I Am a Widowed Bride

Shawn has been gone to Syracuse for work since Tuesday and I remember now what it's like to be single. The up side--I get the whole bed. The down side--no Shawn and no one to play with Ernesto and so he walks on my head and chirps in my ear when he wants me to wake up at 8 a.m. Today, he stepped on my face. It worked; I got out of bed. I'm teaching Ernesto to fetch using this little rubbery mouse we bought in CA. I've been reading this book about how baby animals learn, and the author talks about how, with the right reward system and reinforcement, animals can obey commands. She also writes about how animals learn by watching other animals perform tricks. I know this must be partially true because Henri knows how to sit for a treat and it only took me about three times to get Ernesto to do the same. So, Henri was watching me throw this mouse back and forth and watching Ernesto showered with praise when he returned with the mouse, but then I tried to get Henri to go after it and he was frightened by the mouse and ran away. Not a shock.

Had this story accepted in a journal some time early in the year but I forgot who took it... I would periodically conduct Internet searches to see if it was published online and never found it until today, when I got an email from Passages North. Oh, yeah. That's the one. Some day, I hope someone will pay me for this stuff. It's extremely gratifying to have a story published, but what's the end goal? No one is going to just discover me because I've appeared in Permafrost or whatever. I don't think editors do Web searches specifically for my name just to see what the hell I've been up to. So, must figure out how to send out a short story collection. I have sent it to a couple of contests and was a finalist for one, but that's so competive and you have to pay for them to read it. How do you get a collection published? Please send literary agents my way.

The barrista at Rocket Cat is being very nice to me today. I am suspicious.

Did a little writing yesterday here at RC and then last night for like an hour---got about 2,700 words on another Evie piece called "Evie's Neurosis Explained." I don't now know what to do with it and was thinking today that I should write a story about an adjunct teacher at a small college who ends up having an affair with one of her twenty-one year old undergrad students. It wouldn't be tawdry; it would be sad. Like, I picture a scene where she finds herself at a frat party, standing in line for keg beer with a plastic cup clutched in her hand and surrounded by drunken young girls in tank tops and guys in baseball hats saying, Dude! I'd love to call it "Student Body" but I believe that title is taken by a dumb movie, most likely starring Tara Reid's breasts. My problem is that I'm too frenetic. I start a story and then the next time I sit down to write, I begin a different one and so on and so on and so on.

(A guy just walked in wearing paint splattered jeans with a pencil tucked behind his ear. He is an artist. Another girl in here has really horrible dyed green hair. How about instead of fiction writing, I just continue to catalog the various hipsters who walk in such as this super tall thin guy in a puffy jacket covered in black and white cartoons and fur hood? I suspect he is an artist as well).

Okay, I just spent the last half hour adding some of my older stories to "Amazing Adventures..." Doing this has provided an excellent way to procrastinate any actual ficiton writing. Okay, here's the deal. I either have to write for 45 minutes or until I have 2,000 words and then I have to do about 500 words later on today. DEAL OR NO DEAL?