I'm playing Surface Tension with my life.

Alright. It's November 1 and my denial is no longer denial, it's just reality.

I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year.

There. I said it. It's out on the internetting and there's nothing I can do about it. Officially I'm not writing 1,667 words a day for the month of November.

I'm not sweating words from my fingertips onto my poor MacBook's can't-quite-keep-up-with-my-typing-speed keyboard in the dark lonely hours of the night.

I'm not tethering myself inextricably to @NaNoWriMo's Twitter feed.

I'm not tearing out clumps of hair during breaks from @NaNoWordSprints.

I'm not probing the inner recesses of my ear canal with a tablespoon digging desperately for The Point To My Story.

I'm not crying.

I'm not accepting caffeine as my lord and savior.

I'm not doing premature spring wardrobe shopping, ordering holiday cards with overly elaborate designs, shaving cryptic messages into the cat's fur, custom blending toenail polish colors for the dog's pedicure, cooking my way through Cook's Illustrated's back catalog, taking up crossbow hunting, training for a marathon or rebuilding a 1967 VW Squareback's engine.

Well, to be clear, I'm not doing any of those things while procrastinating on my NaNoWriMo novel.

Though I may do them while procrastinating on the millions of other things that have clogged up my life to the point where I can't do NaNoWriMo because The End would be so visibly near if I were to heap that beast somehow on the tippy top of Mount HOLY SHIT HOW WILL I EVER GET ALL THIS STUFF DONE over here.

Yes, friends, I have successfully filled my life to the absolute brim.

I'm playing Surface Tension with my life.

The combination of going back to school, starting a business, winter gardening (winter garden blahblahblah coming soon), trying to get in some fall fishing, taking up fly tying (yep, hobby #1001 right there), taking up Crossfit (is that considered a hobby? I'm not counting it as one.), indulging in the Giants World Series victory  (this takes serious dedication, so do not roll your damn eyes at me) and project managing our forever-taking bathroom remodel has taken me to the very edge of the glass that is my life.

I'm afraid that if I were to add even a drop of NaNoWriMo to that glass, it would spill over onto the counter and I would lose it.

"It" being "My Sanity". And we know what a tenuous hold I have on that already.

So, I'm just not doing it.

It pains me and I hate not doing it because I love NaNoWriMo's sick torturous fun and I am on a three consecutive year roll of winning and I have two stories outlined in Scrivener (love you, Scrivy!) that I could totally blast 50,000 words at and everything, but no.

I musn't.

Instead, I am going to write on this blog.

And my business's blog.

And Examiner.

And Twitter. And Twitter.

And Facebook. And Facebook.

And write term papers.

And scholarship applications.

And midterms and finals that are supposed to be comprised of 20 short answer questions but really end up being 40-50 short to long answer questions because SOME professors like to make single questions into 10 sub-parts that each require their own short to long explanation so end up taking THREE MUTHER EFFING HOURS to complete.

All of that I'm going to do instead of NaNoWriMo.

I hope you understand.

Also, here's pictures from some of that shit I just said was doing all the Life Clogging.

Obviously we were dressed as Giants' Bat Girls for the Halloween Giants World Series Victory parade. OBVIOUSLY.

That's the Giants manager holding THE SECOND WORLD SERIES TROPHY THE GIANTS HAVE WON IN THREE YEARS.

You know that I will wear those wrist warmers even when I'm not being a Giants Bat Girl.

I tied this fly.

I fished this fly.

And despite the beauty and perfect conditions, I caught nothing.

Which is OK because I got to hang out with this sexy guy all day who bit my hat sometimes.

The winter garden is KICK ASS so far.

Ever wondered what juvenile buckwheat looks like? Wonder no more.

That guy is a cauliflower. He lives under that fabric. More to come on this.

I now have five fewer flies than this box was holding at the time of this photograph. THANKS JERK TROUT.

There's more than just cover crops in the garden this winter. BIG TIMES.

Ah, to have a fully functioning bathroom without paper covering the new flooring. That's the dream.

Oh right. And also to be able to shower in my own house.

Pudding brain

Oh dudes. This month is totally getting away from me and I hate just hate that.

Know what else I hate? Only blogging once a week. Seriously.

I have shit to tell you people and when it gets to the weekend and I sit down to tell you all of it, my brain numbs up and I have a hard time scraping together two coherent words that you might want to read.

But that's mostly because I've been spending all my words on NaNoWriMo.

So far, I'm about 30K words into the 50K goal and I'm on track to win again this year, for the third year in a row. YAY.

In even better NaNoNews (which is a thing I just made up. You should go use it as a hash tag on Twitter and get a trend going. I'll join in! Maybe.) I may be writing a novel this year that actually makes it to Stage 2: Editing. Which will be wholly unlike my previous two novels that will die a cold solitary death in the forever phase of Stage 1: NaNoWriMo Draft.

Now, granted, I'm not 100% sure that I'll edit this novel, but since I never made it this far into the month while still liking my novel and the characters therein, it at least has a better chance than either of the two stink bombs from years past.

I attribute this relative success to three things:

1. Scrivener
   Seriously, having actual writing software that lets you put together character sketches, outlines, scene descriptions and so on, is actually as helpful as the Theys of the world say it is. Not that Scrivener is paying me to say that or anything. I just really like it and it's helping me not hate my book this year. Hooray.
2. I wrote an outline before I started writing.
   Now, granted, I wrote two outlines and did research and wrote up chapter summaries and everything before doing my usual punt at the 11th hour by deciding to go with an entirely new, un-outlined premise, but then I wrote up a quick outline for that idea and it's been semi-smooth sailing since. In the sense that I have only rewritten the premise once or twice and the novel has taken only two or three major shifts since I started writing. OK, so it's not the same premise at all, really, but I haven't changed the title, so that's something.
3. @NaNoWordSprints
   Ever had to sit down and catch up on 5,000 words in a day? Yeah. It's not the best. Particularly when your brain is filled with pudding and you can't come up with the brain power to order a burrito, much less write a novel in draft form.
   But having the @NaNoWordSprints deal going on Twitter, where they have some nice NaNoWriMo person tweeting ideas, commands, prompts and silliness to get you writing as many words as humanly possible in 20-30 minute increments is EXTREMELY helpful when your fingers thud down on the keyboard and immediately freeze. What? I need to have a sudden and powerful weather shift occur in my story? OK. I can think of something for that. Or, an alligator or anteater needs to appear or be mentioned? OK. I can fit that in somehow. Give me 10 minutes. So, yeah, super helpful.

 Mostly, I feel like this year's NaNoWriMo situation is an improvement over past efforts since I'm 10 days from the finish line and I haven't gone on a wordly killing spree inspired by intense hatred of all my characters.

Though someone will have to die soon. I have a chapter in my head all written up for that scene, so unless someone starts pissing me off, I'm just going to have to make up someone annoying to knock off so I can have them shoved carelessly into the back of an ambulance like so much bagged lawn clippings.

Anyway, that's what's up with NaNoWriMo. I'm going for my third win and no one has died yet. I'll let you know when I cross the finish line and we can do a body count together.

In other November news, I signed up for the Applied Materials Turkey Trot again, for the 4th consecutive year, and almost immediately after paying my $35 registration fee, decided I probably won't run it after all.

Why would I throw $35 in a hole like that?

Well, when you submit your registration, you end up on a thank you page of sorts, and this page has a hideous counter to tell you how many other idiots are running this race on Thanksgiving morning in some half assed effort to wish away the calories from the 16 pies they plan to eat.
And when that counter says 18,296 like it did when I was sent there after registering, I had to take a moment to get over nearly swallowing my tongue and then swiftly decide that my $35 would just be considered a donation to the food banks that benefit from the race as well as a little gift to myself in the form of a run through my vacant town on Thanksgiving morning while all these crazy fuckers are off running this race on the other side of town.

Yeah. Jada and I will be going for a solitary run around my neighborhood and, on our way home, will stop by a friend's place for Thanksgiving bloody Marys and ZERO race day bullshittery.

I'm pretty sure.

I mean, you know how much I love a balloon arch and race day jitters and all that shite, so I may give in at the last minute and subject myself to the throngs of insane morons dressed in costume pressed together in the name of extra pie, but it's likely that I'll opt for a quiet run through empty streets with the dog, followed by bloodies with a good friend and some race fries even though I didn't run a race at all.

Because I guess I'm just a cheater like that.

Also, the bees went nigh-night after their third sugaring, nearly all the fava beans have germinated and at this very moment I'm sitting in front of a fully functional gas fireplace that is giving me no guff whatsoever when I go to turn it on.

I feel like I should probably go buy a lottery ticket.

October things and future freaking out

It's random mind-wandering thought time around here, but thankfully it's October and since all of these thoughts occur and have something ever so slightly to do with October, I have myself a handy theme.

I need a theme, people. Or a guiding notion. Or something to keep me from talking endlessly about, say, the process for converting a wood fireplace to gas and how I will be bear-hugging the Heatilater blower all winter.

See - it could get pretty fucking random around here if I'm away from a theme too long. Or, like illegal in 23 states what with the fireplace love.You see.

So, October then! What's up with October?

Well, firstly, my Giants are in the playoffs and, so far, kicking some serious ass via the bullpen. YAY! And that's all I'll say about that because I don't really need to go into my baseball love. It's there. It's a part of me. I can't release myself from its grasps and, since it's October, it's an ever-present state of mind especially since my boys are actually in the post-season for once.

*Quietly chanting* Giants. Giants. Giants. Giants. Giants. Giants. Giants. Giants. Giants. Giants. Giants.

Nextly, there are spiders all over the place and, most noticeably, all over my garden - making the harvesting of end of season produce a special webtastic event.

Also chanting: Will not put face in spider web. Will not...

See, unlike those of you who are, at this moment, stripping yourselves nude and shrieking through the halls of your office or house trying to clear your faces and hairs of imagined spiders and their webs, I love the spiders.

Can you imagine if she was in your hairs? YEEK.

I mean, I don't want their webs wrapped around my face or, say, back of my head when I go to put on a hoodie that's been hanging from the coat rack since last winter (Blech. Imagine it. It happened to Bubba. He asked me since when were we the Addams Family and I said, "Since we hired a cleaning lady that either doesn't know the words 'cobweb' or 'spiderweb' or doesn't care."), but I love that they're out in my garden right now eating the nasties that start to multiply toward the end of the season to wreak havoc on whatever produce remains out there.

"I love nasties. Burp."

I'm just waiting for one of them to snare a cucumber beetle so that I can give her (these big spiders, I've heard, are all ladies and the dudes are these little insignificant things that exist only for sexiness and then disappear. Little trivia for you, there.) a little high five and then carefully navigate around her web to pick a languishing tomato. 

Don't hate the playah, hate the game.

So yeah, the garden's getting creepy what with the spiders and webs and the dying back of the huge tomato plants that have built me a cave and the vines crawling everywhere making a trip to the garden for some basil an acrobatic task fit for a Cirque Du Soleil training group. 

I haven't been able to walk between these plants since June.

I can't do some of these positions in bikram class, but if there's a tomato branch in danger of being snapped by my wayward foot, well, I can contort myself magically to miss it.

I can't be out there crushing tomato plants, that would be ridiculous.

Plus, they're bigger than me and would win in a fight for sure.

So, yeah, tomato yoga and spider caves. My life gets weird in October.

This is the prettiest tomato that I grew. That's all.

It also gets stressy a little bit because NaNoWriMo is next month and the emails from the NaNoWriMo folks have begun to crop up in the inbox and in Facebook and I'm realizing that I'm going to have to make good on my flushed-with-a-recent-NaNoWriMo-win promise to go at it again. 

Though I only made that promise to myself and maybe to Bubba, but I like pretty web badges and letting my brain's unpredictable turns leak out onto the page, so I'm planning to give it another go. Though with the premise I have in mind for this year, there will be fewer alien dicks and extraneous boobs and spaceships landing in Palm Desert.

I know. What WAS I thinking last year? Or perhaps, drinking, is the better question. Oh well, that's so 11 months ago and now we're on to bigger and less purple things.

Did I tell you there was a purple alien last year? Really. My brain is an odd place.

But, come November, you can call probably expect a bit of YAY NaNoWriMo has begun! excitement and then a bit of I am going to be a NaNoWriMo failure because my brain has halted all its literary functions and I haven't typed a new word in 78 minutes! sadness and then a Send Help! I'm buried in caramel corn in my office because I wanted to see if I could fill my house with and then swim through caramel corn instead of writing my daily 1,667 words! alert and then, if we're lucky, a Phew. I finished my 50,000 words and am now going to crawl under this rug and contemplate the dust bunnies. sigh of relief.

If we're lucky.

So, yeah - that's October for you. In a weird little shell.

998 questions and a bitch ain't one.

So...um...I guess I owe you guys some answers.

Because when I said you could ask me anything - you really didn't hold back.

Which, obviously because you guys are you guys.

Well done, you guys.

Let's get down to it then. So that we can get to the Super Special Secret Guest Post 999 and then the BIG HUGE THING NEWS on post 1,000. Also, there's a prize on that post. A Finny type prize. Which you can take to mean whatever you want. 

For those questions though...

Am I still knitting?
Um, sometimes. OK, no. More like, rarely. OK - truth, truth - annually. I have a sweater that I started two years ago and I've picked it up once each year since. I'm now an annual knitter. Don't tell the blog header.

How come you don't have air conditioning?
Because we live in a house that would be better described as a sieve. In our >1,000 square foot house we have 17 windows. Seriously. That's the actual number I came up with when I walked from tiny room to tiny room counting on my fingers and toes. 

I nearly ran out of fingers and toes!

In a house the size of my shoe!

Ridiculous.

Best parts are that one of those windows is in a closet and that NONE of them close securely. That means that we have sweaters with a view of our neighbor's driveway AND that air conditioning our house wouldn't so much be like air conditioning our house as it would be like air conditioning AROUND our house which is, No.

Um, how do you know when green tomatoes ripe?
Because they are soft when you squeeze them and smell like a ripe tomato. Also, they taste like a ripe tomato, so just pick one that feels/smells about right and taste it. If it's ripe - YAY. If it's not - BOO.

What ever happened to the Ugly Librarian Sweater?
It has been hanging in my closet ever since that post went live from shame. As soon as I admitted it was Ugly, I haven't been able to wear it. I'm very vain and self-involved, in case you'd somehow missed that.

If you missed that somehow, wake the fuck up. 

How come Bubba and I don't have any kids...
Because this.

How is that front yard meadow is working out...
Eh, it's OK. I mean, it's the summer so it's not all WOO! like in spring time, but it looks just like our golden hillsides in this golden state which is to say the meadow is golden. AKA it looks like it's dead and that we are neglectful homeowners. 

I'll be working out some of the kinks in the meadow this fall so that it looks less like "Um, does anyone live here?" next summer and fall than it does now. 

Do you even knit anymore?
See above.

How I decided that sewing as a profession wasn't for me...
Yeah, so remember when I made the Not Ugly Car Trash Bag? Yeah. Well, I put it up on Etsy for a while and offered my services for a price. Like, I'd sew you a custom Not Ugly Car Trash Bag for some price (I can't even remember now how much) and then *gasp* someone wanted me to make it for that price.

Actually, I should say that they wanted me to make a dozen of them for that price. For some event they were having that involved hair dryers, a corporate promotion and the Hamptons.

In a week's time.

And because I don't know how to manage my time but I do know how to piss it away, I told them I'd do it and then I spent every non-work waking hour fulfilling my obligations. 

Then, after I'd fulfilled my obligation and resumed normal sleeping hours, I swore I'd never do it again because LOATHE.

My sewing machine and I did not get along well during our inseparable time together and I'll tell you right now that it is only because I WILL NOT WELSH ON A PROMISE that I did not spike that soul crushing machine on my dining room floor.

Also because my dining room floor could likely have not taken that kind of impact. 

But really, it was about the fact that I needed that machine so that I wouldn't disappoint this person/company to whom I had made this promise and so I did not get all Office Space on its ass even though it sooooooooooooorely deserved it.

Sunuvabithing machine that breaks needles going through quilter's cotton COME ON.

What ever happened to all that crap you wrote for NaNoWriMo?
Well, firstly you're right to call it crap. Because it was. And - HEY HEY - it still is because I have not gone back to edit a single word of it. Any of the three years I've done it. 

That's right. Three years in a row I wrote 50,000+ words in the month of November for NaNoWriMo and have done dick with the results.

Nothing. 

They're all sitting on my laptop in Scrivener gathering dust and my growing hatred. 

They're all unwashed garbage unfit even for my compost bin. 

Sure, they might be something if I cared one big rat's behind to go in and edit them, but I have bigger tastier fish to fry about now and all of those words can just sit there being the awkwardly constructed sentences and the plot holes that they are until such time as I see fit to pick them apart and reconstruct them into completely different sentences and plot holes.

Maybe.

One day.

Doesn't mean I won't go at NaNoWriMo again this November. And it also doesn't mean that this year's NaNoWriMo 50,000 words won't be the same variety of horseshit. But it probably means that this year's words will end up a similar looking pile which I will ignore forever.

Also, no you may not read any of it. Because I'm pretty sure it's not even written in English or a modern language any of us understand. 

Just come to this blog for proof of that fact.

Ever think of cleaning up that language?
Fuck that.

Don't you think you're becoming an alcoholic? 
Probably. It's my most effective coping mechanism, so coping with that realization has had unfortunate results. I am keeping it mostly in check though, so please don't alert the authorities or my mother. 

You're shaving your heads and moving to Nepal for a year.
No and no. 

When are we going to play? 
Checkers? Scramble on the cell phone? Hopscotch? Name that tune? I don't know. Email me at finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom and, when we're in the same hood, maybe we'll work something out. Meanwhile, if you do play Scramble on the cell phone, my username is finnyknits (shocker) and I do want to play. So there.

Who gets invited to your fantasy dinner party?
People who like whatever I happen to be cooking that night, clean up after themselves, bring booze, like dogs and don't mind eating outside because our dining room is small.

I don't really have fantasies about dinner parties at my house because, frankly, the idea of it stresses me out. 

Honestly, I'd just like to have over people I already know so that there's no pressure to remember names or cater to anyone's bullshit dietary needs.

Whose singing voice do you wish you had? 
Pretty  much anyone's but my own. I am a terrible singer. It's awful, really. Not that it stops me from singing - I totally sing - but I get mean looks and people throw trash at me, so I try to keep the public singing to a minumum.

I guess if I could choose, I'd have Billie Holliday's singing voice. She is one of my favorite singers and her voice is unequaled in the world today. 

What would you title your autobiography? 
I'm not for everyone. 

What top ten CDs can't you live without? 
I don't think I've handled a CD in years, but I'll play ball. Though I'm going to go with artists because I can never choose one album over another. That's a job for someone like Bubba who knows music better than I.

FYI: I don't know dick about music. Bubba's been trying to educate me for years by asking me "Hey, name the band!" when something's playing on the loudspeaker somewhere. I never know the band. Literally, not ever. Even if it's the Rolling Stones. 

OK, maybe once I got it when it was AC/DC, but it's a super rare occasion. To the point where Bubba will look visibly relieved that there's evidence that his wife may not be a total music retard. 

The fact is that I mostly just like genres of music rather than particular artists. And I can always tell you the genre I'm in the mood for. 

Like, when Bubba asks me what I want to listen to, I'll say something like, "Oh! Something doodly-doo!" which falls into the jam band genre or "Lady jazz!" which means, well, vocal jazz or "WAAAAAAAAA" which means hard rock (I think the genre is technically called ScreamO, but that's lame sounding. Instead we call it WAAAAAA because that's the sound they make when they "sing".)

I mostly like Doodly-doo, Lady Jazz and WAAAAAAAAA.

You get it? Kinda. 

Best I know how to describe my fucked up music taste is to say that I know the sounds I like and these people make those sounds.

(in no particular order)

1. Billie Holliday
2. Volbeat
3. Dave Matthews
4. John Hiatt
5. Sarah Vaughan
6. Seether
7. Widespread Panic
8. Theory of a Dead Man
9. Django Reinhart
10. Warren Haynes

What are your phobias? 
Failure. 

Arriving at my death bed regretting not having done things that I TOTALLY could have done but didn't do because I was lazy or afraid.

Grasshoppers. They jump at your face and that is wrong.

Horses. They have enormous teeth that could totally bite your face off.

Chimpanzees. Because they ripped some girl's face off. 

I think I have a face issue. Maybe I have a face phobia? No. That makes no sense. 

Militant religious evangelists.

Who is a real hero in your way of thinking? 
Anyone who makes their own way in the world rather than adhering to the norm. 

People whose default setting is optimism and positivity.

Each of my best friends.

My grandmother.

What Olympic sport would you chose to medal in? 
The biathlon. It's the coolest of the Olympic sports. Or maybe the high dive. That shit is just amazing. Also, I'd like to know that no matter how high the dive, I wouldn't belly flop because OW.

Were you born in the wrong century?
Probably.  A future century where all my beefs with our current century have been sorted out and we all have jet packs fueled by something biodegradable like religious evangelists' limbs.

Can you tango?
Nope. 

What's the worst thing you've ever tasted?
Grilled beef liver. Thought it was a small piece of steak. Was tragically wrong. Had to spit it out on the ground. 

The dog liked it though. 

What's the best? 
Warm Brandywine tomatoes fresh off of my plants. 

Do you believe in ghosts? 
Eh. Not in any real way.

Who among your friends do you admire the most and why? 
I don't really admire one over the others, but of close friends, I admire certain things about each of them THE MOST of anyone I know.

Does that make sense?

Like, Kelli's dedication to writing and her bravery for moving to a new place for the sake of pursuing her own happiness.

And Shelley's bravery for moving to a new country - TWICE - in pursuit of her own happiness.

And Decca and Fo's Blaze Your Own Path Despite The Norms approach to working and managing a household.

Bubba's ability to figure out how to do anything. And then do it. Well.

Elke's ingenuity with languages and how well she knows herself. Also, her fantastic German-ness. 

Dave and Aimee's adventurous spirits and the fact that they're the best travel and ski buddies. Plus Dave's ability to out-swear me.

I could go on. 

I really admire people who go in the direction of their own happiness and don't accept what the world tells them they should be doing. Bravery. Competence. Dedication. Adventurous spirit. These are all good things.

What book do you wish you had written? 
Winterdance. Which would mean that I would have raced in the Iditarod. Which would be incredible.

What movie will you watch every time it's on no matter how many times you've seen it? 

Tombstone. Cold Mountain. Sixteen Candles. A River Runs Through It. High Fidelity. Australia. Say Anything. Star Wars. Out of Africa. Indiana Jones. Tommy Boy. Legends of the Fall. Lots of other ones that are even more shameful than these. 

Who did you lose your virginity to and how? 
Some dude. In the normal way.

Do you believe in god? 
No.

If you had to swap lives with a friend for a month whose life would you choose? 
My friend Christine who's living in Paris right now. She just spent a year in Zurich and that's just awesome.

What food or beverage have you always wanted to try but haven't? 
I've always wanted to eat at the French Laundry, but haven't had the chance yet. I've also wanted to try durian because I imagine it's tragically bad and I want to know *just how bad*. Or, as the case sometimes is with things that *everyone* says is awful - *just how great*.

Why do you run? 
Because this.

Where does the name "Finny" come from? 
From here.

What language would you like to speak fluently? 
Italian and Spanish. I'm much closer on Spanish, but I haven't spent as much time with Italian because of my one million other hobbies.

Actually, fuck that shit, I'd rather be able to speak Greek. Or Japanese. Or Arabic. Or Pashto. Or something that would completely freak people out to hear me - a blondish American girl - speaking fluently.

What celebrity do you have a crush on? 
John Cusak. Matt Damon. Renee Russo. The Rock. Pierce Brosnan. Nicole Kidman. Mike Rowe. Val Kilmer. Johnny Knoxville. 

Have you ever been arrested?
Yep. 

Ok, so that ought to do it. Every single one of your questions has been answered in one way or another and the window for question asking is now closed.

That's mean, isn't it?

Whatever...on to post 999 and the Super Secret Guest Blogger who you've probably already guessed.

Then...1,000 and the BIG HUGE THING NEWS.

I'm going to go jump in a lake now.

Flip-flops: The latest in winter wear.

Remember when I told you the big news?

No?

You know...about our fireplace? The new one?

Still, no?

With the remote control that will keep me safe from blowing off my face?

Really? Still, no?

The one that will retire the Ugly Librarian Sweater?

Oh yeah, NOW you remember. You're just like Bubba. I can say a million meaningful things but the second I mention that, "blahblahblah I don't think I'll need the Ugly Librarian Sweater anymore blahblahblah", his eyes light up like it's Christmas friggen morning.

Sheesh.

Anyway, so the new fireplace. It's in.

The sub-contractors who came out to professionally torture me with their Down With The Sickness ringtones also happened to install our gas insert over the course of, like, five hours, so now I get to push ON with delight and watch my fireplace do something that used to take at least 20 minutes, a change of clothes, a hike to the backyard (usually in the rain) and a few tries to get going.

POOF - on. I love that.

And, an announcement that may be of greater importance than the potential retiring of the Ugly Librarian Sweater - I can possibly wear flip-flops year round now.

SERIOUSLY! That is big news right there. Not that I'll be able to work on my flip-flop tan in the winter months since, while I can be warmed by this fake fire, I can not actually be tanned by it, but still - big news that I won't have to maybe wear socks and leg warmers and slippers all at once to keep my toes from freezing off from November - April.

That is awesome.

Unfortunately, we haven't quite mastered restraint with the push button greatness of this fireplace yet and so ended up cooking ourselves into a Finny and Bubba stew yesterday as we watched Sunday football and made up for a Saturday off of NaNoWriMo by writing 3K+ words in one sitting.

It's possible that my novel has taken on a football theme, though I can't be sure since I refuse to go back and read anything I've written because I'll be too tempted to edit. And you can't edit during NaNoWriMo!

I mean, you can, but then you might kill your word count and no one wants that.

So, yeah, this post isn't really all that substantive, but I thought you should know that I will probably be wearing flip-flops all winter long when I'm at home, while NOT wearing the Ugly Librarian Sweater as long as when the gas bill arrives it doesn't rival our mortgage payment.

Because we fully realize that we're riding the sweet spot with the new fireplace right now. That time after it's arrived BUT before you get the bill, so you *don't really know how bad it will be* so you just crank it up and then, when it gets too hot, you turn it off and open the front door to catch a breeze as though it's the middle of July.

Yeah, we've been bad. But I'm sure that first bill will set us straight.

So, on second thought, the Ugly Librarian Sweater may be back IN and the flip-flops may go back out into the garage with the off-season clothes, but I'm waiting for that first bill to decide. Don't tell Bubba.

And sorry for the bizarre posts this month, you'll have to bear with me, as NaNoWriMo is working in tandem with the fireplace to cook my brains.

Witness me melting the hell down.

I've ignored a lot of laptop stickers.

I've gazed past Tshirts and pretended to be paying attention to traffic when faced with window clings.

I've conducted my blog-following life in Reader and so have been widely ignorant of web badges of all types.

In fact, I've made a practice of being outwardly ignorant about all these blogging and webby monikers and acronyms.

NaNoBloMo? What is this thing you speak of? Surely *I* don't know. Sounds sort of erotic, if you ask me.

NaNoWriMo? Is this something made up by Apple? I see product placement all over this.

365 Days? OK. I realize that's not an acronym, but what does it mean?

I'll tell you what ALL of these mean, folks, WORK.

Hard, busy, slaving, soul-crushing, self-doubting, finger sweating, anxiety-inducing, sleep-sucking, creativity-sponging, daily time-rationing WORK.

And because I have finished the training and running of two half marathons already this year and have only the hehe I'm not training for that 5K Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving upon which to set my goal-driven sights and apparently need something personally and mostly uselessly stressful in my life, I finally gave in and admitted that I knew the meaning of one of these nerdy acronyms.

And by "gave in" I mean, I stopped ignoring emails from close friends encouraging me to take part in said acronymic event, stopped searching my calendar *to the bone* for somethinganything that would keep me legitimately tied up for the month of November and unblocked the websites in my browser that had been hiding behind the firewall as though they were full of porno and I was my own eight year old kid.

Which makes no sense. And also I didn't do that last one because, can you even do that?

Anyway, what I'm saying is that I held out a really, really long time and feigned ignorance until I was weak and impressionable and finishing up my second week of the glorious Post-Race Break Week with just a little bit of guilt wandering in and out of my goal-free mind when I finally decided to stop being such a fucking pussy and just sign up already.

Sign up for what, you ask? Well, hop over from that reader or just lookie at that sidebar and you'll find out.

Finger too tired to click? Eyes too worn out to look right ----> over -----> there ---->?

NaNoWriMo.

I signed up for National Novel Writing Month.

Finally. After three years of pretending I didn't know what it was. Pretending that people on the Internets were all crazy and who has time like this and what would I write about and oh please as though I can work, run, sleep, blog, eat, garden, have Thanksgiving aaaaaaaaaannd write 50,000 words in a month. Please, now. Don't say crazy things.

Well, the crazy is out of the bag for you all to see. I've succumbed to peer pressure for the whateverTH time in my life and, rather than trying a new gateway drug or going under the bleachers with a football player (sadly - never happened), will be torturing myself to the tune of 50,000 words in November with the expressed written intent of being a "winner". Which means I actually write something with 50,000 legitimate words in it.

The prize? I think there's some sort of web badge. And, hey, I'll have 50,000 of my own words to keep me warm at night when Bubba's out of town. And, uh, I can scramble them all up Lorem Ipsum style and print them onto fabric at Spoonflower and then make myself a straightjacket?

Yeah, so there's not really a prize.

Unless you've thought that one day you'd maybe if you get a good idea or have a life-changing experience or an epiphany or witness something unbelievable write a novel and then TEE DAH! have managed to turn 31 without writing more than what one would consider readable squat and could really use written proof that you're not a total lost cause.

THEN - that is the prize. Proof that you're not a lost cause. Good enough for me.

Also, then, I maybe won't sign up for any more long distance races this year because you know how I get.

So, what this means is that my posts in November may cover topics like the merits of quiet Mac keyboards vs super clacky ThinkPad ones, the maximum recommended daily dosage of Excedrin when combined with black tea and those so-good-they're-fucked-up truffles from TJ's, whether any of you know how to train dogs to type, if you know where I can find a fuel belt with a laptop attachment and whether there's an app for NaNoWriMo and whether it's worth trading in my Blackberry to get an iPhone so I can use it.

It probably won't mean I'll give up blogging, though, even though it seems like one couldn't possibly average 1,800 words a day PLUS blog PLUS work PLUS whine like a snively bitch, but I'm here to tell you that I think I can.

Mostly because my snivley bitchitude is pretty strong. And I believe that it can fortify me in times of stress, much like some runners gain strength from the adrenaline of other runners in a race (not me, I cry inside instead). And also because you well know that I can't bear public shaming and this is pretty public when the counter is right there (or will be) for everyone to see and judge.

JUDGERS!

Now, what happens to my 50,000 word digital fish wrap come December 1? Dunno. I guess we'll just have to see if I live through the experience and have any hair left. Why is hair important?

When is hair NOT important?

I don't know why I feel so strongly about that last part.

Wow. I just realized how poorly this might go. Yay for December.

There's a reward at the end of this post. Probably.

I have an hour to kill before I can go pick up Jada from her surprise emergency trip to the vet that's scaring the ever loving fuck out of me, so I decided that this was a good time to write a blog post about...

I have no idea.

I could write about death, since that seems to be a pervasive theme of my 2014, but I don't really dig on morbidity unless you count my phase of loving black toenail polish and listening to Depeche Mode.

Which I don't.

I do, for the record, still love black toenail polish and am waiting extremely impatiently for my two lost toenails to regrow so that I can make all 10 toes look as busted as the few that remain.

My feet are still fucked from JMT, y'all, is what I'm trying to say.

I have two missing toenails, two blackish purplish soon-to-be-gone toenails, one warped toenail and five semi acceptable toenails that would look a lot more acceptable with a coat of shiny black polish.

As Bubba would say, "Oh my goth."

He's hilarious.

I could also write about work, because it's SO awesome at work and I love it SO much and it stresses me out SO much that I need an outlet for it, but I've never been a write-about-work blogger, so it's hard for me to do that now.

You tell me - would that even interest you? To hear about working in a greenhouse on a farm? Keep in mind that it is a farm mostly composed of greenhouses and herb crops and we don't have, say, a bunch of cute fuzzy animals and farm chic shit everywhere and my office is on a loading dock rather than, like, in a distressed red painted barn and I grow crops in a hydroponic system rather than in the dirt like I've been told "real" farmers do.

Just keep all that in mind and then make your decision: work talk or no?

I could write about why Jada's at the vet and how it was so super sudden and extra scary and how my heart has been breaking all day and I'm so fucking worried and Bubba's traveling for work and the two of us have been over-worrying all day long via Chat, but that'd be boring for you guys.

Or sad. And I don't like to write about shit that's boring and sad.

What about the holidays? KIDDING. Just saying that word made me throw up and curse Macy's and Costco.

And if you haven't seen what's happening at Macy's and Costco right now, then you and I could be friends. At least on Facebook. Because my friends have been posting pictures of what the inside of these two stores look like and it's scarier than when I first started watching Walking Dead.

I get scared during Walking Dead, OK, so shuttup.

TV! We could talk about TV! I mean, the series that are on TV and then go to Netflix or Amazon Prime or some other streaming service because we don't have regular TV anymore. Which I love.

I don't know why I held on to DirecTV or cable for so long. It's all a bunch of nonsense and lame content or good content saturated with stupid ads to the point that we can't even watch TV in hotels anymore.

We're spoiled by no commercials and on demand content of our choice.

So what if I watch Bob's Burgers every single day? And I binge watch series after series without going into the kitchen for a snack during the commercial breaks?

Oh wait - those are two awesome things. Yeah - fuck you, regular TV.

OK, so we talked about TV a little.

How about the garden? I mean, it's been so hot here and so dry that the summer garden has been long since pulled out and the winter garden planting is on hold until it's not seedling-melting temperatures anymore, but we could talk about the garden.

That's all I have to say about the garden: It's been hot. The garden can not be replanted until it's not so hot. HOT.

Have you heard that we're having an End of Days level drought out here in California and everyone's calling it the next Dust Bowl even though that kind of doesn't make sense but then if you think about it long enough it kind of does make sense? Yeah. It's hot and dry here and it's been that way for about three years and now shit's getting real.

Like, I've been driving over the same reservoir for the last three years on my way to Santa Cruz every day and that thing is vanishing before my very fucking eyes.

Soon the bridge over the reservoir is going to be pointless and kids being born around now are going to be saying, "Mommy, why is there a bridge here if it just goes over nothing?" And mommy will say, "Shut the hell up back there and try not to sweat because you can't take a bath for three more weeks."

It's dire.

But that topic, too, is sad and boring, so let's skip it.

NANOWRIMO! Let's talk about that.

I was going to do it this year. I even started an outline in Scrivener and started researching shit and behaving like someone who has done this shit before and then...reality.

I have no time for NaNoWriMo this year. I mean, if I wanted to ignore Bubba and Jada, not bathe, fall asleep and drown in my hydroponic system at work and/or alienate myself from all of society in the name of writing something about which I'm only remotely excited still, then yes, I'd have time.

But my response to all that which I just said is, No thank you.

Instead, I've agreed to be a NaNoWriMo mentor for my sister, who's doing it for the first time this year. I feel like that is a good midway point for me so that I don't feel like a complete abandoner of shit I love and also like a decent sister.

Two wins is better than one big bummer, I say.

And now it's time to go pick up Jada from the vet, so thank you for humoring this very long-winded time killer of a blog post and for your reward, I will write about whatever you want next time.

Seriously.

Throw a topic out there and I'll spin some bullshit for you.

Come on. You know you want it. Bullshit that is. Custom written bullshit.

Go.

Do you smell that?

That burning smell? I can smell it. Yep - THAT.

Don't be alarmed - it's just my brain melting down. Because NaNoWriMo is really not going as smoothly as I previously and naively thought that it surely would.

Don't be confused by the word count you see in the sidebar - it may be in the 20Ks, but only two of those words make sense in their context, I'm sure of it.

I mean, I kinda knew I'd be in for some shit once I got through the honeymoon phase of the first few days - with my fresh new idea turning to molten crap right there on the screen in front of me, but I was really a whore about the whole thing in the beginning and was all up to my shoulders in that false sense of supremacy that can only come from someone who has never tried to write a novel.

I was all, Shit - I have this awesome, funny premise and a whole month to write about it, it's going to be kick ass! And, who are all these people complaining - how hard could this be? Losers.

Well, pee shaw - I am the loser now.

And why? Because all the shit that they talk about in the NaNo forums about characters becoming boring and plots losing steam and fingers bouncing off laptops while resulting in zero coherent words on the page are totally a reality in my life now.

And it's all because I never lost that "I am different and therefore will not experience the issues that normal people do due to my specialness" quality that has been a part of my psyche from the time when I was a small child.

Like, you know when you watch a movie and there's a smart girl and a not so smart girl or a powerful boss and a downtrodden assistant or a clever thief and a dumb sidekick or the hot chick and the ugly chick? Well, in my mind, I'm always the smart girl/powerful boss/clever thief/hot chick.

I would always just align myself with those characters even though, as I get older and (one would hope) wiser, I've realized that not only am I not the smart, powerful, clever hottest girl, but I'm not even in the movie. I'm not even in the best seat in the fucking movie theater and I paid $12 to get in here and am wearing jeans with a hole in the crotch and dirty flip-flops with a very old pedicure.

So, what I'm saying is that it has come to my attention that I've spent a lot of my life being very delusional about who and what I am, what I can and can not do (Kung Fu is a good example) and what I do and do not look like and despite that jarring realization and vague but lagging understanding, I still somehow didn't adequately prepare myself for NaNoWriMo, but instead allowed my brain to delude me into thinking that somehow this was going to be easy like Sunday morning even when other people were balancing on building ledges as the task approached.

This also explains why I still take pairs of size 6 jeans into the dressing room with me even though I haven't been a size 6 in jeans since my freshman year of college. So delusional.

What I should have been telling myself was, "Look, woman, it is very difficult to write a novel. That is why not everyone does this. And you are not a fucking superwoman who has unique ideas that no one else has thought of AND the talent to sit down at a computer and put them to the page in an amusing or even relatively meaningful manner. So get off your high horse and go write something for the blog because at least there you can yammer about things you know, like running slowly around the block and spending ridiculous amounts of time planting shit in the ground. Leave novel-writing to the professionals and just go write some bad words for the internet to read because that's where you really belong."

Also, "That Snuggie isn't attractive and might as well be a fucking muumuu for the amount of action you're going to get while wearing it."

It hasn't been a fun ride these last few days.

I've had to take a new tact with the book and this tact doesn't please me. It's basically the Just Write Some Disjointed Stories About Your Characters And Then Maybe Someday Come Back And String Them Together With Swears method and I'm not sure it's going to work out.

I'll say it - I'm tired of these characters. They're not fun enough. And I don't know how to make them fun. I'm tired of the storyline. It's not interesting enough and I don't know how to make it interesting. My original inspiration that flowed from my brain like wine (see, that doesn't even make sense) has abandoned me for other more hospitable accommodations. Like, perhaps inside the head of a person who knows how to write compelling fiction, for instance.

I'm pretty sure my muse took one look at the garbage I was putting down on the page and was like, pfffffffft - this a total waste of my time.

And you know what? I don't even blame her. I'd leave my mess of an imagination right now, too, if I could. Because when I start to try to imagine what should go on with my fucked up story and boring characters my mind inevitably wanders off and starts putting together outfits for events not happening until 2010 or starts flipping through seed catalogs I haven't even received yet. This mind of mine has already decided that it would rather grow some kind of cantaloupe rather than honeydew but it can't make the female lead in this story do anything more interesting that bounce her three boobs around while sprinting across traffic!

It's maddening!

Anyway, I told you all that to tell you this: I've been quiet on the blog this week because all of my extraneous brain power left after work has been fitfully squooze onto the surface of my NaNo novel, leaving precious little left to fill this blog or even scratch out an intelligible note to the cleaning lady about please don't clean the microwave anymore because we don't use it and you keep putting it back wrong so that it clunks around and scares the dog when I try to make popcorn.

So, in a way, I'm sort of doing you a favor by sparing you my mindless rambling and endless whining and pointless bitching because I bet that if I'd shared with you my irretrievable delusions of grandeur with regard to novel writing when I said something about doing NaNoWriMo last month, you'd have told me to stick with the blog and forget about things as grandiose as stringing together 50,000 sensical words in one month's time.

Feel free to give me a good old, "I told you so", now because I totally deserve it. For being such a pompus bitch about this whole NaNo thing, even if it was all just in my head and I never actually said to anyone, "What's the big deal? So you write a book. Big whoop." because that's totally what I was thinking.

More wrong than size 6 jeans or thinking that my new haircut is going to look as good on me as it did on Jennifer Aniston when she cut it short (not The "Jennifer" haircut - that I did not like) and hated it but I thought it was really cute and filed it away as a haircut I'd maybe get one day if I had the balls to cut my hair short.

Well, I cut it short alright, but it still looks way cuter on Jennifer than it does on me, which is obvious because HELLO she is who she is and I am not her. Which seems like something about which I'd have previously have been aware, but thanks to my amazing self-deluding powers, was totally NOT aware of.

Again, it's been a rough week, delusional-wise.

I think I'll go run around the block. Slowly.