bedsprings

I should be writing nanowrimo today. I should. I'm 11,000 words strong, which means that I'm only 11,000 words behind as of today. Call me a procrastinator if you like. But I'm writing, aren't I? Doesn't that count?

"No," snaps Heisenburg, and inspects his crotch. "I have noble genitals," he says, complacently. "It's a good thing I'm imaginary, or I'd be spreading my seed all over Northern California."

There are, it seems, disadvantages to having cats, fictional or no.

But yes, I should be working on nanowrimo. I'm not. The reason, as it turns out, is that I came home tonight and found an email from Acanit in my inbox, a notification that she has posted another of her delicious journal entries. She has been selected for one of the three finalists in the "Best Writing" category of the Diarist.net awards. For good reason, as it happens. It occurred to me, after I'd sated myself on her phenomenal talent for writing, that she's been through recent surgery and yet manages to write these sensual literary feasts.

In the annals of journal product, I'm a footnote in a Far Side calendar. Yesterday, I stubbed my toe on a coat hanger. It was a wire coathanger, and I didn't notice that I'd done it until later. This, however, constitutes all the tragedy and awesome grandeur of my life. Eh. We do what we can.

Tara, who has been stranded in Germany now for almost a month, has been sending me hilarious, bitter emails about the state of the Teutonic Union. The Germans, she announces, may be good for a lot of things, but they cannot handle bed linens. Nor can they handle beds.

"The bed . . . um," quoth she, speaking of her new bed in her company-allocated apartment in scenic Heidelburg. "It's a queen-sized frame, with two twin mattresses on it. Each mattress has its own fitted sheet . . . the blankets . . . are twin sized again! Two of them, laid neatly side-by-side."

Of course, ever since I received this email from Tara, I've been haunted by imaginings of how the Germans conceived of this brilliant variation on a queen-sized bed. Perhaps they didn't realize that Tara's married, and that her husband could very well be coming to visit her? It must have been a compromise of some sort. "Husbands and wives don't sleep in the same beds," one of the German apartment planners says to his colleague. "Not in America. We've seen I Love Lucy."

"But American lovers do," counters his why-just-business-partner. "They have graceful, non-sweaty, odorless sex in large queen-sized beds. Tom Cruise did in Mission Impossible Two."

"Is she married or unmarried?" asks the first planner, troubled now. On this hinges the very layout of the furniture in the apartment.

The second planner shrugs. "Who can tell these days? Are Americans even getting married anymore?"

The two planners stare at each other, their German mind waves colliding and churning from their magnificent, Teutonic, thinker brows. "We'll put two single beds together in a queen-sized frame," they decide at last. "Then we've covered both bases. If they're married, they can be in separate beds. If they're lovers, then they're in a queen-sized bed. It's the perfect arrangement."

From the people who brought you Martin Luther and the cube: Tara's bed, ladies and gentlemen.

This is, by necessity, a short entry. This is because I'm sleepy and I have a doctor's appointment in the morning.

However, along the lines of making drastic, arbitrary, and wholly unnecessary, not to mention completely irrelevent changes in my life, I have made a new decision, one which I think will impact my life for the better.

I'm not going to do nanowrimo anymore.

After serious thought and a lot of typing and a lot of swearing, I've realized that I have a heck of a lot more fun writing journal entries. Plus, see, Tara's stuck in Germany and I'm her sole connection to the US. Well, me and the thousand dollar phone calls she's got going with her husband every night. Forget the husband. Let's get back to me.

It's a heavy responsibility, being a lifeline. It requires a dedication to the cause.

Therefore, I will no longer be doing nanowrimo. What I will be doing instead is writing at least one journal entry every two days for the remainder of the month.

Sound fair?

Yeah. I thought so.

Give the girl a cookie. Posted by yhirata at November 14, 2001 11:40 PM