Drawing to a Close

Much like the year itself, NaNoWriMo 2008 is coming to its inevitable conclusion.  ::sigh:: It’s been quite a ride this year.  I’ve really struggled in places, but by the end of today, I’ll be 10,000 words from the finish line, and with the end in sight, all the pain will be worth it.  I don’t know… maybe I had the same issues with my novel last year, but I’ve blocked out all the bad parts in the flush of holding my month’s labor in my hand.  I suppose it that sense it’s a little like birth.  ::sigh:: I was beginning to think I wouldn’t make it this year.  The last week’s been kinda rough.  I’ve been dealing with a pretty heavy load of depression and utter blah-ness.  It seemed like every time I sat down at the computer to write, I would be seized with the sudden impulse to be anywhere else.  I would force out a page, a snippet of a scene, and then retreat to the couch for a marathon of whatever happened to be in the DVD player.  Yesterday I finally managed to trick myself into writing by bring the laptop into the bedroom and typing in bed, propped up on pillows and basking in the sun and general coziness.  It worked.  I was in the low 35K’s yesterday morning and now I’m at 38,530.  Not bad for lazy Sunday.  And in honor of my supersized word output, I made a really awesome centerpiece.  Either that or my serious awesomeness in creating said centerpiece fueled my productivity.  Either way, I feel very good about yesterday.  I’ll probably take the computer back to bed this afternoon.  I may even spend some time with it this evening.  Hopefully I can get a jump on tomorrow’s quota.  Hell, maybe I’ll even hit 50K sometime before Sunday night at 11:59. ^_^

Now that NaNoWriMo is slowing down, I have to remember that there is a big world out there, with plenty of people all demanding attention over the next month or so.  On Thursday we’ll be headed to Darien to spend Thanksgiving with Alan’s grandparents.  My mother-in-law, thankfully, will not be there.  She and Kurt have been in Florida since last Sunday.  There’s an awful lot I could say on that subject, but I probably shouldn’t.  Suffice it to say that Lisa hasn’t spent a Thanksgiving with her own family in three or four years.  I include in that account the year that Alan, Zach, and I went down to Florida, since it still wasn’t spent with anyone who has anything to do with any of our lives. Hmph.

Christmas is also coming.  Yay.  Sense the sarcasm?  Lisa and Kurt will be in Vermont for Christmas this year, and this only serves to illustrate her utter lack of concern with anyone but herself.  My mother is the one who originally suggested it, but Lisa apparently ran with the idea without talking to anyone involved.  I mean, we don’t even know if we’ll be able to go up there!  Sears closes early on Christmas Eve, so that’s fine, but if he’s opening the day after Christmas, there’s no way we can be up there.  My parents both work on Christmas Day, so dinner wouldn’t be until evening, the time when we would have to leave to get back to Connecticut.  Did anyone bother to ask us what our plans were? Of course not.

And here’s what ticks me off the most… And it’s got to be bad if it can surpass anything to do with Alan’s mother.  Zach may not even be there!  He works in the photo lab at Walgreen’s in Waterbury, and he said that if he worked on Thanksgiving, he would be able to get Christmas off.  Okay, first off, how many people are really developing photos on either of those days?! Secondly, he’s 18… this is not his career. It’s his afterschool job.  Thirdly, Christmas isn’t a fucking bargain!  You don’t make deals with your boss at part-time job… Not when it comes to family committments!  He’s had almost two months to say "Mr. Boss-Man, I can’t work from December 24th through the 26th."  And now the tool is scheduled for Christmas.  Fucking idiot.  I generally have sympathy for Zach. I mean, his mom routinely leaves him on his own for major holidays. What the fuck is that?  But this one is all on him.  Idiot.

Then again, I imagine that if he was raised by a mother with an iota of family feeling, he would recognize the importance of family on these sorts of days.  If we do go up to Vermont and she says a fucking word about Zach missing it, I may have to ask my mother to cut my tongue out with rusty scissors.  Or maybe I should practice delivering a biting response in the most calmly destructive manner possible.  "Well, Lisa, you should be glad you’ve taught him so thoroughly where family should fall on his list of priorities.  He’s not doing anything that you haven’t done to him over the last four years, so forgive me for not being very sympathetic to your complaints."  Yeah, that’ll go over well.

Ha… Now that I’m thoroughly riled up… I suppose I had better go do the laundry.  I have lately developed a serious aversion to our apartment, especially the lack of a washer and dryer… And closet space and level floors and yadda yadda yadda. ^_^  Still, nothing sucks quite like hauling a basket of laundry to and fro in the nasty coldness of late autumn.  Maybe when I get home I’ll experiment with a yummy recipe for smokey pumpkin soup.

~Liz