A Month-ish-ly Summary

Well friends - I guess it's time to get all caught up. However, so many things have been happening and I am so exhausted at this point that this may be the most haphazard, twisted, non comprehensible piece of writing known to man. Prepare yourselves.

Part One: How I Know It's NaNoWriMo Season

1) I have stopped using conjunctions and hyphenated words. This adds to one's word count and is therefore essential to the ability to make it through the month.
2) I sit in my apartment and laugh maniacally sometimes - the result of reading the NaNoisms thread, where people post the misspellings and other unfortunate creations resulting from the mad dash to 50,000 words.
3) My dishes have been stacking up since the beginning. Namely, every. single. coffee. mug. I. own. is. dirty. It is VERY exasperating.
4) I have started to be able to block out portions of my day again. This used to happen in college when I existed on five to six hours of sleep and would sometimes come alert at some point knowing I went places and did things, but not quite certain how they occurred.
5) I've started making up words.
6) I use multiple adjectives to describe the most mundane things - the puppy's eyes were big brown pleading and sweet. Which they may have been, but I know for a fact there are less verbose ways to say it!

Part Two: The Return of the Old Me

I don't know if it was just the newness of everything here, but for some time I was doing pretty well - I was looking responsible to other people, I was carrying on in a more or less socially appropriate manner, and things were trucking along decently, if somewhat boringly (see made up words from part one). This has ended. The honeymoon is over, as they say, and my true self is showing it's inappropriate, stumbling, blushing self again.
Allow me to run over a few highlights:
Last week, I had to get an oil change. I brought a friend with me, and we went to Walmart so I could shop at the same time. Dropping the car off was no big deal. However, picking it up - well let's just say that they need to label their doors much more accurately. Basically there was this whole ordeal where we attempted to force a loaded shopping cart through a single-person door marked customer, then not knowing where to go since it led into the shop itself, we went out a side door, only to find ourselves on the opposite end of the shop from the car. So, in full view of no less than three laughing mechanics and possibly a customer, we proceeded to march around the entire building, still pushing a rattling shopping cart overloaded with plastic bags, and reach the car, where we then had to unload all the bags in front of the still-staring and snickering mechanics, then make our escape home.
At work on Thursday, I tripped. On the plain old carpet. In the middle of the giant, wall-length, floor to ceiling windows. Right at the front of our office. Three different times.
Coming home from work Friday night, I tried to open my front door using the beeper for my car. Because if it says unlock, it should unlock, right?
This morning, getting ready for church after a very late night of writing and then that random extra hour of sleep, I tried to use not mousse, but contact solution on my hair. May I point out that this is only November 6? As I tried to explain to my friend after the Oil Change Incident, these things just happen to me. I don't know why.

Part Three: Hearing Things

No, sarcastic person in the back, I heard you, and I am not manifesting my latent insanity. However, I have started an interesting assortment of quotes lately - it must be because I'm writing again, I'm always more attuned to the world then. Because this post is already far too long, I'll just share two of them with you, and then I'll be off.

1) My father, of course:
"Well a rolling stone gathers no moss - and that's Spanish. No más."

2) (Overheard at church)
Pastor: "We brag about many of the blessings God gives us, when they're beyond our control. We even brag about pointless things: My house is bigger than your house. My girlfriend is cuter than your girlfriend."
-Everybody starts laughing-
Pastor: "What? Haven't any of you done that?"
Husband down the row - leans to his wife -: "Is my girlfriend prettier than your girlfriend?"
Wife - backhands husband in the chest, then stage whispers: "I wouldn't know, I've never met her." -Then starts laughing crazily at her own self -

And that, my friends, if life lately.

On Hearing a Story

When you like to write, you sometimes get a teensy bit of a God-complex about your story. You know every tiny detail of every word, thought, and interaction every one of your characters will have from beginning to end.
And then you start to write.
And it allllll falls apart.
I was telling a friend of mine that I am going to do Nanowrimo and convincing her to do it with me, and as we were talking about it I gave her the synopsis of my plot, using your average filler "blah-blah-blah" for the parts i wasn't entirely clear on. When she teased me about it I pronounced my wording epic, and added that I didn't know yet whether the end of the book I've chosen to write is going to be poignant and haunting or sweet and charming. This is what she said:
"I guess it might be one of those instances where you won't know until the end. Let the story speak to you.
And if it says "blah-blah-blah" hold out for something a bit more profound. Because no, it is not epic."

That thing that grabs on and won't let go

Writer's are all inspired by different things and have different reasons for writing. I once read somewhere or other that writers write to help themselves understand better - that writing is a way of exploring ideas or questions, an attempt at finding an answer.
One of the things that for some reason inspires me or makes me need to write to find an answer is the idea of a single event changing a life forever. Something big or something that seemed insignificant at the time, that was so powerful as to make someone's life unalterably different.
Usually when I think of that I'm thinking of something terrible. Let's face it, there's no story in the happy ever after - it's what leads up to it that makes it worth telling.
And, too, I guess I'm thinking of the things that go unspoken - family secrets, shame, things every single person on earth carries with them and never speaks aloud.
I hope I don't sound creepy, or dark and troubled, because most people really don't think of me that way, I promise! But these are the things that stick in my mind.
So here are two songs that I've heard, one for years and one just recently, that I just can't seem to get out of the back of my writing mind - I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to do with them, there's a concept there, a story waiting, but I can't seem to muster up the focus to bring them out and find the story in it. What do these songs say to you?

just to whet your appetite

Mealtimes were really Nellie’s time to shine. And by mealtimes I mean, the period encompassing two hours before and two hours after every meal.  About two hours before the meal she would start sitting in her chair, nose up and eyes down, reading her book with both ears open to pick up any gossip from the staff.

An hour before the meal she would begin to perch more attentively. When I set the table, it was never right, no matter what arrangement I made with her silverware be it knife on the right fork and spoon on the left, or fork on the outside right and knife on the inside with spoon on the left, or all three on one side or the other – Nellie always had to rearrange them. About 45 minutes before the meal, she would chirp,

“Why don’t you gimme my milk and water?”

“Well we’re not going to eat our meal for awhile still, we better wait so you can drink it with your food.”

“Oh.” Nellie would say, with a very large, single nod. A few minutes later,

“Why don’t you gimme my milk and water?”

It got to the point where, if I didn’t have any toileting to do or meds to give, I’d go sit on another wing and chat with the folks over there, just to hide from Nellie and her beverages.

As soon as I started taking the food out of the warmer and setting it on the counter to dish out, Nellie would start too.

“I’ll have small portions.”

“Ok Nellie, I remember.” I’d say. Such futility.

“Small portions for Nellie!” She’d say two minutes later.

“Yup I heard you, I’ll get you small portions Nellie.” I’d say again.

“Can you make sure I get small portions? I need small portions. I hope you gave me small portions…”

I’m sure you get the picture. What sweet relief when I handed her her plate of food!

She was rather particular though – if you hadn’t gotten that picture already – and each part of the meal had to be to her specifications. Small portions were a given, but her water glass had to be exactly three-quarters full, and her milk glass one-half. She had to have applesauce and not dessert, mainly because Hannah had applesauce instead of dessert. However if I did give her applesauce straight instead of giving her a dessert first and then having her reject it and demand applesauce, changes were 3 to 1 that she would ask for dessert instead.

She could have used the sugar.

One time I made the mistake of putting cheese on Nellie’s taco salad. Nellie, it would seem, did not eat cheese. So, I foolishly suggested that she remove it and put it to the side.

“You just take that away and give me a different one.”

“Well Nellie, you can just take the cheese off, just dump it to the side.” – as I carried three loaded plates across the room to other residents.

“Give me a different one, I can’t eat cheese, give me a salad with no cheese.”

It only took a few minutes for me to become wise to the fact that it would, indeed, be much faster and far less painful to just dump the entire thing and start fresh, cheeseless.

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There was a woman who moved to my wing only a month or so before I left. Little Hillary tipped over in her chair and dozed off at all times and in all places. Nellie’s bossy old heart couldn’t stand this travesty against decency. From the moment Hillary joined us, Nellie was all over her –

“Why don’t you wake up and eat something? Why don’t you sit up straight? Why don’t you pay attention to your food?”

Oh yes. The joy of Nellie.

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There is one Nellie-story that stands out clearly as far superior to the rest. It was in the evening, and Hannah and I were chatting at one of the natural-wood tables. She was repeating herself with joyful abandon, as usual, and I was enjoying myself testing out a different answer each time she asked the same question, just to see what other directions I could branch the conversation into. It was like one of those “choose your own adventure” books – verbally.

“Well you are a very nice girl, and I like you.”

“Thank you Hannah. I like you too.” I said with a smile. I patted her hand and got up, nearly plowing over Melanie. Melanie liked to wander back and forth all day long. She was nonverbal, and never ever toileted herself, but she was a great one for laughing. She was already laughing when I started talking with her, but I went ahead and asked her a few questions anyways, and she went ahead and giggled back.

“Bye Melanie. Bye-bye. Bye!”

Nellie wasn’t a fan of Melanie, for whatever reason. She was always shooing her away and usually I didn’t trouble myself about it since Melanie never noticed. But the day in mention I was in what you might call a mood, so I tossed an arm around Melanie’s shoulders and said,

“Nellie don’t be mean to my friend. Melanie is my friend and she’s here visiting me, and I am glad she is, so be nice to her.” I said. I was just turning back to Melanie, pleased as punch with the important lesson I had just imparted, when Nellie sat up as straight as her little hunched back would let her, tipped her nose up as usual and said,

“Well aren’t I your friend too?”