Warming up for NaNoWriMo

Update: it's been a while, and in the meantime, Obama WINS! Yay!

There's a lot I could say about the election, but thousands and thousands of words have already been written. Suffice to say that I cried when they called it for Obama. Like so many others, I feel like we've been living in a really bad place for the past eight years, and now there's hope for the future.

On the writing front, I'm trying to (temporarily) focus away from blogging during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which I signed up for on October 31. Nothing like putting things off till the last minute. And if that means anything, I'll probably be attempting to write 50,000 words on November 30th.

Although I have promised myself some hours today to re-start, jump-start, and otherwise begin the new opus: Not for PRofit/Mission Statement/Title TBD. I've got until April 24, 2009 to finish it. We'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, the virtual RA crew team - i.e., the guys who show up in the middle of the night with great big mighty wooden oars to get in a beat-down of my joints have been hanging out in the neighborhood lately. They must be, otherwise I have no explanation for hurting so bad in the past week. Oh well: that's why the Holy One invented Vicodin.

I'll be over at StarCrossed later today (I hope.) More to come.

The Infiniti, and beyond

It's October 31, and much to my chagrin, the car remains uninspected. It was due in September, and now I'm 60 days over. I'm worried and trying to figure out where and how to find the time to get my baby over to the garage, but I can't seem to find a plan that will work.

For eleven years, I drove a Toyota Corolla. Blue, four-door, '89 sedan, a real workhorse. When my '83 Corolla Hatchback lost its muffler on the way home for winter break from college one December day, I didn't know what I would do. The car had been in two major accidents, and wasn't exactly reliable. I knew my parents didn't feel great about me driving back and forth more than 120 miles each way with a tempermental car, and besides, there were these big stupid buses all over campus - I probably didn't need the car after all.

But when I came downstairs one morning, a couple of days before I had to leave to go back for spring semester, my dad announced, "We're giving you the blue car." It was brand new, we'd only had it for about six months. I couldn't believe that I was getting a new car, just like that, for doing nothing. My immediate response was: "What have you done with my parents?"

I drove that car until 2001 - from the time I was 19 until I was 31. I was convinced the car had some kind of divinely-inspired autopilot, considering how many times I drove that car, completely not paying attention to the road, speedometer, or other drivers. I put more than 150,000 miles on that car and never got hurt once.

But eventually, it blew a head gasket and it had to go. We donated it to the Diabetes Foundation. I remember being really depressed about it, thinking I was completely devastated at losing this symbol of my youth. Two days later was 9/11, which kind of put things into perspective.

After that I leased my sweet little Sentra - first the gold one, which was the unfortunate recipient of the karmic blast intended for eleven years of not watching the road - within eight weeks it was totaled in a bad five-car pile up on the FDR Drive. Nissan was fabulous and let me apply the two whole payments and my deposit to a new car. I went over to the dealership one cloudy Sunday afternoon, and picked out a red one.

When my dad passed away, I agreed to buy his beloved Infiniti from my mom, even though I still had 9 months to go on my Sentra lease. The Infiniti was old, but it was paid for, and driving it felt like driving around in a living room. During the past six months before he died, I drove it more frequently as he distanced himself more and more from the things he loved, including driving. We'd go up to visit my sister in Connecticut and he'd mention that he didn't really feel up to the trip home, that I could handle the car better than he could in the dark - something he never really believed before. In retrospect, maybe we should have known there was something wrong.

Now the Infiniti is mine, and I think my dad would pretty much freak out to see it. He kept it neat as a pin - he was as meticulous about his cars as he was about everything else. Now it's got a trunk full of books and dry cleaning and china that my mom gave me but that I haven't brought upstairs yet, the backseat has boxes (again, yet to be brought upstairs) and there is a Torah, a Tanakh and a siddur on the front seat. Talk about being a wandering Jew. I could lead services in my car if I were so inclined. And you could probably get a minyan in there if you took out all the crap in the back.

But it does need to be inspected, and I need to find the time. I don't know where it is going to come from, or how I am going to explain to the Powers that Be here that I need a day where I can work from home and be without the car. This can't go on much longer. Even the Infiniti is beholden to a higher power.

Rainy Day Women #22 & #38

It's an ideal weather day here in White Plains: cold, rainy, and windy, with leaves tumbling down all over the roads. My favorite kind of day. Yeah, I know I'm not exactly in the majority on this opinion.

But it's a good day to be exhausted, and not feeling 100%, and if I didn't have to be in the office today I'd be curled up with my friend Sally's book, with a pot of chili bubbling on the stove and maybe even a challah in the oven. One of my ambitions this year is to learn how to bake my own, even though technically, I suppose, I shouldn't be eating it.

As much as I'd love to cocoon up and forget about the world, I know it's not a realistic expectation. I can only be grateful for my easy job and the fact that it's insanely busy here - which brings great hope for surviving the recession. Sure, I'm not making nearly enough money, and every month is a struggle in spite of the two new dresses bought on sale, and the new shoes I have to occasionally buy for more than I've ever spent on shoes before, because they are really good for people with RA. Right now I'm grateful for my job, and for the apartment I can curl up in even though it's a freaking mess, and for the fact that I was never smart enough to go into the financial world.

When I graduated from college in '92, the economy sucked - not quite as badly as it does now - but it wasn't a good market for new graduates. On the strength of my summer job as a bank teller (which my dad arranged for me), I was accepted into a management training program at a small bank in Fleetwood, about a 20 minute drive from my parents' house.

That was an easy job too, but I hated it. I hated the branded uniformity of the environment, the stupid stock photos on the walls, the sense of confinement in the tiny branch, the strict 30 minute lunch break, having to wear a suit and stockings and heels every day, and the rotten attitudes of the veterans who thought all of the young people were idiots. Not to mention that the manager, a Mariah Carey fanatic, insisted on Muzak renditions of all her greatest hits, played incessantly over the branch sound system, all day. But above all, I hated the sense that this was it - this was the future - surrounded by people who cared about nothing but money. I had spent four years studying the literature of the Holocaust. My boyfriend was 2 hours away, in Philadelphia, cheating on me with anyone he could find. It was not a good time. But as people kept telling me, I had a job, and that was the important thing. I was miserable, but my parents explained it away - that was what the working world was all about - I would have to learn how to deal with it.

One night, I was over at my friend Meg's house - her parents were away so we were hanging out, drinking Coronas and peeling peaches for pie - in despair of my future and its bleak, conformist outlook. At around 4AM, in a haze of lime-scented alcohol and a pile of pie-crust trimmings, Meg convinced me to quit. I decided to table the decision for another couple of hours.

When I woke up at 8AM, the rain was pouring down - it was a day much like this one - with a wind tossing the leaves from the trees. I reached for the phone and called my boss to let him know that I wouldn't be coming in; that in fact, I wouldn't be coming back.

Needless to say, my parents weren't too happy with me. But it wasn't the right fit for me - it would never be the right fit no matter how many chances I gave it. It was only three weeks later that I landed a new job - an editorial proofreader at the Pennysaver, where I made even less money than I had as a management trainee. But it was full of creative people - cool young people in jeans and sneakers - where we got 45 minutes for lunch, and could blast whatever music we felt like playing. Sure, we had our fair amount of suits and crazies, but at least they were real. And best of all, there wasn't a hint of Mariah Carey to be heard.

I went from there to grad school, and then on to marketing, and now here we are, sixteen years after that rainy day hangover that helped me to move to a new path. Standing at the crossroads again, I can only wonder this time what the rain will bring.