Wednesday, October 27, 2010

i'm wide awake and i can see the perfect sky is torn

After a week and a half of sleeping as late as I wanted, I almost slept through my dentist appointment this morning; when the alarm went off at 7:20 (so early, I know), I automatically turned it off, and just happened to remember in the split second before I went back to sleep that I needed to wake up. Sigh. But, I made it to the dentist, where I got a proper cleaning and had no cavities for about the fifteenth year in a row (yay - if it had turned out that I needed major dental work, my unemployed checking account would have been v. unhappy).

Because my dentist is in San Jose, I decided to combine the dental appointment with my once-every-two-months spa experience, since the spa I go to in SF has a sister spa on Santana Row. However, when I got to Santana Row at 10:30, I realized I had made a horrible mistake; they were doing some sort of trick-or-treat activity for the yoga moms and their obnoxious little children, and so the first two levels of the parking garage were full of women trying to wrestle strollers out of their huge SUVs, and the sidewalks were jammed with children (of both the pleasant and screaming varieties) and dogs (of both the small/yappy and large/prone to scare children varieties). It was a complete scene, and unfortunately not the kind of scene I usually seek out. So I ducked into the Container Store and then Crate and Barrel, since they were off to the side of the madness; I escaped both places after buying a small whiteboard for my desk, so I got off pretty easy given how much I love both places. Then, I grabbed lunch at Pizza Antica, where the pizza was delicious and I had even more time to consider how these little toddler tyrants seem to control the lives of their yoga mothers.

I spent an hour or so at the cafe in Borders, where I made a v. detailed list of what I need to get done in the next twelve weeks to finish my book, enter it into the Golden Heart, and get it polished up so that my agent can start shopping it. The goal setting was good and v. helpful, if a bit daunting, since it means that after I clean some stuff up this week, I'm going to have to write 15,000 words each week for the next three weeks to get back on track. No hill for a climber, but I'm going to have to put some effort into the climb (and get out of bed before noon) if I'm going to make it happen.

Then, I adjourned to the spa; the verdict is that I'm going to go there from now on instead of San Francisco, because the treatments are slightly cheaper, parking is free instead of like $7/hr, it's more relaxing to come out of a massage on Santana Row than in a pool of someone's urine on Market Street, and the setting was smaller and therefore more intimate. I got an okay massage and one of the best facials I've ever had (including some sort of cactus peel that left my skin red but v. v. soft), so that was all good.

I was just getting home when John called and asked if I wanted to have a quick dinner, so I suggested Borrone (of course). That turned out to be a bad call, because Jimmy Carter was signing books at the bookstore next door, and so parking was v. difficult. But Borrone itself wasn't any more crowded than it usually is, and they were serving the gouda sandwich tonight, so that was great. I did get waylaid by some strange woman who seemed very nice (if slightly batty; she was old) -- she was sitting at the table behind me, and we struck up a conversation when she asked me to watch her stuff so that she could get a coffee. She ended up talking to me while John waited in line to order, and I began to get the first small inklings of problems when she claimed that Google and Microsoft had designed her website and that it was projected to be bigger than Amazon someday. Then she wouldn't stop talking even after John came back, and it quickly devolved from entertaining to annoying to slightly scary and then back to annoying before I eventually stopped paying attention to her. As John said, this stuff makes for a good story -- but the problem is that you have to actually talk to the person to get the story, and in this case I'm not sure it was worth the effort.

sssanyway, after I turned my back on the "Amazon killer", John and I had a v. nice, quick supper, and I got caught up on the ten days that I have missed at my former company. It was also nice to vent to someone about the yoga mom phenomenon to someone who understands; I don't think his sister is a yoga mom (I haven't seen her in ages, and besides, she has a job), but he had just come from his nephew's fifth birthday party, so we had many anecdotes to exchange about how children are the devil. After he left, I worked on the book for a bit -- I'm slowly getting back into the story, and I think I've finally pieced together a scene that has been blocking me. I'm going to have to actually write it tomorrow, but I'm too tired tonight -- and I need to work on the assignment for my magazine class tomorrow as well, so we'll see how much writing I get done.

Now, though, i'm not going to keep myself up any longer as punishment for my unproductive day -- I'm going to go to bed and hit it hard tomorrow. Goodnight!

1 comment:

Will K. said...

Burke Williams? I still haven't been but my manager swears by 'em. Got my first facial (ha... insert joke) a few weeks ago in Chicago. Twas amazing. Kinda wanna make it a regular thang!