Those of you who know me well know that yesterday was a monstrously important day in my life for at least two reasons, maybe three.  The first and least important reason is that it was my and Mark Twain's birthday. Google chose to honor Mr. Twain with a sweet yet predictable picture of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer whitewashing a fence. And maybe someday in the far far off future when I'm cold and dead in the ground, they'll honor me with a picture of a hairy boy looking at some flashing green lights with a pair of binoculars. You will get that eventually. Today, only my two oldest kids do. Lo siento.

Anyway, the SECOND and slightly more important reason it was important was that I not only had a birthday but I had a FORTIETH birthday. I am FOORRTTYY. If I say it enough times maybe I'll actually start to believe it. I still feel every bit of 38.5.

But the THIRD and most important reason yesterday was so important was because it was the final day of National Novel Writing Month. *drumroll please* Wait for it... wait.... okay, there's no easy way to say this. I didn't win. In other words, I failed. By my quick calculations using a phone calculator I was 72 percent done when I called it a night. Put another way, I needed 13,813 more words to call myself a winner. Put yet another way, I AM A NANO-LOSER.

Now, I came to this blog post fully prepared to list all the reasons why I couldn't do it, like the fact that I have FLU and thus went to bed two hours early last night. And THANKSGIVING happened. A thousand other things went wrong for me throughout the month. But, you know, that's the human condition, and all those people who won the big 50k-word bragging right had crap happening to them as well. So.... I'm going to spare you the list of the thousand other things. And I'm going to finish this novel which, according to nanowrimo.org, isn't going to be until maybe December 12 at the pace I'm going. Gee, thanks for that nifty feature, wrimos.

The good news is that I've got this unbelievably compelling story. I send my oldest kid chapters every few days and she keeps asking me to hurry up and finish so she can know what happens in the end. Dudes, that's a really great 40th birthday present right there.

At this very moment in time, I am 2,085 under par. This means that I've written 16,248 words in 10.5 days which, for me, translates into 58 pages, 18 chapters, and 3 main characters, possibly 4. I only have to write 33,752 more words in 20 days, and then I can turn 40 in UTTER peace.

I don't have Nanobuddies this go-round, so I enlisted the help of my children to meet the goal. To my complete surprise, they happily agreed to whine and complain when I don't send them chapters to read. I get text messages from my daughter saying, "Go out and buy yourself a frito pie. You know you want to. You deserve a frito pie. Frito pies are good for you. They make you be a better writer. Treat yourself to a frito pie today."

Later, I found out that she's the new ad coordinator for Sonic Drive In. Which, brava, she deserves it. I mean, really, what do frito pies have to do with writing? But she convinced me to throw a coat over my sweatpants and sweatshirt and stretch my legs by walking out to the garage. And so I went! I drove to Sonic! And then Sonic! told me that they don't do the frito pie anymore.... at least not this Sonic!

I've come to a couple of conclusions this morning as I sit in my bed wearing a sweater, a scarf, and three layers of thermal underwear. First, I think the reason I'm so intolerant to the cold is because I spent most of my free time at my grandparents house where we all used to sit around a winter fire wearing bathing suits, sweating and seeing visions. Not that it was what anyone could call SUPER COLD in southern New Mexico, but even if it was 30 degrees outside, a person would walk into their house and be hit in the face with a very stiff 115-degree heat. For the first 20 years of my life I thought this was normal.  Imagine my surprise when I moved to Colorado and worked in offices and visited homes where people were complaining about the heat when the thermostat was set to 68 Fahrenheit. People, that's a whole 50 DEGREES COLDER than my body was used to whilst indoors.

After living here for a decade I've become one of those people. Not the I'm-hot-at-68-degree-thermostat people, but the I-have-to-keep-the-heat-at-68-degree-or-colder-because-I-can't-afford-to-be-warm people. I have yet to acclimate to this torture chamber called the San Luis Valley, and frankly if I'm gonna blow $800 every month, I want it to come with souvenirs and syrupy drinks with umbrellas. Electric heat is a beyotchhhhh.

I miss you Grandma and Grandpa. I miss your parties, your food, your very loud telephone, your chickens and roses and apricots, but I mostly miss your warmth... and not just the kind that came from your woodburners.

Back to NaNoWriMo-ing.

 My working title is Hairy Jesus and the Lime Lights, and I'm having way more fun writing this than the title suggests.