National Novel Writer Month Has Begun

... and I am behind. Of course.

Why do I always do this? I know it is my bad habit of procrastination and that feeling I always get at the beginning of November that I can't finish the 50,000 words before the end of the month. I did it last year and I start each year's NaNoWriMo with such heady optimism, I am always afraid, by the end of week one, that I can not hold on to it.

But by the end of the month, I will have my 50,000 words and more. I know I will because I have a husband who's disappointment is as big as my own, except it's on his face. When it's on my face, I can ignore it. Just avoid mirrors. But when it is on his face, when I give him my word count at the end of the day, I see it and I know that I have to do better and stop sabotaging myself.

Still working at the same place. I keep reminding myself of the sacrifices we are both making for a better future. Still, I wish I could spend more time on writing. But I'm going to kill this teaching thing so that there will be no doubt that, despite wanting to leave, I can do a hell of a job doing my job.

Anyway, just a few thoughts to tide me over and so that whoever it is that checks this site once a day will have something to read.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow looms brightly. It is big and full of potential. As the day fades, after working for most of it, when the white screen sits empty before me and the little black line in the left hand corner of the page blinks, I look longingly at tomorrow because I know that is when I will have the energy and the creative energy to do all of these things I feel I have the potential for.

I can feel tired seeping into me. I've watched my shows and now, all I have to do is right. That's all. Just write. But the longer I sit here, the longer it takes my fingers to move over the keys. I glance at the clock and it shows me that night has become the next day. Tomorrow is only a day away.

I wish I would do the things now that I imagine for tomorrow.

Free Falling

This is harder than it used to be, getting my thoughts out. Back then, I didn't have anyone to embarrass but myself. I still remember the url - http://publictrust.blogspot.com. I got the name from a poster on the wall about the constitution at a former place of employment. Back then, I didn't know that you wanted a url that people could remember and go back to.

Those days were a bit more carefree - I had time, a job that didn't require a full 8 hours, no one was paying me to come up with articles on a monthly basis. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but it's harder to get in the creative stuff. Or just to get stuff off of my chest.

I had lunch with a freelance writer a few years ago. She told me that if I started writing for a living that writing creatively would be much harder and that I would even begin to hate the act of sitting down in front of the computer to do something. I'm definitely not at that point, but I do resent the time that my body requires for sleep and for friends and all the other things I want to do. I like those outlets: trivia night, movies, hanging out, staying in. But it all takes time. Just like I have to come to a realization about my weight (despite the magic office mirror in which I look fantastic), I have to come to some sort of realization with my writing.

The Honey is sick of hearing me talk about this. In his mind, if I wanted it, I would do it. And really, in my mind, that's how I feel too. But then I try to imagine a future where I just teach and don't go after writing and my fingers begin to itch, like I've already cut the computers away from their tips and they feel the phantom pains.

So, yes, I want to do this and yes, I will whine, and yes, I need your encouragement (and sometimes ass kicking) and maybe a deadline or two that has nothing to do with the writing I get paid for. While I'm going to apologize to you now for what you may have to put up with in the future, I'll thank you kindly for the encouragement.

Just a Little Something to Think About

If you insist on going at least 10 miles under the speed limit, you don't deserve to have flames on your vehicle.

Starting Somewhere

Every morning, I wake up wanting the day to go differently. This morning, with the foggy, sunless morning, I just wanted to get back in bed, wake up an hour later, then read my book for an hour or so before getting to the page, electronic and otherwise. I imagine this life as I step into my red All Stars and put on a blue shirt that complements my skin tone and I imagine that I'm excited because I have a job that can support me and my husband as he goes to school. I appreciate my job for that. But I long for something different (better?) and I feel it just beyond my periphery every day. So if I am able to do the things I've set my mind and heart ondoing, even as I let other things get in the way, I feel there is hope that I will find the new pathe I want to be on and still be financially stable.

That the dream, right? Write, work hard, and eventually you will be writing from home. I see the dream, kitten in my lap, laptop humming, coffee cup rings on my desk marking the time, looking forward to my husband coming home to tell me about his day.

Yeah, this is a bit wistful, but we all have to start somewhere, right?

This Post Fueled by Beefeater Gin and Tonic

In the case of perception, I am fully female.

I look in one mirror and I am a fat fuck. I mean, just humongous. I look like I'm a stretched out dwarf or a baseball player on an HDTV when it's not programmed correctly for widescreen.

In other mirrors, I am okay. I have more weight on me than I did 5 years ago, but it's proportionate because I am nearly 6ft tall and my fat distributes in an hourglass fashion. Which mirror is correct?

Sometimes I assume the first mirror is correct because I imagine I jiggle when I walk and The Honey is afraid I'm gonna die if I don't stop eating sugary, cheesy, greasy foods. Sometimes I imagine that the latter is true and that I look cute in my clothes that I love but that I realize are a little tighter than when I bought them.

So, would you trust a person who doesn't even know who they are when they look in the mirror? I find it hard to trust myself based on that information. I am the one that is supposed to be in control of my future. But my decision making of late is crap, not in regular life, but with my writing future. I can't see clearly what I want. It's like trying to determine which image of me is real? The one I see when I'm optimistic or the one I see the other times. The writing dream I see when I'm optimistic or the one I see the other times.

I know what I want. I want to wake up at 10am. I want to work out in the mornings. I want to come home, take a shower, relax with a cup of coffee and then I want to write until 6pm. I want to be able to take breaks and be at home with my cat and be able to greet my husband and start cooking again, start tasting foods in my head and putting them together, for better or for worse. I want to watch television at night and write about them by the morning. Then I want to go to sleep and do it all over again. I want to go to the library whenever I want to. I want to make middle of the day plans, have lunch dates, write at night too.

I don’t know how to get there. Just write is the easy answer, but is it “the” answer? I don’t know. There are a few of you who have started getting on to me about writing (or not writing) and I know you’re right, but but but...

There are things that I am changing. I hope those changes help me have a better outlook on writing. And I’m working to stop being so fat, so that there is only one image in the mirror.

75% is Better than Nothing

After being sick for a couple of days, I am finally at 75%.

The last time I got myself up to 75% of something, I ended up tearing cartilage in my knee.

The going rate for healthy little southern girls is going down, but then again, that's just the economy. We cook, we clean, we fix things, we work, we help put our husbands through college, we plant two rows of gardens, we try to write, to watch hours of television, to go out and have fun, and still try to stay sane.

It doesn't always work, as usually happens.

It all came to a head Wednesday when, after meeting up with my little sister/best friend, watching Star Trek 2 times in less than 24 hours, watching/helping a grieving best friend get drunk, taking it all down the street to another friend's home, bringing it all back to my home, planting two rows of fruits and vegetables (8 hours of gardening in less than 24 hours), working, meeting up at a local bar for some PBR and steak (that's right, we get to eat at our local bar, which may, in retrospect, have been a bad thing) then going out to another local bar for Star Wars (yes, I got to nerd out this past week), I woke up Wednesday morning not feeling my usual, cheerful, sunny, top 'o the mornin' self. I dragged myself out of bed because it was LS's last day, so we were going to go to the coffee shop just up the street for our last cuppa before she headed home.

We drove because I didn't feel like walking and two sips into my cuppa I knew things were going to come back up. They didn't... then. I sat down, started feeling worse. She left, I tried to sit and write, but decided my best course would be to go back home. I walked the .001 miles back to my house slowly, taking the steps carefully. I'm pretty sure I looked like Jason. The creepy, slow walking killer Jason. I check on my plants first and then walk towards home. By the time I make it up the steps, I'm so winded and starting to sweat.

Yeah, that's when the fever kicked in.

I just flop in the bed and for the first time in more years than I care to say, I fell asleep.

Before midnight.

Over the course of the next couple of days, all I did was sleep. It should have been refreshing, but it was really, really annoying.

I hate sleep. Sleeping. I never thought I was one of those people who lived by it, but the "sleep when you die" adage seems to hold true for me. I want to be out doing and then I want to come home and write until I have to go to bed because my eyes won't stay open anymore. But no. I have to be wise and go to bed at appropriate times so that I can function the next day.

What I need is a job that lets me use my natural sleep schedule. If I could wake at about 10am and stay up until about 3 or 4... that would be perfect.

Of course, it's thinking like that that brought me to my Wednesday predicament. So here I am, Sunday, waiting for LS to come back down and only at 75%.

However, I did watch Star Trek for a third time. And that sort of makes everything alright.

Neighborhood #1

At one end of Curd Street was a yard, encircled with chain link fencing and attached to a small church. In the fenced yard lived two German Shepherds, then the scourge of the dog world. These two worked in concert, like Cerebus, their two heads barking in every direction, their bodies close and quivering with anger.

If I remember correctly, I was fascinated by the dogs. I was all of ten years old, 5ft2in of legs, arms, knees and elbows. We didn't have much in those days. We lived in what could only be described, looking back, as slums. The drive through the neighborhood is almost unrecognizable, except for that feeling in the pit of your stomach that lets you know you have been here before. The fenced in church yard is still there, so are the apartments, red brick that stand to this day, although now they are overrun with vegetation.

I would walk to school, down my little street, turn left past the dogs, feed them a little piece of my breakfast, peanut butter toast, let them sniff my hands before they began to bark like mad, turn right at the end of the street, walk for about 4 blocks, turn left, scramble over hills that later became the base of the west side's Macon Housing Authority. Back then, the giant mounds of dirt that separated us from school were the biggest challenge of our day. The walk home would be the reverse, with some dry bits taken from lunch and furtively stuffed in pockets for the demon dogs I affectionately called King (yes, that was both of their names). They sniff my fingers, their noses wet. One King even ventured to lick my fingers before they both stepped back and started barking furiously. I let them know, by my voice, that they didn't scare me. When I talked about school, they stopped barking and listened. King would sometimes come closer. I talked as I walked around the fence and then headed home.

Our street was hilly and on the top of the hill was a two story blue house. The windows on the house were like a face and the dilapidated look of the house gave it a creepy feel. We always claimed that it was a witches' house. It was the kind of house you felt sure living next too would also brand you a witch and since I was already a vampire, well, I didn't need any more trouble. She hated animals and would complain about the infernal digging of our dog, Pearlie. I'm sure she hated the shepherds. You could hear King barking all the way to Jefferson Davis Road, the other end of the street, and I would stay awake wondering how I could charm the dogs.

We had our own dog who would dig holes into the hill. She would slink, fox like, into one of the many holes she created. She had puppies in one of them once and let me and my brother crawl through them to watch her feeding the puppies. Thank god for the knees and elbows.

It took several weeks before I tamed the dogs. Eventually, they were waiting for me in my walk. They stopped barking after a while and would perk up at the sound of my voice. The lady from the church was amazed. I'm sure she was afraid the dogs would turn on me, but they never did. For the four years the dogs and I lived in the neighborhood, we were friends.

I drove through the neighborhood the other day, my curiosity stronger than my need to hold on to memories that may not even be true. Everything was so different, though the chain link fence was still there. It was all so small. I couldn't imagine living there now. Of course, there are no dogs anymore. It's been more than 20 years. So much has changed, but the memories, faulty though they be, stay the same. I'm sure the dogs are playing to their heart's content out in the country somewhere.

I've Grown So Morbid - Why Don't I Cheer the Hell Up?

I have a lot to work on. But it has come to my attention that I've been a bit morbid.

It doesn't surprise me. Although I am pretty clean for a writer (no true abuse, but there is a hint of the emotional abuse here and there, no drugs, no sex before marriage, no rock and roll), I do have my traumas. Even though I wish those traumas played a better part in my writing, I find that when I write, I gloss over things, but when I think and then spew them on this blog, they come out a bit more morbid that I actually am in real life.

I like to laugh. I like to dance. I like tv shows and talking about them. I like sitting on porches drinking gin and tonics from mason jars and talking about everything from the meaning of life to the latest House episode (which, not surprisingly, has been dealing with the meaning of life) or Thomas the Train. I like hanging out with people and knitting and spinning yarn and even if I don't finish things, the very act of those things relax me. I've been much to morbid of late and I want it to end.

It's up to me, I know. I'm not deluded about that. So I am making the conscious decision to add things back into my busy schedule that I let work and writing push out. Truth be told, I can't write without the reading. I miss the reading. I miss actually finishing novels. I have about 5 books going right now. My goal is to finish one a week. I went to the yarn store Saturday and sat and knit with the older ladies and let their conversations wash over me as my fingers moved of their own merit and I allowed my mind to wander, perhaps for the first time in so many months. I want to add parts of those things back into my life so that I don't just see the cart I'm trying to pull, but I see the carrot that I get to eat when the cart gets to its destination.

I need to structure and organize my life and then stick to it. Because I like having fun, not regretting what I didn't do the day before. I'll try to laugh more, not just in deed, but in words as well.

Getting Old Has to be a Bitch

The old lady two people ahead of me in line moved much too slowly for the guy in front of me. He was annoying in his youth. I say that, knowing that he probably had about 5 years on me, but the waqy he fidgeted made me want to be like, "calm the fuck down, dude." As the old woman slowly pulled herself away from the counter, the guy surges forward, but I continue to watch her as she grabs her cart and pulls it towards her. It knocks into the sign, but she succeeds in getting her cart safely into her hands and away from things that could fall. I watch her walk, painfully, away and I think about the fact that I'm getting old.

I think about getting old a lot. Actually, I think about dying, but to get to the dying part, you have to get old. At least, that's what I tell myself. I am frightfully afraid of dying. Something to do with not knowing what's on the other side, what happens when you are no longer breathing. It scares the hell out of me. I don't want to think about death, but it has finally hit home to me. My dad and uncle dying has done a lot to make death a concrete matter, not an abstract thought.

I don't want to die. It is a plaintive wail that I hear inside myself every day, a wail that grows in ways that I never imagined.

And frankly, I hate imagining.

PS - something that makes this all the more heartwrenching is I've had a friend die, someone who is a friend on Facebook and whenever I see her in my friends list, it makes me sad. Yet somehow, the thought of deleting her from my friends is preposterous. It's a quandry I find myself in every few months. Death frakkin' sucks.

I've Got It All Figured Out

Really early Sunday morning, I sit at my desk, watching the latest television that I missed last week, hoping I can get through about 14 hours of television before it starts all over again. I don't have time to do everything I want to do.

Writing isn't going to be the hard thing. The hard thing is going to be trying to do everything I need to do in the next few weeks. For about the next three weeks, I will be working more than 40 hours a week because my second program is taking effect. Next week, there is spring break, so no classes, but the week after that, I work 12 hours Monday, 9 hours Tuesday, 10 hours Wednesday with no actual lunch, 11 hours Thursday, 10 hours Friday, 2 hours Saturday = 54 hours = 14 hours off the next week... EXCEPT... I still have to work with the other program the next week and despite having a day off on the calendar, I still have the crazy work schedule for that week.

Why is all of that happening? Because it is time for Script Frenzy. My life wouldn't be interesting if my life went normally, if I had the same time. But it will be interesting to see what my time off will look like when I get over these next few weeks.

I'm just tired. Don't mind my bitching, incoherency, or anything else below the pale.

Script Frenzy: Another Attempt At Craziness

So, I follow up my NaNoWriMo win (50, 781 words in 30 days) with a shot at something even harder, but exactly what I want to do ScriptFrenzy. ScriptFrenzy is the script writing arm of NaNoWriMo. This will be writing 100 pages in 30 days. Starting April 1, I will be hunkering down for hours per day trying to coax at least 4 pages a day our of myself.

It's harder than it sounds, thank you very much.

I will be writing two 30 minute specs - I'm not sure which now... Maybe you guys get to vote. Tomorrow or later today, I will put up the choices with a brief synopsis and you guys get to pick the two that I do. They will either be specs of show already on television or specs of my own original ideas. I want to do at least one that is already on and one that is my own. The one that is my own is the one I want to work on creating and completing in my hometown. The other one is the one I want to perfect and send to my contacts in Los Angeles and enter into contests.

I'm striving because I need to work for myself (I chafe under the rules of others) and still make enough money to keep us from being evicted while The Honey finishes school. I think it's time to get started!

PS, If you want to join me, go to ScriptFrenzy.org

Where the Hell Have You Been?

Let me start by saying that I didn't mean to be gone this long. It started out with needing to take a break as I re-evaluated my writing, hoping to come up with a way to write consistently on all of my sites. It began as a stop, turned into procrastination and then slid into inertia.

I'm good at that.

But, just as I'm surrounded by a great cloud of troublemakers ready to take up for my cause, I'm also surrounded by a great cloud of encouragers who push me to be the best writer I can be.

If you guys don't know it, it means a lot.

My husband has decided to help me up my game by buying me webhosting and a url. I will be writing about television at http://tvforbreakfast.com. It's a chance for me to hone the television writing part of myself and hopefully move me into either being paid to write for someone else or making money on my site. If nothing else, I will learn to be a webmaster, a promoter, a comedic writer and hopefully a short film director. This isn't the end all of what I want to do, but it's a beginning and a direction that I've always wanted to take my writing.

I have to thank Carey at Hey!Media! for getting me started. I'll still be writing there, just about things other than television. I just have to wrap my head around those other things, since I love television so much. I'm watching more movies, reading more books and soon, you'll be hearing from me on those things as well as music, comics, and video games.

How have I been? Tired, sad, slightly inebriated, overcoming, overwhelmed, overjoyed, encouraged... I love the people I have around me, both near and far, new and old. It's been so long... how have YOU been?

Sheer Exhaustion

I had a party Saturday night, a birthday party to make up for my actual birthday, which was spent driving back from Boston. It was a blast and a half. It was supposed to start at 8, but it kind of started at 6pm with my first guests arriving at 8:30. Of course, all it took was for one specific guest to turn the evening around.

I have a friend, let's call him BigBen. He's the kind of person that tells these stories and you wonder how he came up with what seems like these great whopper of a tale until you realize he lived them. Lived them all. When I talk about him doing contract killings, I'm only halfway joking. If you need property destroyed or a way to make someone start paying, I'm pretty sure I know the guy. The criminal element in my life, the weapons loving, multi-knife carrying, "pull a gun on a muthafucker that pulls a gun on me", tank stealing element that sits at my party table, plays bass for my fake Rock Band, drinks up all the gin punch and makes sure no one lays a hand on my pretty little head - yeah, I met them all through BigBen. And if I somehow met them through other means, they all just so happen to know him. Heaven help any fool that tries to mess with me because the beloved criminal element type that's got my back (I'm surrounded by a great cloud of them starting with my husband, sandwiched by BigBen's, topped by my uncle and cousin) would kill them. In that, I'm not joking. But I digress.

BigBen is this giant Nordic looking person with an innocent-ish face who is, most times, pretty laid back. That's a facade. Inside, he's seething with energy and scams. Don't get me wrong. He's a good guy. He protects the weak and innocent (sorta), he looks out for other people (kinda), and he always protects family (the one he claims, not necessarily the ones he was born with). He has a high moral code - it's just a little left of center in concept. Yes, BigBen came to the party and it took a turn.

It all started out innocently enough. Shots with the birthday girls, that's me and A., who's actual birthday was the previous Tuesday. They were harmless, sweet shots of irish cream and butterscotch schnapps. We were having fun. A friend gave us a gift of moonshine* and when BigBen learned this, he made us take a birthday shot with him. Those of us who took that shot were hit pretty hard, but we didn't feel the effects until about an hour later, when we had forgotten all about taking the shot and were in the middle of our Rock Band 2 World Tour. I was on drums because I'm oh so good at them* when suddenly, I was really very good at them. I look over at the others and BigBen is slowly sinking between the couch cushions. A. quickly lets us know that the bathroom was calling her name now. Now. RIGHT NOW. I think we almost broke our television and I'm not sure, but I think someone killed a bird. Someone tried to smoke the lit filter on their cigarette, I broke at least one cigarette because NOBODY should smoke, and passed out in near exhaustion once everyone was on their merry way. Don't worry, those who weren't staying over had designated drivers and those who were staying kept themselves from puking in our apartment. Well, on our apartment.

Now, three days past this weekend, I am still exhausted. I've been getting by on less than 5 hours of sleep a night for the last two weeks. That, with this party, has created one tired little southern girl.

Funerals Suck

I buried my dad Wednesday. I even cried. Understand, my relationship with my father was rocky at best, hate-filled at worst. It's a long story, filled with many things that will stay buried with him, but the turn around came when I introduced him to my husband.

Relationships are hard. Interracial relationships are even harder. Interracial relationships in the south... well, you get the picture. My father was not the most open-minded man in my younger days, so I didn't expect the meeting between him and my intended to go well. My dad met him, heard the news that we were engaged, and gave him a real handshake, talked to him a little and never changed a thing about who he was or how he acted. Many people in my family did change because of my husband's race, but the first person I expected to shun him did no such thing. For that, I will always honor my father.

Do you remember those Oreo cookie commercials where the dad feels like his adult daughter doesn't need him anymore? Then she lets him open her cookie for her to symbolize that she will never stop needing him... do you remember that? That was not my life. I stopped needing my father when I was about 10. I mean, c'mon, I needed him. I just got used to the fact that he wasn't going to be around. While I thought I was so tough and self reliant, I usually ended up with guy friends who just wanted to protect me, who would do anything for me. In a way, my friends became my family because what I needed as a child, as a person, I never got from my family but I always got from my friends - whether it was tough talk, laughs, hugs, enjoyment, validation, or forgiveness. I used to cry at those Oreo commercials because I wanted that relationship with my father. I wanted to need him.

When I found out he had cancer... well, I've already written about that. And when I heard he died, I was blank. Nothing. I wanted to cry and I wanted to feel nothing at the same time. When I was 19, I found out that the man I'd hated for 9 years was not my real father. While I should have felt relief, I suddenly realized what he had done for 19 years. Good or bad, he had made me feel like I was his child. It was the first grown up thought I'd ever had. In my mind, when I wished I was adopted, I'd come up with scenarios of how I would push my non-relation to him in his face, but when faced with the actuality of not being related to him, I found that I didn't want to do it. I struggled through 3 more years of trying to forgive him, never fully understanding why I felt I should. In that time, while seemingly being hit on by a much older man, I met someone who knew my biological father, who told me when he died a couple of years later. I'd already decided I wouldn't search for him and the possible half siblings I might have. Yet for a brief moment, when I heard the news, I felt sorrow. It was a sorrow for all the things that would never be possible.

Maybe that was what I felt this Wednesday as I looked down at his body for the last time, but surely something more. Surely more than what I felt for a man I never knew, I hope. And despite never knowing the man that brought me up and accepted me as his own, there is a piece of him that will always be a part of me. Maybe that is why I never told him that I knew. Maybe it is because I was a sucker for that daddy/daughter moment and I couldn't take it away from me by letting him know I knew the truth. Even as we looked at each other, knowing the truth until the day he died, we both kept quiet. Whatever the why, I did stand at his grave, watching them lower him down, and said goodbye. I am sad in ways I don't fully understand, maybe won't for a while. I cry when I remember, in strange places, like getting my battery replaced or on aisle 3 at Kroger. No reason, just crying. But I'll be okay.

He and my uncle are together again, only space separating them. And God bless the poor soul that has to lay between them for eternity.

Porch Sitting MoFos

My husband and I chose to live on a street that has a bit of a reputation. The people who live there and hang out often are called the Magnolia Street Mafia. I'm not sure how the reputation evolved, and maybe one day I will ask the Don, but as it is, when you walk down the street, and people are on the porch where the Don abides, you want to stop to pay your respects.

The Don is not a benignly menacing king, like Corleone. He's so laid back, it would almost be a joke that he's the Don, but there is something commanding about him that tells you to give him that respect because he will give it back to you, two-fold. His house is open to you, his porch is your port of call and on those days when you just want to sit and talk to somebody, anybody, there he is, he and his mafia, ready to parlay.

Normally, I don't get to see the Don's wife, but tonight, she was out and I took the opportunity to sit and talk. There is something very arresting about her, the tilt of her head, the way she moves her hands, and when she speaks, her voice moves in and out of sound. I know, it's weird. You continue to hear everything she said, but it is almost rhythmic, like she's singing an Irish tune, the lilt almost imperceptible, but just there, in earshot. She speaks as if she loves everything she's saying, like she treasures each word she chooses. Each crafted story is her child, which she introduces to the world and she doesn't care if you think it's an ugly baby or not, she just cares that you got to see her precious bundles of joy.

I'm sure I'm making it all up, but as we sat on the porch, drinking our wine out of mason jars, talking about cell phones and trees blowing onto power lines, talking about birthday parties and CD release parties, the chill settling into our bones, I realized that there might be a few more things about the south that I like.

Drunk Texting in a Pub in the New Year

So we drove to Boston for New Year's Eve, which is a sight further than driving to Atlanta to hang out with BigBen and watching a concert. Because I thought he'd be killing someone up in South Boston, I didn't invite him to come along because I swore we would meet up, but his contract killing got cancelled. Sorry, BigBen.

Instead, we all piled into the rental car and did the 19 hour drive in 18 hours 59 minutes. It was a thing of beauty. By the time we got through all the boring parts of the south (we mapped ourselves away from toll roads and thus, big, beautiful cities), it was too dark to see if we were driving through scenic beauty or boring, Texas-like, stretches of flat emptiness. It didn't matter. All we really wanted to do was go to sleep, but we only had a few days in the city to do it all.

It began to snow as soon as we got into Quincy, MA. It was beautiful, a blanket of white to welcome us. We drove in the first fresh fall of it, before it became a hazard, at the point when you are still thinking maybe you should try to do a snow angel, before the chemical salt goes down and it is a dirty mass of ice scooped to the side of the road. Of course, we didn't reach our goal of doing it all in the city. We went into Boston and ended up shopping because I forgot that canvas shoes are no good in the snow. By the time we made it to Prudential Center, the back of my heels were frozen and I was sure I would never feel my feet again. I ended up buying rubber shoes in a high gloss grey, shoes I will never wear until I'm once again back in Boston.

We headed back to Quincy to eat and drink, to drink and eat, to drink and drink. We went to a bar where we listened to true Irish accents and a cover band that wasn't bad, but wasn't good either. They had several Sam Adams on tap, but no other stout beers to speak of outside of Guinness, whose flavour has been reducing for the last few years. We ran over to a sports bar, fighting the biting wind, where we found blueberry beer that was like drinking a spring day and a clam chowder that we forced the girl allergic to seafood to try. Because it was that good. Whatever happened would be worth it. She agreed, even after whatever happened. We tried to go to another bar, just a bar, but it was too full for what we wanted, a quiet place to sit and talk and drink as we ushered in the New Year in a different city. We left that bar quickly and decided to brave the alleyway to check out places on a different street and came to a bar that was just what we were looking for. We ordered shots, played pool and as midnight crept up on us, the management passed out hats and tiaras and noise makers and offered us meatballs and sausage to snack on. Apparently, people will eat anything when they've been drinking. After Ryan Seacrest and Dick Clark brought in the New Year, champagne was passed around and both our table companion and the guys a table over went crazy with the noise makers, we called a cab to drive us the two miles back in the snow to our hotel. It cost $10.

And the drunk message I typed to all and sundry with cell phone and texting capabilities? Happy time wasting New Year! You all are great and I love you all, from a bar in Boston. Don't ask me about the champagne. I didn't get any.

This went to many people, some who didn't have my number anymore and one of the messages even crossed over into Africa. It was nice to wake up to a ton of message either wishing me the same or asking who I was.

It was a good NYE, a good night of food and drinks and camraderie. An excellent road trip and a brilliant start to the new year. Drunk texting and all.