Done.

I now own a new car and am a novelist. I will be passed out in bed for a few days…

Oh, and…

Is anyone watching How I Met Your Mother? OMG so friggin’ funny this week! Ted wakes up from a night of err…heavy…drinking in bed with a strange woman, a pineapple on his nightstand, a sprained ankle, and the words, “Hi, my name is Ted. If found, please call 555-555-555″ written on his forearm, and he remembers nothing! His friends piece together his night, and let me just say this show is pure gold!! The 18-34 crowd should be eating this up like candy…Seriously, if you haven’t seen it yet, watch it! Monday nights…This is not a mild show…And guys, you really will like it…some good guy humor about dating…well actually about dating anything that moves…

Today is Very Big Day

Today I will complete my NaNoWriMo book. I will ALSO be buying a car and getting a raise. Seriously! How totally cool is that?

I work with my parents…but I have been working here for 3 years, no raise. It wasn’t until I started talking about a new car, or rather, that I would have to buy out my lease to afford a car at all, that my father realized I hadn’t received even a cost of living increase. (And by the way, at this point, our warehouse manager has received THREE raises since I have been here…) He had asked what I was going to get when my lease ran out and I told him I was just buying the car. Well…He decided as a father, that was not a good idea…I needed a new car, under warranty. And voila! An overdue raise appeared…

Sometimes working with family has it’s advantages…this summer for instance when my grandmother was so sick. We all took about three weeks off over the course of the summer to take care of her. There is no way I could have pulled that off working somewhere else. It also comes in handy when the sun starts setting early, and your parents don’t want their only child to be in a huge empty building all alone…Almost daily I have to kick and scratch and fight to stay just 10 minutes late when they are leaving. I explain I will be right behind them, but my mother will just wait for me to finish…(this has a downside though. I work really well at the end of the day, and I would get more done if I wasn’t kicked out of the office…but I will take it for what it’s worth.)

So for all the shit I put up with working with my family, and believe me, adding a family dynamic to the work place creates A LOT of shit, often the benefits out weigh the negatives. Oh except when you are hungover and want to call in sick…not possible…the ‘rents get worried you have strep throat or something…chicken soup, cough syrup, “go to the doctor,” the whole nine yards come out, and you feel fine by three…Emm, yeah, doesn’t go over too well...

So anyway, today, I am buying a brand spanking new car…anyone wanna take a guess what kind? Oh let me just show you…
Isn’t it B-A-U-tiful!!!?

A 2006 Nissan Xterra SE!
And yes, it is exactly like my old car only 5 years newer….I couldn’t think of a way to top a yellow car! I mean how could you? And there is no other car out there that I am even slightly interested in, so this is what it HAD to be! It is TOTALLY supped up, Rockford Fosgate sound system, with NINE speakers, 17″ wheels, step rails, security alarm, leather wrapped steering wheel…EVERYTHING!

AND I got a great deal. All on my own. I negotiated the whole deal myself. My mother went for support on Saturday, but she didn’t say a word. And the sales guy (who helped me when I was helping my father get my mother a 350Z last year–which I also negotiated single-handedly) looked at my mother and said, “Man, she bargains.” I looked at him and said, “No, no T.J., I just make you work!”

So the end deal is a car for $4000 below MSRP and a below prime APR (which I also negotiated for). Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I CAN NEGOTIATE!

So today is a day for the record books. By midnight, I will have bought my first car (last one was in my mom’s name because I was still in grad school and it was a lease) and be a novelist. I really should go buy a bottle of champagne tonight…

38 Hours To Go

I have just 38 measly hours to go for NaNoWriMo. I am down to approximately 4,000 words or 6 pages to write, and this book is not half bad!

Now that it is nearly done (and I know what it’s about) I will give you a brief synopsis:

Kismet

Mel is a smart, attractive, seemingly pulled together woman. At just 26 she has it all, the house, the car, she is Art Director for a major account at a great ad agency, stunning clothes, even a great cat, but what she is still missing is the love of her life.

In a cruel twist of fate, she finds herself working on a pro bono job for an amazing man, Eelco, who is from the hometown of the love of her life, Eindhoven, Holland. She falls for Eelco at first sight, but she is torn by the knowledge that fate has handed her a second chance with Sebastiaan, the man she fell in love with almost 10 years earlier while traveling in Europe. We learn that although she spent very little time in Sebastiaan presence, she knew before she even met him that he was special. Time and reason, though have kept them separated by an ocean.

While her love life is falling apart or coming together (she isn’t sure which) her career nearly takes a faulty step. A vengeful coworker has put her account in jeopardy and she is determined to find the troublemaker to save her friend’s job, her own job, and the pro bono account that could bring her closer to both Eelco and Sebastiaan.

Torn between the only two men she has ever loved, she travels to Eindhoven to work on the pro bono campaign and figure out where she stands with Sebastiaan. She is standing at a fork in the road and she is given the chance to see part of her destiny. Now if she could only decide which way to step.

Happy Thanksgiving and Text Me, Baby

Something strange happened today. Each year, I tend to get three or four calls from close friends on Thanksgiving, and I might make one or two. But today, the phone never rang. Not once. It beeped though. Starting at 10am, I received no less than 6 text messages wishing me a Happy Thanksgiving. Not one phone call. This is a very interesting shift to me and it means one of three things:

A) My friends were afraid to disturb my festivities, and decided a text message was less intrusive while still conveying the message of good wishes.

B) Text messaging intruded less into their festivities.

C) My friends didn’t want to call, because I talk too much (quite plausible actually…)

But the outcome was sweet wishes and no guilt over missed calls, or cutting short conversations. I quite liked it…

The text message is quite an invention. So with that in mind…

Hppy Thnksgvng 2 U!

I Still exist. I Swear.

Writing 2,000 words a day is taking it out of me a bit for writing my blog. I am still around. Just writing, writing, writing…but in other news, I am having a fun little Christmas party this year…It’s a gift exchange with naughty gag gifts…I get so bored of traditional Christmas parties, so I figured I’d liven up the season…thought you all might like to see the illustration I did for it…(Note: I am not yet talented enought to draw the girl…she came from iStockPhotos but I did the tree and the writing and all…)

NaNoWriMo

I am nearing the end of my NaNo experience. There is just a scant 11 days left. I have mixed feelings about this. I am thrilled that is almost over, but I will be sad to not have the relaxed sense of self that I get when I write with no distractions. I have found that my loft, which overlooks my living room, and has lovely dark wood floors, and my favorite burnt orange couch (which has been around since before I was born, and was a huge hit at UT where anything that bleeds burnt orange is nearly on par with a 2005 National Championship win) is the perfect place to write. The music drifts up to me, in soothing creative tones from my iPod telling me the trials and tribulations of Dave Matthews, and the Shins, and Jack Johnson, and Frou Frou, then a little Gwen Stephani or Black Eyed Peas pops up, and for all of it, I feel a little more creative and connected to that side of myself.

I stare at what I have done each day; a few thousand words that had never been written the day before, and I wonder if I can sculpt this mess of a completely non-literary work into something I am willing to hock, or even share.

As I write though, something strange has happened. I am tapping into some very old feelings. It is scary. Scary in that way that makes you pull back and want to push the feelings back inside, into that hole behind your stomach where they belong. To not share them. To not share those moments, because they were some of the most personal of your life.

I share a lot. I tell a lot. I have very few secrets with the world, but this book is pulling out things I hadn’t realized I had never spoke of. The book is fiction, but it is based on the relationship I had with the man I can only describe as Possibly The One. I have yet to meet someone who I was so completely over the moon for. Someone who, when I stepped back was flawed, but to me, he was perfect. He lives thousands of miles away in Holland, and he has since professed his non-love of me, and I have come to terms with that, but for 7 years, I was ready and willing to do anything to try it out. To see if it could work. And to be quite honest, if he called today, and said “I want you on a plane. Now. Come live here and let’s try this for real,” I would have a hard time not giving it a shot. So to write about him is closure. It’s the end to a chapter, if you will, of my life, and an exposure of a very deep secret to some people. I had never told my parents about him, for fear they wouldn’t let me visit him, and at some point, if this book becomes readable, they will find out.

Writing this story is something I have wanted for close to a decade, now, although, when I first wanted to write it, little did I know, the story was just in its infantile stages. I had no idea how hard it would be to do. The parts of the book that are purely fiction, about other characters, and other settings, those parts flow so easily. I can truck through them in no time. But describing the most intimate kiss, and strangest rejection of my life has been trying to say the least. Writing those parts, I am so wrapped up in the story, it’s as though, as I type, rather than watching the letters on the screen, I can see the scene like a movie playing in slow motion, and in small ways, I relive the feelings. I can feel my own anxiety and ecstasy from those moments years ago, and it is wonderful and terrifying at the same time. It reminds me how intensely I felt. How much it hurt when it ended. I am so glad to be finally writing it down. The feelings I had for him have shaped much of what I look for in men now. Do I have an utter fascination with him? Does he drive me in ways I had never know before? Do his flaws seem completely insignificant? Do I hear his voice and feel a chill down my spine and a stirring in my more private regions? Am I really willing to do whatever is needed to make it work? And then from those questions, the inevitable, is this just an infatuation, or will I still feel this way a year, two years, ten years down the road? And with him, all of those questions were answered with a resounding yes. Was he the one? I don’t know. I don’t believe so. I think we all have a few people that can become the one floating around this world, but depending on which one we choose, our life takes a different path with a different destiny. To be honest, I have to believe this, because if I don’t and he was the one, then I will be a lonely (or miserable) old hag, and I just don’t want that.

So what am I doing right now to procrastinate dredging up the feelings that are so enveloping? I am dragging them out by writing this to procrastinate dragging them out by writing my book. And on that note, now fully saturated with feelings and emotion, I will be off to write a few thousand words of prose, that some day, I am sure will be on the New York Times Bestseller list. Or Oprah.

Girl Talk! Guys: Avert your eyes!

So, you know how you can skip your period for up to three months now, by just keepin’ on keepin’ on with your birth control? And how it’s actually supposed to be better for you and all? Yeah ok, they fail to tell you, and I fail to remember (every time) how when you skip a couple months, the cramps are infinitely worse on your next period. GROAN! I never got cramps before BC and then they weren’t that bad. But now, holy Jesus. My back hurts which makes me want to sit up straight and stretch out, but then that stretches out my abdomen and my cramps hurt more, and the cramps just want me to curl up. UGH! Just went to the store for Midol…kick in, kick in, kick in…

Travel Baby!

Ok, I may have just been disuaded from ever having children. I just found the best reason not to. Travel. I’ve been keeping up with Kottke as he travels through Asia (which is really cool…he’s a good travel writer) and he wrote something today that made me rethink things…

To those who say they can’t afford to travel, I say to you: stop making excuses. If you’ve got the income and leisure time to be spending time reading this blog, are sufficiently motivated, and make it a priority in your life[8], you can certainly afford it.

[8] This is the big sticking point for most people, I think. If you choose to have a family or focus on your career or pursue a costly photography hobby, you might not have the money or flexibility to travel this way. But that’s a choice you’ve made (on some level)…and I would argue that if you’re 30 years old, you can arrange to make an overseas trip once every 3-5 years, and that’s about 7-8 trips by the time you’re 60.

And I have also been writing my NaNoWriMo book and it has brought me back to visiting Europe. I have to pilfer my memories for the book, and as I think back and think of intelligent descriptive ways to write about my trips, I remember how wonderful it was, and how depressed I was to come home.

And then…he linked to this couple…they are Dutch and have been traveling to and in Asia since 2003. I would absolutely love to do that. To travel and write, and blog, and do photography. I have found my new career I think…

…sigh…

Then I remember, I have two cats…and I have a real problem sleeping in uncomfortable places…both of which might hender this thought….but maybe I could just do it for shorter spans of time…I am sure I could get someone to watch the kitties for a month at a time or something…And for a month, I could deal with uncomfortable sleeping arrangements…

Travel is one of those things that can just take you over. It reveals not only mysteries about the world to you, but also about yourself. You learn so much. You learn your personal limitations, and strengths you have never explored before. You learn you can communicate without words, and that no matter where you are there are certain universal truths. Feelings are expressed the same way everywhere. A smile is a smile. And you learn that surprisingly, some of the biggest adventures you take come in the form of food. Discarding your inhibitions, and taste buds, can be some of the most thrilling moments in travel.

I just hope I have the desire and the means to do some serious travel in my life. And as Jason suggests, that may mean not having kids. And I may be ok with that.

I’m Not Dead. I Promise.

Sorry I have been MIA. I was out L-I-V-I-N-G. It was great! Camping last weekend was a blast. We saw a shit-ton of deer. They seem to be overpopulated out there. In Austin, when that happened, the deer didn’t have enough food and they were dying of starvation, so the suburb that was having the problem had to pass a bond issue to allow hunting in city limits so they could bring the population down. At first, at the time, I thought it was cruel, but then I saw the pictures of the emaciated deer. It was so sad. Their rib cages stuck out, and they looked tired and sick…In any case, I think they might need to do that out where we went camping. Some of the deer looked great. Healthy, and strong, but some looked so sickly. Obviously, survival of the fittest at work…

Now, we went camping with the usual suspects, but we also brought along my friend Harry from Holland (who was–and is–in town to visit my best friend because they are in LURVE…more on that later) and my friend Jenny. So Harry has a dutch accent. It’s this soft almost germanic accent, but less gutteral, and quite attractive. We pulled up to the campsite at night, and in the headlights, we saw something. We parked, and got out, I got the flashlight and we swiveled it around looking for the mysterious creature that flashed in the headlights. It was a red fox. Beautiful. Healthy, a huge fluffy tail. It was great. Harry said, “What is dat?” His voice excited to see something new. I told him it was a fox, and he responded, “Oh! A fucks!” Jenny and I roared with laughter. Yes, Harry, a fucks…