random observations for a Thursday...
Every afternoon, now that it's warming up (it was over 80 today), there is the typical rite-of-passage, the one moment when I know spring is upon us and winter is over: I am bombarded with the tinny clanging of music from the ice cream man. In a world where we have amber alerts, where kids are snatched, where we don't let them talk to strangers or go to a friend's house without double-checking the background of all adult units who may be present, we still let our kids chase down a painted and decaled van where they can buy a bar of ice cream for $2.50 instead of getting it at the grocery store for a fourth of that price. I have often seen kids zooming by on bicycles, trying to catch him, because they weren't quite ready with their money as he sped by (this guy drives way too fast), and they practically race their bikes in front of his truck to get his attention. This is a disaster waiting to happen, and I feel like one of those crochety old 80-year-olds we used to make fun of as kids... the ones who said, "Well in my day, sonny...." yikes.
Even so, it makes me wonder, who checks out the ice cream man? I mean, there's not exactly a union for that, is there? Are there background checks? Someone making sure this guy isn't wanted in a few states? What? I'm always amazed at how schizophrenic our trust is... if we had it as a kid, it must still be safe.
My dog, Dee Oh Gee, has long been housebroken, but we now don't have a fence up in part of our back yard and she can easily wander to the front. To encourage her to not wander off, I started giving her treats every time she came back to the door to be let in. It took her a couple of months to catch on, but man, she loves those treats. Well, I'm out. And I'm not going to the store in the middle of the night. But if there's anything that would make me do so, it's the sight of that very confused face, big brown eyes just not understanding.... "What? I went! I peed! I came back! No treat? Don't you still LOVE me? My heart is breaking!"
She doesn't have many tricks, this dog, but she is an expert at the broken hearted expression. I can almost see her holding back the tears. oy.
And in other pet news, apparently the "sick" cat has finally decided to forgive me my transgressions of daring to rearrange my own office. She spent a week sulking in another room, and when that failed to gain her sympathy any longer, she moved into a room closer to me. I would only pet her when she came out of the room and joined the family, and she's finally given up the pouting and has resumed being her normal, loveable self. Only now, she's trying to make up for lost time by being more aggressive about sitting in my lap or somewhere on my body 24/7; preferably in any position which most hinders me writing.
She has also decided this meowing thing is pretty cool. She used to never make a sound. Ever. Oh, she was capable, but she just didn't. I can't get used to her meowing for every little thing, now. Who knew cats could do the terrible twos?
Okay, this may be the only time in my life a book I'm in beats the Da Vinci Code on the sales charts, but I'm stoked over it, nonetheless. (Yes, that is just for New Orleans. I'm still stoked.)
I am also really thrilled that the book has already sold out of its first printing, and that Borders has placed a nice big order (big in the world of the small press).
Several of us are going to be speaking on a panel at the Tennessee Williams Writer's Fest on Saturday, and we're having a book signing at the Barnes & Noble in Baton Rouge on Sunday, April 2nd, at 2 p.m.
Good things, all.
So, my sister-in-law e-mailed me yesterday with an oh-so-innocent subject line:
"For Carl and Luke and Jake"
Right away, I know to be afraid. I opened the e-mail and she said:
"For next year’s New Year’s party:"
And then she included a link:
How To Build a Toilet Paper Air Cannon
It was complete with photos and instructions, not only of how to build the damned thing, but how to make it a semi-automatic air cannon. It's not bad enough that my husband and sons build a 'tater gun every year and generally wreck havoc in our back yard. Noooooooooooooo, not quite good enough.
My reply to her:
"Can I tell you how much it scares me to know you're putting your evil genius to work to help the mad scientists in my family? Stop that."
And her response?
:::::snicker::::::
I think I am on the losing end of this battle.
You know, beyond the obvious illegal, totally immoral stuff. I'd totally do all of that.
So, the other stuff:
1) Sky diving. I don't care how much you tell me it's perfectly safe and easy to pull that little pull tab that makes the parachute expand and that only a teeny tiny percentage of people ever go splat. It's only a teeny tiny percentage of people who get pregnant while using two types of birth control, and I have two kids, so I'm thinking I'm not really good with the odds here.
2) Eat live bugs, even for a million dollars. Look, I didn't even venture into eating Chinese food until after I was married and still it took my husband years to convince me I would like it. I only tried sushi a couple of years ago. (i.e., bait. It's pretty good bait, but it's still bait.) But live things? Not even with a gun to my head.
3) Stand in a box on national TV, looking like hell so that I could have a makeover to make me look better / younger. I am just not that much of a masochist. You know damn good and well those people in the box are forced to wear their ugliest stuff and wear no make up just so they look their worst, and then, big surprise, make up, clothes and style make them look better. Well, duh. As I said on Ally's blog, the whole fashion industry was really sweating that one, baby.
4) Make a video of a really intimate moment. Anyone who makes one should just go ahead and make copies for the general public because someone, somewhere is either going to get pissed off and show it or is going to steal it and blackmail you with it. You might as well just go ahead and pick the best images and make stills from them. You can't pretend to be all coquettish if you're hanging your hootchie out on film. Suck it up and show it off or shut up.
5) Live for a year month day five minutes with TV cameras in my home to document all of the ways I can be crazy and stupid. We do crazy really well over here. I'd really rather there not be proof the kids could use later to put us away with the little snug white jackets.
6) Expose all of my innermost thoughts and feelings to the world at... er, oops. Move along, nothing to see here.
So... what would you NOT do for the money? If you say it a blog, come back here and let me know and I'll link back to you.
Over on Backspace, we were talking about blogs, then got randomly off topic and somehow the act of typing came up, wherein a few people admitted to being peckers (as in, hunt and peck). I asked why they didn't use voice recognition software. Heather cracked me up with what she suspected would happen if she tried speaking her prose into a microphone:
"Vlad stepped into the hall, minding the lack of sound around him. Ahead, there was the shape of a man, but it couldn't be...no honey, mommy's writing. I'll get you chocolate milk in a minute. Where was I? Oh yeah, that shadowy hall thing. Hmmm...okay, but it couldn't be a man--Vlad was alone. He'd check the entire house over and locked the door himself. He...what? WHAT?! I CAN'T HEAR YOU FROM IN HERE! Yeah, chocolate milk. I don't know, give her a cookie until I can thaw the chicken."
Seeing that, I suddenly realized exactly what my prose would look like:
"Bobbie Faye wasn't going to panic. There would be no panicking in the Sumrall househald. Which was when she noticed the WHAT? I don't know where it is. No, I didn't move it. No. What? No, the last time I saw it, it was in the where the hell did he go? Where are you? Will you quit moving around the house? It was in your closet. No, your closet. okay, where was I? Right. She noticed the trailer starting to NO. I did NOT MOVE IT. I don't know where you put it, it wasn't my day to watch it. Okay, and lessee... she noticed the trailer starting to. What? Holy freaking geez.
::::::stomp stomp stomp:::::
:::::: commit murder:::::::::::
::::::return to computer::::::::
Okay. Thank God. Quiet. I wonder if they have laptops in solitary?"
Check out Heather's blog... she's got a cool YA vampire novel coming out soon.
I don't know what's going on around here, but lately our conversations have been like:
"Do you know where that thing is?"
"What thing?"
"You know, the thing. That, what's it called, thing? I was holding it a few minutes ago and now I can't find it."
"You were holding it recently, and now you can't name it or find it?"
"Yeah. It's somewhere around here. I was walking to the back, I had it in my hands, I set it down to pick up something else. Oh, right, the phone. Someone called and then I..."
"Who called?"
"Uh. Wait," checks caller ID. "Your mom."
"You need caller ID to remember that?"
"I was preoccupied. I think I need those pills."
"What pills?"
"You know, the ones that help your memory. I can't remember the name of them."
"Well, they probably have them over at the health food store. I bet the clerk could tell you what they are."
"Hey, you're right. I'm going to go on over there now."
:::::: little while later, spouse returns :::::::
"So, did you get the pills?"
"What? Oh, no. I forgot. I got there, saw the video store, went in and got distracted. Totally forgot about the pills."
"And the thing?"
"What thing?"
"The thing you were carrying around that started all of this?"
"When?"
"Just a couple of hours ago."
"Oh. Yeah. I think I'm going to go get those pills."
"Wait. I want to put a name tag on you. With your home address. Just in case."
"Smartass."
We are young, damnit. Young. Apparently very tired and desperately needing a vacation.
Over on The First Offender's Blog, Lori has been blogging about the editing process of a book and what each writer does. It's interesting to see so many different ways of achieving the same end result. Here's my response:
I love editing; I think it's my favorite part of the process because it feels like I'm taking raw clay and making it into something fun and useful and finished. (I hesitated to say "beautiful" because I write humorous action/capers.)
My process starts after I have two or three trusted readers' feedback. If there's a consensus about something being off, etc., I know where the major problems are. Since I come from screenwriting which had a fairly strict attitude about page count, I'm used to going through and cutting, which is what I'm doing right now for book 1. I go through the book and ask myself questions and mark the spots:
Does the pacing flag anywhere?
Is there consistency in a characters' actions / reactions? If not, is there a good reason why not?
Have I reached deeply enough into each character so that they're unique and not just an amalgamation of traits?
Do the stakes continually escalate? Is anything solved too easily?
Does everything flow logically? If I leave a question open somewhere, or a set up open, have I paid them off by the end? Is the pay off satisfactory?
Then I start looking at the smaller things... are my verbs the best choice? Am I giving the exact right visual detail? If I'm using a metaphor, does it feel original and/or organic to that character's POV? Is each character's dialog unique enough so that if you saw it on the page without signifiers, would you know who was speaking?
I also try to pay attention to word choice, looking for the specific choice which will make the text spring to life. While doing this, I try to find repetitive usages. (This apparently doesn't always work, as my editor discovered... there for about three chapters, everyone smirked. I'm not even fond of the word; I have no clue what happened.)
Finally, since I write humor, I constantly look at the humorous bits, dialog or action, and work to see if I can make it funnier. Sometimes the first or second choice will be amusing, but if you push for the unexpected (as long as it's still in character), it can make the reader laugh out loud. It's reaching for that unexpected which takes the most effort, because it must stay in character and work within the tone / events of the story.
What do you do? Do you work in layers? Do it all at once as you go? Or edit as you write the first draft and are pretty much done when you hit THE END?
Last week, my cat started acting a little weird. Nothing too off, but she usually gets allergies this time of the year and I thought she was starting up with allergies again. Except... she didn't have any of the allergy symptoms, just a spate of odd behavior. By Friday, she was crying when I walked into the room. This cat almost never meows (except when we get in the car, then she tunes up like a diva soprano). However, now, I'd walk in the room where she was lying and there were these horrible, plaintive little meows that sounded like she was in pain. Real, terrible, horrible pain.
When she wasn't lying there crying, she was hiding and starting to freak me out. I can't tell you how weird it is to know the cat is most definitely in the house and to turn the house upside down for more than two hours and not be able to figure out where she's hidden herself. And man, was she creative. Worse, in addition to the hiding, she didn't seem to be eating much (unless I was sitting there with her and then eating only if I had spooned up the very bestest soft catfood to be purchased). She wasn't drinking much, either. I tried to take her in to her vet, but he's remodeling (and thus, closed) and I didn't think it was an emergency, per se, so I didn't want to take her into the animal hospital. She freaks out at the animal hospital but seems to tolerate the vet's really well, and I hated to traumatize her needlessly. Still, I resolved that if she wasn't better by this morning, I'd take her in to the vet's substitute.
I saw the cat at midnight. When I tried to find her this morning, she was nowhere to be found. I mean nowhere. I looked for three hours. Carl then looked for an hour. We sat and listened to see if we could hear something. Nada. Finally, Carl went back into the exercise room and decided to look underneath the treadmill. There is maybe, at most, two inches of clearance space, and somehow, the cat had gotten under there. I cannot fathom how, or what would have happened if I had started to walk this morning like I had planned.
She went into the cat carrier without fussing or seeming to care, until it closed, and then she just cried.
Everyone who saw her this weekend asked me if she was dying. I started to feel like I was the worst pet person in the world, because I didn't think she could be that sick that suddenly, and then I knew if it turned out that she was really sick and I hadn't taken her in earlier, I was going to feel horrible for her suffering.
We got to the new vet's office and she was still very docile. This cat has always been extraordinarily laid back. She's a calico and tolerates even hordes of kids vying for her affection really well. As I was signing her in, she perked up a bit, looking around. Then the vet's assistant walked in and at the moment she took her from me, my cat turned into the Evil that Satan's really really really bad seed aspires to.
I could not believe that was my cat. I've never seen her do that, never. She growled and meowed so loud, I would have thought she was a little mountain lion; she flipped and hissed and tried to bite the assistant multiple times. I've handed her over in the vet's before and there was nothing like this. I knew, then, she had to be dying to be reacting so badly. I told the woman to put her down and I'd catch her and calm her (because of course she loves me and was going to be calm) and the woman let her go. I cornered her under a bench and she reacted to me with the same fury she'd used on the assistant.
Finally, the assistant brought me a towel, which I tossed over my cat and she settled down on the spot. I wrapped her up, handed her over , went home and awaited the phone call.
A couple of hours later, the vet called me and said she'd gone over the cat pretty thoroughly and frankly, she hadn't seen a healthier cat in a long time. She wondered why I thought she was sick, and when I described what had been happening, the vet asked me if anyone had moved into or out of the house in the last couple of weeks. I said, "No."
"Any major changes in your household?"
"No, nothing."
"Did you move any furniture?"
"Furniture? Well, yeah. We just painted my office and moved out a big credenza and moved in my favorite reading chair. Why?"
"Does your cat like sitting with you in that chair?"
"Well, yes. Every evening. Why?"
"I think she's upset that you've made changes in the house and she's acting out. And since it's working and you're giving her more attention, she's keeping up the act."
"So you're telling me that I have been completely conned by a nine pound animal with a brain the size of a large walnut?"
"Yep. Pretty much."
Yeah, that university degree has done me a world of good.
Ever read a book that didn't engage you? Of course you have. You didn't care what happened to the characters and you (very likely) put it down and possibly even mentioned to a few people how much you didn't like the book. Ever read one that absolutely held you riveted? Geez, I hope so, or I'm going to be depressed for a week.
The difference of being the latter type vs. the former is, of course, the characters -- how well developed they are, how unique, how they resonate off the page and with the reader. So what is the secret to doing this well? I think there is one angle into developing characters that I haven't seen anywhere else (yet, who knows?), and it's a simple thing.
Shame.
I'll get back to that in a moment.
When I first start writing about a character, I already have a sense of the type of person he or she is. This is born as much from the kind of person and the type of problems that personality would encounter as it does from the type of story I'm writing. For example, I'm not going to write an action / caper with a heroine who is passive. In that type of story, a passive heroine would require someone else to step in and do the saving, or at least do a majority of the saving, and frankly, the passive woman-in-jeopardy story isn't something I'm interested in writing. I wouldn't be interested in that character's growth because I'd have to spend so much time demonstrating her passivity when I'd be secretly wanting to smack her and make her stand up for herself. So for me, the type of character I'm going to write about is determined by the type of story I want to tell and the type of person I'm interested in watching go through obstacles and grow and learn and, ultimately, become. Become more of who their are, find their own strengths, weaknesses, make an effort to improve, etc. Most people don't radically change after the outcome of something major so much as they examine who they are and what they did wrong or right and they make some decisions. It's more of a continuum, not an abrupt change, and I'm interested in that art of becoming. That feeling of growing more comfortable in our own skin.
So, that said, story and character type help me narrow down a character's personality, but then I have to figure out the details to bring this character to life. The goal is to do it so richly, they become memorable. Becoming memorable in this cluttered world is hard as hell, so I can't rely on surface personality "traits" or "quirks" to accomplish that goal. Given that, there is a sort of checklist of things I look at to develop my characters which will help me get started:
What does the character need?
Want?
Does the "want" conflict with the "need?"
Character history (particularly as it pertains to need / want).
What is the character's goal in this story?
How does the goal amplify and / or conflict with either the "need" or the "want?"
Now, all of these things will get me a character, maybe even a great character. It helps me eliminate random traits and craft the character into a cohesive person. And sometimes, I'll get really inspired when I'm thinking of a character history and something will just click for me and I'll have my hook in how the character acts and talks and walks which makes them stand out. Even so, I go back to that emotion I first mentioned -- shame -- and I ask the character, "What have you done that you're ashamed of? What would you never, ever, admit to unless forced on pain of death?"
When you key into someone's self-inflicted shame, when you know what they've chosen to do which humiliates them and makes them hold that as a secret, as a thing against which much be guarded, as a potential for future damage, then you know your character.
Shame is a difficult emotion to peg. People get embarrassed at certain things, certain failures, of goofs or lapses or mistakes, but real DNA-rattling shame speaks to their core beliefs as to what kind of person they ought to be, what they see as their own potential and how they've betrayed that potential. That choice to betray something they believe in is an important insight to the contradictory nature that makes us human.
Sometimes, people will be ashamed at the strangest things which wouldn't bother someone else. Figuring out what someone would do that would create shame, something that they do in spite of being aware that they are creating a very bad emotion they'll have to endure, tells you their priorities and more about their secret desires and how they contradict what they'd like to believe about themselves. A man who thinks he's a moral person, yet, when he gets in a big financial bind, steals from his employer and is horrified at his own actions (and hides them), is someone who hasn't come to grips with the fact that maybe he's prioritizing "keeping up with the Joneses" much higher than what he thought of as his moral character. Will that make him cynical? Depressed? Sad? Will he over-compensate? Joke it off? Ignore it? Bluster? Fake not caring? That sort of personal conflict gives a writer a lot to work with and makes the character more memorable than simply describing a funny or dark "quirk." Quirks are easier to paste on, but they don't render a character as real or memorable.
Now the benefit to figuring out the shame of the character isn't necessarily to use it on the page or incorporate it into the book. It may not be necessary. If I know what a character is ashamed of, even if I'm writing something humorous, I know how that shame informs who they are and the choices they'll make -- from dialog to action.
True character is revealed by the choices a person makes when everything is going to hell. I think we often surprise ourselves by our own weaknesses and the things that can influence us when we thought we had more control or backbone or moral fortitude, and it's that sort of contradiction which can help a writer render a character memorable. One of the best writing exercises I was ever given... (wait... I digress... it's the only actual writing exercise I remember from four years of an English degree and then two for an MFA in Creative writing... that's sort of sad, I think)... anyway, the most memorable writing exercise was when a professor said we had to write a one to two page scene where the POV character was ashamed of something they were doing / were about to do, but we couldn't say they were ashamed or have them think that. In fact, they had to do the deed and through their actions and dialog, we had to show their goal to get the thing done and yet their own self-loathing at having done the thing without ever once allowing them to admit the shame. It was one of the hardest two pages I ever wrote, and the most illuminating. I highly recommend it as a tool to use if you ever need to figure out how to make a character spring to life.
The part of the writing process that I think I have been most looking forward to, believe it or not, was getting the notes from my wonderful editor. I know that makes me weird, but I love the editing process. I love seeing how someone else has read the material, what resonated with them, what didn't, and why. Getting that sort of feedback teaches me more, faster, than any sort of coursework ever did, because it's personal to me, to what I've written, and it shows me how well I accomplished what I set out to do, and where I can improve.
And frankly, the goal is to always improve. I love this first book, and I'm happy with it. (A little tired of reading it, and sometimes that makes it hard to really focus on the page because I know it so well, already, that I can end up skimming over something I should be reading more critcially.) But as much as I love the first book, I feel like I've already learned a lot of things which are helping make the second book much better. I now have the chance to apply some of that back to book one as I go through the notes from the editor.
When I called my agent after receiving the notes, I think she was surprised by my excitement and enthusiasm. First of all, the notes are terrific. They're small, nuance sort of things, no major changes. Yet, they are very smart and elegant. My agent told me that a lot of first time novelists feel real despair when they first get notes back from an editor, because no matter how small the notes are, the fact that there are notes in or throughout their manuscript despresses them. Writers would love to write the perfect book and have everyone fall all over themselves proclaiming its perfection, of course, but that just isn't ever going to happen. I know a few writers who've had their editors tell them their book has zero notes (not even grammatical), and honestly, that would make me a nervous wreck. I know I am not a perfect writer, and I truly love love love the fact that I have someone in my corner who is very vested in making this the best book it can be. It's important to her, and I truly feel like she's got my back. I'd much rather know someone went through it and told me the honest truth and helped me make it better so that when it does get to reviewers, I can feel I am honestly giving them my best effort. (And I'm not writing all of this just because my wonderful editor reads the blog. Hi Nichole! I am truly that happy with the process.)
Part of my perspective about editing comes from my experience at having edited a small regional magazine for a year. I'd recruit writers occasionally from the MFA program at the local universities to try to raise our caliber of writing, and I'd get articles in which ended up needing way more work than I would have expected from that group of people. My goal was to make sure they didn't embarrass themselves or the magazine, and to do that, I had to edit them. The other reason I feel like I respond really well to notes is that I have lived through getting notes on screenplays for years. Notes on scripts tend to be brutal, because film is a collaborative medium, and everyone who reads wants to have some creative input. Like I said to my agent, "Notes on this book? A piece of cake. Notes on a script would have been, 'Yeah, we LOVE it, love it, love the girl, think she's amazing, truly, we love her. Can you make her a horse?'" I once got notes on a romantic comedy which were so brutal, I had people ask me if I had done something to the guy in a past life, and the really funny thing was, had I actually done the notes, it would have turned the romantic comedy into a very bloody thriller. That happens a lot in the script world (which is why so many movies have huge steaming plot holes or character flaws in them). Everyone has their own idea of what the film should ultimately be, and they want to steer it toward their vision. It routinely is notr about the quality of the actual writing... because audiences don't sit in the theater and look up at the screen and read the script. The script is a blueprint. And if you were building a house, you are going to want that blueprint tailored to your tastes. Happily, in the book world, it is very different, very respectful of the material. The point is the writing and the voice and I cannot say how happy I am that I made the switch. I couldn't fathom ever going back and writing scripts again.
There's another meta sort of reason, though, that I've been looking foward to getting the notes, and that is because it makes the publishing process more official and real to me. Sure, I've cashed the check and I have the contract, but since I'd sold the book based on a partial, and not the full manuscript, I spent several months after cashing said check just finishing the book. As a result, there was this whole lack of direct interaction with the publisher that made the process feel a little unreal. Now, though, I've got the tangible notes, I know what to do next, and it all feels very concrete and real and wonderful.
Expect a lot more writing-related entries for a while since that's my main focus. I'll still be writing the random observational posts on other topics, of course, both humorous and not, but the blog will probably lean heavily toward writing and publishing subjects.
There is this moment when you start to appreciate the simple things in life. Like breathing. Breathing is pretty cool, and kinda necessary, and you know, we just don't appreciate breathing enough. There should be Oscars for good breathing, best breathing in a flu-like situation, deep breathing when angry, and so on. Because beathing? Kinda nice.
I really missed it this last couple of weeks.
I had the sludge. I don't know if it was officially the flu or just a really bad cold gone over-achiever or what, but I had the sludge. It moved into my lungs last weekend and I couldn't talk until last Monday or so, and I thought I had gotten over it, I was getting all better, see, and then Sludge said, "Oh, hell if you think so, Bitch, we're just getting started," and it proceeded to kick my ass all over the map. By Tuesday, breathing was really a lot of hard work as the goopy stuff wheezed in and out of my lungs and by Wednesday, I was pretty much prone on the sofa, moaning to anyone who'd listen, and by Thursday, I had a high fever and I sort of wanted to die, because I also had that horrible cough -- you know the one -- the one where your body cavities turn themselves inside out with every lung-rattling barking rhythm. Yeah, I was fun to be around, let me tell you.
Wednesay and Thursay nights, my husband ended up building a tent over me and turning the vaporizer on so I could breathe. He used a big golf umbrella (no idea where the hell that thing came from at two a.m.) and then draped sheets over it and had me sitting up against a pile of pillows, with more under my knees. Only the coughing? Made me have to go pee on a regular basis, so I'd climb out of the precariously balanced "tent" and then had to try to climb back in (because it took so long to set the damned thing up, but it really did help) and then of course, the umbrella closed on me and the sheets all fell and I leaned over trying to open the umbrella back up and get the sheet to drape just right over the chair that held the vaporizer so the steam could go inside the tent instead of outside (which was the whole point of the tent) and then I leaned too far and fell off the bed, knocking over the glass of water my husband had lovingly placed beside the bed and knocking over the vaporizer and crunching the umbrelling and bruising myself on the chair and it would have been fucking hysterical if I wasn't stuck on the floor upside down in a golf umbrella, my legs waving in the air and STILL NOT ABLE TO BREATHE. I'm not sure if I saw a camera flash just then or not, but if my husband ever needed to blackmail me, that was the photo to do it.
By Friday, I called my doctor and begged for mercy, and she prescribed the antibiotics I needed without making me go in to see her, and I think it was maybe the, "Please don't make me get dressed and come in, I'd rather kill myself at this point," that did it. I highly recommend that for a doctor-avoiding strategy, by the way. I spent all of Friday and Saturday extremely busy... I had to move from the bed to the sofa and then back to the bed again, and I'm here to tell you, that was a helluva lot of work. But today? I woke up feeling about a thousand percent better. So much so, I repainted my office and ended up cleaning and doing some other things that had been ignored for too long. But mostly, I just took these really long, deep breaths. I highly recommend them. Because you just never know -- that could be you stuck upside down in the umbrella next.