Day in the Life of an Idiot

 The deep freeze has returned to Minnesota. When I got up this morning to take Mason to a robotics club build at Washington, it was - 11 F/ - 23.89 C (I am forever fascinated that Alexa always wants to tell me two decimal points out when she calculates Celsius for me. Do you folks who use Celsius really go that deep?)

Yesterday, it was also cold. Even so, I ventured out of the house to have lunch with my friend Rosanne. We met up at a place over in Minneapolis called Butter Bakery Café.  I found it very easily, despite not having GPS. I mention this because on Wednesday night when I gave a ride home to one of Mason's debate colleagues, we used her iPhone's GPS app to direct me to her house.  It was pretty darn slick and made me think that, if cell phone packages weren't so expensive, it would be almost worth it to have a built in direction-sense. I don't get lost very often, but when I do, I tend to get REALLY lost. I once was nearly a half hour late to work because I forgot how to get out to Mounds View Library.

Butter Bakery Café has a nice parking lot behind their building, too, so that made me very happy. I arrived few minutes before Roseanne so I had a chance to check out their menu.  I have to say, the food was very much in the only OK category. As I told Rosanne, I love breakfast out and I was excited to see they had all day breakfast.  But, their "sunny side up" involved a lot more gooey gross bits than I usually like from my eggs, alas. I got the potatoes and wheat toast as sides, and the potatoes were serviceable, but nothing to write home about.  So, that was a bit of a disappointment, but I wasn't there for the food. I was there for the company and Rosanne is always good company.

She and her partner are retiring. For Rosanne this means graduating writing coach clients, which sounds like it's been a long disentanglement, which makes sense to me. We talked a lot about how it's kind of a shame that writing doesn't work like a regular job, because it would have been nice for her to have an apprentice to pass these clients on to.  

I also agreed to write a blog post for her about my experience with NaNoWriMo, because it's always been Rosanne's contention that it's better to form lifelong habits for writing, and that the competitive nature of NaNoWriMo can actually make you feel like quitting.  I fit that mold.  Not everyone does. I know a lot of people who really LOVE NaNoWriMo for lots of different reasons, but when I tried it I discovered very quickly that the goal set for me 2,000 words a day did NOT work.  When I'm writing original fiction I can't work that fast.  A huge part of my process is revision, which actually takes away words at the end of the day more often than not.  So I kept putting in smaller and smaller word counts and NaNoWriMo "helpfully" produced a graph for me showing my declining "commitment" and so I quit.  This is made ironic by the fact that without anyone's prompting, I've successfully had the discipline to write and finish several published novels. To be fair, though, I set my life up to provide some of the support that I think people really love about NaNoWriMo, which is the community it generates. There are classes and group meet-ups where you can hang out with other writers.  I forged my own writers group that met regularly, and I'm certain that without them I would have given up on my writing, too.

So, it could be a good blog. I just have to figure out how to be more articulate and witty. :-)

The only bummer is by agreeing to meet with Rosanne on Friday, I ended up missing my usual Friday gathering with other women writer friends.  I comforted myself by the fact that a number of us Wyrdsmiths (my writers' group) braved the slippery mess  of Thursday evening's snow in order to give naomikritzer feedback she needed on a short story for an anthology she was invited to contribute to. We meet at Nina's and the coffee shop was startlingly DEAD.

This upcoming week I'm going to meet-up with a friend of mine from high school who got in contact with me because she was looking for contract advice about a non-fiction project she was working on.  (This is partly why I ended up getting back in touch with Rosanne after all this time; I figured Rosanne knew about non-fiction contracts.)  

So, even though it's cold as heck, I'm still getting out and about and meeting up with people. But for now?  Now, I think it's time for a nap under some comforters.

Ja matta!

Actually, I *know* it's cold out, because I've been out there delivering various people in my life to their jobs/school. Now I'm sitting in a coffee shop and eating a donut, having convinced myself (and the barista) that I NEED the fat layer to keep warm.

Last night, Shawn and I splurged and had a "date." As in we left Mason in the company of a babysitter and ventured out... into the wild unknown of where people go who are not hampered by kids.

I know. Kinda scary, right? :-)

I'd been kind of aggitating for Ethiopian food, but when the temperatures took their nose dive in the afternoon, both Shawn and I suddenly craved comfort food. We ended up with the elderly set at Red Lobster. Which was kind of a theme for my day yesterday, as I had made myself my favorite "old lady" lunch of a hot beef, mashed potato, gravy, open-faced sandwich for lunch, AND encouraged a writing collegue to put on fuzzy slippers and stand in her front lawn yelling at the "kid" listening to his music too loudly. Yesterday was my embrace my inner old lady day, I guess. Continuing in that vein, Shawn and I did not, in point of fact, go "clubbing" after. We went book shopping.

There was a little public fondling, though. Shawn couldn't keep her hands off the color Nook at Barnes & Noble.

I suspect that in the next few (months? years?) our household will have an e-reader of some sort in it. Shawn would really like B&N to let the next generation of Nook be a bit more of a Pad, but I think she'd settle for something that can read .pdfs from her work. (At least I think that was her complaint. She was so buzzed about the Nook that I had trouble following all her excited noises.)

In keeping with our new austerity program, we didn't buy too much at HPB (or B&N), we mostly window shopped. I did end up with a new dinosaur book, which I bought as a gift for a friend whose birthday is quick approaching, and Shawn found some things she'd been searching for, and one she wasn't: H.G. Well's slim volume of the "Complete History of the World." Which just looked too cool to pass up, especially as he starts in space, and the thing can't be more than a couple hundred pages (if that!) long. As it was $2.00, it was hard to say no to.

Anyway, it was lovely, even though, when we got home at 9:00, the babysitter hadn't quite been able to coax Mason to sleep. It was fine, though, since we actually sort of suspected he'd resist, and I rather enjoyed snuggling him (warm!) and hearing about how he and the babysitter had just talked a lot of "small talk" all night.

All and all a very successful date, IMHO. I mean, the best part of being together for twenty-five years is that the quiet dates can be just as romantic as the big, splashy ones. And, frankly, book browsing without a small person under foot can be really relaxing and romantic. Mason is usually pretty good in bookstores, though, since he's such a big reader. IF he finds a good haul of whatever series he's reading at the moment, he will just plunk down next to whatever asile I'm in, and start reading. It can be tougher, though, if he strikes out, or only finds enough books to last a few minutes. Plus, regardless, I or Shawn always have to keep track of him, and not having that worry was just... pleasant.

Did I ever tell you about the funny incident in the HPB that Shawn and I both witnessed in different parts of the store with the mom who just wanted five minutes to browse and the toddler who just wanted to pull all the books off the shelves? She had a much older child whom she'd put in charge of the toddler, but little guy kept making a bee-line for her skirts. At one point Shawn overheard her say, "How did you find me!?" She also heard the older boy say, "Take care of your baby, Mama," to which she relpied, "I just want five minutes!"

I'm sure most people were horrified by her parenting, but Shawn and I had only sympathy. We call those moments "noodles," because of a very similar experience we had when Shawn was trying to make lasagna when Mason was just a newborn. Let's just say, it involved a hungry baby, tears (from everyone), and noodles that had to be re-done because they got soggy....

Sometimes you just don't GET five minutes.