Thursday... still grateful

Even if I am cold, even if we are down to one car, even if I slept like a nocturnal animal last night, even if I'm annoyed about having to fire someone else at work, I'm still grateful. Grateful for being here, for my red overcoat, for the available money and perspective to be able to laugh at a broken starter and a tow truck in our driveway, for caffeine, and for the personality I somehow earned that allows me to keep business separate from emotions.

This is going to be a rambling post. Even after a coke this morning (a REAL one, not a zero or diet or anything else) my brain still feels like a fat man sat on it and left it flattened and squished out my ears and useless. I'm heavy, heavy arms, heavy eyelids, heavy fingernails pushing down on these keys too hard.

My friend, the one who was doing in vitro, is pregnant. One baby, due in October. They're very happy. Would have been happier with twins, I think, just so they didn't ever have to go through this again. Not that they have to, but I imagine they'll want more than one. I texted her and asked her if she wanted to go get a drink and celebrate before I remembered pregnant people can't drink. And life changes again.

I'm wearing an orange sweater today, orange like that Publish Post button down there, pumpkin orange, with a white and orange gauzy scarf tied loosely around my neck. The sleeve are just one tiny bit too short though, and it bothers me. I keep pulling them down. I'm one of those weird people that likes my sleeves to touch my thumbs if at all possible though.

I submitted the first story, Last to Leave. I think there's a tendency in "serious" literature to avoid the happy endings, the sweet stories, which is unfortunate, but which led me away from submitting the second. Too bad I couldn't send both; they're very different. Thank you to everyone who voted or commented, I really appreciate it. I'll let you know if anything becomes of it.

I told my husband I was submitting it, and he was happy for me. Not that I expected anything different, but considering I don't really consider myself a writer, that I do this blog thing just to entertain myself and to get these rambling random thoughts out of my head, and that I only write stories so that my failing memory is forced to remember and, again, for entertainment, I half-way think people will just giggle and pat me on the head, like "aww, look at the cute little thing who thinks she can 'write.'" It just seems false to me to call myself an author because I can't make up stories from scratch, I can't write about things I don't know. I was never a barista, but the feeling of that story, the characters, were real in my life, and that's the only way I can write them. I can't make up a character. When I've tried they've felt fake to me, like wisps of other people, ghosts, lacking real motives or inspiration or even faces. Like poorly acted B movies.

I am so asleep this morning. My boss just came in and asked me something, and I looked up at him wide-eyed, like he had three heads, completely not understanding a word. Is it 5 yet?