The 12 hours after Christmas

After a five-day visit, my family has scattered back to their own homes.  It is a joy and a luxury to spend so much time with my family of origin.  For a few days, my normally quiet, relatively tidy house is transformed into a truly Saturnalian chaos-land, where young cousins laugh and run, sprinkling tortilla chip crumbs behind them, adult siblings day drink Bloody Caesars and keep the party going late into the night with our three games of choice (Texas Hold Em, Cards Against Humanity, and Wise and Otherwise), and my parents hang with their adult kids, laughing over wildly inappropriate things that parents probably shouldn’t laugh with their kids about, but whatever.  It’s awesome.  And a little exhausting.  When everyone leaves, I revel in the quiet, and then I start cleaning.  I find all sorts of strange things left behind, and this year, those things kind of organized themselves into a song.  You know the tune… Sing along!

On the first hour after Christmas, my family left for me… 10 extra pounds on my ass.

On the second hour after Christmas, my family left for me…one dish of dogfood… and 10 extra pounds on my ass.

On the third hour after Christmas, my family left for me… a toothbrush and some toothpaste… one dish of dogfood, and 10 extra pounds on my ass.

On the fourth hour after Christmas, my family left for me… empty bags of crumbs (like 3 or 4 of them)… a toothbrush and some toothpaste, one dish of dogfood, and 10 extra pounds on my ass.

On the fifth hour after Christmas, my family left for me… five Keurig cups!  (No, we don’t own a Keurig.)  Empty crummy bags, toothbrush and toothpaste, one dish of dogfood, and 10 extra pounds on my ass.

On the sixth hour after Christmas, my family left for me… ten little containers of leftovers each containing a tablespoon or less of food… five Keurig cups!  Empty crummy bags, toothbrush and toothpaste, one dish of dogfood, and 10 extra pounds on my ass.

On the seventh hour after Christmas, my family left for me… fake pancake syrup… ten mini-leftovers… Five Keurig cups!  Empty crummy bags, toothbrush and toothpaste, one dish of dogfood, and 10 extra pounds on my ass.

On the eighth hour after Christmas, my family left for me… four half-full juice boxes… fake pancake syrup, ten mini-leftovers… Five Keurig cups!  Empty crummy bags, toothbrush and toothpaste, one dish of dogfood, and 10 extra pounds on my ass.

On the ninth hour after Christmas, my family left for me… three Tupperwares of potato water*… four half-full juice boxes, fake pancake syrup, ten mini-leftovers… Five Keurig cups!  Empty crummy bags, toothbrush and toothpaste, one dish of dogfood, and 10 extra pounds on my ass.

(*Potato water, you ask?  The water left over from boiling potatoes.  Three large Tupperware containers full.  To be used to thicken soup.  Except my mom took the ham bone to make the soup at her house, so I’m not sure the potato water has any other use.)

On the tenth hour after Christmas, my family left for me… a jam jar full of something (milk, maybe?)… three potato waters, four half-full juice boxes, fake pancake syrup, ten mini-leftovers… Five Keurig cups!  Empty crummy bags, toothbrush and toothpaste, one dish of dogfood, and 10 extra pounds on my ass.

On the eleventh hour after Christmas, my family left for me… a few cell phone chargers… jam jar of milk maybe, three potato waters, four half-full juice boxes, fake pancake syrup, ten mini-leftovers… Five Keurig cups!  Empty crummy bags, toothbrush and toothpaste, one dish of dogfood, and 10 extra pounds on my ass.

On the twelfth hour after Christmas, my family left for me… lots of love and happiness… a few cell phone chargers, jam jar of milk maybe, three potato waters, four half-full juice boxes, fake pancake syrup, ten mini-leftovers… Five Keurig cups!  Empty crummy bags, toothbrush and toothpaste, one dish of dogfood… and 10 extra pounds on my ass!!

On writing. On writing smut.

It’s been a week since I finished the mad dash to the NaNoWriMo finish line.  I did it!  Fifty thousand words in a month.  That’s a lot, or not a lot, depending on your perspective.  This blog entry is approximately 1,200 words.  It takes me about an hour to write 1,000 words, give or take a half hour.  If the inspiration is flowing (i.e. I am writing a sex scene or a snarky internal monologue), closer to a half hour.  If not (i.e. I am writing awkward dialogue that I know will need to be rewritten, but I’m writing it anyway because it’s really better if my main character talks to other people too, not just to herself all the time), then closer to 90 minutes.  The goal per day for NaNo is a little under 2,000 words, so it was a 2-3 hour/day commitment for me. 

There were days during which I wrote nothing.  Thanksgiving weekend is always a black hole of family, cooking, and day drinking.  I also discovered a fun penicillin allergy in early November, for which I was essentially chugging Benadryl from the bottle to control the overwhelming itchiness and hives.  Not so much with the writing or even the moving my mouth to makey the words.  In contrast, on my most productive day, I wrote 7,000 words, which was roughly a full 8-hour day of nonstop writing.  That day included three sex scenes.

Oh, if you’re new here, or just catching up, I’m writing a smutty novel.  Contemporary fantasy/paranormal erotica. 

I have always wanted to write smut.  Always.  At sixteen, top of my class in high school, I’m sure I was a disappointment to many teachers when I told them that my career aspiration was to write smut for a living.  Only one of them told me to my face that it was a waste of my brain.  He recommended that I become a geneticist.  At the time, that held zero appeal.  Now, older, wiser… yeah, still no. 

So smut.  I’m writing smut, and I love it.  It writes itself, honestly.  Not the pesky plot part (Plot? What plot?), but the characters seem to emerge as if by magic.  The novel started out as a romance between a succubus and a satyr.  But then this other character came in, and who knew?  The romance between the two of them is much more compelling.  I didn’t plan that.  These two fictional characters that emerged from my own brain have a chemistry that I didn’t plan on.  So the novel switched genre from romance to erotica.  I’m not going to make her choose.  For now, at least, she can have them both.  Where by have, I mean… Yeah, you all know what I mean.  Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.

Here’s the tricky part.  People keep asking to read this thing.  They have joked with me that I should send excerpts out with my Christmas cards instead of my annual holiday letter.  That seems like a good thing, in theory.  People are interested.  That’s good.  I mean, who doesn’t like smut?  Smut rocks.  I would happily stick a pseudonym on this thing and let anyone read it.  It’s not about insecurity.  It’s about intimacy.  I didn’t realize that writing sex scenes was so… personal.  That sounds dumb, right?  I mean, what is more personal than sex?  But I really just didn’t realize how personal until my best friend asked if she was going to get to read it and I freaked out inside.  No.  Just no.  She knows me really well, but no, it’s too personal. 

There are only so many ways to write “and then they boinked and it was awesome.  Big O’s all around.”  If you are writing explicit sex scenes, it’s going to get… more elaborate.  And the elaborations say a lot about me and my sexuality.  The main character isn’t me.  But the sex scenes?  Yeah.  They’re my hot buttons.  Of course they are.  Who else’s could they be?  My experiences of sex that didn’t involve me are… shall we say… rather limited. 

I think about some of my favorite writers who do sex scenes in their novels.  Jacqueline Carey.  Laurell K. Hamilton.  They have hot buttons, and I have a pretty good idea what those hot buttons might be.  These women are strangers, but I feel as if I know some very intimate things about them.  But it’s OK, because they’re strangers.  I’m not hanging out having coffee with Laurell K., thinking about how she fantasizes about having sex with two dudes at once.  How it “just flat does it for her.”  (If you read her books, that line should be familiar.)  She likes guys with long hair who wear lace-up leather garments.  She likes biting.  She probably scratches the crap out of her partner(‘s/s’) back(s).  I am really fine knowing that about a stranger.  I am also really fine with a stranger knowing the equivalent fantasies for me.  But friends?  FAMILY?  I don’t know how to knock down that wall of intimacy. 

For now, the “novel,” such as it is, consists of 50,000 words spewed out rapid fire.  Those words are not suitable for anyone else to read yet anyway.  So I have some time to figure this out.  But I feel it… I feel inside that I will finish this novel and that it won’t suck.  I don’t know whether other people will agree that it doesn’t suck.  I don’t know if anything will ever come of this.  But I think that at some point, people I know are going to read this thing.  They’re going to know I like that, and that, oh yeah, and that other thing. 

Having someone else read my writing is always an incredibly intimate and agonizing process for me under any circumstances.  Always.  Even just putting these blog posts out there is intimate and not without social challenge.  It’s hard to imagine getting over that hurdle, letting someone read what I’ve written about the most intimate aspect of my life.  The main character isn’t me.  Her issues are not my issues.  I have known a lot of people in my life, and they all inform the kind of characters that I can imagine and create.  But sex, more than anything else I can imagine, is personal.  I don’t know what it’s like to have sex as someone else.  In those moments, yeah, she is me.  Except for how I’m not a succubus.  There’s that, at least. 

So for those of you who have been requesting smutty excerpts, thank you thank you thank you.  You are encouraging me to finish this book, to edit it, to keep working when self-doubt creeps in.  You are helping me to realize a dream I have had since I was a teenager.  But also, please be patient.  It’s not self-deprecation or my inner critic that is holding me back from sharing.  It’s this question of intimacy.  I need to figure this out if I am going to be a purveyor of smut, but I haven’t figured it out yet.  And if I never share it, but one day you find a smutty book on a shelf somewhere with a pseudonym based on my first and middle names, please buy it.

The true meaning of Christmas… a clock tower?

Well, it’s been a year since the “What’s church” conversation.  And we just had the "true meaning of Christmas" conversation.  Oh my.

We were putting up the tree, and the kids asked if everyone in the world is decorating for Christmas.  I told them some people don't celebrate Christmas, that they don’t believe in it.  "That's sad," said my daughter.  "That's crazy," said my son.  I didn't say anything else, just let it marinate.  About an hour later, tree decorated, garlands up, the “Seasonal” music channel playing through the TV, my daughter asked why some people don't celebrate Christmas. 

Gather 'round, my children... Time for you to learn that Christmas is not about Santa and Rudolph and presents.

Here are some notable events from the conversation:

When asked, "Do you remember what 'God' is?" my son answered, "God is a grown-up word" (i.e. "Oh my God," which they are not allowed to say).  So, um, that’s hilarious or awful, depending on your perspective.  Once I reminded them about God making the earth and the sky and the animals and McDonalds, they clearly remembered.  But…

They have both switched their positions since the original talk.  My son is now on the "God is pretend" track, and my daughter is now a believer. 

We talked about the pagan origins of the Christmas tree and evergreen garlands, showing how our modern version of Christmas comes from lots of different kinds of beliefs blended together, and how everyone believes something different.

I showed them the baby Jesus and nativity ornaments and told them the traditional Christian Christmas story.  We also talked about the significance of the star, and the presents people brought for God’s special baby.

My daughter is clearly taken with the idea of a baby god.  She likes baby things.  A baby god?  That is so right up her alley.  She is all about the baby Jesus.

My son said that he thinks God didn’t have a baby.  God had a clock tower.  Um, huh?  “Why a clock tower?” I asked.  “Because clock towers are really real, and God isn’t,” he said.

Um, OK.  Good talk.

It's November, the season for writing a novel

My dear readers, if you have been wondering where I have been all month, I have been sitting right here in my blogging chair, writing away.  Just not writing this blog.  I have been writing a novel.  If you’ve never heard of NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month.  Every November, tens to hundreds of thousands of people set out to write a novel in a month.  Thirty days, 50,000 words.  That’s the goal. 

I have accomplished this mad dash before, pre-kids. It taught me a lot about my writing process.  It helped me find strategies for powering through (or going around) writer’s block.  It got me in a habit of writing every day.  But then, you know, twin babies, and then twin toddlers, and then twin preschoolers…

Now that they are twin kindergarteners, and gone all day, I am back to my frantic November noveling, and hopefully back to a habit of writing pretty much every day. 

This year, I have discovered the joys of writing in the first person.  I love to create rich voices for characters, and it is so much easier when I can just write their stream of consciousness thoughts from time to time.  The main character is a 40-year-old mom, so her voice bears some resemblance to mine.  But she’s not me (except inasmuch as every character I write is some facet of me).  She’s single, first of all, and has never had a deep, lasting relationship.  Oh, also, she’s a succubus.  So that’s different. 

If you know what a succubus is, that should be your first clue that the novel I am writing is not going to be suitable for all audiences.  I’m writing a blend of romance and erotica.  Kind of like 50 Shades of Grey, except good.  I hope.  No inner goddesses doing tangoes or any other dances.  And instead of a virgin who has never held hands, my female lead has had to have sex at least once a week since she hit puberty so that she wouldn't die.  And also, she has three kids and stretch marks.  And the guy will be more realistic too, once she stops boinking him long enough to get to know him.  Certainly he’ll be less of a douche nozzle than Mr. Fifty Shades.  If he tried to tell my main character what she could and couldn’t eat, demanded that she get weekly bikini waxes, or told her what kind of car she was allowed to drive, she could use her full power on him and take away his will entirely, or she could just, you know, leave.  So he’d better not pull any of that misogynistic crap. 

So, anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing.  It takes two to three hours a day for me to reach my writing goals if I want to stay on track to finish on time.  I am pretty much on target, although perhaps 3,000 words behind.  I blame the two days I lost when I discovered that I was allergic to Penicillin, and needed constant Benadryl in my system.  I can make that up if I stay on track, so this might be the last blog post of the month. 

If you would like to read excerpts of what I am writing, um, no.  Eventually, yes.  But writing at this pace means vomiting out a book in a month with no editing.  It’s not suitable for company yet, polite or otherwise.  But I do have one excerpt on the NaNo website.  It’s relatively clean, not a sex scene, but also… definitely adult content.  Here it is.  And credit where credit is due… I have my sister and my good friend, Eve, to thank for the best two of those slang terms.  Most fun brainstorming session ever.  You’ll see when you read it.

If you’ve ever considered writing a novel, if it’s on your “bucket list” or your someday list, I can’t say enough good things about NaNoWriMo.  One month.  You give yourself over for one month, and at the end, you have either a novel or a big head start on one.  And you get to tell people you’re writing a novel.  That shit never gets old.

If you give a mommy a new faucet

My kitchen faucet has seen its day.  It’s white plastic, ugly, stained, and when you pull out the handle to use the spray function, it won’t retract.  If you think it has retracted, but it’s not locked in place, it falls down, spraying you and the entire kitchen with water.  It completely sucks and needs to be replaced.  Here is the story of why I just keep living with it:

If you give a mommy a faucet, she is going to want a new sink to go with it.  A sink that is not scratched up and stained, a sink that is not white, a sink in which she can dump out half a cup of coffee without having to clean the resulting coffee stain with Comet or a Magic Eraser.

If you give a mommy a sink, she is going to want new countertops to replace the old laminate ones that have that telltale brown laminate seam, and have bumpy drips of superglue from the messy fixing of broken toys.

If you give a mommy new countertops, she would really prefer not to put them on the existing cabinets, which are dated country oak, and not her style at all, and which have curved panel doors that, even if painted, will never look modern.

If you give a mommy new cabinets, it really doesn’t make sense to put them on the cracked tile floor, because the flooring goes under the cabinets, and wasn’t installed correctly, leading to a long crack that runs through several tiles and gets longer each year.  Also, the floor is white and shows every single freaking drip and piece of dust.

And that is why I have a non-functional kitchen faucet.  The end.

Go team?

Last week, my son was invited to a birthday party for one of his classmates.  He was one of only two or three kids from the class invited, so clearly this kid and my son have connected.  We had a fantastic time, and I enjoyed the other moms and the kids.  But here’s what happened.  The party had an Orioles theme.  (That’s baseball if you’re as sports-dumb as I am.  I’m just proud that I didn’t have to look it up to determine the sport.)  The birthday kid asked my kid, “Do you like the Orioles?”

And my kid looked at him blankly, and said, “Huh?”

Once someone at the grocery store asked my kid if he liked the Ravens. (That’s football.  I didn’t have to look that up either.  Go me!)  He answered, “A raven is kind of like a crow.” 

Yeah.

See, I pretty much hate watching sports.  I would go to a live game, I guess.  If there was going to be beer and naughty food I don’t usually allow myself.  But honestly, I’d rather go to a pub and have beer and naughty food without the boring sports part.  I could see tailgating, especially with friends of ours, one of whom went to culinary school. He makes elaborate meals including Scotch eggs from scratch. (He mixes his own sausage spices, etc.)  I would be totally down with that.  And just, you know, skip the football part.  (A Scotch egg, if you don’t know, is a hard boiled egg, encased in sausage, breaded, and then deep fried.  Dipped in spicy mustard, if you’re me.  Mmmmm, Scotch eggs.)

I like playing sports.  I played basketball, soccer, and tennis as a kid, and I still enjoy those, or the slower-moving mommy-playing-with-kids equivalents.  I would probably still enjoy the faster-moving versions if I had better shoes and a better bra and a month to get back in cardiovascular shape.  But watching?  Absolutely no interest. 

My husband doesn’t watch sports on TV either.  He probably would.  He watches when he’s with his family.  But it’s not high enough on his priority scale to set aside time to watch, especially since he knows he would be watching alone.  He has made some noise about taking the kids to an Orioles game, and I said, “Awesome, have fun!”  But since I tend to plan all of our outings, the odds of this ever happening are pretty low.  Like, not statistically different from zero.  He can go.  I’m not going.  And I’m not planning it.  Maybe some other dad will plan it and he can tag along.

He has taught them baseball (a sport I loathe in all forms—playing, watching, watching kids play, etc.)  My daughter, who is very sporty, can already bat better than I can.  I have taught them some soccer skills.  They did gymnastics, and they both dance.  They have been exposed to parkour, and know the names of some of the feats from American Ninja Warrior.  They’re not… you know… deprived.

But in this area of the country, I wonder if sports and (gag) the local teams are an important part of their social education that I am neglecting.  Maybe they should know who the Ravens are.  Sigh.  But do I have to?

Kids their age are asking.  If I expose them to sports and they still prefer Mario and Pokemon and reading and dancing, at least I’ll know it’s their choice.  But what if they like sports?  I managed to score a husband who doesn’t watch sports.  I am not having football on every… um… Monday?  Monday night football?  That’s a thing, right?  Except that my dad comes down on weekends, and there always seems to be some important football game on while he’s here too.  So, is it, like, more than once a week?  Is that right?  That sounds bloody awful. 

Can I just not?  What do you guys think?  Can I just… not?

I’ve spoken with a few friends about it, and the consensus so far seems to be that I have to at least expose them to sports.  Football first, and then baseball, pretty much the two LEAST appealing sports possible.  I guess it could be worse.  It could be golf.  I imagine myself sitting down to watch a Ravens game with them, telling them that the Ravens are “our” team.  It feels like talking about the Easter Bunny.  Or maybe more like indoctrinating them in a religion that I don’t share.  In Maryland, the Ravens are more of a religion than, like, you know, god.  People (apparently) wear purple on Fridays before games.  No one dresses up every week for god.  I’m just saying.  Well, maybe for church I guess, but around here, people don’t really dress that nicely for church.  This isn’t Manhattan.  There are no fabulous hats.

This whole question makes me miss the San Francisco bay area.  Around here, my friend’s kids apparently have a “wear your favorite team jersey” day at school.  I have this fantasy that in the bay area, people would send their kids to school wearing the uniform of the Irish curling team or something.  It’s not the appreciation of sports that makes me uncomfortable.  It’s the assumption that everyone is into sports.  We have no jerseys.  We have no favorite team. 

The easy solution, proposed by a dinner party companion the other night, is that I outsource the problem.  Send the kids to someone else’s house on a game day.  Or make chicken wings and taco dip and buy a bunch of beer and have some people over to my house to teach my children what they need to know to be socially accepted in suburban Maryland.  So I guess I’ll do that.  So that at least when a school friend asks them if they like the Ravens, they won’t start quoting Poe. 

But can’t I have that same party—chicken wings, taco dip, beer—without the football?  Oh, right.  Right.  Crap.

An honest resume

Pam-a-rama ding dong
http://www.pamaramadingdong.com/

Objective

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Job utilizing my creative energy, requiring absolutely zero follow-through.  Must have flexible hours, and a yoga-pants-friendly dress code.

Qualification summary

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Overeducated, intelligent, creative type with savant-like knowledge of a completely useless array of domains.  I can make something from nothing.  But it might be crooked and/or unfinished.

Skills

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Writing

• Sole writer for a successful blog with tens of regular readers.  Especially skilled at creating an authentic voice using such devices as F-bombs, ludicrous overuse of sentence fragments, excessive ellipses, and idiosyncrasies borrowed from Joss Whedon characters.

• Have several unfinished novels languishing about.

• Craft a mean facebook status update. 

• Zero-tolerance policy for poor grammar.

• Can beat most people at Scrabble and Boggle.

Sexiness

• Can seriously rock a corset, and have trained minions people in appropriate corset-lacing technique, because that shit is not as easy as you think.

• Bikini model.  Um, kinda.

• Specialized expertise in the area of deviant sex slang describing disgusting acts that no one I know would ever do.  Go ahead, quiz me.

• Used to belly dance, and have retained just enough muscle memory to look like I know what I’m doing for the 15 seconds it takes to impress someone.

• Apparently have the voice of a phone sex operator.  Or so I have been told.  More than once.

• My boobs have their own twitter account.  Yes, really.  They don’t talk much, but once in a while.

Making stuff

• Ability to wing it/fake it at any art or craft, from painting to making a faux fur bike seat cozy. 

• Can bake and cook my ass off (or on, perhaps I should say).

Pirate costuming. Corset.  Boobs.
Oh, and I made those curtains.

• Extensive costuming abilities, with specialties in Mario characters, Renaissance Faire garb, pirate costuming, and anything involving a corset.  Specialize in modifying existing costume elements into a new costume.  And pushing up boobs.

• Goddess of inebriated crafting.

• Can make lampwork glass beads and jewelry.  Wait, that is an actual skill.

• Speaking of actual skills, I am a decent decorator.  You should let me pick all of your paint colors.  I am always right.  And I can make curtains and stuff.  And I’m really good at shopping and buying all of the pretty objects.

Judging people

• Statements made while watching So You Think You Can Dance often repeated nearly verbatim by “qualified” judges.

• Superior expertise in choosing glasses frames, as evidenced by having once had an ex-boyfriend ask me to accompany him glasses shopping, even though he was dating someone new.

• Correctly chose last season's American Idol on week one.

• Paragon of fitting-room clothes shopping companions.  Kind, but honest.

Drinking

• Connoisseur of box wine.

• Extensive and somewhat snooty knowledge of single malt Scotch and bourbon.

• Can totally drink you under the table.

Loving

• Not the best mom in the universe, but hella good at loving those kids.

• Giver of freakin’ awesome hugs.

• Bow-chicka-wow-wow.

Education

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Dude, you guys?  I have a PhD in Psychology from Stanford.  Isn’t that weird?  I know… it freaks me out too.  Seems totally out of character.  I met the best people there though.

Work history

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1991-2007         A bunch of jobs I was really good at and have absolutely no interest in doing now.

2007-present     Person who can count to three really well, even though I usually only count to two.