I’ve been trying to write this goddamn book for years.

Really, years.

The first time I started it, I was maybe 14.  I gave it another whack when I was 19.  At 25, once I knew everything there ever was to know in life, I sincerely had an honest go at it.  For the four years I’ve had this blog, I’ve tried every year to use NaNoWriMo as my motivation.  I even had a team of fellow wanna-be writers to dream work with for a while, but we always ended up wine-drunk and no good ever comes from wine-drunk.  Unless you’re the guy who’s getting the tip at the end of the night.

It’s always been the same story, it just keeps getting longer and more convoluted the longer I wait.  Now that I’m comfortably wedged somewhere between menstruation and death, and I have all new motivation to get this thing going (see: greying hairs, kids hitting puberty, bunions), still I just can’t.  I blame this on the fact that I’ve read too many good books already.  Maybe I’m just lazy.  Bygones.

When I go through my “serious” phase on my blog, like I seem to be in now, and sorry about that*, I can’t read other people’s blogs because I can’t sort out my own thoughts from all of yours.  When I go through my “oh my god I’m so close to 40 I could pick its nose” phase, I can’t read other people’s books because it makes me cringe that I still can’t do that after all these years.  Reading The Bloggess just makes me want to go work at McDonald’s.  I’m not the only one, either.

That said, when I got into it with one of the eleventy-hundred people at the mall trying to push their credit card down my throat, when I explained that I think credit cards are the downfall of modern society, but thanks, and the guy went from sneering at me to really asking me why I thought that and we got to talking, not just pitching, he asked me what I did for a living.  I didn’t hesitate for a second when “writer” fell out of my mouth and landed on his tie.

Apparently, I think I’m a writer.  Which explains why I can’t read anything right now.  I can’t even listen to anything more that the first Live album and The Kings of Leon at the moment.  Both of which are great, but not that great.

I got through Marshall Karp’s book with flying colors, mainly because he’s kind of hot and more mainly because Beth asked me to and mostly mainly because they gave me three bags of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups afterwards.  Also because it kicked ass.  Also also because his book isn’t the type of book I’m trying to write.

The main problem I have is that I want to write the kinds of books I like to read, and I’ve read them all.  A million times over.  I am a repeat reader, and I am happy that way.  I read authors, not books.  I love authors, and so I love what they write, even what the thing they write goes on for fucking ever and makes me wonder if it isn’t time for him to retire.  I’ll still read it because I love that man and I can glean what I love about him through his ether-induced ramblings.

So, naturally, I’m a little concerned about how long it’s going to take me to get to, and then through, Chuck Palahniuk’s new book that’s sitting on my desk right now, all autographed and shit.  AUTOGRAPHED.

Zoeyjane and I drug all of my kids and all of her kid down to a bookstore where he spoke for 90 minutes and then autographed copies of his new book.  My boys loved him.  They talked to him after and he talked back and now they want to read all of his books, which of course I said no to, until they’re ten, which makes me the worst mother ever but do you know how awesome it is when your kids appreciate the stuff you’re into?  Best.  Feeling.  Ever. 

Ever.

So I’ve got this new book sitting there on my desk, and I’ve got his older book Choke which I still haven’t read for some crazy reason, and i’ve got World War Z as well because it was screaming at me from the endcap in the store, and I just can’t bring myself to open any of them right now.  Because if I do, I’m perching myself up on the shoulders of these authors who have done what I dream of doing, I’m seeing how far down the fall is, and I realize that I’m left just cold.

And so, for now, I’m going to light my own fire and hunker down and let the world wait while I find a way to tell this story.  While I find MY way to tell it.  But I better do it soon, because god damn do I want to read about the zombie wars.

*Really, I almost got weepy all over my final American Idol recap of the year.  Weepy, I tell you.

I fancy myself a nice person.  I’m a benefit of the doubt kind of girl, I am not one to raise my voice in public, I have an underdeveloped sense of road rage.  If you cut me off in line, I’ll typically just assume that you’ve got something fairly urgent going on.  I’m kind of a doormat, truth be told.

However, the onset of my advanced age has brought a few changes to my proverbial doorstep.  With who I am.  I went from having A chin hair to having ALL the chin hair.  My moustache doesn’t suck, either.  I’m getting Cherry Angioma all fucking over my body, and my hair is coming in gray.  ALL OF THEM.  You know how your hair looks if you go a few days without a shower?  Mine normally looks like that about 12 hours after my shower.  Now, it just always looks like that.  It’s stringy and greasy and motherfucking gray.  My 9-days-long-just-like-clockwork period is now a two-weeks-long-whenever-it-damn-well-feels-like-it period, and it usually feels like it right after I’ve blown the entire bank account on pregnancy tests.

Oh, and I suddenly have PMS for the first time in my life.

My old PMS manifested itself in nesting.  My house is never cleaner that the week and a half after I ovulate.  Lately, though, not so much.

I am blaming this shift in hormones and attitude for the fact that I tore some woman a knew asshole at my kids’ school today.  See, we have this drop-off/pick-up lane at the school that is a no-stop zone.  You can’t park there, you can’t walk there.  You drop your kids at the curb and move on.  No one ever follows this rule.

Of course, we’ve had 100 billion cm of snow, and the school district kind of forgot to plow the school before it started after winter break, so this already narrow, weird, straight uphill drop off zone is now a sheet of snowy ice and hardly wide enough for one car.

Naturally, some fucking moron decides that today, in the pouring rain, she should park her minivan half-way up the hill and go get her kids.  I could see my kids at the top on the curb, where they should be, waiting and getting soaked.  I waved, they waved, and they stayed put until that car moved and we could all get up the hill.  10 minutes later, after 10 cars piled up behind us blocking the main street and a city bus, she returned.  I was fuming.  She got in her car and tried to drive off, but what was in front of her?  ANOTHER parked car, a Ford sedan, this one at a 45 degree angle, so no one who didn’t know how to drive in the snow stood a chance of getting around it.  Minivan mom tried to inch her way around that car, but couldn’t figure it out, so she just got out of her car and climbed in the back with her kids.  After 5 more minutes, she got back in the drivers’ seat, tried again, and got around the Ford.  Eventually.  Very slowly.

The car in front of me goes around the Ford, no problem, and so did I.  (Nice tense switch there, huh?  I can writes good.)  The 10 more cars that are backed up on the street, and the now TWO city buses that are blocked start to move.  We pull up to our kids, and by now they are dripping and shivering.  They start getting in the car, and I’m pissed.  I look up and see some woman walk past me, grab her keys, and point them at the Ford.  The trunk pops open.  This is my moment.  Am I man or amoeba?  What do I do?

I rag out all of her ass is what I do.

I unroll my window, open the car door, take off my seatbelt, lean my head out of the door and turn it all the way around all Linda Blair style, and as loudly as I can I say to her back, “Are you aware this is a no parking zone?”  She turns around and puts her hand up, like “talk to the hand” puts her hand up, and that was it.  BOOM.

“Are you also aware that you held up TWENTY CARS and TWO CITY BUSES?  It took me TWENTY FIVE MINUTES to get around your car.  My kids are SOAKED.  This is a NO PARKING ZONE.  Do not ever, ever park here again.”

She says Sorrrrrrrryyyyyyy.  I say “DON’T PARK HERE.”  She starts saying something that begins with “I just…” and a gave her a nice, loud whatever and drove away.

I have never, ever done anything even close to that before in my whole freaking life.  I don’t even know who I am anymore.  The worst part?  I wrote the PTA president to bitch that there is never anyone out there directing traffic even though we have an entire committee dedicated solely to directing traffic, and guess what?  I’ve officially unquit the PTA.  I’m now directing traffic two mornings and two afternoons a week and organizing the parents who I will force to help me with this.

Seriously, do you want my uterus?  THREE TIMES NOW, it’s landed me a spot on the PTA.  Fucker hates me, and I’m breaking up with it.

I hate quitting. Anything. Smoking, doubly so.

It’s not that it’s oh so terribly hard for me to quit; in fact, I cold-turkey quit every single time I’ve ever done it. All 6 times or so. OK, maybe that I’ve had to re-quit 6 times or so means it’s an eencey bit harder than I’m willing to admit. It’s just that I like smoking and it’s the one grown up thing I get to do every day.

Somebody asked why I quit. I don’t really know, exactly. There are a few reasons.

One is that I am a cheap cheap bastard and when I look at the monthly budget and realize we spend more on cigarettes every month than we do our groceries, well, I take issue with that. Smoking is more expensive than crack here.

Another reason is that I have been going to the doctor, kind of a lot, because I am fairly sure something is significantly wrong with me. After throwing around a bunch of large, uncomfortable words and scanning/poking/prodding every inch of me, it turns out that I’m just fine except for my red blood cell count, which happens to be ridiculously high. How does one fix that? One quits smoking, that’s how. As for the rest of my health issues, whether they exist on paper or not, I know they’re there and now I’m left to find a dietary cause. Step one, cut out the meat. Meat makes me want to smoke. May as well cut them both at the same time, eh?

An even better reason is that my friend is battling cancer within her family right now, and she’s about to quit, and I thought it would be a friendly gesture to quit with her.

The biggest reason of all, though, is that my kids are old enough to know better. I am sick of hearing, “Mom, you smell like cigarettes,” and, “Eww, mom, you’re gross,” and the cold, flat, mono-tone, “You’re going to die, you know.” I promised them I’d quit, a year ago, and it’s time to make good on that. 1of3 told he he’d stop biting his nails if I stopped smoking. If that’s not incentive, I don’t know what is.

And so, with all of this in mind, yesterday I just let myself run out of cigarettes. I figured if it got awful, I could always run out for more. It didn’t get awful. It got a little hairy this morning, and I cheated a little this morning, but I am totally ok with a little cheating here and there. It’s not like I really want to quit, it’s just that I know I should. And I am. And I will.

I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, but I think I just quit smoking. Not just just, but like 2 hours and 20 minutes ago just. I’ve hit the point where it’s all I can think about. So far, I have eaten:

• Several handfuls of animal crackers
• 3 big ol‘ chucks of sharp cheddar
• 5 pinches of hot chocolate powder
• 2 fingerfuls peanut butter

For some reason, I really want a huge cheeseburger, but I want a bag of carrots just as badly. I think we’re hitting Dairy Queen tonight.