I wasn't as productive today as I intended, but since that's always, always true, I should probably stop saying it. Remember my birthday goal of being nicer to myself this year? It's working out real swell, tanks for asking.
So I woke up this morning and worked throughout the morning/early afternoon, with a trip out of the house to grab lunch at Morning Due since I had nothing worth eating in the kitchen. However, when my parking ran out, I needed to vacate, and my errands on the way home took longer than I expected. I made an impromptu, utterly unplanned stop at Flax, my favorite paper store ever (except for Mai-Do, but Mai-Do is more Japanese paper and cutesy stationery in a tiny shop at the mall, while Flax is a gigantic art supply store sprawling across a warehouse-size space). I make my own notebooks these days, and while I have enough plastic covers and rings and paper options to outfit a small army of writers, I was out of pretty paper to use for the interior covers. More detail about my obsessiveness than you wanted, I know. But I bought some utterly awesome paper that will keep me in covers for awhile, and also a small mat and a rotary cutter so that I could cut the covers for my smaller notebooks (since I no longer work for my former employer and so don't have access to their industrial strength paper cutters inexplicably on every single floor even though most people don't have anything to do with paper during their day to day work). And I resisted buying an awesome red fountain pen, so I consider it all a victory.
I then stopped at the grocery store to buy stuff for dinner, came home, put my pork chops in the fridge to brine, and did a bit more work. However, at that point I was running out of steam, and I hit a wall with a scene in which I realized the motivations made no sense and the whole book could be resolved if Malcolm and Amelia just had a sensible conversation over tea instead of arguing excessively. Damn damn damn. So my storytelling side needed a break to work my way out of this dilemma, and I took that break by making an elaborate dinner, violating my personal rule about not drinking alone, and watching the first four episodes of this season of NCIS: Los Angeles. Dinner was a repeat of last week's elaborate dinner (pork chop + risotto), but I bought better, thicker pork chops this time, and it turned out quite delicious (if a bit undercooked, although that made it tasty; if I die of trichinosis, I brought it upon myself). Since I had to open a bottle of wine for the risotto, I proceeded to drink two glasses of it, which I rarely do by myself since there seems to be such a slippery slope from frustrated writer to alcoholic writer -- and the level of pleasure I got out of self-medicating tonight is precisely why I very rarely indulge (alone; last weekend was all the proof you need that I'm quite capable of indulging with others).
Of course, NCIS: Los Angeles was self-medicating too, but it was fantastic; I really like that show a lot, and the backstory that is slowly being doled out about Callen and Hetty is super intriguing. I may have to pound the remaining episodes before I go back to Iowa so that I'm caught up for whatever I might see there (CBS programming and all that) -- but since I have a fucking book to finish in the next six days, perhaps I don't have time. Sigh. So I really should go to bed, get up, and get to work. At least I forced myself to take a break between episodes to fold clothes, clean the kitchen, do the dishes, etc; without that busy-work to distract me, hopefully I can get a lot done. And I think I figured out how to resolve my plot dilemma, so forward progress shall be made. Goodnight!
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