I am She

I'm still working on that novel. It's pretty stupid, but like I said before, since there are a lot of stupid people in the world I'm thinking there might be an audience.

Or maybe it's for a stupid audience of one: me.

It is quite a dose of therapy. As the autobiographical crap keeps slipping in there, I'm faced with the many ways in which my protagonist is like me. But she's separate enough for me to be a bit more analytical and honest about her than I might be about my self.

When I think she's boring, it's usually because she's not being very proactive. I need to fix that to make her more interesting and to make her more capable of fulfilling a healthy, satisfying character arc.

Fixing my protagonist can be a simple matter of de-wimpifying her dialogue and giving her a kick in the pants when it comes to confronting her antagonist. Shouldn't the same work in real life?

What can Bridget say to Todd that might improve their chances of making things better, more honest, healthier?

This novel may be just for me.

Drinking and Blogging

I'm going to be utterly profound... because I can. I was about to post some of the things I've been thinking on my public blog, but then I remembered some good advice the voices in my head gave me... not to drink and operate the internet. But you know me. I like to live on the wild side. But, I can be cautious, too. So I thought it better to log off my real facebook before saying anything that might prove to be too great of an embarrassment. So you get it all here...

And no emailing boys til I sober up either.

So, I'm listening to a recording of piano music played by the boy who replaced the Spawn of Satan in my young throbbing heart several decades ago.... and I truthfully heard voices. They weren't telling me to throw myself from a bridge or to commit any crime or anything like that. In fact, I couldn't tell what they were saying... just that they were human (or at least human-like voices) and they were emanating from the music itself. That was pretty cool. Not exactly profound, but cool, nonetheless. I'm not going to email Piano Boy, though...

...no matter how much I want to tell him that the sound of his fingertips massaging the keys of a piano cause me to hear the utterances of angels...

...no matter how much I want to thank him for rescuing me from that bridge (okay, I don't know what the keyboard angels were saying, just as I'm sure they weren't telling me to jump, and I did get the impression that they didn't want me to jump.)

I'm still working on that novel. I know it's totally stupid, but there are an awful lot of stupid people in the world these days, so I'm still hopeful that it will find a market.

Don't know what I'm drinking. Decided to just grab one bottle at a time without reading the labels. My eyesight is going downhill anyway, so I figured this would be a taste of things to come.

I'm not much of a drinker. A real light weight -- or as Todd used to say, "a cheap date." Cheap date... I should have seen all this coming. Not going to go there, though. When I started in, I thought this was going to be one of those morose depressing morose redundant depressing drunken episodes that make me feel like listening to Patsy Cline's "Crazy" and putting my hair in rollers and imagining myself dying in a plane crash... but this has actually been a happy time (mostly).

Shoot! I had something profound to say and I totally can't remember it now! Sorry to make you read this without any satisfying conclusion. If you're disappointed, please have a few drinks and then feel free to leave a drunken comment.

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Arrghh! You're turning me into a pirate, Todd!

I'm tired of nagging. Twice a month, I have to nag if I want to avoid the insufficient funds charges on our household bank account. Twice a month, the big unavoidable automatic payments go through. And twice a month, we (often needlessly) pay these fees because Todd doesn't transfer money into the household account.

He has been working, so I don't think its a matter of not having the money (but then, I wouldn't know that for sure because his business account is as secret as the illuminati's iCalendar). He's just too darn busy to get around to transferring it to the family account so we (I) can have a little peace of mind (and use of that $34 a pop that's going down the drain every time he's too lazy to manage his money as a supposed business owner).

He's too busy. Poor boy. Putting in three to six hours on the job site (including commute time) and then having to watch football on TV when you get home can be so demanding!

In a couple of weeks the property tax bill is coming due. I have no idea how we're going to pay it. Last time I was able to pay it all by myself by sinking my entire writing advance check into it. But I still haven't finished the project that was an advance for, so I'm tapped out.

My gut has been all tied up in knots. I woke up this morning and I could hardly move -- the pain was so excruciating. I've cleaned up my diet to the point that it shines like the top of Mr. Clean's head, so I don't think it's being caused by food allergies or additives or preservatives... I think this time it's just good old stress.

He bought me some expensive probiotics to try to take care of my problems. I wonder if it ever crossed his mind that such things might not even be necessary if he would just take the time to transfer funds on time?

At least Todd is able to sleep at night and eat without fear of what convulsions that might send his digestive tract into!

Arrghh! That's about all I can say.

Todd Apologized

I don't have time to write a blog right now, but I did have to take a moment to say this:

Todd was being a real @$$#*!% last night while we were getting ready for company. Big deal. Nothing out of the ordinary.

What makes it blogworthy is the fact that later, after the guests had left, he actually apologized. He said, "I'm sorry for being snippy earlier."

I was speechless. I could have said, "It's okay," but I didn't because that would be lying. It wasn't even the apology that blew me away as much as the fact that he NOTICED that he had behaved inappropriately.

That's all. Nothing clever. Nothing funny. Nothing Profound. But it's as if the world shifted on its axis.

Novel Idea

I'm working on a novel that, although it is definitely fiction, has a lot of autobiographical stuff in it. It will be interesting to see where it goes if I get any publishers interested in it.... Will I be able to let Todd read it? or will I keep it a secret from him?

Within the story, I'm tackling some of my deepest fears. If a person cannot be honest with another person about her fears, how are they supposed to have a relationship? And yet, how Todd would react if I were to share that sharing my deepest fears with him IS one of my deepest fears.

This novel could end up being the true test of our relationship.

I'm tired of being fake, and yet I want to feel safe. Is there a place where a person can be both genuine AND safe? I would run there so fast my running would turn to flight.