No flowers for you!

My Nanowrimo book has been fully read now. I've only put that off for three months, you know. Golly, it sucked. At least I didn't use the word "golly" in my book, you'll be pleased to know--it's just all of you that get to suffer from that particular lamemess. There were a few worthwhile moments in the last half, though, including one that will be stripped ruthlessly from the final product regardless of the worthwhileness. (The cute finale was really just a shameless ploy for words that must be eradicated.) I was also pleased to see that the resolution proposal scene was actually kind of funny. I was pounding out words like crazy on that last day, so things were generally not all that well thought out. I thought it was just majorly lame, but now I think it's cute lame, which was a pleasant surprise. I hold no illusions about the rest of it. I think I'm going to rewrite the whole thing, actually.. but that's a project I'll get started on another day. I'm just happy to say that I wrote a book, darnit.

I'm in a bit of a moral quandry at the moment. I must eat ice cream to get the freezer space to a level at which we can comfortably go grocery shopping again, but yet I have an unopened box of Girl Scout cookies that have been begging for my attention for days. We felt like good samaritans when we bought those cookies. Two girls were sitting outside WalMart just at dusk, huddled together with one solitary box of cookies. They had to sell it before they could leave, and they were freezing to death. That's when we decided that we had to end their suffering. See, I eat candy for the good of mankind! It is therefore unfair and unreasonable that those calories count. I shall call a city council meeting on the matter immediately.

Oh, I forgot to mention last week's anti-romance incident. I feel totally guilty because I am the cause of some poor woman not getting spontaneous flowers from her husband. I was completely oblivious to the whole thing until after we walked away and M started laughing like a crazy man. See, we usually have hanging baskets on our porch, but we don't have this year's set yet. Last week, we were walking into Walmart and they had a display of flowering baskets sitting by the entrance. We slowed down to look at them, and M suggested that we could buy a couple, and I said, rather contemptuously, "Well, yes, but they're ugly." Unfortunately, at approximately the same time M said that, apparently this other man stopped to look at them as well. He picked one up and turned to his buddy and said, "I think I'll take one of these home to the wife." It is at just this moment that I, not hearing this, begin discussing how ugly these particular flowers are as I walk off. The poor man looks me consideringly and then looks back at the flowers thoughtfully, and then puts them back and enters the store, sans wifely gift. M tried to convince me that I saved their marriage, because if I thought they were ugly then she might have as well and been annoyed with him for buying them, but I think that was a pretty far stretch. He was just trying to make me feel better, though, so I pretended to believe him. I do wonder about the woman in M's mind who would divorce a man for buying her ugly flowers, though.. and it also makes me wonder if I have perhaps uncovered a psychologically damaged facet of M's personality. No wonder I don't get flowers from him.*

*I'm lying. He does buy me flowers, but that doesn't go with the theory, and so I'm choosing to conveniently ignore the facts momentarily.

Anyway, I better suck it up and get to work on the ice cream so we can go to the store tomorrow. I just have one more thing I want to say tonight.

I love living with a boy. I do. I really do.

This happy thought brought to you by two boxes of kosher salt and a boy that makes me laugh.

Clean, clean, clean.

So I guess tomorrow is the big day we've been waiting for--our houseguest arrives in Cinci at 3:00. We've been extremely productive over the last week or two, making Blatt's arrival our deadline on any number of things that didn't strictly have to be done before he got here. Like.. retiling the bathroom floor. He won't care about our bathroom floor, and presumably he won't care about how clean the place is, but it's been nice for us to have a reason to get some stuff done. (It's spic n span clean, though, just so you know. It's walking-through-the-house-smiling-to-myself clean. It's the-bathtub-is-so-shiny-that-it's-distracting clean (thanks, sweetie!) I guess if I talk any more about how happy I am that the house is clean, you folks are going to think that it's usually never clean. ;) It's usually clean in phases, though. You know. One day the kitchen and living room are spotless, but as I get the back of the place clean, the front goes into gradual decay. There's something about the size and the way this place is laid out that makes it look like a mess if there's one thing out of place, too, which doesn't help.

I was kind of looking forward to writing tonight, but now I'm all tired and I realize that I have nothing at all to say. So I guess I'll just stop while I'm ahead.

Oh, and I saw a bumper sticker today that made me laugh--Real Men Don't Sue Children.