either way it's okay you wake up with yourself

Today I went to Indianola to work on my book. I wrote 2076 words, and figured out the gist of what I want to have happen in the next section. I also had a delicious sandwich that did not make my lips swell -- it's a miracle!

The other big event was tonight's secret society meeting. My grandmother hosted, and since her living room gets crowded when we have Christmas Eve there with only ten people, you can imagine how difficult it was to squeeze in eighteen women. Also, it was strange to sit on the floor of her living room and not receive arcane types of money (from Uncle Mark), or tiny gold-wrapped Josephs Jewelers boxes (from Aunt Becky), or odd Christmas decorations made out of socks and toothpicks (from my cousin Andrew). But the meeting was fun -- and while the proceedings are of course highly mysterious, I can divulge that Cheyrel (who is in the same general age group as my mother) asked if she could be in my novel, and specifically requested that any character named after her should be a 'tart'. Ha!

Then I had vision (which I have frequently) of how mortifying it will be if my book is ever published, since I will have to make eye contact with friends, coworkers, and people who have known me since I was born, knowing that they may have just read a scene involving words like 'manroot' and 'velvet sheath'. Perhaps I should take a v. long vacation if the book sees print, so that I can hide out in Morocco or something until the titillating storm dies down.

Tomorrow I have a dentist appointment, conveniently located in the town thirty miles to our east (Centerville, pop. 7000). Centerville has stoplights! And they got a McDonalds about ten years ago, in addition to their Taco Bell/KFC, so they're a genuine metropolis. They're also home to a Wal-Mart, which, true to Wal-Mart form, has sucked the oxygen out of the non-Wal-Mart economy in all surrounding towns (including ours -- people don't mind driving half an hour to buy cheaper crap). It is also, interestingly enough, the town in which my parents met, when my mother was eight and my father was three -- and the town my mom was living in when my dad stalked her until she agreed to go out with him. Ah, the memories.

Now I need to go to bed -- I probably won't go anywhere else to write tomorrow, which is a shame. My father pointed out an apparent correlation between the distance I drive away from home and the amount of writing I get done at my destination -- Indianola is thirty miles closer than West Des Moines, but I wrote half as much today as I did on Monday. He suggested that I drive to Minneapolis every day to write, but since Minneapolis is 342 miles away, I feel that there is probably a point of diminishing returns somewhere between here and there. There's also a possibility that I wrote less today because I only spent two and a half hours writing, rather than five, but I will have to examine this issue closely over the next couple of weeks.