. Bridgette, who had been trying hard to not giggle (and encourage me), left for the bathroom where I suspect (although she won’t admit it) she had a damned good laugh. Othello failed to rise up with a suitably glib story, so I stepped in and told her it was like a Roman Catholic concentration camp with ugly ties. Her pity was manifest — she was obviously a girl who felt things deeply — and she touched Othello some more. His shoulders must have been all a-tingle.

She left to pursue her undoubtedly bright career in food service, and Othello glowered at me. “I will get even, you know.”

“For what? Helium balloons? Free ice cream? The attentions of a pretty girl? Fine, I agree, I have sinned beyond the reach of remorse. Do your worst, as you see the need. Heh. I am remorseful, you know. Hm. Hee. Ha, parochial school, gawd, I kill me.”

Bridgette returned, commandeered some of the whipped cream from the dish, and notified me that I am not allowed to go to the bathroom by myself anymore.

I chuckled all the way home, a half hour drive. I’m pretty much incontinent with it now. Parochial school.

Oh, I love being me. I truly do.