First Halloween of the Rest of My Life

it's been a sobering Halloween so far.

For one, the niece and nephew I held as new borns are now old enough to pick out their own costumes and ask for their own candy. For another, it really doesn't seem that long ago that Cara and I were trick or treating, and I just saw pictures of her kid in a dinosaur suit. I don't know. It doesn't make me feel old, or grown up, but just growing old.


[now, I'm pretty damn sure this wouldn't be affecting me as much if not EVERY woman I knew was pregnant or getting married. Jeebus, it was an eventful summer for everyone but me.]

Second, I had to do all kinds of adulty things today like take some money of out my retirement account to pay for my car fixins, and I had to put my Netflix account on hold since after paying rent, I'm officially flat broke. Yes, I know, it was my decision to make 3 expensive trips to VA on my lightest paycheck ever. Whatev's, they were worth it. 

BUT. It's ok that I'm flat broke. Because NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow! And now I have no excuse not to succeed. I've attempted NaNo every year since 2007. I have failed for the following reasons:

-room needed re-arranging
-boy problems
-failing my STAT class
-crippling self-loathing
-the GRE
-rush hour traffic
-"Writer's Group" meetings that ended up being "Audrey Drinking Wine and Gossiping" meetings
-nothing good on Netflix
-car problems
-bad hair day

All legit reasons. HOWEVER. As of yesterday,

-our entire apartment is ordered to my satisfaction (for the time being)
-I'm in an awesome relationship (Trash TV & Tea Time, whatup)
-I'm not taking STAT (nor will I ever again) (ps. I totally passed)
-funneling it into my book!
-grad school is for losers (I want to be a loser)
-I have a 7.5 minute drive
-well... this I still have to work on
-I know how to dig for TV on the internet now!
-I'm too broke to drive anywhere!
-my hair's pretty awesome nowadays. I mean, I think I have until December my de-markation turns from ombre to straight into white trash.

Audrey Straight-Up Pro-Tip: Don't spend lots of money on ombre treatments at salons. Just go in once for bold streaks, and then launch yourself into abject poverty so you can't afford to get your roots touched up. And when people ask where you got your hurr did, tell them someone in New York did it. Simple and fashion forward.

So starting tomorrow, I'll be walking to and from work (except on rainy mornings), writing 1700 words a day blog not included, and generally working on self-betterment.

I'll check back with you in a week when I'm back to the status-quo of snotty-I-hate-everything-and-I-can't-write mode. It'll be awesome.

Oh, and in the tradition of Firsts, I came home and found Addie curled up in bed wearing a sweater, mumbling I'm sick.

Hooray, it's the beginning of the cold and flu season!

It's also the first time he's had a cold in the 4 years I've known him. So I've been treating him the way I like to be treated when I'm sick--coddling him and asking him every ten minutes if he needs anything. But also I'm nagging him to wear a scarf and a hat when he takes Bart out.

And I'm pretty sure he's ready to kick me out of the apartment until he's better.

So this is an interesting lesson. I need enough varieties of medication to knock out an elephant, in addition to lots of love, attention, tea and chicken ramen to get over being sick; whereas Addie needs thera-flu, football and his PS3.

Good to know.

Also, I made a modern day tapas. You can only have so many glasses of wine ruined by a stray gnat landing in it before you take action. (action also includes pouring ammonia down all the sink drains)

class-e