writing and other nonense
Welllllll. Im at 26,509 words. As of right.now. In my novel I mean. Sounds a little pretentious to call what I am trying to write a “novel”. But if we can agree to let it slide for the sake of the month of November (novel writing month) I would appreciate it. The Nanowrimo site calculates how many words per day I now have to write to catch and reach my goal by midnight Nov 30th… its over 3300 words a day. I don’t even know what that means. That’s four hours of writing a day. Most likely. Unless the ideas just spew forth from me like some sort of water main break. Which I am doubtful.
This happened on my block the other day actually. Not ideas spewing forth, but real water. They were supposed to notify us of water shutoffs due to installing fancy new water meters. To which I say great. Now they will really know when I forget to shut off my backyard sprinkler and leave it running for 8 hours through the night. Anywho, so I came home one day to find my water shut off inappropriately with no notice- the gall! I go marching down the street to the nearest poor sap sitting in one of their vehicles and demand to know why. “we broke a water main” Fan-tas-tic. Well I sputter on about notification etc, and he looks at me sorta bemused. “It was an E-mer-gen-cy.” Oh yeah. Right. Kinda hard to argue with that logic. So the water man got the best of me in one four letter sentence. I walked away head held high, attempting to look as if I was a reasonable person and not one they would tell jokes about later over beers.
Moving on. I am currently in the midst of a “trim project”. Meaning taking off my old painted trim around the door jambs, baseboards, etc and replacing it with new stained beautiful trim. This project has lasted slightly longer than God. Yes, years. Yet I am proud to announce that I am almost done! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, however at times the end of the tunnel seems to get further away and not closer.
One of the reasons being I decided to take all my doors off and repaint them. Paint the jambs to match the new doors and then put up all that pretty stained trim around newly painted doors. Picture this with me: I have the door sitting on saw horses, waiting for its second coat of paint. I go to pour the paint into my little tray and proceed to tip over and spill about half of the half gallon of paint all over me and the patio concrete. I scream and run over to rinse off my arm. I then run over, grab newspaper and attempt to scrap up gallons of paint off the concrete, realizing this isn’t working and Im only making a bigger puddle I run cursing over to the hose and start spraying it down. I now realize that I am not cleaning up the paint but actually making.more.paint. It has now turned into a tsunami of barely diluted paint moving across my patio toward furniture, tools, the dog. I toss the hose down and it lands in such a way it depresses the handle thingy which then shoots water into the air- into the roof of the patio cover actually – where it comes crashing back down like a water fall on to, yes, the newly painted door. I run back over now screaming And cursing, fight through the wall of water to grab the hose. Run in to the garage grab towels and start sopping up the now newly painted, wet, ruined door. Towels are tossed on the tsumani of paint in an attempt to stem the tide. I then manage to not cry at the absurdity that has become my life as I realize I must forge ahead with the dilution of the paint and send it into the lawn where hopefully my grass will survive.
Door is still unpainted by the way. Handyman told me I need 16 more pieces of stained trim. 18 actually just in case he makes a mistake. More trim. More stain. Im guessing this project might not be finished for … oh… about 5 years. That’s an estimate.
After all that, I am feeling rather grateful today and I’ll tell you why. Cleaning out the garage to make room for aforementioned “a buttload of new trim to stain” project, I decided to test if my dog likes to use his rather expensive comfy crate. I crawl right in and make myself at home. Its dirty, but Im wearing my “i paint and move garage items” clothing so I could care less. I coax and coax, cajole and bribe. Which only ends up with Dog outside crate barking at me, Kate laying down inside dirty dusty crate talking back to dog.
Finally I look around and just about two little inches from my sometimes cute nose cruises a black widow spider. Mind you Im not outside looking at this spider with many escape routes handy. oh no. I am laying down inside.a.dog.crate. I exit crate rather quickly. And then i exit most layers of my clothing rather quickly as well in an attempt to find the black widow that has no doubt crawled inside my hoodie, or my hair, or up my pant leg, while I was busy laying in a dirty dusty crate trying to persuade my dog that he should want to be in there with me!
So this is what I have learned: 1)dogs are smarter than humans. 2)if I had a gratitude journal it would say: i am grateful i didn’t kill myself or my dog today by poisonous black widow spider bite. 3)painting doors is stupid. AND 4) if i could write my novel like i babble in my blog i would be home free.
goodnight and goodluck
Intrepid Women 
Great descriptions! Felt like I was right there with you. Laughed the whole time!
Poor Kate! Honestly though you make what must have been a horrible day highly entertaining. Love hugs and misses.
Does it help to say that I loved this and needed the laugh? 🙂