Miguelina

Winner! Back From The Dead Award

I signed up for Nanowrimo and then promptly decided to pretend it never happened.  I even sent out query letters (something I haven't done for months) because maybe, just maybe, I'd get a fabulous assignment that would work as an excuse as to why I'm not meeting the word count or would explain the mess of a story I'll be churning out.

In other words.  I'm in denial.  But hey, it's not like I've signed a contract or anything.  I don't have to do it.

Imagine my surprise when I open up the Sunday paper and read this.

Oh.

I guess I can't back out now.

So here I am, five days away from Nov. 1st, and all I have is an idea.  No outline.  No real plot to speak of.  I can't even decide on names for the characters.  Needless to say, I'm not the type to plan ahead.

This is hard.

My Landlady Is Crazier Than Yours

We're still renters.  Yes, we are aware that housing prices are going down - so much so that the desperation in realtor's eyes is making me feel sorry for them.

I kid!  Of course not!  Seller's agents are evil, everybody knows that.

But I'm not going to discuss the ridiculousness of the Boston real estate market and the sorry state of most of the housing stock - especially in the "desirable" W towns.  Maybe another time.  Instead, I will tell you about how stupid it is to live right below your landlady.  Because it is all levels of stupid.  If there is one thing I want you to remember from this entry it is this:

BE YE NOT STUPID:  DON'T RENT FROM AN OLD LADY AND DO NOT SHARE A HOUSE WITH HER.

Our landlady, a crochety 70 year-old woman who I'll call Vera, is crazy.  She talks to us as if we were her good-for-nothing children who won't move out of the house - despite the fact that we hand her a huge check every month.  She pleads poverty (did I mention the large sums of money she receives from us every month?) even as her 2 story apartment is getting remodeled.  Whenever we bring up issues with our apartment - the kind of things normal tenants talk to their landlords about - she tells us that her children wish they could live as well as us.  Mind you, her children are unemployed (by choice, I suspect), and we are not.  This is why we can afford to pay the rent, you see.   (Am I bitter?  Well, yes, I am.)  Also, she knew that I was pregnant before I told her that I was.  I don't want to think about how she found out.  I pretend that she is psychic and leave it at that.

Vera does not have many friends, and her children stay the hell away from her.  This would be sad, except that she instead calls me for all sorts of crazy reasons, like asking me if I know whether she locked her front door. Or this:

Ring! Ring!

Me:  (After looking at caller ID and a long sigh)  Hello, Vera.

Vera:  Oh, Hi.  It's Vera from upstairs.

Me:  Yes.  I know.

Vera:  I'm calling to see if you have any electric things running in your apartment.

Me:  (Huh?)  Excuse me?

Vera:  I need to know if you have any electric things running in your apartment.

Me:  You mean things that plug into the electric outlets?

Vera:  Yes.

Me:  Of course I do.  Why?

Vera:  That explains it!  What do you have running?

Me:  Vera?  What does it explain?

Vera:  There's a strange hissing sound in my apartment, and I believe it is caused by some electrical appliance in your apartment.  So what's running?

Me:   Vera.  We have all sorts of electrical things running in our apartment at any point in time.  The computer runs on electricity.  So does the fridge.  And the lightbulbs!  Why, this very phone works precisely because it is plugged into an electric socket!  I won't give you an inventory of all the electrical things we are using.  Use your imagination.

Vera:  (Silence)

Vera:  That reminds me...can I borrow a can opener?  I'm having tuna fish for lunch.

Talk about a non-sequitur.   

Seriously.  We pay for this.

Crazy

I may regret this come November 3rd - but I'm giving it a shot anyways.  Have I ever written a novel?  No.  Come to think of it, have I ever written any fiction, of any kind?  Nope - not even on my resume.  I figure if can get a crappy first draft out of my system during November, I'll at least find out if I enjoy fiction writing.  I may not find out if I'm good at it, but at least it will be out of my system.  Let's see what happens!

I'm off in search of a plot and maybe some characters.

(Has anybody done this before?  How does one accomplish this?)

What I've been up to (in chronological order) and now with pictures!

1.  I'm Pregnant

Hey, it's not like I haven't done this before, but this time it has kicked my butt.  The first trimester went by in a blur of morning sickness and my shock at the fact that I started showing before the test turned pink.  Strangely, I seem to be the only person that expected my second pregnancy to be easier on me than my first.

It's great news, but I'm exhausted.  Let the 40 weeks of worry begin!

2.  We went to Austria

Most of August was spent in Austria.  I know, poor, poor me.  But before you call me crazy and ungrateful keep in mind my news above. 

No alcohol + No stinky cheese + No staying up late + No shopping (thanks to my quickly expanding belly)= There's no point in going all the way to Vienna.  I could have eaten saltine crackers at home.  Why deal with extremely high security at airports, a screaming toddler, and no liquids on board only to arrive in Europe and be greeted with secondhand smoke everywhere?  Do you know how much that stinks when your senses are hypersensitive thanks to first trimester hormones?

And when all you can drink is water, it is no fun to be in a place where ice cubes are a rarity, and where they believe that drinking cold water is baaad for you but smoking and drinking while pregnant?  It's your pregrogative!  Try drinking room temperature mineral water for 3 weeks while politely declining shots of schnapps and you may understand some of my misery.

Of course, there is a reason we keep going back to Vienna.  Everything is so grand and beautiful there.  For instance, here is a shopping mall:

Behold, a supermarket:

(This is the Julius Meinl in the first district.  The first thing you see when you walk in is a huge display of Pepperidge Farm cookies.  The sight of floor to ceiling Sausalito cookies brought tears to my eyes.  So yeah, I'm definitely pregnant.)

(Oh, and they were sampling wine.  You could serve yourself as much as you wanted.  That also brought tears to my eyes, but for different reasons.)

Even toddler tantrums are more elegant in Vienna:

Guess who wanted to move to Schonbrunn palace.  Hint:  Not me.

We also left the city and took a trip to wine country (Niederosterreich):

All those grapes!  All that fresh Gruner Veltliner!  And me!  So pregnant.  Boo!

3.  We came back

And I was jet lagged, sick and grumpy for 2 whole weeks. 

Moving on...

4.  Project Runway

I had missed 4 episodes during my trip.  Thankfully, Bravo seems to have a marathon going on everyday.  So I had to catch up, of course.  Watching pregnant Laura have a meltdown made me cry, but in a good way.

5.  Daycare

My son started daycare 2 weeks after we got back.  I was very nervous.  It was like the first day of 4th grade.  We couldn't sleep the night before.  But, he went in and took to it like a pro.  He loves going to "school" and playing with his friends.  And mom gets a blessed 2 mornings a week when she can recuperate from the other 5 mornings in the week.  So not everything makes me cry.

6.  BIKE!  BIKE!

We bought our son a tricycle.  The weather has been absolutely gorgeous so I've spent many afternoons pushing him around the neighborhood.  The best part is Sebastian proudly screaming "BIKE!  BIKE!" to every cyclist and Hell's Angels we encounter.  The look of pride on his face when someone acknowledges his little blue and red trike is priceless. 

I do my best not to post pictures of my family here, but this one - oh, I couldn't resist!

7.  I turned 30

I had an amazing birthday.  My husband and parents spoiled me immensely.  My friends were there for me.  But still, I'm now in my thirties.  Wow.

It's not you. It's me.

Hi! 

Umm...Hello?

It's been a long time since I've written here.  Heck, it's been a long time since I've written anywhere - including work stuff - and that's just lame because the "work" writing?  It consists of me enjoying myself and then writing about it.  And I haven't even managed to do that.

You may or may not be asking yourself why.

Well, for the lamest, most overused reason ever:

Because I've been Busy. 

(Note the capital "B".  I totally did that on purpose so that my excuse would seem Important.) 

(Didn't work, did it?)

Seriously folks, I've been busy.  I swear.  I'll even tell you about it, but not now.  (One of the benefits of taking a break is that I've improved my already impressive procrastination skills.  I'm sure that they will come in handy someday.)

OK, maybe I wasn't busy all the time, but for a while there I kind of forgot that I had a website, and that I had made a commitment to write.  Then I got a little check in the mail for a past writing project, and it kind of reminded me that this writing thing?  It's not so futile.  Oh, and then I was reminded that I do indeed have a website (by friends who very clearly know that I am alive, but who still called to ask if I was OK.  Because I hadn't updated my blog.) 

(I've created a monster, I think.)

Most people that write choose to do it because it feels good and because you are just driven to do it and blah, blah I'll spare you the commencement speech.  That's why I decided to do it too.  And I worked at it, and just when I was getting a little momentum, just like that, I didn't need to write.  In fact, I needed to not write. 

So I didn't - for eight weeks. 

And it was good.

But now writing is ever so gently calling me again. 

And that is even better.

So I need to get to work, but I promise that that includes updating this here site.