all my life i've been good, but now...i'm thinking what the hell

Today was totally wonderful, with a slight dip in the afternoon where I thought it might go sad and wonky, but it recovered just in time and ended on a high. It was not totally wonderful waking up, however; since I got less than six hours of sleep for the second night in a row, I was not in a good place. But, I dragged myself out of bed, ate some Cheerios (breakfast of champions), and made it to the gym to train with Alyssa. She tortured my upper body this morning, but it was a manageable sort of torture, and after our workout I put in a bit more quality time on the treadmill before showering, grabbing a salad from the cafe, and coming home. I gave myself some procrastination time and checked Twitter, etc., while eating my salad, and then I sat down to edit.

And I successfully spent most of the afternoon editing; I took an inadvertent half-hour break in the form of a nap somewhere around two, and then I moved to the kitchen table so that it wouldn't happen again. Katie, the queen of my heart, called me later in the afternoon and we chatted for a bit, but I had to hang up on her abruptly because one of the girls from my writing group stopped by to drop off a copy of her finished manuscript that I agreed to beta read. She's the one whom I had lunch with before the holidays and that I have quite a bit in common with, and I'm looking forward to reading her book. Her boyfriend is a consultant and is doing a "focus group" with us at the end of March to facilitate a conversation about the book while she listens and takes notes, which should be an interesting exercise -- my beta readers have been super helpful, but they all live in different cities/states and so I've never spoken to them as a group.

Anyway, Katie had moved on to bigger and better things by the time I called her back (I think she was offended by my suggestion that she might like vampire erotica if she stopped being close-minded about fantastical elements in stories (and by that I mean vampires/otherworldly beings in general, not the erotica part)), so I proceeded to edit some more. Somewhere in there, Katrina canceled our planned drinks excursion, which made me sadder than I either a) care to admit or b) usually feel. While there was a part of me that was like, "Yay, more edits!", another part of me was craving human contact and so was sad to face the prospect of an entire weekend without plans. But, I changed into my pajamas (at 4pm), pulled me hair up, and started editing in earnest, deciding to make do with what I had.

Happily, though, Katrina restarted our plans, turning it into food/drinks at La Bodeguita del Medio, which is a delicious Cuban place less than a mile from my house. It was ridiculous that she restarted it, since she had to drive back down from the city for it -- but as she said, it may have been faster for her to drive down her than to look for parking and then wait for a table in the city, since she found parking right in front of the restaurant door and we were seated as soon as we walked in. She picked me up on the way, and then we picked up Kirsten, who is the bona fide writer who lives in my neighborhood and came over when Katrina and I were playing with makeup a few weeks ago.

We ended up staying at the restaurant for three hours, despite the aggressive clearing of plates by the waitstaff. The conversation was a riot, none of which I can divulge here for the sake of confidentiality -- you will just have to invite me out someplace so that you can experience it live. It was really nice to get out of the house and hang out, so I'm glad the plan ended up working out. And it's clear how desperate I am for human contact this week, since Vidya and others can attest to the fact that I usually don't say yes to last-minute plans (because I have a misplaced notion that I should be working), but even though I was editing the climax of the book, I happily dropped my green pen mid-sentence and walked out the door as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

But, the editing is going v. well, so it was good to take a break -- I edited about 40 pages today, and I only have another 25 to go before I'm done with this round of edits. I still have work to do -- I have to enter all those edits into the computer, which will take hours, and there are a couple of scenes that I need to either write/add in or rework significantly. But, I think I can send it to my agent in a week and a half as promised if I continue to work diligently for the next ten days.

Now, though, I'm super exhausted, and so even though it's not yet midnight, I'm going to make the v. unexpected move of going to bed immediately. Goodnight!