Well, I haven't fallen off the wagon yet, despite being thrown off course this morning by a series of phone calls that registered on my caller ID: Mom, Dick (Mom's partner), Jenny (my sister), followed by Jan (family friend). I was mentally going through the list of Most Likely Candidates for Hospitalization and/or Sudden Death, trying to figure out why all the midwestern members of my immediate family would be calling me at once, getting pretty worried, when I finally got to a message on the voice mail from my mother, slightly intoxicated and sounding weepy, saying, "I didn't want to tell you this on a message, but...."
Spit it out. Who's dead. Don't do this to me, just tell me. The keys are already in the ignition.
"...Dick and I got married yesterday."
Jesus Christ. Thank you for the happy ending, congratulations, I love you, and if you people ever call me in such rapid succession again, somebody'd better be in the hospital because if you're not, you will be once I get a hold of you.
So Congratulations to Mom and Dick, happily honeymooning it in Aruba (like the Beach Boys song)! Maddie has been notified, and we are in the process of picking out the proper appellation for Dick. "Papa Dick" sounded obscene to me, "Grampa" sounds old and reminds me of Grampa Thorvalson who was a fine ol' gramps but nothing like Dick, and "Boppa" conjures images (don't ask - I have no idea - "The Big Bopper"?) of Chubby Checker and black and white tile flooring and a disco ball and what's his name, the black piano guy, "Tutti Frutti..." and Dick just doesn't look good in blackface with a curly wig... so the current favorite is "Papa Wheelie."
NaNoWriMo has effectively, for the moment, suppressed my inner editor, which I am very grateful for, but which may, for the readers of this blog, prove potentially damaging. My apologies for the ridiculosity to follow in this post and in those to come.
Word count so far: 3,545
Number of words in Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues," which was included NOT as filler or padding, mind you, but to create an atmosphere in which I felt my protagonist could be further developed as a character (okay, I'm lying, I was desperate and so is my laundry pile): 327
Which means that 3,218 of those words are my own, which STILL puts me right around the 1,666 words/day goal, (alright, 114 shy... does blogging count? I think so).
Ratio of profanity thus far: 2/3,545 = 1 swear word for every 1,772.5 words. Hey! I'm growing!
Number of appearances of the word "spooge": 1. Okay, maybe "growing" wasn't the right word.
Posted by stephanie at November 2, 2006 04:17 PM