I wasn’t really intending to do an introductory-type Holidailies newcomer post, because they always seem sort of artificial and weird to me. (Yes, even more so than the whole existence of online journals to begin with.) However, I have wound up having a day that has been basically a microcosm of my life. So if I just write about my day today, I think that should pretty much tell anyone the basics of what they need to know about my life.

So, here’s the introduction that’s not really an introduction: What I Did Today And What It Says About My Life.

I woke up earlier than intended, because one of the cats was slowly and methodically pushing objects off my nightstand one by one. Today it happened to be Schroedinger, but he and Pixel take turns doing this because they know I cannot sleep through it and will always wake up. There was another cat on my feet at the time, and a third sitting on top of my sleeping boyfriend. They all got up as soon as I did and chased me down the hallway to see if I would feed them.

What this tells you about me: I have too many cats, and they run my life.

We took Dimitri to the vet for a fructosamine check to see if his diabetes is still well-controlled. I solemnly promised the vet that I would try to find some way to restrict his caloric intake even further, and perhaps consider crating him at night if he absolutely cannot be stopped from snacking. Then we got in the car, cracked up at the very notion of being able to contain our gigantic whiny Dimitri overnight, and made “I have crated a monster!” jokes all the way home while I fed Dimitri cat treats so he would not cry the entire way back.

What this tells you about me: Not only do I have too many cats, but they have too many medical problems. Also, I really do mean well when I make promises like “I will try to put my cat on a harsher diet,” but I am a pushover and never actually follow through. Also, Len makes terrible puns but I think he is extremely funny.

We came home and I spent a while on the computer finishing up a copyediting job, and then we headed out again for lunch and errands. I had kielbasa and pierogies for lunch, and then we loaded up on 2×4s, weird fiddly woodworking tools, and bird seed. While in the car, we had a snippy little exchange about Hillary Clinton’s campaign and I sulked for a while, and then I got over it because there was a really funny article in the New York Times I wanted to tell Len about.

What this tells you about me: I have a freelance copy-editing business and I live in Pittsburgh, land of the pierogies. My house is in a constant state of DIY fix-it jobs, I am a little obsessed with my birdfeeders in the winter when I can’t obsess about gardening, presidential campaigns are the only things Len and I fight about so we get along beautifully 75% of the time but get a little tense every four years, and I get annoyed easily but am completely incapable of maintaining it for more than ten minutes. Len gets annoyed even more easily but can’t maintain the anger for more than five minutes, so really even in the presidential-election years things never get too bad.

After we came home, Len spent the afternoon downstairs building things in the recording studio and making an awful racket, and I sprawled about upstairs writing out Christmas cards while watching Meet Me In St. Louis. We then spent a while trying to talk ourselves into cooking dinner, but gave up on the motivation and ordered Indian. Right now Len is taking a nap while we wait for the food, and I am, obviously, writing this. But while I write this, I have, let’s see…nine open tabs in Firefox. Two are internet forums I read, two are New York Times articles (one a horrible story about an autistic boy blinded by his aunt that is filling me with rage right now), one is a Merriam-Webster page where I looked up “microcosm” earlier in this entry to see if “little microcosm” was redundant, one is a nonogram website, one is my work email account, and one is my RSS reader.

What this tells you about me: I get into the Christmas spirit way too early (and thus usually burn out before Christmas actually arrives), and I love old musicals in a completely unironic fashion, with ever fiber of my being. I multi-task way too damn much on the internet, my day job is in autism research and I get really upset when I read terrible autism news stories, I am more than a little obsessed with intricacies of word usage and with logic puzzles, I am unable to completely let go of work on the weekends, and I have good intentions of cooking nutritious tasty food but am both lazy and way too enamored of garlic naan.

All that’s really missing here to cover the main issues of my life is something indicating my needle exchange volunteer work, my love of reading, and my film geekery. And I plan to round out my post-Indian-food evening by taking a nice long bubble bath with a Steven Pinker book, and then probably watching Jan Svankmajer’s Lunacy, because I have had it out from Greencine forever and should really return it one of these months. So I’m pretty well covered today, really. Except for the needle exchange, and I’m sure I will have something to say about that later in the month.

So there’s my whole life in a weekend, really. It’s either a little sad or a little comforting that I can be summed up so neatly. Right now I’m going to go with comforting.

Two years ago this week we went on our first house-hunting expedition, to look at a really lovely little house. Which, after several visits to other houses, we just kept coming back to and wound up buying. So it is that same lovely little house that I’m sitting in right now.

It’s funny to think about that; it seems like both so long ago and so recently, in different ways. And it really is a lovely little house, all the more so because it’s ours now, full of our memories and our cats and our favorite things. It’s funny now to think that we had reservations; I barely even remember what they were. I know there were a couple of repair things we were concerned about, some of which we’ve fixed and some of which are still lurking on our “things to do one day when we have time and money” list. But this is so clearly our own beloved home, I can’t imagine trading it in for any of the other places we looked at.

When Len comes upstairs from building whatever it is he’s building in the garage, I must remember to tell him that Wednesday is our house-iversary. (Or one of them; I suppose spring, when we actually bought the house, is another house-iversary.) I wonder if I can convince him that we should buy the house a present to celebrate? I think maybe the house wants new curtains.

I’m having a little trouble deciding what to write about today. I’m tired, and it was a pretty brainpower-consuming day at work, and I nearly froze on the way home because I got passed up by a few buses, and generally I don’t want to think about anything except staying warm and possibly watching Heroes in a few minutes.

As such, I had initially thought I would perhaps poke around a bit and look for writing prompts. I’m not generally a big writing prompt person, but it couldn’t hurt to see if anything happens to jog something that would be fun to write about, right?
Wrong.

In place of a real journal entry, I offer you a gift - a look at all the horrific writing prompts I found but am not using tonight, just to spare you the agony. Real honest-to-god prompts I found online just now, and the first sentences to the responses I am not going to write.

1. Compare your relatives or friends to things you might find on a bathroom, using simile and metaphor.

He was like a roll of toilet paper; it was easy to take it for granted that he’d always be there, but when he wasn’t and you needed him, boy, did that suck.

2. Write something about vitamins. Do you like them to be chewable or not?

Vitamin E is the best vitamin ever!

3. Write down the first memory you hear when you hear the word “rabies.”

Cujo is some fucked-up shit.

4. List the best qualities of your five best friends. Then make up a fairy godmother, bestowing each of these qualities upon her.

My fairy godmother has a great rack, knows more curse words in German than anyone I know, always knows where to get good weed, hardly ever sleeps with underage girls, and boy, can she make a margarita!

5. Describe a desk you’ve seen in your life. What does furniture mean?

It was made of fiberboard, and it meant something very special to me - that I would never again get splinters from writing my term paper on the floor.

6. What would your car’s New Year’s Resolution be?

Tell people I love them more often.

7. How would a broken plate feel?

Like a broken plate.

8. Write from the point of view of a clean sock that was mistakenly placed in the hamper.

Well, shit.

9. Write about a time you thought someone was watching you.

Dear Penthouse Forum…

10. Compare some part of your life to water.

My feet are really cold right now, like if water could somehow take on a different form - a hard, clear, solid form that would suck the heat right out of you!

11. Everyone has an idea of what Heaven is like, even those who don’t believe in religion. What’s yours?

Uh, no. No, I don’t.

12. Write a story whose title would contain the word “starch.”

That Time I Did The Laundry And Starched Stuff.

13. Complete this famous tagline with your own: “Please don’t squeeze the: ___________”

Ever-Loving Shit Out Of That Kitten, Little Billy!

14. Write about your dumbest daily rituals

Sometimes, I smoke crack.

15. Come up with ten reasons to stop bathing.

I hate everyone around me.

16. Write a piece of fiction where a baby’s first word i.s surprising.

“Fuck, I killed the kitten!”, said Little Billy.

17. Brandi and Greg meet. One of them is allergic to almonds. Write their story.

For a moment, Greg wondered whether his coffee tasted like almonds or arsenic - until he realized he was a dead man either way, and had only seconds in which to make his move on Brandi before he started swelling up like a balloon.

18. Write a story about a swing. Consider writing it from the swing’s point of view.

Back. Forth. Back. Forth. Back. Forth.

19. Write about someone watching a parade that has lasted too long.

“Yup,” said Jim, “That makes sixty-four baton-twirlers. Nope! Make it sixty-five.”

20. Make up a fictional scary encounter with your hairdresser.

As the lifeblood drained out of me, I thought with my last dying breath that Johnny Depp really shouldn’t have recycled his Edward Scissorhands hair.

So there you are. Never say I didn’t do anything for you. Just for you, I did not write a story about starch from the perspective of a broken plate sitting next to a sock in a hamper full of vitamins.

Um, hi. I’m over here in the corner, having a little bit of performance anxiety, because apparently I was really funny yesterday, and today I am tired and cranky and not really feeling very funny at all. Because really, sometimes I think I should chuck my whole career and go flip burgers. But I figure everyone has those days, so I am just being melodramatic and things are not actually that crazy - until one of my higher-ups comes into my office and says “Hey - do you ever think maybe we should just forget about research and go flip burgers?”

In other words, it’s been a bit of a day and I’m officially demoralised. Nothing a bath, a game of laser pointer with the cats, a mug of Mexican hot chocolate, a listen to the soundtrack bits that are now up on the Sweeney Todd website, and a good night’s sleep won’t cure. But in the meanwhile, I do not feel funny tonight.

However! All is not lost. I did decide last night that the Bad Writing Prompt entry went over so well that clearly a Holidailies Bad Prompt Advent Calendar is needed. And while I have not yet rounded up a full set of prompts to get us through until Christmas, I did scrounge up the first few last night. So, here it is:

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Holidailies Bad Prompt Advent Calendar: December 4, 2007

“A favorite possession is threatening to jump from the top of the Empire State Building. Dissuade your beloved item from jumping by expressing your love and telling it how much it means to you.”

Please, drop me a line in the comments and let me know how you would begin the terrible response you would write in response to this prompt. Or if you’re actually crazy enough to write a full response, more power to you, and please leave a link in the comments!

I believe my own response would begin something like:

Dear gigantic stuffed turtle that Len gave me for our anniversary one year: Don’t jump! Except, wait… you’re a stuffed animal. It would be kind of fun to watch you splat, and I could always safety pin you back together. Jump! Jump! Jump!

I had thought perhaps I would throw the prompt into the Google Images search engine and see what it would pull out, to offer you some visual stimulation to get your bad-writing juices flowing. But Google images gave me pictures of the state of Oklahoma, a box of penicillin, a Hillary Clinton mask, and Ronald Reagan. I’m very, very afraid.

Ow, ow, ow. Stabbing migraine. Possibly throbbing migraine. Not sure which. However, whichever type it is, it makes me want to stab, so maybe we’ll just go with “stabbing.” Although the pills are helping a bit - at least enough that the light-sensitivity has diminished enough for me to use a computer. So not necessarily a fatal stabbing; just a little minor wounding.

Ever since I got the official migraine diagnosis a few months ago, I have been trying hard to keep a log of when I get them, what the symptoms are, and how I’ve been eating/sleeping/exercising/stress-level-ing the previous few days. So far I cannot figure out anything vaguely resembling a pattern, but I am also really bad at keeping this log. My track record of years of spottily-updated online journals really ought to have cued me in that this was a doomed effort from the start. I’m starting to wonder if I should just be obsessively logging this stuff all the time so it would be a habit, but just thinking about it bores me to tears. Although maybe that would be a good way to get people I don’t know to stop trying to add me as a friend on Facebook; just have the most boring Facebook page ever. Which I kind of already do, but I bet I could make it more actively offputting if I tried.

For now, I am going to go do something less stressful on the eyes than staring at a computer screen. Not sure what, but cuddling with the cats seems like a good bet. Antigone is pacing anxiously up and down the bed like she is dying to sit on my laptop keyboard.

But before I go, here is today’s:

Holidailies Bad Prompt Advent Calendar: December 5, 2007

“Isn’t this moment the most important thing?”

My answer would be: This moment right now? Where I’m sitting in bed freezing because the cats have hogged all the blankets, puttering around on my laptop, with a killer migraine, having accomplished virtually nothing at work today, pretty much broke, and craving Chicken McNuggets? God, I hope not. The End.

Just for the record, a Google images search on this prompt turns up Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, some guy from Celebrity Fit Club and his dog, and an Asian girl dressed up like some sort of wholesome pink gingham Playboy bunny. I don’t think this whole “using Google images for visual inspiration” thing is going to work out.

Argh. I got all caught up in a transcription job and lost track of time and now it is already past my bedtime, so I am certainly not going to whip out any sort of wonder of a journal entry at this point. But I will say that I think the Holidailies Charity Project is a great idea - rock on, Jette and Chip.

That said, my personal charity of choice would be one of my volunteer spots - Planned Parenthood or the needle exchange. And while those places rock, and I could tell you a lot of really moving stories about why they desperately need and absolutely deserve every spare cent anyone can scrape up, my guess is that abortions and injection drug use are going to be a harder sell than literacy programs. And hey - literacy programs are pretty high on my list too. So I’m for whatever gets picked (as long as whatever gets picked is not donations to Ron Paul), and will ante up a few bucks.

But now, I sleep.

But first, of course:

Holidailies Bad Prompt Advent Calendar: December 6, 2007

“What would happen if everyone lived in space? ”

My response would begin: I sort of thought we lived in space already. So, my guess is the world would be eerily like it is now. Possibly with more Tang.

Curses! I missed my first post of the month yesterday. I went out to see The Golden Compass after work and had intended to write afterwards, but then wound up in an impromptu trip to see one of Len’s bands perform. Which was not my optimal way to spend the evening as live gigs aren’t really my cup of tea, but it was a fun change of pace and it was nice to finally see the CD they’ve been working on so hard in my basement.

Today I’ve been busy working on one of my freelance projects; I’m doing some transcription for a PhD candidate who’s doing research on high school choice for young black teenagers in her city. I’d probably be going faster except that some of these interviews are just breaking my heart.

If anyone ever doubts the stats about children doing better when their parents are involved, all they’d have to do is listen to a few of these interviews. There’s such a gap in the way the parents respond to questions about what their considerations were in choosing a high school, how informed they were about their options, how they talked to their kids about the process, how involved they plan to be now. One mom says outright that she knows kids do better with parental involvement so she rearranges her time however she needs to to be there. Another one can’t be bothered to figure out what classes her kid took one year when living elsewhere, or how to transfer the credits, so she doesn’t really know whether the kid’s eligible for high shool and figures it’s the kid’s problem to figure that out. And I know perfectly well that I’m reading way too much into some voices in a wav file here, but I swear that in the interviews where the kid is present, the kids sound different in the families with concerned, involved parents. They sound happier and more confident and they seem to interact in a different way with the parents and the interviewers.

What’s actually breaking my heart more though is the families where the parents clearly want to be involved, but don’t have the tools they need. They just don’t know what the options are and they’re not getting support from the school system to figure it out. Sometimes they don’t even know there are options until they get into this interview and realize from the questions that they didn’t have to send their kid to the neighborhood school. One of the dads is shocked to hear that he could have tried to send his daughter somewhere without metal detectors and frequent violent crime.

Not that I don’t know all this shit happens, but it’s different to be hearing these same stories told over and over again by particular individuals, with tiny human variations. It’s so far from my sheltered-suburban-white-girl experience.

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I will offer the Holidailies Bad Prompt of the day, and one to make up for yesterday, but I don’t think my heart’s in figuring out good responses. So you get the ones I wasn’t sure how I’d respond to anyway:

“Write a eulogy for your computer, remembering the good times and the bad.” (Which I can’t answer because my beloved Vaio actually is near death due to a tragic clumsiness mishap, and I’m just trying desperately to nurture her along a little longer until I can afford to replace her, so this is too close to home.)

and

“What if cows gave root beer instead of milk?” (Which I can’t answer because…the fuck? How was this supposed to prompt anyone to write anything at all?)

Stayed home today feeling sick, so there’s not much to say about the day - I stayed in my pajamas all day, played with the cats, did a bit of work for my job and a bit more for a freelance client, and watched a bunch of stuff off the TiVo. Nothing to write home about.

In absence of interesting things about today, I will note that the more I think about the previews I saw at The Golden Compass, the more confused I get about the state of children’s movies. On the one hand, I think it’s awesome that so many beloved childhood favorites are getting movie adaptations. There’s Golden Compass itself, obviously, and I’m all for another Narnia movie. I’ve never read Spiderwick Chronicles , but the movie looks nice and Brian-Froud-esque. I loved Five Children and It although as far as I can tell it never got American release, so I’m not sure anyone else ever saw it. I’ve written previously about how violently opposed I am to the “adaptation” of the Dark is Rising, but I’m just choosing to think of that as entirely separate from the books.

So yeah, good stuff overall, and I’m glad kids are growing up with a lot of great movies aimed at them right now. It feels like it was a long dry spell for good children’s movies apart from Pixar and Harry Potter for many years there. But at the same time, isn’t there something original someone could be doing? Sooner or later we’re going to run out of good children’s books to plunder. And then either someone’s going to have to do something new, or it’s going to be Sweet Valley University: The Movie.

Although actually, as I’m typing this I realize I’m shocked no one’s ever made a Sweet Valley movie. IMDB tells me there was a TV show, which thankfully I didn’t know about until this very moment, but seemingly no movie. Wasn’t this what the Olsen twins were born for? Surely the world did not require two of them just so that one of them could grow up to amuse me on Weeds.

I’ve lost the plot here, I think. Basic point: I’m finding most of these adaptations delightful, but I miss good original children’s/YA fantasy movies too.