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That’s what’s on the menu tonight. Fuzzy’s still en route back home – his plane was delayed for no apparent reason. I told him that’s the risk you run when flying AirTrans. He grumbled.

I should make something to eat, and feed the dogs, but I’m suddenly really tired. Eight hours to blogathon. I’m really excited about it this year.

…to check out some really cool musical parody.

(Clicky on the piccy)

(Alt link: http://www.myspace.com/moronlifemusic )

Do you remember your first book? Whether it was read to you by a loving parent who held you on his or her lap, or with a patient teacher helping you sound out the words one at a time, at some point you probably made the connection that those funny typewritten symbols were the key to an entire world of imagination, a land where every story was a new adventure that you could experience as many times as you felt like turning the pages and looking at the pictures.

Wouldn’t you love to help a child visit the land of reading, and get hooked on words and images and possibilities?

Here’s how you can:
Tomorrow, Saturday July 29th, I’m participating in a BLOGATHON. Beginning at 8 AM, I’ll be posting to my blog at MissMeliss.com every half an hour for 24 hours, in an attempt to raise money for First Book, an organization that gives new first books to children in low-income families, getting them involved not just in reading, but also in the special pride that comes with owning books. (They do more than this, of course, including helping to restock the shelves of the public libraries in New Orleans after Katrina.)

If you’d like to plege on my behalf – and I hope you will, because even $5 will help significantly – please go to this sponsorship link. You’ll be asked to register with your name and email address, but you can choose to be anonymous if you don’t want your name all over the web. In
addition, you will receive about three email messages from the folks at blogathon.org. The first will be a pledge verification – that one’s crucial. The second will be a general info email. The third, which will happen post-blogathon, will tell you where to go to actually pay your pledge. Your name and email will not be sold. After the Blogathon, you will make your donation directly to the organization your blogger sponsored, and no blogger ever sees or touches a single cent, or any credit card information. If you
can’t pledge at this time, consider forwarding this email to five friends, or, if you have a blog or website of your own, please link to me, and mention my blogathon.

While we’re not allowed to pre-write, I’ve had friends and family taking my reading survey for a few weeks now (if you haven’t participated, and would like to, go here. I’m drawing
inspiration for my 49 required posts from the survey results and my own favorite childhood books, as well as from whatever’s going on around me during the day, and I’d love for you to be involved. (Also, consider popping onto Yahoo IM, AIM, MSN Messenger or ICQ to chat with me during the Blogathon. Interacting with others helps me stay awake.)

Thank you in advance for your support.

Last year, on the day I submitted an entry to the summer essay contest over at Toasted Cheese, a large argiope spider took up residence in our garden. While I am generally the kind of person who shrieks in terror and calls her husband to come out with a large flat object whenever arachnids appear, this one seemed special – almost pretty, even – and she was outside in the farthest corner of the yard, so I let her be.

Friends told me that argiopes are beneficial spiders because they snack on mosquitoes, and anything that eats mosquitoes is a good thing, in my book. In addition, one particular friend pointed me toward information about these spiders including the fact that the variety visiting me is a “writing spider,” so called because of the letter-like zig-zags in the stablementium part of their webs. (There’s also this cool legend about writing spiders, which states that if they write your name in their web you will die. So far, I’ve only ever seen them write ZZZZZZZZZZ, however, so I’m not terribly concerned.)

Argiopes only live about a year, but ever since summer started, I’ve been scanning the yard along the back fence, hoping a new argiope would arrive. I enjoyed having her quiet presence last year (the pretty ones are female, the males are smaller and not as flashy), and yesterday, while I was refilling the pool, I felt like there was someone watching me. Turning, I looked at the fence post where last year’s spider had taken up residence – nothing. But a few feet away, in a different section of fence, there was an argiope, basking in the sunlight.

She may not be the daughter of my writing spider from last year, but the chances are good that she is, and I’ve welcomed her into my yard, and taken her presence as a sign that I need to write more, and a blessing upon my blogathon tomorrow.

The last few weeks at work have made me feel brutalized. My job is not particularly difficult, really, I mean, basically I do simple math for a living, but sometimes it can be intense. Especially around month end, which, for us, was yesterday. (Our month-end is 4 business days before the end of the month, the cut-off date for refinances to be closed, so they can fund by the end of the calendar month – recissionary transactions are so much fun.), and while the people I work with are great, I feel trapped by the work part of work right now.

It’s probably got a lot to do with my impending birthday. Sky would say – has said – that Mercury being in retrograde is a contributing factor. What I know is, by the time I went home yesterday, I’d already worked 33 hours, and since I already have Monday the 31st off to recover from Blogathon (you can still pledge, btw) and was literally in tears in the car on the way home this past Monday, I asked for today and tomorrow as well, taking one as a vacation day, and the other instead of the overtime I’d earned this week. And so I am here in bed, reclining against pillows at 11:18 in the morning, groggy because even though I was up yesterday at FIVE, I was in that wired stage where I get too tired to sleep and didn’t go to bed til four (practice for the Thon maybe?), with Zorro draped on my ankle and Miss Cleo sleeping on Fuzzy’s pillow.

Fuzzy is in Florida.

I miss him. The bed is too big, and the dogs are faintly agitated, and my routine is disrupted. I like exploring new things, but I like the comfort of a routine as well.

I’m trying to decide if I should do anything productive today, or truly just rest. Does filling the pool count as productive? The pool guy lectured me on the low water level via door-hanger. I’ve got a stack of videos, but it seems criminal to waste a day watching movies. I should write. But I’m afraid to write. I’m afraid it’ll just make Tuesday, which I’m already dreading, even WORSE.

I should have been independently wealthy.
Or less in love with froufrou things.

I’m three weeks away from my 36th birthday, and I still have no clue what I want to be when I grow up.

*Le sigh*

It’s been disgustingly hot here, to the point where my pool is visibly lower every day, and I know it’s from the weather, because we’ve checked it for leaks. Does filling it so the filter works count as allowable watering if I use the hand-held attachment, I wonder?

I missed work on Friday because I was so nauseous I couldn’t move. This is happening about every fourth month, around a certain time, and is so not fun. Actually, that’s an understatement. I spent most of the day sleeping, and trying, ironically, to keep warm – I was freezing, and I even had the A/C set to about 85 at one point. Even the body heat from the dogs wasn’t helping. I slept most of yesterday as well, and felt well enough to work the door at CSz last night, though we came directly home after, watched tivo’d Stargate, and went back to bed.

I’m reading this sort of sulty, slow, novel about a romance between a British officer and an Italian peasant woman during WWII, and about their daughter many years later. They keep talking about the heat and the scent of figs, and the geraniums everywhere. I miss geraniums.

Last night on the way home, the sky was brightened by flashes of heat lightning, the kind that comes without rain, and looks like backlit color-blocks on the night sky. I closed my eyes, and wished for rain.

1) Fuzzy got the promotion. It is, alas, not enough money to allow me to quit working at BigFinancialCompany and concentrate on writing, but it is enough that I will never have to worry about froufrou salon days being in the budget again.

2) Right now, we are NOT being required to relocate to Florida. This will, however, be re-evaluated in 2007.

The first player of this game starts with writing 6 weird things/habits about themselves and then selects 6 others to write an entry about their 6 weird things/habits as well as state this rule clearly. After making your list of weird things, pick 6 others. They are allowed to laugh at you in your comments as much as they want, so deal! Don’t forget to leave a note that says, “You are tagged!” in their diary.”

1. It doesn’t matter if I sleep til four in the afternooon, or bounce out of bed at seven, I am never really awake until I’ve brushed my teeth, and if the toothpaste is a flavor other than mint, my whole world is off-kilter.
2. I have an underwear fetish, of a sort. My underwear has to match or coordinate with whatever I’m wearing. Granted, no one but me and Fuzzy ever see my underwear, but it’s like a secret. Knowing is half the fun. To this end, I have more underwear than any single human truly needs, and could probably go a month or two without HAVING to wash any, though that would be gross, and favorite outfits would be unworn.
3. Sometimes, I write smut.
4. I have a strong aversion to public restrooms. I have ever since I was little. It might have something to do with being the one to crawl under the door and open the stall from the inside, at the beaches in New Jersey that only have pay-toilets (not like the froufrou ones in Europe, just normal public restrooms with coin-op locks on the doors). When I am in a restaurant or store that has a clean and non-threatening restroom it goes on a sort of mental map. (Yet another reason to frequent Starbucks.)
5. I think in songs. Mostly showtunes. If my life was a play it would so HAVE to be a musical comedy.
6. When I’m writing, especially dialogue, I have to hear it to know if the phrasing is right, so I wander around the house testing bits of scenes I’m working on and very likely confusing Fuzzy, and not just the dogs. I suspect they all want to know who I’m talking to. (I try not to do this in public, because that would border on unpleasantly weird, but sometimes I think I forget. Maybe I should get a bluetooth headset for camouflage?)

   As for tagging, I don’t like to do that. If you’re moved to respond, do so. I tag you, you, you, not YOU, but definitely you, and you…oh, and you too.

…often come wrapped in a few lines of text, like the email I received from an old family friend yesterday. My Wednesday at work was pathetically Thursday-ish, chaotic, and frustrating beyond belief. I was at the office past eight, and I’m still not quite as caught up as I’d like to be, but, mostly so.

I’ve come home too tired to write, even though my mind is burning with ideas, with words desperate to get out, almost every day this week. I miss the days when I had time for daily entries, even multiple entries, and I’m trying to find a way to reclaim that.

I’m in a really horrid place work-wise. The charm of it being a new job has worn off, and I’m bored and restless. The people are cool to hang out with during the forced captivity of working hours, but I keep feeling like there’s something More or Better I could be doing.

I turn thirty-six next month.
Shouldn’t I know by now what I want to be when I grow up?