Ha

If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?

In fact, I didn’t sleep. I’ve been awake since 3 am, and now I have to go to work. Boy, this is an easy one. I’d totally go back to bed.

I’m peeved

Name your top three pet peeves.

1) when people misuse reflexive pronouns

2) when people mispronounce realtor

3) that I’m okay with the evolution of language as long as reflexive pronouns aren’t tampered with and extra vowels aren’t shoved into places they don’t belong

Bonus) that bad grammar irks me when I’m not qualified to judge

But, honestly, why bother sounding educated if ignorance squeezes itself into dictionaries? Maybe that’s my greatest pet peeve. This willy nilly misuse of words cheapens the genius rebellion of great wordsmiths.

So annoying.

July

What’s your favorite month of the year? Why?

I like the middles of things. Middle of the cake, middle of the day, middle of the night when time disappears halfway between sundown Saturday and sunup Sunday—the black hole between last week and next when the world sleeps. It’s the things between the things I like best because those are the things that are least noticed. One of the perks of being a middle child, if you like that sort of thing. Of all the middles of things, I like summertime most of all, because the sun gobbles you up and hides you from the world for a little while. July is smack in the middle of Hidden and is where all the least noticed things live. July is boss.

So I’ve been thinking

What if I just wrote a cheap novel, something simple and catchy like an 80s pop song, the kind no one wants to admit enjoying. I have to stop being such a book snob. I will never be a Fitzgerald or a Salinger.

I could use a fun pen name—maybe the one I give at the fast food window or at Starbucks. Maybe I should use something more 1940s like Eleanor—the lonely spinster who hides behind a typewriter and emerges now and then wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door. The sloven, grey malkin with a steamy secret she has tucked away in the attic waiting to be discovered in a dusty box after she dies. Eleanor isn’t like that at all, actually. I just like the way the words write. See there? She lives now. I wonder what is on the page that is snapped into her typewriter.