OH MY GOD I EFFING DID IT

I am a winner!


And you probably can't see this very well, but there it is, for me to look at whenever I feel like crap:

In Sickness and in Fire

The Boy may have scarlet fever. SCARLET FEVER! We'll hear more later today when the lab tests come back. If there's any good news to come of this, it means we get to skip the enormous mass of extended family that will be at my parents' for Thanksgiving tomorrow.

Here's some further nice news.

That's Mr. Scarlet Fever over there on the right, playing Xbox. It's a terrible picture, because I'm entirely too lazy to get the real camera, but look at my toasty fire! The logs and a new gas line were installed today, and I am thrilled. The Boy is happy. The cats are bewildered.

And I only have about 6,000 words to go before I finish NaNoWriMo. Woo hoo!

Sharing the Love

Public radio is street, yo.

NaNoWriMo: Now with Cramps, for Extra Misery!

So I'm doing this. I waited a while to go public with it, because I was afraid I'd quit, but now that I'm 20,000 words in, I'm pretty sure I'll make it to the end. As The Boy used to say when he was little, "Phewf!" I signed up because my friend P wanted a writing buddy in the worst way, and because I am an idiot who always wanted to write a book. I'm one of those jerks who's read a lot of books and thought, "Pah! Why aren't I doing this? If this is as good as it has to be to get published, I should quit my day job!" Of course, I'm not a complete idiot, so I never quit my day job, and I limited myself to the occasional short story after I finished my writing degree in college. (English Writing: Fiction, with a minor in History and a certificate in Women's Studies. No wonder my mom frowned upon my choices--I graduated from school qualified for nearly nothing.)

Anyway, P is much more serious about being a writer than I am, and the idea of NaNoWriMo's crazy deadline and inexorable march toward a Daily Word Count appealed to her, because she knew she'd have to shut off her inner editor/critic/perfectionist and Just Write It (suck it, Nike). And I've always wanted to write a book. Honestly, my goals when I was in my 20s were to own a house, get a graduate degree, and write a book before I turned 40. Assuming I finish the (flaming pile of crap) book on November 30, I will have achieved each of those goals. Granted, these are technically the "lite" versions of these goals: Really I wanted a nicer house in a better neighborhood--with my husband still in it, I wanted a PhD in English, rather than the MLIS I have, and I wanted to actually PUBLISH a book, but hey. I'll take it.

If I finish this book (which is a completely stereotypical first novel, semi-autobiographical and all that. because, Write What You Know), I will feel like the poor sap at the end of the Invictus poem: Bloody, but unbowed.

If I don't finish, I'm pretty sure my future is doomed. DOOMED, I say. Because if I can't spend a month doing what is essentially little more than thirty 1,600-word homework assignments (THANK YOU, P), then I can't ever finish anything. Ever. And I'm doomed.

Cross your fingers for me. You'll never read my pile of dreck, but I promise you'll know when I've finished it.

Election Day, Plus: Has the Internet Killed Cool?

My sister and I voted this morning, dutifully following the example set for us by our parents, and gleefully canceling out their votes. We do it every election, and it never ceases to feel good.

***

In other news, have you guys heard the ubiquitous-to-pop-radio song Like a G6? It's catchy, and it sounds cool, and though I grasped the basic gist of what the song meant, many of the words were foreign to me. This is probably as it should be, as I am a nearly-40-year-old mom who hasn't seen the inside of a dance club in decades. Thanks to Urban Dictionary, though, I was able to get my geek on and translate.

First, though, here's a picture of the band, Far East Movement, so you can see how their Coolness Quotient far exceeds mine:

These people are clearly Too Cool for School. I'm probably too cool for . . . forget it; I'm not too cool for anything at all.

And now, the lyrics with translation:

Poppin bottles in the ice, like a blizzard (Easy: We put our alcohol on ice, like sensible people.)
When we drink we do it right gettin slizzard (Still easy, but for the curious, "slizzard" is a "dirty south" term for drunk.)
Sippin sizzurp in my ride, in my ride, like Three 6 ("Sizzurp" is a very likely disgusting drink whose Urban Dictionary entry I'll paste here: The original formula: Promethazine w/Codeine syrup Any fruit flavored soda A jolly rancher Put it all in a styrofoam cup and enjoy. The codeine is mainly responsible for the euphoria felt after drinking sizzurp. Promethazine causes motor skill impairment, lethargy, and extreme drowsiness. If it doesn't have promethazine, it ain't real sizzurp. DXM is not a component of sizzurp, although it may produce vaguely similar effects to the above recipe in doses ranging from 150 - 250 mg. "Three 6" is a group comprising rappers from Tenessee.)
Now I'm feelin so fly like a G6 (It's a play on words! Even the lamest among us knows that "fly" is super-cool, and a G6 is A PLANE (a very expensive Gulfstream G650)! Oh, the hilarity!)
Like a G6, Like a G6
Now now now now now now I'm feelin so fly like a G6
Like a G6, Like a G6
Now now now now now now I'm feelin so fly like a G6

So there you have it. The song goes on in its catchy way, making me wonder about the fact that one of the singers repeats, "When sober girls around me, they be actin like they drunk (I can't decide whether it means that his charm radiates so strongly that it intoxicates even women who abstain from alcohol, or if it means that he realizes that certain women might feign intoxication in his presence in order to try to get something from him without being taken advantage of)," but that's pretty much it.

Anyway, I feel like Far East Movement would be really disappointed if they knew that I knew what all their slang meant. Isn't the point of slang, after all, to keep out undesirables? And isn't a middle-aged, lower-middle-class mom pretty much Undesirable No. 1 (me and Harry Potter, man--me and Harry Potter)? But the Internet allowed me to decipher their codes in mere keystrokes.

Nothing is sacred. Cool is dead. And now I'm off to find a red plastic cup to mix up a drink in.