Shiny Happy People

Quick hits from the homefront...

MathMan My World

Wednesday evening I was writing another sex scene and hit a snag.  I wasn't sure if it rang true.  MathMan was stretched across the bed checking Facebook or writing a Calculus quiz.  Does it matter? (no).  I swiveled in my chair to face him and gave him the one eyebrow raise. He smiled invitingly.  After spending half your life with someone, words aren't always necessary.

Without telling him what I was up to, I coaxed him into position so I could test the authenticity of the scene.  Actually, coaxed is probably too strong a word.  The fun part (besides the obvious) was that this was something different for us.  It's not something we usually do.  While hyper-efficient communication can be a happy result of being together for a long time, the downside is that sex can become routine and more about efficiency than wild abandon, romance a casualty of time. 

In case you're wondering, with just a bit of tweaking the scene works.  

Moi

Yesterday, I got bogged down by my growing addiction to political TV and became frustrated.  As a result, I hit the wall of writer's block.  And I think it made my cheek break out again.  It could be political TV, it could be the fact that I messed with my hormones when I had my Mirena IUD removed, it could be my rosacea roaring back due to stress.  Whatever the cause, it's annoying as hell to have wrinkles and an angry red blemish on my cheek.  I can't even hide it under my bangs.

Idiotically, I thought flipping through TV channels would solve that.  Instead I got caught in the beam of watching war movies.  Sink the Bismarck, to be specific.  (That happens to be the movie MathMan mentioned the other day that resulted in my out of control craving and the consumption of two donuts last weekend.)

I texted MathMan to let him know that I was watching the movie.  Then I decided to just start typing (damn it!) to see if I could get around the stupid block.  (Turns out that's a very effective tool for breaking writer's block.) Before I could get back to typing, I had to read the last two paragraphs to remember where I'd been when I left off the night before.  I was a few words in before I realized that I was reading aloud using my Winston Churchill voice.  A sex scene read as Churchill.  Try it.

Chloe

Poor Chloe.  The parenting doesn't stop just because she's nineteeen and living away from home.  She called yesterday morning because she was sick. Being sick is not only gross and painful, it's inconvenient.  She shares the bathroom with several other girls in the sorority house which makes it also embarrassing and horrifying.)  As I listened, I realized that this was the first time she'd been sick like that away from the relative comforts of home.  Last year while living in the dorm, she'd been lucky enough to avoid getting any kind of stomach or intestinal bugs.

While I tried to be sympathetic and offer words of comfort across the miles, I couldn't help but think that if Chloe were the kind of kid who went out and got ridiculously, don't remember what you did last night drunk once in a while, this wouldn't have been the first time she'd been puking in a strange place.

Although I'm sure that keen observation would have sounded hilarious delivered in my Churchill voice, I refrained.  Sometimes you've just gotta hold back. 

So what are you holding back?  Who do you do impressions of?  What do you do when you have writer's block?  Who do you call and cry to when you're sick?