To be honest, so do I!

The Crazy Dollar Warehouse Outlet.

And it was just a veritable cornucopia of images!

For just $30 this panther rug can be yours!

Resident bird.

Resident . . . elderly . . . baby.

what is this I don’t even

I searched and searched and still couldn’t find the special moon beams.

In case you’re wondering what one buys from a Crazy Dollar Warehouse Outlet, the answer is this: a three-way touch lamp emblazoned with flowers and blue furry dragons. Of course.

Image copyright “OK LIGHTING.” Well, at least they’re honest.

We met when I was eighteen. The first thing I noticed were his fingernails, trim and neat. Nicer than mine, by far, with my chipped nail polish and acrylic paint underneath them.

Funny, the way life surprises you. I’d always expected to be single for a long time. When I fell in love, I thought it would be with a lean, tall, dark man. Maybe someone who went to raves or had tribal tattoos. Not this guy with a big dorky smile and killer sense of humor and beautiful hands.

Anyway, my life as it is now is mostly the aftermath of that decision: to fall in love at 18, fearlessly, and for good. And not a day goes by when I wish it had gone any differently.

Sorry, gentle reader–this is probably boring for you. Other people’s love always is, isn’t it? But for me, it’s the best thing in the world. Getting to wake up next to him, to spend every day with my best friend.

Also, hey, look, icicles!

Yes, I am one of those people. Those people who take their cats for walks. On leashes. While wearing their pajamas.

(No hair rollers, though.)

Sammy Katz used to be a wild creature, stalking through the Central Florida college town where we lived, beheading lizards and squirrels and, once, a large crow. He was also fond of getting stuck on roofs. And crying. And fighting with his nemesis, the orange cat who lived next door.

Blame it on my husband. He moved in, and convinced me that all these vet trips–for the abscesses, the fleas–weren’t worth it. Also, he wasn’t quite so into our routine, how kitty would wake me up at 3 a.m. to let him out to do cat stuff.

So, compromise! Kitties! On leashes! We wander around the yard, smellin’ stuff and seein’ stuff. But sometimes, he likes to prove to me he’s still a cat. He takes running leaps, claws his way ten, twelve feet up. Sits there meowing for a few minutes until I make kissy sounds and drag him back to the Earth. He doesn’t mind. Just wants me to remember, I guess, that he’s still wild, deep down inside.

You know how I said in my last entry that Rainbow Brite is one of my style inspirations?

Well, my mother got me a sewing machine for my birthday (thanks, Mom!). First order of business? To make myself some obnoxiously loud leggings, inspired by these. But, you know, cheaper.

I’m pretty proud of how they came out. I feel, in fact, a bit like a superhero.

Be warned: I have ordered five yards of rainbow lame. More loud, sparkly stretch pants to come.

Today I cherry bombed my hair. And the tub. And my fingernails. And my neck. And my ears.

Maybe you can blame Rainbow Brite–we were born in the same year, and I grew up thinking that life was not complete without splashes of bright, garish color (also without talking horses). Maybe it’s all my big sister’s fault, because one day when I was eleven, I came home and the whole house smelled like artificial grape, and my sister was soaking the long strands of her hair in a cup of boiling Kool-Aid. Whatever the reason, I’ve always been drawn to blazing pigments. By the time I was fifteen, my best friends and I were staying up late at sleepovers, staining the bathtub Purple Haze and Green Envy.

I decided back then that I never wanted to give it up–if I have my druthers, I’ll be an 80-year-old lady with silver and violet hair. And other than a few ill-fated years spent among the ranks of the business casual, I haven’t. It’s one of the great things about being a writer, about working from home, about living the life I live. I can be myself.

Even if it means I have to spend hours scrubbing pink dye off the bathroom walls.

. . . but today this is all that matters.

Today–a half hour ago, actually–I finished the book that began as a story at Viable Paradise back in October. It started out as “Dehado” but lately I’ve been calling it TCAFOYPR, sort of. I am very much enamored with it.

And drafting is done! Done done done!

Now the real work can begin.

John Scalzi says that you’re not fooling anyone when you take your laptop to a coffee shop. But yesterday, I did just that–tucked myself into a corner with a hot chocolate and a scone the size of my head–and banged out three chapters. Solid chapters, good chapters, too.

Today, on a cold rainy day spent mostly at home? Not a word. Nada. None.

Maybe sometimes the person you need to fool is not any single person watching, the cute barista or the radical who tries to invite you to a protest or the college student gossiping in the corner. You don’t need to convince them that you’re a Real and Serious Writer. You only really need to fool yourself.

It’s strange how a book can irrevocably change one’s world.

I was a year out of college when I read Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker . I was working in a college library, and I’d gone through a long, unhappy spat of reading “the classics,” then a moderately less unhappy period of reading Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates and then, abruptly, I decided to read some sci-fi. I picked up A Canticle for Leibowitz first. Dusty and strange, I enjoyed the narrative–who doesn’t love post-apocalyptic monks?–but it didn’t touch me any more deeply than had, say, The Robber Bride. Moderately deeply, perhaps.

But I hadn’t expected the wild beauty of Riddley Walker. I started it in the cafeteria on a dark winter night. My brain bucked up against the prose at first, but after stumbling over it, stuttering over it, and finally just reading it aloud, I began to get it. It’s a simple story, plotwise. But the strong dialect gave it a versimillitude that I haven’t really seen in any novel since.

That winter, during the weeks that I savored Riddley Walker, I walked on the brick track during my breaks. Everything smelled fresh and alive, even in winter. There were seeds and green shoots hibernating in the grey dunes of snow. Apocalypse seemed likely. No, imminent. And in that year when I drove a broken down Chevy, worked in a library, wrote bad poetry and worse novels–in that year, it felt okay.

Hoban’s words changed winter for me. The scent of melting snow on the air will always say something about the constancy of the human experience–the mythology of the past, the possibility of the future. Late January will always, always be Riddley Walker time.

Pookie and I went out last night for Greek food. It was cold and rainy, and the streets of New Paltz seemed to glitter from the melted-down snow and the streetlamps. The restaurant was bright and warm, and everything looked blue–blue maps of Greece and a blue ocean scape painted on the blue walls and blue printed menus. I got pea soup thick as the fog outside and we gossiped and laughed.

I love the place where we live, halfway between the Hudson River and the Thruway. Last night, as always, we marveled at the college girls who streamed in and out of the bars in their UGG boots and the boys who held the doors open for them, the hippies who sat in the doorway of the coffee shop strumming their mandolins. Because, just five minutes before, our car rose and fell over the twisting road, and we passed a lake, frozen over; then  fallow orchards; and we rolled in and out of the shifting mist, our fog lights up high.

Some people are city people. They couldn’t live outside of DC or Brooklyn, need the concrete and the crowds and the excitement. Some people love the suburbs, the cars and the big box stores and the space. Me? I like small towns best–something right in between. I’m neither a city mouse, nor a country mouse, and that’s okay with me.