I am such a hot mess this week.
So, I celebrated the first anniversary of my 30th birthday on Tuesday. Yaaaay. 31. Thirty-freaking-one. I’m now old enough to appreciate the former hit series “Thirty Something.” Except I was like, ten when it aired (quick Google search: I was five when it first aired, and nine when it was cancelled). What did I get for my 31st birthday? Sick. I got freaking sick in July.
As if struggling up the driveway isn’t a treat on its own, combine that with heat, humidity, and the inability to breath out of one or both nostrils. With my luck, I’m going to pass out and the neighbor is going to find me, all pale and colorless; like ET when Eliot found him similarly passed out. The only difference is, the National Guard isn’t going to show up at my door and set up a containment unit. I actually know this for a fact: in 2010, when I was seven months pregnant, Snow-pacolypse hit and we got two feet of snow in like, six hours. Our notorious driveway was impassable. Literally, impassable. We were snowed in, with no heat. No electricity. No water. We melted snow to drink, we ran the fireplace 24 hours a day (our electric was out for about a week). My mother told me that the National Guard was making their way around the city, rescuing people. We evidently lived too far in the sticks, because no hot Army guys showed up to carry me and my girth up the driveway and to safety. No. The Hubs flagged down some enterprising lad on a bobcat tractor and paid him $100 bucks to plow the driveway. My father-in-law then showed up and drove me to the safety of the suburbs.
That was a lot of pointless information.
Anyway, so yeah, it’s hot and miserable right now. But in light of the above pointless story, I’d rather be hoofing it up the driveway in warm weather than in snow and ice. Humidity is doing nothing good for my vanity. My hair is enormous. I’m to the point I’m ready to strap it down in my reenacting hairstyle to keep it from taking up all the space in my cube at work. Plus, being sick doesn’t help, since now my lips are chapped, my nose is running, and my eyes are watering. And my liberally applied eyeliner gradually pools underneath my eyes which is, no doubt, attractive. Stand back gentleman. I’m taken.
Despite all this, I continue to insist on staying up late to write. Am I writing quality stuff? Who knows. The other night it took me forty-five minutes to write two sentences on Manuscript II. And then I deleted them and puked out two better sentences in like, three seconds.
I was having this problem last night. For whatever reason, I am just not in historical mode this week. I think the sinus pressure in my head is making it hard to function or something. Or act like an adult: case in point, that Geico commercial with the camel? “Guess what dayit  is! HUMP DAY!” I laugh. And I don’t stop.
I finally gave up and pulled out the contemporary. You know, the one I said I wasn’t working on. Then I slouched down, started watching The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and before I was actually aware of what was happening, wrote almost half a chapter.
We can’t blame this on self medicating. I’m not taking cold medicine for this beast.
Maybe it’s the sinus pressure. Look, I don’t know, but I’m not complaining. Writing happened! And it was glorious!
My brain wasn’t done creating though, I guess, because I had weird dreams about completely unrelated things: Alonzo Cushing (my new Civil War infatuation), Orlando Bloom, the guy from Copper (Tom Weston-Jones, looked it up), tanning beds, and Marla Hooch (what a hitter). I don’t know what any of that means, but there you go.
And by 6:35am this morning, I’d plotted out the rest of the chapter for the contemporary novel. The rest of the chapter has nothing to do with any of the above people and/or tanning beds, but now I feel compelled to make an offhanded reference to one of them. Just because I can. Bonus points if it’s Marla Hooch (what a hitter).
Here’s my prediction: I’m going to spend all this time crafting beautiful historical novels and then, when I’m so sick that I mistake deer standing in the driveway for hyenas (PS-there are no hyenas native to Pennsylvania), I’ll crank out a contemporary about tanning beds and Alonzo Cushing and it will be instantly published. If that happens, I’m starting out my acknowledgement page with, “Brought to you my Mucinex.”
And Tom Weston-Jones can star in the movie.