Grumble, grumble

I am in no mood to update this afternoon.

I have a wicked cold and cough, a Nyquil hangover (I think there's an ingredient in Nyquil, aside from the alcohol itself, that, as it wears off, puts you in an especially bad mood), and an infant son who is bucking all the rules of the schedule.

Of course, my mood is bad from within, and I am not blaming Sam for it.

Wanna know a secret? When Sam is obviously tired, and I'm obviously being a grump, and Sam keeps spitting out his pacifier and therefore won't fall asleep, and then he looks up at me and laughs, I sometimes think, Stop laughing at me! Pathetic, ain't it?

I want to thank the people at Blogger for not citing "ain't" as a misspelled word. Kudos.

Next stop, Eric Stevens Town, where Mr. Stevens has just submitted his latest Jake Maddox title to the good people at Stone Arch. I should be using this afternoon's free time to work on the mysterious (apparently) YA MS. But, as I noted above, I am in no mood.

I hope I find the proper mood soon, though. It would seriously suck if my big day of writing tomorrow was wasted simply because I'm being such a sourpuss.

I bet you're thrilled to your toes that you bothered reading this entry!

Winter cleaning

Today is cleaning day here at the Brezenoff household. Beth's slaving in the bathroom right now, while I am on lunch break. Fear not; I do my part (vacuuming, dusting, some odd decluttering). We also took down the Christmas tree, which is a relief. I like it; don't get me wrong. I'm not about to get all anti-goy on this. Fact is, when I was a tot, I was jealous of many of the Christmas trimmings. I do get sick of seeing it, though, after a few weeks, and its placement makes everything else have to shift to one side a little. Now everything is back to normal.

I think after lunch, though, before I tackle the kitchen, I'm going to brave the cold and take Harry on a longish walk. It's sunny out, and I could use a little of the old vitamin D, believe you me. The winter continues to hammer away at my soul, so I better fight back when I have the constitution to do so.

This evening, I think it'll be Jake Maddox time; I'm behind on the next title (a football story), and it's due Tuesday. Eric Stevens's good name must live on.

Wednesday is looking like my big highlight this week. Various in-laws will be watching Sam for me for about five hours, and I intend to use every minute of that to work on YA MS the first. I have this ridiculous notion that I can get a draft finished before the end of the month. It's probably a pipe dream.

I am not watching football. Football is boring.

Dunes

The drifts of snow on windy nights like this, especially when the snow is dry and light, remind me of the dunes at Jones Beach on Long Island. In places, like on our own front lawn, tall perennials still stand, their tops reaching well above the reach of the accumulated seven inches, to deeper in the drifts, of snow, and look just like the thick-stalked grasses that managed to survive between the blacktop of the parking lot and the crowded flat sands closer to the breaking waves. Along the wood-plank path, on either side, where the sun made the sand too hot to walk, the dunes took whatever shape the wind gave them.

Tonight, I'm on the couch (what else is new?) and snacking on pickle chips, something of which I had never heard the last time I was at Jones Beach.

As my recent tweets and FB status updates have alluded to, I have begun a new MS. I am foolish in this respect, and have been for years. But sometimes some free writing has to happen to get my juices flowing again, and the YA MS had been running on fumes for a couple of days. So I free wrote. And free wrote. And free wrote some more. And now I'm 60 pages in and don't want to stop. It feels great that writing is fun again!

So far, it's still coming pretty easily, but this has happened before. Hopefully this time's a charm, and I'll get this title finished enough that I'll be able to go back and do some edits to bring it up to submission quality.

The real question is, when will I get back to YA MS? Ugh.

So, in future, YA MS is still YA MS, and this new one is, um, YA MS . . . 2?

This is the winter of MY discontent

Now it's really winter in Saint Paul, and it's just how I remember it: terrifying.

Not like "Oh it's so cold I might die." Not at all. That comes in February, when Harry's paws nearly freeze to the sidewalk on his nighttime walk, and I have to carry him home lest he suffer permanent foot damage. This is the terrifying one might feel before walking into a conference room for a production meeting, let's say; or maybe right before a Kevin Costner movie starts.

Today, the earth is a grayish white: the combined colors of the muddy grass and light dusting of snow. The sky, too, is grayish white, nearly the exact same tone. These are the days I dread most. Complete and total sensory flatness. Flatitude. It makes my eyes go numb. (See above, Kevin Costner movie reference.)

Meanwhile, I can't get any work done. I'm not blaming Sam at all this time, either. This is strictly the numb-eyes thing. Everything has a sheen over it, and not in a pleasant way. More like a window covered in Vaseline.

The good news is PE Obama has set some very nice (albeit not strict enough) rules against lobbyist involvement in the transition.