Why I Will Never Do NaNoWriMo

To write a novel you need coffee, a computer, pens, paper, and...a Viking hat?

Every couple of years I decide I'm going to do National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The idea is that you write 50,000 words in 30 days because, um, you can? I've actually never paid much attention into the whole "unleash your creativity!" narrative behind the whole thing. I write for money, which usually means keeping my creativity pretty well leashed.

I try it every couple of years instead of every year because I fail miserably, remember my failure the next year, then forget about it the year after that and try again. So here is a list of why NaNo never works for me, to be read by me in 2014:

1. Daylight Savings. Suddenly it's the middle of the night at 4:30 p.m. and hibernation seems like a valid life choice.

2. Illness. At least seven days of every November will be devoted to sniffling on the couch in my bathrobe, sitting on the couch with a sniffling, bathrobe'd Baby Razor, and/or poking the prone form of Mr. Razor while telling him that no, that sniffle is NOT going to kill him.

3. Thanksgiving. Perhaps this holiday is not a drama-bomb for you and yours. Be sure to give thanks for that next Thursday, because my family is still feuding over who's hosting.

4. Christmas. Between Baby Razor and her seven cousins, trying to find something that they like/don't already have/won't cost me a kidney is a part-time job.

5. Alcohol. Look, there are a lot of seasonal beers and I feel like it's my job as a knowledgable drinker to try as many of them as possible, okay?

6. Parenthod. Even after three years, I continually underestimate the effort of stay-at-home parenting. This is an old example, but the current ones range from unfunny to depressing, so here you go:

When Baby Razor was about two-years-old, I got a big freelance project and was debating whether I could do it while taking care of her or if I needed a babysitter. One day I was sitting in the basement working on the project while she happily played by herself and I thought, "Oh yeah, I can totally work and mom at the same time." Then I looked up. My daughter had a) found a pile of cat puke I'd overlooked and b) shoved it in her mouth.

I got a babysitter.

7. I Might Not Want to Write A Novel. I know, that one should probably be at the top of the list. Aren't all writers supposed to want to write a novel, though? I'm starting to wonder. Because it turns out I actually enjoy having other people tell me what to write about, whether it's Etruscan relics or ovarian cancer surgery. I like the resulting checks too. Fifty thousand words and no check? That's just a crappy cost-benefit ratio.

Anyway, my NaNo non-novel was going to be about a 19-year-old starlet in Hollywood having lots of sex and getting really famous. If the fact that I couldn't motivate myself to write about sex and gossip isn't enough proof that I'm never going to be a novelist, I don't know what is.

p.s. I was inspired to try again this year by The Hairpin's Nicole Cliffe, whose novel is going about as well as mine.

Drive

I am way better than this.

I failed my driver's test as a teenager after turning a three-point-turn into a five-point-turn, failing to back up 50 feet without drifting into the center of the road, and, um, nearly hitting a jogger. (In my defense: that jogger came out of nowhere.)

I cried for 45 minutes and made my mother take me to Dairy Queen for a sundae before going back to school for the rest of the day. I still feel like this was a perfectly reasonable response.

I passed on my second try a few months later, drove around Martha's Vineyard for two years, then took a 15-year hiatus upon moving to Boston. Believe it or not, public transportation around here used to be pretty reliable. But between the fare hikes, the busses on the schedule that don't exist in real life, and Baby Razor's short temper, I realized it was finally time for me to get back behind the wheel.

Fun fact: If you've kept up your license, you can just get in the car and go, even if Bill Clinton was president the last time you started an engine.

The thing that surprised me the most was how comfortable I felt, even with Baby Razor in the backseat yelling, "Why you sitting in Daddy's seat? Don't sit in Daddy's seat!" (Another good reason to drive: gender equity.) I was like, "I thought this was hard? Why?" Well, between my undiagnosed-at-the-time anxiety disorder and Martha's Vineyard's complete lack of signage and traffic lights, 16-year-old me thinks 34-year-old me can suck it.

Plus I always had the crippling fear that I was the worst driver on the road, which is a nightmare for a perfectionist like me. Boston has cured that fear. I am nowhere near the worst driver on the road. I don't talk on the phone or text, my eyesight is fine, I use turn signals, and I don't treat a double yellow line like a slalom course.

What I've learned so far is that most of my Driver's Education was totally useless. In the real world, no one cares if your turn is 3-point or 5-point. You never have to back up 50 yards. And joggers have sidewalks in the city. Also: people only remember how to parallel park until the moment they're given their license, at which point everyone reverts to being horrible at it and avoiding parallel parking spaces at all costs.

There is really only one rule: Don't Hit Anything. My visual-spacial skills are sketchy at best, so I was worried about this, but age, wisdom, and a healthy sense of "This car is expensive so don't fuck it up" have served me well so far. Okay, I've jumped two curbs, but I think that was just a bad morning.

NY ComicCon, Quickly

I have an actual wrap-up post going up on Paper Droids soon (ETA: Here it is!), so this is just the goofy shit more appropriate for a blog I haven't managed to update since June.

Adorable ladies. They even had rebel alliance earrings.

So Mel, Jane, Amanda, and I hit New York ComicCon last weekend. Thoughts and impressions:

1) So. Fucking. Crowded. You know that feeling when you're hemmed in on all sides by people pushing you in multiple directions and you know that if something goes wrong, you're getting trampled to death? I got to experience that MULTIPLE TIMES. I realize that cons are always going to be chaotic, but there was zero crowd management and it was occasionally terrifying.

2) Clueless con staff. Dear organizers, Please give your volunteers maps, schedules, and lessons on how to ask people to form a line. Sincerely, everyone.

3) Numbers 1 and 2 led Mel to say something I never thought I'd hear: "I miss San Diego." Yup, it made SDCC's chaos look like a model of planning and organization.

4) Okay, when we weren't waiting half an hour to pee, we did have lots of fun. I met Sir Terry Pratchett! And, predictably, I went totally blank and was like, "Hi. Hello. Hi." But he told me I had a pretty name, so that's good! Jane held it together a little better and told him he inspired her to become a librarian. They had a moment. I got a little verklempt.

5) I had a ticket for a photo op with Stan Lee, but he cancelled his Saturday appearances. But! On Friday he walked right past Jane and I, so I can say I got to see Stan Lee, which is still pretty cool. We also walked past Richard Speight and Rob Benedict, two actors from Supernatural. They are wee pocket men. I heard Jane say, "Oh, look the guys from Supernatural" before I saw them, and given that my most vivid memory of SDCC is nearly being crushed to death by Jensen Ackles superfans, my first reaction was DUCK AND COVER. Thank goodness it wasn't them. I'm pretty sure the con staff were not trained in riot management.

6) During Saturday's crowd crush, a guy dressed as The Monarch ended up squashed up against Mel and me. "Um, sorry if my shoulder pads ding you," he said. "And also if I fall over on you. I'm not used to walking in heels." Me: "Welcome to the club." Meanwhile, I'm praying that we'll get to the escalator safely so my last conversation on earth won't be with a guy in a yellow felt suit.

7) Speaking of cosplay, here's my goofy self posing with She-Ra:

I love Catra photobombing.

She was my favorite that I saw. Looking at the costume round ups from other sites, I feel like I missed a ton of awesome costumes, especially this Captain Marvel.

8) Jane and I were sitting together when a guy dressed as Deadpool walked by. "That is a really bad Spiderman costume," she noted. It took me a minute to realize she was serious. And thus a running gag was born. I was like, "That's Deadpool?" and she was like, "WELL, THAT'S JUST CONFUSING."

And then we started wondering if guys who wear full-body spandex costumes tuck or not. We decided some do and some really should.

Lucky

This spring, my daughter reached a point in her development best described as Go Away, Mom. So while she ran around our little backyard urgently moving dirt from spot to spot, I sat and poked at the clover patches that pass for our lawn. Two weeks into the most perfect May weather I've ever experienced, I found my first ever four-leaf-clover.

I was thrilled. Baby Razor was unimpressed. (Story of our lives, really.)

The only other time I'd seen a four-leaf-clover was right before the final for a class that was technically titled something like Beowulf and Old English Poetry but I only ever referred to as Beowulf: Bane of My Existence. One of my classmates found it on the way to the final and let us all touch it before we went to our academic doom trying to remember what "gefrunon" meant.

So, figuring it would be a nice memento for Baby Razor's baby box, I Mod Podge'd it to a piece of card stock and figured that was the end of that.

Well. Three days later, Mr. Razor came home, said, "I had the weirdest day," and pulled these out of his laptop case:

He found the first one on the way to the bus in the morning, the next three in the patch near his office building (which is apparently a mutant clover patch, because his coworkers found two there as well), and the last one at the foot of our front steps as he came home in the evening.

I considered buying scratch tickets, but was unsure if six four-leaf-clovers in one week could be some sort of weird anti-luck jinx. For now, all the preserved clovers are safely stored for Baby Razor, just in case she ever has to translate Beowulf.

A Wicked Bostonian Weekend

This roughly translates to "The whole world is a Mercier world," aka my new life motto.

This post is basically an excuse to link to a bunch of things that I love. Hopefully you'll find something to love in here too!

Saturday was our first CSA pick-up from Stillman's Farm. We got rainbow chard, beets, greens, arugula, and the best strawberries I have ever tasted. They were the platonic ideal of juicy berry goodness. Baby Razor ate a dozen.When we did our first CSA 4 years ago, I could barely cook mac & cheese. That first year, the only thing I knew how to do was to sauté every veggie in butter with either garlic or brown sugar. It wasn't until last year, when I was also on a gluten-free cooking crash course, that I finally really started incorporating our CSA box into planned meals. It took more than a decade of adulthood, but I finally learned to cook.

And let me tell you, if I can do it? Anyone can. I know fuck all about vegetables. But between very patient friends and the amazing powers of the internet, I've gone from, "Roast beets. Eat beets." to "Make beet risotto." Believe me, no one is more surprised than I am.

After the farmer's market, we headed to Mr. Razor's Father's Day present: a Formaggio Kitchen shopping spree. Except my husband isn't really a "spree" sort of guy, so it was more of a "moderate concession to indulgence." So I'm going to order him this to supplement the two little hunks of cheese and tiny bit of salami he allowed himself.

I, meanwhile, could have bought the whole store. The place might as well be called Everything Daisy Loves! It's full of cheese, meat, chocolate, fancy honey, wine, spices, local veggies, beer, fresh bread, and all sorts of other yummy things that you don't need to live, but which certainly make life much more enjoyable.

I settled on garlic scapes for garlic scape pesto (I like that recipe because it uses pistachios, which I usually have around the house anyway, but you can find one with basically any nut available. Seriously, it's idiot-proof and DELICIOUS.) and beer. I'd been wanting to try the Porter Square Porter since I heard about it because I used to live in Porter Square and adding Taza Chocolate cocoa nibs to the brew sounded brilliant. It is, in fact, really freaking tasty. Here, read what the beer snobs have to say about it.

See? Idiot-proof.

On Sunday Mr. Razor and I were like, "Happy Father's Day, Razor Family! Have a toddler." Yup, we dropped the kid off with her grandparents and uncle and went to the Sowa Open Market and Vintage Market. Our first stop was Zooguu and its adorable stuffed animals. I bought a Wonder Woman print, because she is my spirit animal (duh).

At the vintage market, I bought a 1950s ad for Mercier Champagne because, again: duh. The nice British lady who sold it to me said, "Oh, it's quite a posh champagne," which made me smile. I also got to meet Keyse of Crocodile Tears, who was lovely. I always feel like a gigantic weirdo being like, "Hello! I'm from the internet!" but I really enjoy her blog, so I had to say hi.

Then we went home and our whirling dervish of a toddler kept me so busy that it took me until Thursday to finish a post about the weekend. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go make a garlic scape pesto & grilled cheese sandwich.

Veneer!

It should probably come as no surprise that Mr. Razor and I are huge Antiques Roadshow fans. So when they started advertising that they'd be visiting Boston, there was much nerdy flailing in our living room. I signed us up for the ticket lottery, and we improbably won two tickets for the June 9th taping.

After joking that we should head to Goodwill and buy the ugliest painting we could find, we decided to bring gold bracelets that came over from Syria with Mr. Razor's relatives, an old copy of Anne of Green Gables that belonged to my mother, and a brass lamp we'd found at the thrift store. I really wanted to bring the antique chamber pot my mother uses to store napkins in her kitchen, but she vetoed that one.

The day is split into five entrance times, each two hours apart. We had the first entrance at 9 a.m. I figured we'd be the youngest people there (we're in our thirties, in case my obsession with comic book characters and dumb internet shit has misled you) by at least a decade, but there were a good number of under-40s there.

Which brings me to a point that I had not considered until I got there: every single person at an Antiques Roadshow event is a massive, massive Antiques Roadshow nerd. No one wakes up and goes, "Oh, huh, that could be fun. Let me go look in the attic for something old." We applied for the ticket lottery four months before the event and spent a month of Sunday dinners with our families debating what to bring. All 6,000 people in the convention center had chosen the antiques most likely to get them either on TV or close to their favorite appraisers.

(We wanted to get on TV. We did not, but the piece that I thought could do it still has a very interesting story that I want to tell at a later date.)

So the first thing that happened was we got in line. At the front of the line, a general appraiser looked at our stuff and gave us cards naming the appraisal section they fell under. We had Books, Jewelry, and Metal Work. It's not an exact science, though. While we were getting our cards, two appraisers at another table were trying to decide if a handmade Freemasons's apron should be Textiles or Folk Art.

Then we went into a huge room that was mostly empty, but in the center had a roughly circular  setup of tall blue screens. Above the screens were large stage lights. The lines for each section were behind the screens. When you got to the front, a volunteer checked and stamped your section card and either held you in place or directed you to another, shorter line inside the set.

Our first two lines moved really quickly, so I didn't get to see much of what was going on around us, but the book line was like molasses and we saw all kinds of cool behind the scenes stuff. From what I could tell, if an appraiser thinks you have something TV-worthy, he or she pulls aside a producer and shows it to them (we saw the music guy do this with a viola). If they deem it worthy, the person goes back outside of the screen and is interviewed by the crew, who take notes. We also saw a couple of the appraisers come out to look more closely at the pieces and talk to the owners. I imagine that's the research portion of the process, where the appraiser figures out what he or she will say during the taping.

When we got into the set for the last time, the line continued to move slowly because two of the three book appraisers were talking to producers. But I didn't mind at all because we got to watch a bit being taped. The center of the set holds the cameras and boom mics, and around them are three appraisal stations. They were setting up to record an old rifle at one table, while at another a slightly shellshocked-looking woman with an antique toy was waiting for the appraiser to come sit across from her. The third spot was being set up with a contraption that ended up holding up a really cool looking rug.

We got the book appraised and were out almost three hours exactly after we'd arrived, exhausted despite the fact that we'd spent 90% of our time just standing in line. (Very well managed lines, I should add. Roadshow volunteers are On It.) The appraisers we spoke to were all friendly, upbeat, and happy to tell us in detail about our pieces (Peter Shemonsky in particular was super informative). They didn't seem fazed by the crush of people or seemingly endless lines, and it occurred to me that you'd have to be quite an extrovert to sign up to appraise for a television show.

I think my favorite moment came near the beginning of the day, when the woman at the metal work table was politely telling us that our lamp wasn't anything special. Another person walking onto the set looked at her and exclaimed excitedly, "Oh, it's Kerry Shrives!" Ms. Shrives briefly looked confused, then smiled and waved. It must be awfully strange to be a nerd niche celebrity.

Slayer Shoes

Previously in Geek Shoes.

The lovely Mel asked me to transform a pair of pumps into slayer shoes. She sent me the shoes and a TPB of Fray and I got to work (as soon as I finished reading it, that is).

Everything went faster this time because I knew I needed:

1) 4 long panels with visual interest for the sides.
2) 4 kick-ass close-ups for the heels and toes
3) A selection of smaller rectangular shots for the in-between spots
4) Some tiny pictures for the inevitable gaps

So I marked illustrations I liked as I read and picked ones to cut out only after checking to see if they'd fit on the shoe.

Then I decided to get faaaancy and layer pictures:

The goal is for you not to be able to tell, but this shot is three separate illustrations: The shot with the tattoo is the bottom, with the picture of Fray with her arm out and the red blade layered over it.

I was really happy with the results.












And Mel was happy too, which was the best part!



A couple of people have asked, so:

To get your own geek shoes, just send me the shoes and comic of your choice. My jar of Mod Podge and I will do the rest!

Vow

Hang on a second, I just need to recreate the experience of seeing Garbage live for the first time in fifteen (FIFTEEN?! Oy. Fifteen.) years via shaky YouTube videos. (Watch Cherry Lips if you only watch one, just to hear the crowd sing along. It was like that for every song.)

Supervixen, aka what I imagine it says on Shirley Manson's business cards.

Temptation Waits. Shirley comes over to our side of the stage at about 1:00. She made eye contact with my friend Cathy meaning they are now BFFs, obviously.

Shut Your Mouth. The kids in the front looked like they were having the time of their lives.

Queer. Y'all, can we talk about how great Shirley looks? I want her arms. Seriously, I would buy Shirley Manson's Sassy Scottish Punk Rock Workout, wouldn't you?

Stupid Girl

Control

#1 Crush. She actually walked off the stage and into the crowd for a verse. And the crowd gave her space to sing. It was amazing.

And I have to talk about the crowd, because in my mumblemumble years of concert-going, I'm not sure I've ever experienced a nicer, more enthusiastic group of fans. At a tiny venue like the Paradise, the crowd can make or break a show, and I'm sure we've all experienced Flaily Drunk Girl and Needlessly Aggressive Guy in our time, but there was absolutely none of that. If this group of people had a collective thought bubble, it would have said, WE'RE JUST REALLY HAPPY TO BE HERE.

Examples: I, like an idiot, walked into someone in my quest for a good spot near the stage, and he was like, "Oh my god! I'm such a klutz! Sorry!" Meanwhile, I was like, "I...uh...I have lived in Boston so long I've forgotten how to respond to an apology?" Then the tallish guy standing in front of us while we heckled the (HORRIBLE) opening "magician" laughed at something we said and was like, "I'm not eavesdropping!" and when he saw that we were shorter than him he said, "Hey, you just let me know if you can't see, okay?" I think at that point I decided we'd been dropped into a parallel universe.



Cherry Lips. I can't even tell you how fun it was to sing along to this song. This was pretty much the point where the concert hit its Awesomeness Peak, so I'll just link y'all to the set list for the rest of it on the off chance you've actually gotten this far into the post!

Shirley Introduces the Band.

The last song of the encore was Vow, their first single, which came out in 1995. It's one of very few songs where I actually remember the first time I heard it. I clearly remember lying down between the speakers of my stereo to get the full effect of the echoing guitars and closing my eyes to concentrate on Shirley's brutally beautiful voice. I was seventeen and, to put it mildly, A Goddamn Mess. I mean, I had it together externally, but my brain was like a bad Hoarders episode.

I didn't know that what I needed was a loud, ballsy redhead to grab me by the hair and sneer I came to shut you up/I came to drag you down/I came around to tear your little world apart like I should do the same to anyone who dared to fuck with me.

It took a few years, but eventually I managed to do that very thing, after a couple of nervous breakdowns and probably way too much red wine. I'm an old lady now, and a bad bitch, if I do say so myself. But when Vow started up? Seventeen-year-old me made a cameo appearance. I got teary. It was vaguely embarrassing, but also wonderful to know that I've still got that connection to the Goddamn Mess of a girl who grew up to be so Goddamn Fine.

Friendship is Magic

I was thinking about the recent spate of features blaming modern loneliness on the internet as I returned home last night from a Hairpin meet-up where I'd spent two hours happily conversing with people who'd previously only lived in my computer.

Then I started to count the number of people I consider good friends whom I'd met in various places online over the years. I stopped when I hit a dozen, because I wasn't sure how to differentiate between the people I now regularly see in person (including my husband) and the people I talk to all the damn time yet have never actually met face to face.

Needless to say, I don't feel terribly isolated by newfangled modes of communication.

When I got home I posted this to Facebook:

I keep reading about how the internet makes us more socially isolated, but I also keep meeting people online then in real life who are awesome and fun. Maybe I'm internetting wrong?

And this is an abbreviated version of the conversation that followed with some of my internet people:

Meaghan: Obviously we are horrible, worthless people.
Meaghan: as are you
Me: Obviously. Us losers have to stick together.
Kristen: I'm really a psycho killer. I just assumed you were as well.
Meaghan: I'm actually a large, West Indian man named Jeff. I like sumo wrestling and crochet.
Michelle: I am a horrible hateful stalking criminally wanted person. Boo!
Me: I am a platypus with incredible makeup skills.
Michelle: I like yours better.
Me: Originally I wrote "hobo," but then I was like, "I don't want to be a hobo! I want to be a mammal that lays eggs!"
Michelle: You will have to raise those eggs, you know. Hobos are guardians to no one.
Melissa: Damn. How did I, the only normal person in all the world, meet YOU GUYS? It's insane, really. [NOTE: The first time I met Melissa in person, we were staying in a hotel room together and she said, 'I hope you don't mind nudity, because I don't really wear clothes when I don't have to."] 

All right, I'll allow that it's possible I have all these internet friends because normal modes of communication can't contain our crazy.

Return of the Man in the Yellow Hat

Last year, I lamented the closing of Curious George & Friends bookstore in Harvard Square. Many of the square's independent businesses have closed since I moved to Cambridge in 1996, but that loss made me the saddest. (So far, that is. If Tealuxe ever closes, I am going to wear black and listen to nothing but The Cure for weeks.)

So I was delighted when I heard the store was reopening with new owners. I bookmarked their website! I followed them on Facebook! I stalked them all over the interwebs, basically, which is how I heard that they had their soft opening last Tuesday. Accordingly, I bundled up the baby and the husband and headed to Cambridge on a chilly, gray Sunday to check it out.

The new owners (who were charming and nervous, bless them) totally redesigned the store's layout. The cash registers have moved from the center of the store to a corner by the door, completely opening up the space. It's much brighter and easier to navigate with a stroller or hyperactive toddler. There's less merchandise, but I suspect the old store was overstocked, so that's not a complaint.

There are a lot of really sweet, kid-friendly touches, like the little padded space at the bottom of this bookshelf:

I think that spot will be popular, because Baby Razor waited patiently (ok, "stared like a crazy person and repeated I wanna sit in the bed! at increasing volume," but at this age no hitting or pushing = patient) until another little girl left. She then snuggled with a George larger than her for approximately four seconds before sprinting to the other side of the store.

Mr. Razor, meanwhile, hung out with an assortment of Georges on a corner bench seat and read about Margaret & H.A. Rey's amazing escape from Paris during World War II.

I shopped, of course. I didn't look much at the books (although I noted that all of my/my daughter's favorite authors were represented) because Baby Razor's personal library is up over 300 books at this point. I loved the all of the t-shirts from Out Of Print Clothing and the small but beautiful selection of children's clothing and hats from independent makers like Maisey Mae. There are also toys, games, and stuffed animals to be had.

Then, of course, there is every Curious George product known to man and monkey. I liked that they had merchandise featuring illustrations of Curious George from the original books as well as stuff featuring George and his friends from the PBS cartoon. Baby Razor likes the books, but she LOVES the cartoon. Whenever I mention something like going to the library or camping or kindergarten, she says, "Like George!" I got her a t-shirt of the cartoon's animal characters because she knows them all by name.

I realize was predisposed to love the place, but I think even if I were unfamiliar with it and/or my kid wasn't a Curious George superfan, I still would have found it charming. It's clear that a lot of thought, effort and love went into The World's Only Curious George Store, and I wish them the best. I'll definitely be going back!