My Own Planet

It just can't last
I've spent the last two evenings sitting in bed, eating pumpkin pie and watching old (but new to me) episodes of Lost on my laptop. It doesn't get much better than this, folks. See what I meant when I said this could become a dangerous addiction? It's probably a good thing that I don't have much pumpkin pie left, and that I'm leaving tomorrow to do a story in Nashville.

I take it back
There's an impromptu rock concert going on in the apartment above me, and for reasons I can't even fathom (although I think it may be due to the Motorcycle Guy who parks in my garage repeatedly revving his engine), my apartment smells overwhelmingly like gasoline.

I'm not cutting Monday any slack.

Do Mondays ever get better?
Like, will they be easier to handle when I'm 30? Or 50? Or dead? I'm guessing the answer is no, that they only get more difficult as you get older.

Then again, I did manage to get the last box of my favorite cereal at the grocery store this evening (and I still have pumpkin pie left, and my Christmas tree is all up and pretty), so maybe I should give Mondays a break.

I'm eating a piece of pumpkin pie as I write this
And that's enough to be thankful for right there. But wait, there's more!

When my sister was in second grade, her class did the Thanksgiving PTA program, during which each of the kids got to go up to the microphone and say what they were thankful for. One by one, every single member of the second-grade class walked up to the microphone and said they were thankful for their family. About halfway through, I turned to my dad and said, "If it were me, I would've said, 'I'm thankful for everything but my sister.'" And in that moment, it was true. That was the longest hour of my life.

Now that we're grown, I am actually thankful for my sister (even though she didn't come through on her promise to bring my nephew to our grandparents' house so I could see him again), mostly because she's the one who always comes up with our annual Thanksgiving post-meal diversion, whether it's the usual round of board games, or a walk down to the elementary school playground to swing, or a drive out to see the house where our great-grandmother used to live (although none of us could remember exactly which house it was).

And since we're on the subject, I'm also thankful for: playgrounds that remain unchanged, with slides that still seem as scary now as they did when I was three; sleeping in; lazy bike rides; cotton fields; and book recommendations (Bel Canto, courtesy of Dave) that cause me to stumble across sentences like these:

There was such an incredible logic to kissing, such a metal-to-magnet pull between two people that it was a wonder that they found the strength to prevent themselves from succumbing every second. Rightfully, the world should be a whirlpool of kissing into which we sank and never found the strength to rise up again.

Yes, kissing. I'm thankful for that, too. But aren't we all?

I should just sell my soul to iTunes now and get it over with
I mean, it's inevitable that I'll have to one day, so why wait, right? I just found out yesterday, while listening to one of the weekly Lost podcasts (yes, I am a dork; thanks for asking) that you can download episodes of the show off iTunes for $1.99 apiece. (You can also get episodes of Desperate Housewives, too, but I am so over that show, as it has, as I pointed out last week on Jana's blog, not just jumped the shark, but is now running the 400 while using sharks as hurdles.) This is good, good news for me, as it means I can finally watch the various Lost episodes ABC chose not to rerun this summer without having to shell out loads of money for the DVD set. Of course, it could also be bad, bad news for my checkbook, particularly if this trend catches on. Could you imagine what would happen if I were able to download, episode by episode, with one click of a button from my cozy living room, Felicity? Or Friends? Or Sex and the City? Or Dawson's Creek? Or The O.C.? Or My So-Called Life? Or Coupling? Or Arrested Development? Or The Office (both versions)?

See what I mean? The selling of my soul is imminent. I just hope I don't do something stupid, like give the whole thing away for that one episode of My So-Called Life where Angela kisses Jordan Catalano. Because you know I totally would.

Ah, to be two years old again
I spent my lunch hour at a Mexican restaurant, entertaining my former boss's two-year-old by repeatedly hiding her crayons in the chip basket and pretending not to know where they were. (Fortunately, everyone had already stopped eating chips from that basket, probably right after she stuck her entire face into the basket and started chewing.)

It was the best lunch I've had in a long time.

Just breathe.
This is what I need to do. Stop. Think. Breathe. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of time that will allow me to stop or to think, or even to breathe. And therein lies the rub.

Just when I allowed myself a moment of relief at the passage of my deadlines, I find out that some changes are being made that will require a deadline that should have been more than a month away to be pushed up by a couple of weeks--where it will fall right on top of another deadline that was already starting to cause me concern. So it appears that I'm looking at another few weeks of marathon writing without much of a break in between...which can't be a good thing, since I'm already past the point of being burnt out as it is.

Writing a novel in a month was a piece of cake compared to this.

Shopping can kiss my ass
It's amazing to me now how I ever loved shopping as much as I once did. Actually, it's not that amazing--I still enjoy shopping to some extent, but only under certain conditions, those being that I have an abundance of time, money, and interesting stores in which to browse, and also that I have nothing that I need to buy. Of course, it is very rare these days that any of these conditions are met, let alone all of them. In fact, I've come to the conclusion that such a feat is only possible in a foreign country, which may explain why I enjoy shopping in London and Paris as much as I do.

But this weekend, I am in neither London nor Paris, I don't have much time or money, every store I go in seems to have pretty much the same thing, and none of it is what I need. In other words, shopping has been HELL. The worst part is, when I finally do stumble across something suitable, I can't help but think to myself, "This will probably be half off next week after Thanksgiving. I should just wait." And then I leave the store without it, meaning I have to go through this exact same ordeal again next weekend, only it will be a million times more crowded, which just ups the horrible-ness of it all.

I swear, if it weren't so damn cold, I'd be tempted to just start walking around naked, to save myself the headache of ever having to buy clothes again.

The rearview
When I was younger, my mom had a strict rule that nothing was allowed to hang from the rearview mirror of our car, on the principle that things hanging from rearview mirrors are tacky. (She also applied the same maxim to bumper stickers, although she made an exception for my dad's Vanderbilt Divinity School sticker, I guess because stickers from really prestigious colleges can be marginally considered posh.) Anyway, this lesson was imprinted on my brain at an early age, which is why you will never find anything more than a parking pass on my rearview mirror.

However, last night on my way home, I was stopped at a stoplight when I noticed that a guy in the turn lane had a fake hand dangling from his rearview mirror. And with all due respect for my mom and everything, I have to say--that's just awesome.

This is not funny
So in addition to the large amounts of work- and running-related stress, plus my newfound (and possibly ill-timed) fascination with Joni Mitchell, I think I've identified another reason why I might be feeling a little blah lately. I believe it's because, thanks to the geniuses of network programming, I have not had any television-assisted comic relief for, literally, months.

First there's Arrested Development, which has, it seems to me, been off the air more weeks than it's been on this season. First it was interrupted for baseball, which I wasn't happy about, but I could at least understand. After all, some people like baseball. But now they keep pre-empting it for two-hour marathons of Prison Break. Who the hell likes Prison Break? Nobody I know, I can tell you that. Now Fox has just announced that has once again decided to cancel Arrested Development due to low ratings. But honestly, were they surprised by the poor ratings? I mean, it's kind of hard for people to watch a show when it's never on.

Then there's The Office, which is being mangled in a similar fashion by the idiots over at NBC. It should be noted that I am a huge fan of the British version of The Office, but I'm not one of those Office purists who insists, on principle, that the American version is crap. I think it's quite funny in its own right. But none of that matters, because it's never on. Last night, I was thrilled to learn that there would be a new episode to greet me when I returned home from pilates class--but I got back and turned on the TV to discover that, while the show was indeed playing, the audio was pre-empted by our local meteorologist, yammering on and on about a tornado several counties away. After insisting that he had to do this because it was regulated by the FCC (funny how no other stations seemed to be under said regulation), he said all we had to do to listen to The Office was hit the TV's SAP button, which most new TVs should have. Well, guess what? Not all of us have new TVs! Some of us have TVs that are wood-paneled, circa 1987 affairs that we got from one of our dad's hunting buddies when we traded him a smaller wood-paneled TV that we had gotten from another of our dad's hunting buddies for handing out programs at his daughter's wedding when we were 11! Obviously NBC doesn't think of things like this when they're pre-empting my beloved programs, which I feel is just blatantly insensitive.

So basically, for the past few months, the extent of my comic relief has amounted to Hurley on Lost and Seth Cohen on The O.C., and, unsurprisingly, they're not exactly cutting it. At least I still have America's Next Top Model.

It's the least wonderful time of the year
No, I'm not referring to the Christmas season (although truthfully, playing Joni Mitchell's "River" over and over hasn't exactly put me in the most chipper holiday mood). It seems it's once again that time of year when my feathered friends, Herbert and Judy, along with several of their best pals, start to settle into their new home, otherwise known as the lake behind my office. Which means that I can look forward to at least a few months of them copulating with reckless abandon, leaving nasty "surprises" on the trail, and just generally scaring the ever-loving crap out of me. And last year, after all of this, they didn't even have any cute little babies for me to coo over. What a rip.

I am pleased to note, however, that their much-uglier friends have decided not to return for another season. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that apparently, my friend Elizabeth's two-year-old niece fed one of them part of a peanut butter sandwich last year, and the duck had a bit of trouble getting it down. Perhaps this near-death experience frightened the ducks so much that they have decided to choose a new office park to terrorize this year.

Maybe I should start taking a peanut butter sandwich with me on my walk, though, just in case.

Spread me on a peanut butter sandwich
I don't think it's any secret that I've been a little stressed lately. I've written more than 10,000 words in less than two weeks, and not by choice this time. My attempts to train for a 5K have only succeeded in plaguing me with one injury after another. So today, all I wanted to do was have a nice, relaxing swim and escape from life for a little while.

But when I got to my YMCA branch, I discovered that the indoor pool was closed for the entire day, which meant if I wanted to swim, I would have to go to the downtown location. The pool's closure ended up being a blessing in disguise, as the facilities downtown are far superior. After a leisurely 45-minute swim in the uncrowded, sun-drenched pool, I kicked back in the jacuzzi, had a long, hot shower, and spent some quality time in the steam room. Mmmmm. I feel like jelly. But in a good way.

I think I may have just found my new Sunday ritual.

Oh, whatever
This morning, I spent a good deal of time that I don't really have writing about the continuing saga of my trials and tribulations with my bathtub drain, only to have the post be inexplicably devoured by Blogger. So the long and short of it is: Last night, after I had to actually bail water out of my bathtub with a bucket just to take a shower, I finally broke down and called my landlord, who very sweetly agreed to unclog the drain for me even though it is not technically his responsibility. And apparently there was enough hair down there to fashion several new wigs for Cher, so my previous statement was not quite the hyperbole I had intended it to be. I have been informed by my landlord that there is now a big mess waiting for me in my bathroom, but honestly, I'm just glad that a bucket will no longer figure into my bathtime ritual.

Hmm, I guess recreating the story wasn't so painful. I should've just written that brief account in the first place.

Living to run and running to...uh, die, apparently
Let's get something straight right away: I do not like running. There are some people out there who do, and that's all fine and good for them, but I have never been one of those people. In fact, "don't like" may be an understatement. I hate running.

So why I thought it would be a good idea to run a 5K is beyond me.

All right, so it's not entirely beyond me. I thought my exercise routine could use a jolt. I thought that, in the absence of writing a novel, I'd get bored without something to challenge me during the month of November. I thought that if I gave running a chance, maybe, just maybe, I could learn to love it, too.

As it turns out, I thought wrong.

This is not the first "I can be a runner! No really, I can!" phase I have gone through, although it is the first in several years. I went through quite a few in college, actually, most of which ended in boredom/frustration because I didn't quite seem to be making enough progress. The last one ended because I kept getting shin splints, and that was enough to turn me away from running for the next four years or so.

But for some reason, against my better judgment, I have decided to try again. And this time I have been stricken with yet another alliterative runner's ailment--the side stitch. Apparently these are pretty common in running. What is not common, I would imagine, is getting them before the running even begins. That's right--my side stitch appears to be either psychosomatic or just plain psychic. When it knows I've got another interval of running coming up in my training program, it suddenly starts to twinge. This might be partly my fault--when I started getting the side stitch last week, I brushed it off as a side effect of stress and kept running right through the pain, not wanting to disrupt the training plan. Now I'm concerned that I may have permanently damaged my liver/diapraghm/whatever the hell other internal organs are down there. All I know is, when you practically keel over just from walking into work, it's not a good thing.

And yet...I'm still trying to be a runner. What the hell is wrong with me?

He's baaaack!
This afternoon, I had to go to the library to check out a book for work. As I was making my way up to the adult section, I happened to notice a man sitting at the computers in the children's library, reading an e-mail in what had to be at least a 72-point font. I mean, the text of the e-mail was clearly visible to me, standing a good 10 or 15 feet away. So I did what any normal person in my situation would do. I read part of it over his shoulder. (What? It's not like I became a journalist because I have a healthy respect for the privacy of others. Besides, if you read your e-mail in 72-point font, you're pretty much asking for other people to read it. You might as well take out a billboard.)

Anyway, this is what I read:

"You should know upfront that I like my 'whole body massaged' 'while in the nude'..." (I'm not sure why these phrases were in quotation marks; if they're supposed to be euphamisms, they're not very clever ones.)

I stopped reading at this point, because I knew immediately who it was: the mumbling gay john! Only apparently I had identified him wrong; it turns out he's actually a blind prostitute. At least, I think it was him. I didn't get a good look at him either time, so I can't be sure. But I really hope there's not more than one person trafficking in prostitution in the children's library. (This is all taking place, by the way, at the branch located in the poshest neighborhood in Birmingham.) Either way, I'm glad I still have Internet access at home.

Quote of the Day

"The world is her gynecologist." --my friend Elizabeth, on Paris Hilton, upon seeing this picture, in which Paris's birth-control patch is clearly visible through the sheer underwear she is pulling her...um, other underwear (?) down to expose.

(My reaction to this picture? "Sometimes I wonder why she even bothers putting on clothes at all before she leaves the house." Also, don't ask me why, but I would've pegged Paris as a birth-control ring kinda girl.)

Sick-o
I'm one of those people who pride themselves on never getting sick. Sure, I'm victim to the occasional head cold (usually averaging one a year), but it's never anything that can't be fended off with a couple Nyquil and a glass of vino. I've been working since I was 18, and I've never once taken a sick day. Until the unfortunate incident that was New Year's Eve 2003, I hadn't thrown up in 11 years. In high school, when my entire OM team got sick right before a big competition (when we'd been spending night after night in each other's company), I somehow managed to escape unharmed. Once, I drank out of the same straw as Diana at Sonic shortly before she came down with a vicious 24-hour bug. The next night, I stayed in bed watching movies, just waiting for it to catch up with me. By about 3 a.m., I realized it wasn't going to (and I celebrated by walking around a graveyard in the middle of the night with Kate and Austin, then going to Austin's sketchy basement apartment, where we sat on his matress on the floor and listened to the song he wanted played at his funeral...but that's neither here nor there). All told, I have a pretty kick-ass immune system.

So it makes sense that I would want to brag about it. However, every time I do, I hear a little voice in the back of my head saying, "No! Don't do it! You'll just jinx yourself!" Usually, I just tell that voice to shut the hell up already, but I've always known that one day, my faith in my top-notch immune system would come back to bite me in the ass.

I think that day is today.

My office has been struck with a sickness. I'm not quite sure of the nature of this mysterious sickness; I only know that it's sending my co-workers (particularly the ones who work in my little corner of the office) home in droves. This afternoon, a co-worker came back from a business trip, and I overheard another co-worker explaining to her why all the people who sit near us had suddenly disappeared. During her explanation, she happened to mention her own great immune system that keeps her from being susceptible to office sicknesses. So of course I have to pipe up with, "I'm the same way!"

This evening when I got home, I suddenly noticed that I was exhausted and sort of achy. I was both hot and cold at the same time, and my stomach was feeling a little queasy. I may not get sick often, but I know what sick feels like.

And I definitely feel sick.

Ahhh. Much better.

This is me. This is me on deadline.



I created this little work of art almost six years ago, during the month I spent living with my parents before I headed off to England. It's what I imagine Andy Warhol might have done, had he been forced to spend an entire month living with his parents, with only a webcam and some really low-rent photo editing software to amuse himself.

It's also how I feel right now.

It's not fair to blame the deadlines, because it's not really the deadlines' fault. It's the things that are keeping me from making any sort of meaningful progress toward the deadlines--the petty office dramas and the stupid chores that keep piling up--that are driving me to a Technicolor scream. It's the fact that even the bright spots that have come along over the past few days, no matter how bright they might be, seem to be dulled again much too quickly by this stress and tension. It's the way the little things seem to keep going wrong, like when I came home at lunch to get my laptop so I could work outside and maybe, just maybe get an hour of peace, and I found that my trackpad had frozen. And so I couldn't get the computer to shut down and had to pull out a screwdriver and detach the battery, and the whole time I kept thinking, "Why? Why did the trackpad have to pick this day, this hour, this minute to screw up on me?"

When I created this Warhol-inspired picture oh so many years ago, I had to fake a scream; otherwise, my parents would've heard me and wondered what was up. (I'm not a fan of pulling Marissa Cooper-like tantrums with them.) But I think maybe that's part of my problem now. I need more than just an artistic outlet. What I really need right now is an honest-to-goodness, from-the-gut, throw-all-the-lawn furniture-in-the-pool kind of scream.

It's NaNoFiWriMo time!
By now, most of you have probably heard about NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. But you may not have heard of NaNoFiWriMo, or National Non-Fiction Writing Month. That's probably because I just made it up last night.

Here's the deal: My partner in crime (or former partner in crime? We haven't committed any crimes lately, not that we ever committed any actual crimes) (at least none that we would tell you about) recently decided to make it 2 for 2 with the writing a novel in a month. I, despite the strong influence of cold air, Jeff Buckley, and honey chai lotion, realized that while it is possible to write a novel in a month, and is also possible to write nearly an entire magazine in little over a week, it is probably not possible to do both things at the same time.

And yet, the absence of a partner in crime meant the absence of another rising word count to compete against, which is particularly important if you are like Dave (a self-proclaimed "competitive fellow") and me. Then it hit me: If I'm going to be spending the whole month of November writing anyway, why not just keep track of the number of words I write? That way I can get my work done, and the competition doesn't have to die. In fact, this just might make it easier for me to hit my deadlines. (For Dave's sake, I hope it doesn't, because then I might be tempted to ask him to write a novel every time I have a major deadline approaching.) Thus, NaNoFiWriMo was born.

Because NaNoFiWriMo has been in existence for less than 24 hours, we're still working out a few kinks. For instance, we don't have a fancy web site with a little thermometer-type thingy that registers your word count and shows you how far you have to go. Instead, we have me, thinking about putting a little box somewhere here on the blog, but not really knowing how to implement such a thing. And while getting a new NaNoWriMo word count is as simple as clicking a button, the NaNoFiWriMo word count is slightly harder to obtain, and not just because I have a habit of working on snippets of stories here and there rather than just sitting down and writing an entire story at once. Dave and I have agreed that I am allowed to count all articles that are for my upcoming deadlines, even though I may have written them before today--however, I have consented not to post these word counts all at once, causing my word count to skyrocket and Dave to get defeated and throw in the towel. So just know my word count might not reflect the actual number of words I've written in a day, in case you should ever find yourself sitting at home thinking, "How did Clare write 5,000 words about babies in one day?" I probably didn't.

I'm hoping the competition generated by NaNoFiWriMo will also be helpful to my other noveling partner in crime, Kate, who has also once again chosen to embark on the NaNoWriMo voyage. However, as Kate has never to my knowledge referred to herself as "a competitive fellow," I couldn't be sure. So for her I have assumed the role of Official NaNoWriMo Cheerleader, which involves a lot of rhyming words and exclamation points and, yes, spirit fingers. Unfortunately, you probably won't get to see any of that on the blog.

Current NaNoFiWriMo word count until I get around to making some sort of fancy box
1,259