020.
Cumulative NaNoWriMo word count: 6,627
Today I had to go talk to a guy, and another guy, and I guess both conversations went pretty well. That's all I have to say about that. I did careful things in preparation. I did superstitious things. Lucky things. I clothed myself carefully, tried to sculpt my hair into some suitably "adult-looking" shape, though my choices at this point are pretty much limited to scraggly pageboy-ish thing, pigtails, tiny ponytail, wet spaniel, and Wear A Hat.
My dress is dark blue with white dots on it; the blue is made of silk and the dots are made of old paint, which is always flaking away and leaving patches of white paint speckles on my black messenger bag. (I am one of those people who hauls the same student-ish, unnecessarily large bookbag almost everywhere instead of just having a purse or using pockets.) Someday it will be a dark blue dress with faint, faint circles like stains where the dots used to glare out at you like moons. Right now, this is my favorite dress; like about half of my dresses, it was normal, if snazzy, clothing in 1956. In 2011 it probably looks a little weird to most people, even now that "vintage fashion" is coming back in style thanks to television programs I have never seen. I like the little waists on these dresses, and the full skirts; a few of them, I'm considering adjusting the hemlines so they'll be more just-past-the-knee length than middle-of-the-calf length (which looks really odd and dowdy on a short, slight person, I think). Not on the blue polka dot dress though. It's perfect.
The sky was also blue today, albeit bright, robin's egg. It was sixty degrees. A little over a week ago, the sky was snowing. Don't ask me to explain these things. This is my favorite kind of weather, although I do like slightly more cloud cover because I sunburn easily. The squirrels like it, too.
Yes, I heard about it. Yes, that is the town in which I live. Yes, these are shocking and terrible secrets being brought to light. No, I don't have anything much to say. I'm sick of hearing about it by now.
You left a bruise under my left shoulder. Still there.
My dad and I made quesadillas for dinner, and I made the same mistake I always make with quesadillas, which is to be stingy with the refried beans for the first five or so because I'm afraid of running out and then realize I still have a ton of beans left and I need to use up the whole can and then end up making the last three or thereabouts so full of beans they leak out the sides of the tortillas and there's barely enough room for anything else to go inside.
I should make it clear that these aren't real quesadillas. Sometimes we put potatoes in them, which I don't think is anywhere near the traditional or standard quesadilla filling. They're more like grilled sandwiches with cheese, beans, and a random assortment of other vegetables or tubers we happened to have on hand that happen to be sitting inside a folded-over tortilla, which is why we call them quesadillas. (Or "kay-SAH-dilluhs.")
One thing I think would be great about being a musician is that musicians get to be in rock bands, etc. Writers don't have an equivalent, really. There's no such thing as a poetry band. A weird-ass, quasi-literary fiction band. Instead of bouncing your ideas off a bunch of other talented, enthusiastic people with similar (or at least compatible) aesthetics, collaborating on awesome projects, and forcing/encouraging each other to practice and work even when it's hard and frustrating and you're stuck and you don't feeeeeel like it, instead of all that, you get to sit alone at a desk a whole lot, if you're an aspiring writer. You get to be clueless. You get to be clueless all by yourself, trying to figure out how to do what you want to do based on a handful of advice-crumbs from English teachers, etc. and the gut instinct a person develops from reading, reading, reading while other people are making friends, learning trigonometry, and playing beer pong. I wish there were bands for writers. Oh, I'm sure there are "literary collectives" or just literary cliques, out there that sort of fill that function, but they might as well be on Neptune as far as I'm concerned.
My sister has informed me that I'm the human incarnation of the Socially Awkward Penguin meme. A lot of people say that about themselves, but I don't know how many have had another person just declare that they're SAPs (ha!) right out of the blue. Whatever; it is true that when I'm in roll call situations I tend to spend so much time reminding myself to listen for my name and preparing myself to shout HERE! when my name gets called that I miss it and the next thing I know someone's been shouting my last name for several seconds and I spring up and start waving my arms like a castaway sighting a cruise ship: OH! RIGHT! HERE! OVER HERE! THAT'S MY NAME! I'M PRESENT! SORRY!
I'm here. Yeah.
Today I had to go talk to a guy, and another guy, and I guess both conversations went pretty well. That's all I have to say about that. I did careful things in preparation. I did superstitious things. Lucky things. I clothed myself carefully, tried to sculpt my hair into some suitably "adult-looking" shape, though my choices at this point are pretty much limited to scraggly pageboy-ish thing, pigtails, tiny ponytail, wet spaniel, and Wear A Hat.
My dress is dark blue with white dots on it; the blue is made of silk and the dots are made of old paint, which is always flaking away and leaving patches of white paint speckles on my black messenger bag. (I am one of those people who hauls the same student-ish, unnecessarily large bookbag almost everywhere instead of just having a purse or using pockets.) Someday it will be a dark blue dress with faint, faint circles like stains where the dots used to glare out at you like moons. Right now, this is my favorite dress; like about half of my dresses, it was normal, if snazzy, clothing in 1956. In 2011 it probably looks a little weird to most people, even now that "vintage fashion" is coming back in style thanks to television programs I have never seen. I like the little waists on these dresses, and the full skirts; a few of them, I'm considering adjusting the hemlines so they'll be more just-past-the-knee length than middle-of-the-calf length (which looks really odd and dowdy on a short, slight person, I think). Not on the blue polka dot dress though. It's perfect.
The sky was also blue today, albeit bright, robin's egg. It was sixty degrees. A little over a week ago, the sky was snowing. Don't ask me to explain these things. This is my favorite kind of weather, although I do like slightly more cloud cover because I sunburn easily. The squirrels like it, too.
Yes, I heard about it. Yes, that is the town in which I live. Yes, these are shocking and terrible secrets being brought to light. No, I don't have anything much to say. I'm sick of hearing about it by now.
You left a bruise under my left shoulder. Still there.
My dad and I made quesadillas for dinner, and I made the same mistake I always make with quesadillas, which is to be stingy with the refried beans for the first five or so because I'm afraid of running out and then realize I still have a ton of beans left and I need to use up the whole can and then end up making the last three or thereabouts so full of beans they leak out the sides of the tortillas and there's barely enough room for anything else to go inside.
I should make it clear that these aren't real quesadillas. Sometimes we put potatoes in them, which I don't think is anywhere near the traditional or standard quesadilla filling. They're more like grilled sandwiches with cheese, beans, and a random assortment of other vegetables or tubers we happened to have on hand that happen to be sitting inside a folded-over tortilla, which is why we call them quesadillas. (Or "kay-SAH-dilluhs.")
One thing I think would be great about being a musician is that musicians get to be in rock bands, etc. Writers don't have an equivalent, really. There's no such thing as a poetry band. A weird-ass, quasi-literary fiction band. Instead of bouncing your ideas off a bunch of other talented, enthusiastic people with similar (or at least compatible) aesthetics, collaborating on awesome projects, and forcing/encouraging each other to practice and work even when it's hard and frustrating and you're stuck and you don't feeeeeel like it, instead of all that, you get to sit alone at a desk a whole lot, if you're an aspiring writer. You get to be clueless. You get to be clueless all by yourself, trying to figure out how to do what you want to do based on a handful of advice-crumbs from English teachers, etc. and the gut instinct a person develops from reading, reading, reading while other people are making friends, learning trigonometry, and playing beer pong. I wish there were bands for writers. Oh, I'm sure there are "literary collectives" or just literary cliques, out there that sort of fill that function, but they might as well be on Neptune as far as I'm concerned.
My sister has informed me that I'm the human incarnation of the Socially Awkward Penguin meme. A lot of people say that about themselves, but I don't know how many have had another person just declare that they're SAPs (ha!) right out of the blue. Whatever; it is true that when I'm in roll call situations I tend to spend so much time reminding myself to listen for my name and preparing myself to shout HERE! when my name gets called that I miss it and the next thing I know someone's been shouting my last name for several seconds and I spring up and start waving my arms like a castaway sighting a cruise ship: OH! RIGHT! HERE! OVER HERE! THAT'S MY NAME! I'M PRESENT! SORRY!
I'm here. Yeah.