I'm taking a very quick break from novel-writing a) because I'm waiting for a phone call, and everyone knows you can't go into full-blown novel-writing when you know your phone is going to ring at any moment... and b) I cannot NOT tell you this story.

When I went to pick up my kids at the bus stop yesterday, evidently I forgot to engage the emergency brake. (Engage? Is that the right word?) I say EVIDENTLY because I would have bet my last paycheck that I'd ENGAGED the emergency brake. I didn't. {One more digression: Before you ask why I drove to a bus stop to pick up kids... It does sound lazy of me... it's because the bus stop is far away. Not a block. Not even two. IT FEELS LIKE IT'S WAY OVER IN SIBERIA IN THE WINTER.} So the kids are climbing off the bus. Excited to see me, which is always nice. I'm showing off my new brace-less teeth to them for what feels like two minutes, give or take a few, and then we head toward my car that's now going down the street. NOBODY else was in my car. It was EMPTY when I shut the door and locked it........................................ .....................................................................................
So for approximately three long seconds I thought someone was stealing it. My mouth would have formed words that are so bad that not even my brother has ever heard of them. Only I couldn't speak. But then I realized that it wasn't getting stolen (phew!) because the car lurched across the other lane, slowly... slowly... cutting off traffic... then jumped a curb... and that's when I realized that nobody was driving it... right about the time it ran into a fence to somebody's yard.

The long and short of it is that my kids are okay. My car is okay. The cars on that busy street that had to stop for my runaway car are all okay. Even the fence is okay.

I'm not okay. It's like Groundhog Day in my head. I'm still running through heavy traffic after my car, I'm watching the slo-mo version of my car jumping the curb, boinging off the fence, rolling back into the heavy traffic, while I'm screaming, "DONNNNTTT MOOOOVVVVEEE!!!!" to my girls who are watching this with what I can only imagine is mortal humiliation. (Mortal? Is that right?)

On a completely off-the-topic other note, I finally finished War and Peace. It only took me four months. 

So do you know how many people probably went home and told their significant others about the runaway car and that crazy lady with the boots and the big white teeth chasing after it?? It's giving me nightmares, guys.

There's the phone. Gotta go!

Me: Jonah! Guess what!!
Jo: You finished your book??
Me: No!
Jo: Your braces are off??
Me: No! 
Jo: What then??
Me: Emma and Kyra got a kitty! And it already made itself at home! It just jumped on the couch and rolled onto its back and-
Jo: And started giving birth??

*approximately five minutes of open-mouthed idle speechlessness*

Me: No.

So I updated the website a little bit as ya'll can see. This is me pining for longer days. Letting in the light. Breathing in some fresh spring air, metaphorically speaking. I'm not sure if I'm going to stick around here. Here being Weebly. Weebly isn't bad as far as web hosts go. But there isn't a Weebly APP and so I can't access it through my Apple stuff. Now that I don't HAVE to, I don't always lug around my PC laptop when I travel. By the way, travel includes moving from my bedroom, which is upstairs, down to the my couch, which is downstairs, and OCCASIONALLY to the bathroom. I like listening to music when I shower!

But that's not why I'm posting. I'm posting to say this: I'm not done with anything. And I'm ALMOST done with everything. It's the way it is when you work nine- and ten-hour days as a federal employee. *cue the violins*

So this is, in essence, a cigarette break. No, I don't smoke, Internets, but my blog is the equivalent of screwing around when I should be writing the novel(s). And, as a federal employee, I'm here to tell you that the powers-that-be frown down on cigarette breaks that last longer than, say, five minutes. The boss would be hunting me down by now if this were my real job, tapping his make-believe watch and reminding me that this "habit" of mine is going to kill me.

I'll catch you on my next break.

At first I was going to post this pic because is there anything more precious than a little girl wearing a dress and snow boots walking in the snow with a cute mutt? But then I found it more compelling that it's been approximately one week since a snow event and my road still looks like a snowmobile trail on a mountain pass.

One of my New Year's resolutions is to take more of these pictures. And indulge in their many stories.

Today was supposed to be DAY 1 of my new hobby. Today was going to be the day that I replaced my grease-stained NaNoWriMo sweatpants with a fresh pair from the dryer at 6 AM-ish and embarked on my quest to become A RUNNER. Inspired by my daughter Toni, my sister Irene, my wonderful friends Russ, Laurie, and Jay, the ever-inspirational Dooce, and even the mother in my new story, I decided that maybe it was time I do something other than drink wine to ward off the depression that lurks behind me at all times, tapping me on the shoulder and raising its eyebrows seductively while whispering, "Meet me in the coat closet at noon, baby. And bring some rope."

But I woke up at 5:30 as I always do only to curl the blankets tighter around my neck because it sounded like I had been transported into a Snoopy novel. "It was a dark and stormy night." An hour later my bladder yanked me out of bed and so obviouslyI had to peek outside at DAY 1. This, friends, is what DAY 1 looked like:

I felt completely justified in putting off DAY 1. For the love of God, several inches of snow were blowing sideways, backwards, AND diagonally. So I drank coffee and read. I played Words With Friends. I attempted to wake up my daughter via text message. I fell in love with products that I don't need. I ignored my dirty kitchen. 

FOUR MORE hours have passed since then. In that time I've seen two runners blazing a trail along the bank of the river. And then to add insult to injury, this guy shows up as if to say, "Get your lazy ass out here, you good-for-nothing writer."

THIS IS SO NOT MY IDEA OF A GOOD TIME. But I'm strapping it on (the running shoes of course) and going for it. Because fuck the coat closet.

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.

I'm sitting on my bed which overlooks the Rio Grande. I'm clicking away at my keyboard, hit a rough spot in my story, and look up just in time to see a bald eagle take a nose dive into the river and come up with... something. I don't have my glasses on, but one can only assume it was a fish.

It suddenly hits me how much I take this place for granted on a very regular basis. Bald eagles fishing. Squirrels mating. Deer foraging. And aliens spying. I'm a lucky, lucky girl.

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.