Two Exits, No Waiting

Food poisoning yesterday. Absolutely trashed me. As Robin Williams put it, "Your body says, 'Everybody out! Two exits, no waiting!'" Nine hours of that! And then I could barely move. The wife picked me up to take me to her house and take care of me. She had to help me get dressed. A Powerade did wonders for me. That and many, many hours of sleep. I still had to call out of work today, just walking the dog put me back in bed for hours. I'm feeling much better now and should be back at it tomorrow.

I just sent out The Dog Planet. That's number 88 of The One-Thousand. I'd write more, but I've got a bazillion things to catch up on and it wouldn't surprise me if more sleep was one of them.

Just Skip To The Good Part

If you want to avoid all the crappy boring stuff, just skip to the video at the bottom. You've been warned.

The weekend. The wife was up at 4 am and I at 5 am to make breakfast for two-hundred people for the PTO's breakfast with Santa. Save for the part about getting three hours sleep, it was kind of fun. I had a brief Lileks moment. Understand that because of the way these meals had to be served, we had to package them individually, as if they would be purchased for take-out. The little packages of syrup we included were not labeled "maple syrup" but instead labeled "table syrup" and I pictured the stuff inside being refined from the sap of freshly squeezed tables.

Then a quick trip to the wife's house, walk the dogs, and off to the five hour parenting class, which made watching paint dry seem like downhill racing. Suddenly it was dark again and my daughter needed to get to my computer for a couple hours for a science project. Dropped her off, came back, started working on something for the Sofa. The wife called, this was like midnight now, and we had to talk out some stuff so I went over there, talked it out, got a couple hours sleep, went home, slept for another forty-five minutes before being called into work early.

You can imagine what a pleasant mood I was in by that time. I don't totally remember what happened last night (I know there was driving involved), but I had to go to the Dreaded Monday Morning Meeting today, and after errands and my quarterly visit with Dad (Who, as a veteran who fought at Pearl Harbor, was bumming because he received very little mention in yesterday's paper on the sixty-seventh anniversary of the attack), I went home and slept and slept. My son came home from school and after our post-school meet and greet I went back to sleep. Then supper, library with daughter, and now, at 10:20 pm, I'm thinking I'm going to sleep again. This is normally very early for me. It's partly about catching up on three night's of lost sleep, partly trying to wash the memory of the weekend away.

I'm posting this, because it's one of my favorites for Christmas. Hall and Oates got intentionally goofy here and the video is as much fun as the song:

I Wanted You To Read It Here First

Thanks to Diane, for being follower number three and all the nice things she's said in my direction over the past year (including her comments here). If you haven't yet voted in the Sofanaut Awards nominations (and why haven't you?), then give Diane your love for "Best Narrator." Yes, we are a big mutual admiration society over at the Sofa. That's why we need your votes, so that it doesn't end in a fifty person tie for first place. Voting only lasts about twelve more days, so please have at it!

Tomorrow, I'm heading to the wife's school early on to help her with a Breakfast with Santa, the cooking and the clean-up. Then we're off to a parenting class which is a condition of the forthcoming divorce. That's at least twelve hours of my day between the two, so I'm not certain I'll be posting tomorrow, but I'll sure as heck try to get you your daily dose of Mattitude.

Oo. I just forgot. The class is near our good friend(Joel Kilmer, who first coined the word Mattitude)'s shop, Big Dog Comics. We'll have to stop by there for the latest issues of The Boys if we possibly can. Over the past month I've enjoyed the twentieth anniversary of meeting both Joel and my wife. Both meetings occured shortly after I moved to Florida. And I thought I wouldn't make new friends.

Of course, if Joel reads this, he might say, "What in the hell? I didn't know they were getting a divorce!" Well, all I can say, Joel, is that these things are best broken online, where I don't have to answer any questions!

My Little Hunter

The boy and I spent Thanksgiving at the wife's house. She stuffed us magnificently as usual. I got in a little golf on the Wii and dragged my score down. I'm out of practice, but at least I'm still pro.

We watched the new Futurama movie, Bender's Game. I'm sure there'll be a lot of haters out there like for the last one, but I loved it. It had a Dungeons & Dragons theme as the ads made clear, but they didn't spend as much time in the fantasy setting as I thought they would. Lots of Lord of the Rings jokes, D&D jokes and an inordinate amount of dwarf-eating. The family mostly slept through it as I laughed.

After my nap, I got up to see that my wife and her dog were gone. My dog, Cutie (I didn't name her), was whining to go out so I took her out and she struggled to run as she always does. She's a hunter and I assumed that she was on the scent of my wife, daughter and their pug, Pepper. I figured we'd catch up fast so I jogged behind her (as best I could). They weren't to be found right away, but I knew the dog was on the case.

She's the kind of dog that can take care of herself if left to her own devices. Years ago, when we would let her run loose, I'd find pieces of rabbit in the front yard. She ate well. She's almost ten, but she's got a clean bill of health from the vet and she's young at heart. I trusted her. We searched.

My wife sometimes takes rather long walks, so I wasn't put off by the lengthening journey. I kept thinking that we were about to find them around the next corner and my wife would say, "How did you find us here?" and I'd point proudly to my dog and say, "She tracked you here!" My wife would say, "No way." And I would say, "Yeah way." And then my wife would be so impressed that she'd call her sister on the other side of the state and her mother in Brooklyn and tell them about my incredible dog and they would be equally impressed.

We probably got past the mile and a half mark when I realized that Cutie had brought us around in a small loop and into a new direction I didn't think my wife would take. I checked the next street sign, walked a little farther and looked down at the dog.

"Bitch, you don't know where the fuck you're going, do you?" I said. She sniffed and tried to keep on. "No, I'm taking over now," I said and we made our way back. It was dark, it was cold (yes, it was only Florida cold, but if you live here for twenty years, it's the same as regular cold), and all I was thinking was, They're all just going to laugh at us now. My wife, my daughter, her sister, her mother, maybe even the pug. Cutie had seemed so confident!

Finally we got back. My wife said she had just walked around the corner, sans daughter, maybe two blocks away and come back, surprised we were gone.

My little hunter.

Now I walk and walk and walk, it's been part of my job for years. I can walk for miles and it doesn't bother me. But on this excursion, I moved pretty quickly, using my muscles in a running way more than a walking way, so three miles or so have messed me up. For some reason my left ankle told me to go screw. It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't want to bend upwards any more, either. So I've been walking around like some sort moronic monster movie creature for the last four hours, having to lift my leg up more than normal to move my foot forward. My wife and daughter got good laughs. Not Futurama type laughs, but good just the same. Here's hoping I'll be closer to normal in the morning.

My Woman Done Left Me

My wife, daughter and my daughter's dog are now living in another house, leaving me, my son and my son's dog in this one. No divorce, no separation, just one family living in two different houses.

Today was a good day. Still on hernia leave, I spent the day at my wife's place, waiting for the DirecTV guy while she was at work. I had many hours away from the enormously distracting internet and away from my needy dogs. I had hours to write and came up with one shade of an idea, one piece of flash-fiction and one two-thousand word story. It’s amazing what you can do when there’s nothing else to do. I really need to get away from reality more often. So, anyway stories sixty-four (The Ones That Got Away) and sixty-five (Dust Dog) are in the bag, though they haven’t yet been sent out. But will be by this time tomorrow.

A Good Day

It was a good day. I finally had the house to myself and I got some good work done on "Roothi." Sent out a story to Fantasy and Science Fiction. Really discovered Maria Mena, great stuff, great soft autumn music. I was on top this afternoon. For the first time I could remember, my body was quiet. Not too full, not too hungry, not too tired, not too hyper, I went to the post office resting back against the driver’s seat, windows open in the perfect day.

If I was hungry for anything, it was something different to read, something nourishing and well-written. I’ve decided to read what I want to read, rather than what I feel I should read and to give a work a few pages of my time and if it doesn’t earn anything more than that, toss it aside and move onto something better. I wanted some good character-driven mainstream fiction. You need to read the crazy stuff to feed your imagination and do something that approaches originality, but you’re not going to transcend the field without looking beyond it. I want to help bring science fiction into the realm of great writing. Many people have already done great work in that area, but as a genre it still has a ways to go. At least in this country.

So I picked up a number of things and read "Breakfast at Tiffany’s" today. I haven’t seen the film, but I’m betting it’s a bit different. I’ll compare notes with my movie-gluttonous wife tomorrow.

I’m hoping to have another go with "Roothi" tomorrow and maybe get her out the door by the weekend, but you never know. I won’t send something if I don’t think it’s ready. Of course, I’m off track for the one-thousand but it’s way too early in the race to sweat. Things are getting better every day.