MissMeliss: Escribition

There are new prompts at CafeWriting.

It’s been roughly two months since I’ve updated my bookblog at Bibliotica, but I have been reading a lot. Most recently, I finished Water for Elephants and I’m currently reading The Man of My Dreams by the same person who wrote Prep.

While I haven’t yet re-vamped the skin (need to do that soon), I have added one of those astore pages, you know, the kinds that sell Amazon books and give you a kickback? I have NOT linked to it in this article because it’s not quite live yet. Look for it on Sunday or Monday.

I have two more novellas to read before Algonkian. I’m in this zone where I’m both terrified and excited. Expect that to be the case until August 4th, when I leave.

And keep thinking good thoughts, please?

I haven’t taken pictures of my new Abode of Writeyness yet, because while the furniture is in there, I won’t be able to afford money for ART until after my conference, and the walls are bare, and the bookshelves aren’t organized…and, and, and…

I did purge all mortgage-related things from my desk. (If anyone needs a rubber stamp that says “computer generated original” let me know), including title fee books for three different title companies, business cards for appraisers I haven’t contacted in three years, and more “sign here” flags than I care to count.

Among the stuff I also cleared from my desk included information on various no balance transfer fee offers from credit card companies (I kept one), and an entire box of sticky-backed prongs for gluing into legal folders.

It was at once freeing and sort of sad clearing out the last vestiges of my old career.

We originally set out this morning to refill Zorro’s blood pressure medication, and maybe find lunch. We ended up first driving to downtown Grand Prairie, which is all of a block long, trying to find a Filipino grocery store that’s supposed to be there, but isn’t.

We gave up on finding macapuno ice cream today, after all, and went to Piranha for sushi. I was craving their wasabi crusted tuna roll, which is to die for. Our waitress said that roll alone accounts for between three and five percent of their business, and I believe it. (I also had a dragon roll, because I was desperate for unagi). Fuzzy, had teriyaki salmon.

On the way to lunch we also stopped at the library, which was depressing, and will get it’s own entry.

After lunch, we went to this part of Arlington we’d passed once that had a gate labelled Village Lake Historic Area, or some such. At the time we found it, it was closed due to flooding, but we’re in a mini-drought, so we thought it might be open, it was, but it’s just a park. Now, I like parks, but I was not dressed for walking on trails, it was 101 degrees, and we had no water with us. Fuzzy failed to see why this was a problem, and why I got angry with him when he said, “I’m just going to go look at the marker,” and then was out of sight five minutes later, leaving me in the car. I called him, and he said, “Well I wanted to see what was here.” It took him twenty minutes to return.

Next, we drove to Irving, in our ongoing quest to determine if any part of the metroplex has a cute, functional downtown (so far, the answer is NO). We got jamba juices and sipped them as we looked at funky houses, and mocked the different businesses on the old main streets, emblazoned with signs for modern furniture and the like, but clearly long-since out of business.

Today was one of the days when I sorely missed our old condo in California, and the surrounding neighborhood, and being able to walk to Starbucks and a bookstore.

I still have to go to a bookstore and do my Algonkian prep work, and I still have to write this weekend, and I feel like we wasted a day when we could have done something productive or meaningful.

I was up all night with a brain burning with activity and a sick dog. The former is still abuzz, the latter is now stretched out along-side my right leg, in blissful sleep, and the warmth of his tiny body is comforting in a way only Animal People truly understand.

I tried to catch some sleep today, but a gorgeous thunderstorm kept me awake. I feel like I’ve been waiting months for rain, and I didn’t want to miss it. Storms are so magical to me.

I’m torn about my hair. I was ready to go in and have them strip all the pink out, last week, but now that I’ve had time to think, and had a mall full of people tell me they love my hair, I’m not sure I want to completely de-pink. In fact, I was at the mall because I’d been so certain that I was DONE with pink hair that I didn’t re-order my usual color. The pink I ended up with is a softer one…maybe it will be a good transitional shade.

I just started reading Eat Pray Love. I was initially put off because of the title, but I’m two chapters in and so far I’m good with it. The author’s approach to spirituality and religion is much akin to my own, except that I like the “smells and bells.”

Natalie Goldberg once took a classroom full of students on a walk between raindrops. Sometimes I try to do that on my back deck. To step between the drops isn’t to defy nature, but to perceive it from a different angle.

Clay is my muse once again. He taught me a secret to success that I hadn’t considered before. I am in all kinds of love with the universe today.

Bed now.

Sometimes I can be really fickle. Not with friendships or anything like that, but when it comes to hair color I really need an option that says “varies” or “subject to change,” and when it comes to domain names and webhosts I’m almost as bad.

I mean, I like Dreamhost, for the most part, but sometimes I see what other services offer and think about changing, and while I will eventually do something with the 23 (no I am not exaggerating that number) domains I own, sometimes I wish I could just turn them into one of those i4 sites, that are just link portals, and not worry about them any more.

I’ve come close. I’ve temporarily parked a few, but then I decide to revive them, or worse, I buy NEW ONES to replace those I no longer need.

Yes, I know, I’m a sick, sick person.

But I’m never boring.

My rhythm is completely off with Fuzzy away, and I hate to admit that, because it makes me feel like I don’t have a life without his presence. It’s not true, of course. We have separate interests anyway, and we don’t spend every moment of the weekend together even when he’s home, but the bed is too big at night, and the house is too quiet.

I spent Thursday night, working far later than I usually do, working, writing about such topics as California auto insurance, and staying up later than I should have, but the end result was that I didn’t have to work on Friday.

Here’s my thing about Fridays and work: In the mortgage industry, the loan officers all leave by two on Friday, leaving admins, processors and underwriters to close out the day. Inevitably there would be a crisis at 4:30 PM on Friday afternoon, and we’d end up cleaning up other people’s messes at six or seven, and really resenting having to be there so late. As a result, I like to have my Friday’s clear, so that if something comes up, I can handle it and be DONE. I’m not always able to do so - but I try pretty hard.

Come Saturday morning, I’m in a much better mood than I would have been if I’d been racing to complete tasks the day before.