author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

How do we know this? We know this because it's the day after Thanksgiving, and the Tea Spot is serving up hot chocolate, and the ice-skating rink is open for business. Today was the rink's grand opening, along with the annual lighting up of Boulder. The star on Flagstaff Mountain has been turned on. That's how we know it's holiday season in Boulder.

I have a gripe, though. I've had this gripe for quite some time. I'm griping about the automatic synonymization of "Winter" with "Christmas." I'm griping that every single tune the ice-skaters in the grand opening ceremony twirled to was a Christmas tune. I'm griping that there's no Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, or Wiccan equivalent to the sentimental notion that "even the most hardened, cynical heart can believe at Christmas time!" Look, I don't care that Christmas has been secularized - that doesn't make it any less irksome to see it get exclusive favor from secular entities.

I mean, would it be all that bad to have a little mention of the Solstice? of Chanukkah? of Eid, Diwali, Kwanzaa? That would be so damn cool: an ice-dancing routine of African descent celebrating the seven virtues, with the dancers dressed in green, red, and yellow; then a reenactment of the consecrating of the temple with the miraculous eight-day duration of that tiny bit of lamp oil; and then a solemn yet divinely comic procession of divinities led by Ganesha around the rink.

Wouldn't it be cool if the onset of winter prompted a celebration of the entire community, every last heathen pagan atheist or god-fearing one of 'em? Wouldn't it be cool if the folks planning these festivities actually gave a damn about the diversity of their city... instead of brushing the non-Christians aside, putting on their church robes, and then pretending that calling it something vague like "the holiday season" somehow magically does the inclusivity work they've neglected by only celebrating one damn holiday?

Maybe one day. When I'm the boss of Boulder.

Wow.

OK. I've just written the penultimate scene in the book. I've decided at last exactly what leads up to the shooting scene, and how that comes about; and I've fleshed out a bit of what happens just after. (Best line of dialogue so far: One police officer says to another, "You asshole, put that away. You wanna tell your kids you shot a unicorn?") And I've finally figured out how to resolve Diane's relationship with the one-horned critter such that she loses the ability to change shape in a way actually required by the story.

Hint: no, she doesn't just lose the magic item. It's something better.

I'm not sure whether what I just wrote was awful purple yuck or transcendent glorious poetry. But I'm feeling like I just read something transcendent and glorious, anyway, so I'm just going to ride that wave for now and congratulate myself.

Now I really ought to pull out my short-short story draft and start revising it into something submittable. Except I'm kinda scattered at the moment...

Maybe it's the coffee. Many cups of coffee, on top of a glass of tea from Penny Lane, on top of a pot of tea from the Tea Spot. My brain went and drowned in caffeine. So... I guess I'll hit the keyboard again when I've managed to resuscitate it and dry it off.

Happy Thanksgiving!

1. That the Tea Spot were open all night long. 9:30 just seems so... early!

2. Actually, there is no 2. At least, not at the moment. Psyche! Sorry 'bout that.

I am not proud of what I just wrote.

No, it's not the scene I've been agonizing over. It was a Mitch scene, though, and it wasn't pretty.

It did show some more of Mitch in his element, and the role Diane has to play when she's out with him, so it wasn't totally irredeemable. Introduced a few characters from his gang, at least one of which will be in the car with him On That Fatal Night. My plan is to just keep that up for now and let what I learn from that inform what actually goes into the paragraphs leading up to the shooting.

No blood on the keys tonight, so that's all right too.

As an avoidance technique, I am eating marshmallows.

They're very yummy marshmallows, hand-crafted by the good people of Whole Foods. Faintly flavored with vanilla. Big and square and poofy.

But they're marshmallows.

This is on beyond zebra. This is pathetickness cubed. This is... stupid.

It doesn't help that I purchased a small bottle of rum today, and am now thinking of dolloping it in hot chocolate. With the marshmallows.

(Tea. Just keep thinking tea thoughts. Dilmah darjeeling. Yes.)

What the hell happened?

Well, it was more complicated than I thought.

The logistics of the scene I want to write are still evading me. How does Mr. Right end up getting into the position of witnessing Mr. Wrong's abuses, let alone defending Diane from them? Did he somehow get invited along in a car ride that was intended to end in a sex scene? That seems unlikely. Did Mr. Wrong just happen to park the car somewhere along the Diagonal Highway on a night when Mr. Right was going for a late night bike ride from Niwot to Boulder? Even more dumb. If Mr. Wrong is in the middle of doing nasty things to the main character when Mr. Right shows up, does he still manage to whip out a gun while still, er, engaged, and then does he just ditch Diane on the side of the road and drive off?

And then the thought occurred to me that all three of my NaNo novels so far will have sexual assaults in them either onstage, offstage, or in flashback. I'm not sure I like the trend.

So, I'm just not sure exactly what's going to happen or how high the stakes will be. Does the story really need an attempted rape right before a gunshot murder? Isn't the shooting enough? Do we need another unicorn story in which a unicorn visits a rape victim, thus proving that it's not virginity but pureness of heart that unicorns actually care about? Does this story need to be one?

All of which is a) more than you want to know, and b) a lame excuse why after last night's enthusiasm I somehow haven't written another word.

But, hey. Last night, I typed until I bled. "Dude," said my husband, "that's hard core!" Yeah. People walk into your apartment and find you dabbing blood off the keyboard with a bit of moistened toilet paper. That should count for something... even if the bleeding wasn't really caused by the typing. Or maybe it was. I mean, I don't know exactly how that cut on my knuckle from the other week's bicycle wipe-out reopened. I just realized that my finger was wet, and looked down, and there seemed to be a lot of red. Maybe it was the typing. Serious, hard-core typing. Yeah.

Hey, look! That websnark guy is doing Nano too! Go look at his excerpts and leave me alone while I frantically make up 2,000 words of, oh, I don't know, background material or something.

Pardon that last entry. Part of the reason I'm keeping a NaNoWriMo blog at all is to have a record of my pace - when I was at what word count - so if I miss a day, I lose a point on the graph, so to speak.

Anyway, today I had this plot flash. About 15,000 words and 11 days ago, I had just jumped ahead and written the climactic scene in which the Disreputable Older Boyfriend (we'll call him "Mr. Wrong") shoots the Nice Classmate And Bourgeoning Love Interest (we'll call him "Mr. Right") and then drives away, and Diane has to try to flag down help to save her friend's life. I had no real idea what action led up to this scene, though. All I knew was it had to happen. Well, now I know - but it's not very pretty. Mr. Right is going to show up in time to witness Mr. Wrong mistreating Diane rather viciously, and, being a virtuous lad, will try to come to her rescue, with the above results.

So, good. Another piece of the puzzle falls into place and I'm looking forward to continuing tomorrow. But the exact nature of Mr. Wrong's abuse of the main character brings up a logical problem I really can't keep ignoring. (Although I will keep ignoring it until I either spontaneously solve it or finish this first draft.) The problem is, this is a teenage novel with all the sex and hormonal uncertainty associated with that age... more, it's a teenage unicorn novel, which invites the author to explore issues of innocence both emotional and physical... but the story is being told by Diane sixty years or so later to her grandchildren. Grandchildren who are mostly too young to hear, for instance, about Diane and Mr. Wrong having a heavy petting session under the bridge behind the school.

And, no, grandma-Diane is not too old and senile to realize that the story of teenage-Diane is R rated.

I think the solution lies in differentiating the version the reader gets from the version the grandchildren get. But I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to pull it off.

And, er, that's all I've really got to say, for now. "I'm not sure how I'm going to pull it off." It lacks a certain snappy something for ending a blog entry, I know, but now that I've met my word quota for the day, I need to get to work on another writing project - a short-short to submit somewhere before the end of November. Just because it's NaNoWriMo doesn't mean I'm off the hook for doing one professional submission a month! Last year maybe I could have pulled the "but I'm already doing my novel, what more do you want?" whinge, but last year I was employed full-item. This year, my full-time job is... writing. So 2,000 words later, my job ain't quite done.

I had met
my quota
of words
due yesterday

which accomplishment
I probably
should have blogged
at the time

Forgive me
I was tired last night
and my head was hurting
and I had nothing left to say

What? Cat food? Screw that. That's boring. Fruitcake is where it's at. Fruitcake in the oven for the next 3 hours, slowly making my house smell niiiiice.

Today, SlyCrow and Kandybar and I all went to Caffe Luna, in Longmont, and held miniature writing races where we'd set a timer for five or ten minutes and see who got the most words written in that time. I started the day at 29,131 (how the hell do I remember that?) and you can see where I'm at now. I highly recommend this activity. Especially if you type fast. Kandybar kept track of the math, and I'd watch to see if she punched the air triumphantly or gave me a squinty glare to see which of us had beaten the other by five words or so.

Caffe Luna claims to have free wiFi available. Actually, what it has is wiFi available. Boingo Wireless, to be exact - the kind where you need a login, and you either have a monthly subscription or else you "pay as you go," and that's not free, not in the littlest bit. Good thing we weren't there to web surf.

Not much else to report. It's Teen Titans tonight on Cartoon Network, followed by Justice League Unlimited and Megas XLR. And somewhere in there I want to do another 45 minute writing session or so, just to try to get me up to the 33K mark. And that's all I got for now.

(Oh, all right. Homemade cat food. Bake 1 lb chicken livers and 2lb ground turkey breast. When cooked, chop the liver fine and crumble the turkey. Take 1.75 cups uncooked brown rice and cook it. Open a can of pumpkin - not pumpkin pie mix, OK, just regular pumpkin - and set it aside. Open up a bag of Wellness brand dry cat food. Now, make up five batches of cat food by mixing 2/3 C turkey, 1/3 C chicken liver, 1 C rice, 1 C dry cat food, and 1/4 C pumpkin per batch. Stick all the batches but one in the freezer. That last batch goes in a closeable container in the fridge. Feed 1/3 C twice a day to overweight tabby cats with finicky digestion. In Uno and Null's case, said cats will lose weight and their digestion will improve.)

(Take leftover pumpkin and mix with falafel and a little olive oil. Form patties. Fry 'em and eat 'em like hamburgers.)

(Take leftover turkey and mix it into mac and cheese. Or saute up some celery, onions, scallions, and garlic to mix with leftover turkey; add a cup of water, a half cup uncooked jasmine rice, a couple boullion cubes, some chili powder and cayenne pepper, and a couple bay leaves. Bring to boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for fifteen minutes. Voila - Cajun dirty rice!)

(There oughtn't to be leftover brown rice. If there is, add it to the Cajun dirty rice during the last five minutes of cooking the jasmine rice.)

It's time for my thousand word blogging break. Readers - all two of you - rejoice!

So I have this fruitcake recipe. Someone sweet sent it to me a few years back on the condition that after I followed it I send her a slice. Which I did. And then I never did it again. Make the fruitcake, I mean.

But now the Tea Spot (I never get tired of linking them!) is selling little slices of the stuff, heavy in cherries and walnut, and you know what? I gotta do it again.

So yesterday when I went to Whole Foods to pick up the ingredients for cat food (about this, more later) I also started in on fruitcake preparations. This is both the fun and the obnoxious part: bopping up and down the bulk goods aisle, deciding which dried and/or candied fruits to include, scooping them into little baggies with PLU numbered twist-ties, and weighing them to see if I'm adding up to 3.75 lbs yet. I got...

• pecans
• walnuts
• almonds
• currants
• bing cherries
• sour cherries
• black mission figs
• dates
• cranberries
• candied ginger
• and sweetened papaya spears.

Now. About chopping up dried fruits. Dried fruits are sticky. I don't care how much your friendly Pampered Chef Dealer hyped the Food Chopper, it is useless for chopping dried fruit. Dried fruit sticks to the blades at the very first slice and then rides them clear of ever getting sliced again. Besides, you don't want randomly minced fruit; you want cubed cherries and quartered dates. So stick with the knife. It's old fashioned but it works.

By the way - here's a little bit of trivia for you. True or false: "It is safe to leave bags of dried fruit out on the kitchen counter in a cat-infested household." False! I came back from retrieving the second load of groceries to find Uno and Null regarding a scattering of black mission figs, occasionally batting them to watch how they rolled. Bad kitty-owner!

So now I have a bowl of chopped-up dried fruit sitting in a covered bowl and happily getting drunk on half a cup of cognac. Tomorrow there will be the mixing of the batter, the baking of the cake, and the beginning of the process of curing the cake in more cognac in my big round Tupperware™. I plan to let that sucker pickle right up until Solstice. Yes, yes, I know. "Waste of good cognac." Well, you know what? It's just as much a waste to leave the stuff sitting on the kitchen counter until it spontaneously quadruple-distills itself. Which is what would happen. Believe me, the last third of a cup of brandy from the bottle I used on my last fruitcake was still hanging around as of yesterday. So, deal.

Next entry: A musical interlude, with homemade cat food. You (all two of you) may want to skip it, as it involves baked chicken liver.