Well, the boys went over to Steven J’s house for the evening, so Dad and M decided to take me out for a yay-you-must-be-KIND OF-closer-to-getting-published dinner, and we were in the car chatting about this and that when I started to get this awful nauseous panicky feeling. Sort of like my body is going to combust. Or aliens are going to beam me up. You know? A wee bit out of body, like the spirit is breaking loose of the corruptible flesh kind of thing.
“Yeah, don’t mind me, but I’m going to lie down on the back seat,” I said. “I promise I won’t put my shoes on anything.”
“Do whatever you need,” Dad said. He comes from a whole family of low blood pressure people.
And, doggone it, I was right. I felt better almost immediately. Just the warning lights coming on. I hear it like an automated female voice: Good. Evening. You. Have. Six. Teen. Seconds. Left.
Of c, half an hour and about a thousand calories later, I felt marvelous. We went to Boston’s and got, among other things, the appetizer platter. Grease-tastic. Mmm.
When we’d digested we crept sheepishly down to the basement and worked out (after picking up the voicemail messages—typical one from Miq about chocolate-covered ball bearings… dental humor). With the treadmill, bike, and free weights we can all do our best Richard Simmons as one happy family. How pathet. And rather nice at the same time.
Dan came home for the weekend and showed us pictures from his medical missions trip to Guyana (South America). One one week, the team did upwards of $220,000 worth of dental procedures for free. Not bad, not bad. Dan and I have not always been the best of friends growing up thanks to life philosoph differences (I will spend an afternoon sitting like a Buddha in the sun, which he thinks is kind of, you know, stupid; and he will talk about “the sin of video games” which I think is kind of, you know, a bit much, all things in moderation, and time and place for relaxation and, yeah, we’re different people), but I have to say that putting your money (or your drill, in this case) where your mouth is impressed me. I admire good works so infinitely more than vows of asceticism.
I’ve now written three novels, but I still suck dirt when it comes to revision. I started today by rewriting snapshots of each other major characters—their personalities as well as their arc of change throughout the story—so that when I do the first read-through I can check for character consistency. The other major things I’m looking for are plot pacing and verbal fat that I can trim.
My other project for the weekend (besides working at PR 
) is to play in my closet. I have a couple of things that I never wear because I don’t know what to wear them with, so it may be time to play stylist. In my ultimate, Obsessive-Compulsive alternate reality, I would put together outfits and take pictures of them and keep them all filed somewhere so that I would rotate my looks and not get stuck in ruts so easily. The important thing, of c, is to make everything in my life as busy and overwhelming as possible, and I think the best way to do that is probably to start as many ENORMOUS tasks as possible all at once. Brill? Yes.
In short, life is bliss.
