Not that I have time for this.

And to all a good night

2004-12-26T04:38:38Z

Merry Christmas! Miss Mabel got me many nice presents, like the complete first season of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" on DVD (five discs, six episodes each) and the latest David Sedaris book (Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim).

Got a reply from an agent; wanted a synopsis and the first 30 pages of my book! She's in Georgia, so she'll love the dialogue and understand how mundane the kookiness of the characters actually is.

It Must Be Love

2004-12-24T05:53:56Z

How can it be
That we can
say so much without words
Bless you and bless me
Bless the bees and the birds
I've got to be near you every night, every day
I couldn't be happy any other way

-Madness, "It Must Be Love"

I guess I wasn't as tired as I'd thought. I went to bed, and got chatty; I finally had to remove myself before Miss Mabel had a chance to kick me out of the room because I was keeping her awake. Bless her heart, putting up with an insomniac who also suffers from acute bouts of loggarhea . . .

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and this is probably the first Christmas in a long time that promises happiness, companionship, comfort and joy. Last year, I didn't even go to my mother's; I stayed home with the cats and sulked. This year, we're going to my mother's, so the cats will have to sulk without me.

Of course, I do still have the dreaded Christmas Funk; others who suffer this annual malady can attest to the fact that, while it's a definite funk we fall into, it's got nothing to do with Rick James or Lakeside and everything to do with wanting to take a mace or a machine gun to Christmas trees, stuffed stockings, red Salvation Army buckets and bigger-than-life-size inflatable snowmen waving from the foot of someone's driveway.

If anyone should ask, "What would Jesus do?" I'd have to stand by my assertion that "He would never stop puking. . ."

And even though it's the yuletide, I'm still sending query letters and first chapters of my book to agents, hoping someone will take me on (or--A-Ha!--take on me) as a client. I have five queries out right now. I do love the convenience of sending e-mail queries, though it would probably be good to have hard-copy rejections to add to the stack I've received over the years, and that I keep in my desk at all times.

Nobody told me there'd be days like this

2004-12-24T04:48:59Z

. . . While the noise level crept back to normal next door, Loretta glanced out the window. She watched as her neighbors pulled Dewey's limo driver out of the vehicle, hanging him upside down by his ankles. As they shook him and moved him side to side, he screamed, quarters and dimes and an asthma inhaler hitting the ground.

The children fell upon the change like jackals upon a steak filet. A tussle commenced among a few of the women before one of them snatched up the asthma inhaler and tucked it like a tiny periscope down the front of her pink tube top next to a pack of Salem 100s . . .

-from A Barber for a Bald Man