The beach, good books, and detox time

Les cinq choses de vendredi… Hmm, un peu de French there. My brain is fried. French fried, apparently. Regardless, here’s another Friday Five for you….

1. I’ve had a great start to the day – earlier, a run in the misty rain, and now, chai latté and writing time. Yay!
2. And speaking of writing time (okay, not a very original segue, but a segue nonetheless, and y’all know how I like my Friday Fives to sparkle with segueness)… where was I? Speaking of writing time, I don’t work my day job again until Tuesday, so I’ve got writing time galore, during which I shall be sending my novel out into the world in search of a home. Send good vibes, people.
3. When I was at the beach this morning, I saw a salmon that was definitely not sending out good vibes (oh, I have to stop this! hello, my name is Shari and I’m a segue-a-holic… sigh). The fish in question was not sending out any vibes at all. It was dead. A decent size – three running-shoe lengths – but dead. The funny thing was, there were no birds dining upon it. I often see remnants of ocean critters that have become lunch for gulls or eagles, but not today. It seemed a little strange. Less disgusting that way, but strange.
4. Hmmm… my tea is gone. I may have to make some more. Of course, what I really want is diet Coke, but I unfortunately remember that I said I was going to do a diet Coke detox when I finished revising my novel. So, um, that would be now. Rats.
5. It’s supposed to rain forty days and nights. Or all weekend, at least. But I have books! And tea! So I shall read…. Up first, Getting the Girl, by Susan Juby, then My One Hundred Adventures, by Polly Horvath. I also have an abundance of hockey games to attend because it’s tournament weekend. Should be good! I hope your weekend is great, too.

Peace…. (à bientôt)

How to save a life

I spent an hour and a half at the blood donor clinic today, and gave… nothing. After the nurse obtained a second opinion, and then a third, and after repeated attempts to coax my shy blood vessels into making an appearance, a vein was finally selected, successfully entered, and then blown, within a minute. I have puny veins. So after all the paperwork and humming-and-hawing (?) by nurses, I didn’t get to give any blood this time. I’ve got to say I felt like somewhat of a failure. Not that I’ve got any control over the size of my veins, but you know. Man, I can’t even bleed right…. Please, if you’re able, go and donate. Call here or here. Make up for my lack-of-donation today, and maybe save a life! Thank you, thank you!

::steps off soapbox::

Sleep-deprivation stole my creativity…

…so this blog post has no title.

Okay, I’m definitely spending too much time on YouTube. But you have to check this out! This guy knows all the moves. Yes, ALL of them.

Personally, I know none of the moves. Not that that stops me. But that’s a good thing, right? It’s like that whole dance like no one’s watching thing, which I guess really means live with no fear of being judged, or just be yourself. Hmm, that’s what my mother always told me. “Just be yourself, dear, and you’ll be fine.”

Now I must sleep for a while. I’m so sleep-deprived it ain’t funny. I just read this article about how not getting enough sleep can double your chance of dying from heart disease. Eep. Apparently, adults need seven hours — not less, and not more, cuz that isn’t good for you either. (I think my mother has always known this, too.) I’m not even close to having had seven hours sleep in the past 24, so I’m thinking it’s nap time.

Take care of yourself — dance, sleep (but not too much), and always listen to your mom.

Peace….

Dilemna, disappointment, disgust, delusion, and disbelief

These are the things on my mind today:

1. Dilemna. Only one Canadian team remains in the NHL playoffs. But they’re so not my team. Sigh. Now I have the big debate about who to cheer for. Do I go for the “Canadian team”, which for all I know could have more European and/or American players than Canadian players, or do I go for the under-dog, which is always pretty fun, emotional, and often ultimately depressing (but when your under-dog team wins, it is so sweet) . I can’t not watch the playoffs, so I definitely need to pick a team to back.
2. Disappointment. As all my fellow Gilmore Girls fans must know by now, the show is ending in a couple weeks. Another sigh. And maybe a sniffle. I’ll be okay, just so long as Rory doesn’t marry Logan. And Lorelai and Christopher shouldn’t end up together (again). The relationship between Rory and Lorelai has always of course been central, so I hope the finale has some really great moments between the two of them.
3. Disgust. A judge thinks his pants are worth $65 million. Must be some niiiice pants. This better get turfed out of court mighty fast.
4. Delusion. My daughter managed to convince me that it would be, um, fun to enter an off-road triathlon with her and my hubby as a relay team. Time to get training! I’m the “running” member and, I fear, the weak link. But I’ve got three months to whip myself into shape. No problem.
5. Disbelief. I picked up four pizzas for the six teenage boys that I knew would be at my house when I got home from work today. They were gone in about 7 minutes (the pizzas, not the guys). How do they do that? That’s like 1500 calories per person. In 7 minutes. I would explode if I ate like that.

So there you go. Maybe tomorrow I’ll think about more intelligent things. Or not.

The early bird gets wet

I feel great. Last night was the third night in a row that I got eight hours of sleep. That shouldn’t be something worth posting about, but, well, it is. See, it’s just so unusual that I had to share.

After my wonderful night’s sleep, I rolled out of bed and… remembered I was a little older than I used to be. I used to be able to roll out of bed, lace up my runners, and hit the pavement. These days, I roll out of bed, creak, groan, stretch, creak again, then lace up my runners and hit the pavement. It’s still totally worth it, though. I headed out in the rain, detoured to the beach for a stroll, then finished my run just as the rain was letting up. By the time I’d showered, the sun was shining. Living where I do, however, if I waited for the sun to shine to go for my run, I’d hardly ever get any exercise. So, yeah, I got wet, but it felt great.

Now I’m going to make a batch of low-fat, whole wheat, wheat germ, banana muffins that I will cleverly disguise as something kids want to eat by throwing in a handful of chocolate chips. (We moms have our secret ways of getting nutrients into children’s bodies. Mwahaha.) While I bake, I’ll mull over my latest story idea and see if there is enough potential conflict to actually become a story. I always have trouble nailing down an actual, tangible antagonist in my stuff, which isn’t good. But when it’s not genre fiction – say, a coming-of-age story, or other strongly character-driven story – does the standard protagonist-antagonist conflict plan work? Any insights would be most welcome….

Off to the kitchen to bake and think. Happy Monday!

Weird…

For the third day in a row, my eye is twitching. Not the actual eye, but the lovely purple baggy part just underneath it. It freaks out my kids, so at least some good is coming of it.

Just thought you should know….

Necessary evils

Ever have that eye test where a machine blasts compressed air into your eyeball? Okay, it’s not nearly that bad. It’s just a little puff of air that somehow lets the machine measure the pressure in your eye. I have high eye pressure. Low blood pressure, but high eye pressure. Go figure. Anyway, I get my pressure checked a couple times a year, just to make sure I’m not heading for something serious like glaucoma.

So these puffs of air: I’m definitely developing a phobia about them. It’s all I can do to keep myself from jerking back in the chair just when I anticipate the air will hit. It doesn’t hurt, but I hate it. I used to just dislike it, but now I hate it. I appreciate that it provides the necessary information to the optometrist to alert me if I’m in danger of going blind, but I just can’t convince myself not to despise the test itself.

I guess it falls into my “necessary evils” category. That’s somewhat worse than a pet-peeve, but not as bad as, say, ancient water torture. Anyway, writing this has got me wondering: what are your necessary evils in life?