Alternate Title: One Nap at a Time

So I've been working on a novel I actually want to write for the last few weeks, and it's basically sucked my brain dry of any creative juices. But I don't want to neglect this here blog, as I have it on good authority that people do periodically stick their heads in to see if it's still alive.

It is. I promise.

So rather than try to write something original today, I've opted to bring back the ol' "as interpreted by..." fairy tale, which was last seen back in September. But this time, I'm tackling my favorite fairy tale of all time:

Sleeping Beauty

as interpreted by Kimberly "Snoozin' Kinda Pretty If You Squint Hard Enough" Welsh

Once upon a time, there was benevolent king who was beloved by all his subjects with the notable exception of an evil witch because hey! You can't please all the people all the time. Also the witch hated anybody being happy for any reason. She was like the religious right of the Middle Ages, except she did believe in science. But what they called "science" back then was actually alchemy, which turned out to be a total load of horsecrap when it came right down to it. ANYHOO! One day the queen announced she was pregant, and since Wendy's drive-thrus hadn't been invented yet, the king knew he was up a creek without a paddle when she started getting cravings! He decided to appease her by promising to hold the First Known Baby Shower once the kid was born, and the entire kingdom was invited *PROVIDED EVERYBODY BROUGHT PRESENTS*.

So the catering staff was summoned and some nice finger foods were laid out and all the king's subjects poured into the main hall bearing gifts under threat of death. FACT: if you don't have a volcano for your subjects to appease, a pregnant woman is the next best thing. It was a joyous occasion and the queen was thrilled with all her gifts, even the duplicates, because everyone had brought the receipt so she could exchange those for store credit at Heir Apparents to the Throne 'Beith' Us. Mostly it was just cute bibs and flannel footsie pajamas (because castles are very drafty), but the king had wisely asked some magical fairies to act as godparents and they gave her some bitchin' stuff! The only real hiccup was when one of the fairies wanted to grant her "the gift of beauty", and the queen was all "What the hell is THAT supposed to mean?" and the fairy was like "Nothing! I'm just sayin'. She'll just be even more beautiful!" But the queen was like "Whatever. I know what you meant." Luckily the king was wise in many things, so he said, "Give the kid a break, dear. She has my hideously bulbous nose!", which was a good point, so the queen backed off. It looked to be a glorious day indeed, but some people just CANNOT leave it alone so of course the evil witch showed up.

She burst into the main hall and shoved past the last fairy to give the newborn princess her "gift", which was a actually A CURSE (oh snap! see what she did there?) that would cause the child to die by pricking her finger on a spindle, thereby creating the first known case of hemophilia. But the last fairy had yet to take her turn, so she distracted the evil witch by tearing off her weave, then rushed forward to half-reverse the curse so the child would only fall into a deep sleep rather than dying, because we can't be killing off the title character, now can we? Even J.K. Rowling knows that. The fairy declared that the princess would only awaken to a prince's kiss, which says a lot about women's rights in this era, since everyone is basically agreeing that unless she has a boyfriend, there's no point in her ever waking up again.

After the party, the king made another wise decision to outlaw spindles throughout the kingdom and everyone wisely complied. Well, everyone except this one old lady because she was hard of hearing and the Sonic Ear also hadn't been invented yet. Occasionally someone would tell her she was supposed to get rid of her spindle, but she would just yell, "'EY? WHAT'S THAT, SONNY? I'M SUPPOSED TO GET FREUD'S THE EGO AND THE ID FOR MY KINDLE? IT'S THE 16TH CENTURY, NUMBNUTS!" Frankly, by this point the people had grown tired of "hasn't been invented yet" jokes, so they just left her to get arrested and executed. It was an unfortunate coincidence that the old lady lived and worked in a tower within the castle for reasons that the Brothers Grimm didn't bother to explain so why should I? The point is: after her sixteenth birthday the princess was wandering through the halls looking for her bauble or whatever rich kids do, and she saw the old lady spindling(?) So she stuck her head in the door...

"Pardon me, old hag, what is that?," she asked.

"I DON'T HAVE YOUR STUPID HAT!," barked the old woman. "LEAVE ME ALONE! I'M TRYNNA USE MY SPINDLE!"

"Oh!," said the princess. "A 'spindle', you say? May I try?" She stepped forward and motioned toward the machine in an effort to make herself understood.

"YOU WANNA DO IT?" The old woman shrugged. "YEAH SURE WHY NOT." So the young lady took her place at the spinning wheel, but just as she reached out for it, she pricked her finger and passed out. The old woman panicked and hobbled to the window calling, "HELP! HELP! OH, HELP! ALSO: I DIDN'T DO IT!" So every quack in the country was summoned to treat the unfortunate girl, but the king was wise enough to recognize that trepanning and leeches weren't the way to go here. Instead, it was decided that the entire castle should be put to sleep in order to spare them the pain of going on without their princess. The king's loyal subjects, who never really saw the princess on a daily basis, politely agreed to this plan because they were too nice to point out that they would be perfectly fine going about their lives without her spoiled little butt using up all their tax dollars to buy more baubles. So the people were gathered once more in the castle, and the kind fairy godmother magically installed flat screen televisions in every room so she could play a Grey's Anatomy DVD. Soon everyone was fast asleep.

Many years went by, and before long literally every major character on Grey's Anatomy had slept with every other major character, such that it was now only a "medical" drama in the sense that everybody had a venereal disease. In the meantime, a handsome prince came through the nearby forest with his hunting party, but he drew to a halt as he got close to the castle.

"Hark!," he said to his entourage. "Do you hear that? It sounds like... Yes, it sounds like a series of unrealistically attractive people whining about their love lives in a hospital! But I can't...quite...make it out..." He craned his neck further toward the castle. "It's being partially drowned out...by snoring! By Heaven, I would swear someone up on that hill is suffering from sleep apnea!," he shouted. He grabbed his medieval CPAP machine and raced up the hill at a canter to rescue the snoring victim and also to find out what had happened on Grey's Anatomy.

Arriving inside the castle, he was shocked to find room upon room of sleeping peasants and servants. The stillness was eery, and he had to hold mirrors to their faces to check that they were breathing. After some time, he came upon a room where only one person slept - a beautiful princess who appeared to be roughly his age (she'd been asleep a hundred years but it's really true that sleep keeps you young!). Thinking back on a letter he'd read in an issue of Ye Olde Cathaus, he decided to try to make out with her. He leaned over her gilded bed and pressed his lips softly to hers.

Suddenly her eyes opened and she sat bolt upright, banging her forehead into his.

"OW!," he yelled. "That hurt!"

"Well well well," she said, wiping his spit from her face, "If it's not the Handsome Pervert! I was ASLEEP! Do I even know you? GUARDS!"

At that very moment, the last episode of Grey's Anatomy played on the DVD and it went back to the menu screen. The sound of the same two bars of theme music repeating over and over annoyed the sleeping masses into wakefulness, and they heard the princess's cries of distress. Within minutes, the whole of the kingdom had come to her aid, and the prince was being dragged down to the dungeon, where he would be made to inscribe his name on the First Known Sex Offender Registry. Meanwhile, the fairy godmother rushed back to the castle to make sure everything was OK. When she arrived, she magically created Listerine because HELLO KINGDOM-WIDE MORNING BREATH, and they all lived happily every after.

THE END

I am Happy. I am Sorry.

OK, so I guess I'm making this up but I thought that title was stolen from a tweet which was tweeted by one of my favorite UK comedian/blogger types, Michael Legge. But I can't find it in his timeline now, so clearly I invented it out of thin air, along with the story of how he tweeted it while he was in Edinburgh, as well as my own inference that what he meant was that he didn't have anything funny to say, because he wasn't mad about anything, because he was happy.

But that whole paragraph is apparently a mixture of fiction and fantasy. I hope you enjoyed it.

ANYWAY! If it had been true, then I would know exactly how he hypothetically felt! Because I've been struggling with my own blog for the past week, and not because I'm so depressed I want to drink myself into a coma and then slowly die in a puddle of my own vomit, which was the previous reason I was having trouble blogging. Now I'm just too damn happy and I don't have anything to say!

I mean, I could tell you about how happy I am, but that would be boring. It's not like I even have any news to share. I didn't meet any great guys or win a million dollars or anything like that. I managed to enjoy a vacation, which is a pretty major personal victory, but there's only so much you can say about that.

And now it is very cold outside (remembering of course that I am from the South, and anything below 80 degrees is "very cold" to me), which makes me simultaneously happy and sad. I mean let's face it, those three-digit temperatures weren't doing anybody any favors, and probably contributed to what I can only describe as "mass insanity" in August, which led to rioting in England, Rick Perry being taken seriously in the US, and me trying to give up booze and chocolate at the same time. WHAT WERE WE THINKING, YOU GUYS? LOL!

So yeah. Here's this incredibly boring blog post. I couldn't even work up enough snark to write a half-assed Top Ten list or some shit. Here's hoping something makes me miserable again soon!

Note to Self: How to Vacate the Premises, Part II

If you are a person who knows me personally and sees me in person from time to time, please punch me in the face the next time you see me. I deserve it, and it's the only way I'm ever going to learn.

Some of you may recall that I wrote a blog post LIKE, A MONTH AGO in which I outlined all the things that are absolutely imperative to guarantee a good vacation. You MUST get the hell out of town! There MUST be a housekeeping staff! You can NOT travel with your family! These aren't just suggestions; they are incontrovertible scientific truths, like the law of gravity and the fact that only guys I'm *not* attracted to will ever want me! Ignoring these facts is just ASKING to be tortured.

So what did I do?

Well, last Wednesday, I had this conversation with my boss:
BOSS: Man, you're gonna bust your butt this week and then not have anything to do til mid-September!
ME: Hey, you're right. (PAUSE) I'd like next week off, please.
...and then Bikinius, Roman Goddess of Summer Vacays, came down from the heavens and beat me senseless with an inflatable pool toy before stabbing me repeatedly with a decorative plastic cocktail garnish sword. Because I had done it a-flipping-gain.

My brilliant (<--SARCASM!) plan was that I would have Monday thru Wednesday to write, clean up, and relax. Then I'd go to the beach with my parents Wednesday evening and be back on Saturday night, in time to do more writing/cleaning/relaxing over the last half of Labor Day weekend. If you read that other blog post, you'll remember what I said about "staycations" - mainly that they do not exist. If you are at home, you are not on vacation. Period. I said that if you stay home, a hundred bizarre misfortunes will befall you and you will not enjoy one second of it.

So yesterday the new cat sitter was coming over. And rather than give her the impression that my entire home is one big experiment in composting, I decided to clean up. This meant 4 hours of frantic cleaning, scrubbing, folding, sweeping, dusting, etc. By the time she came over, the place was passable. Also, I had injured my back in the process. Badly. We'll call this FAIL #1.

So I spent the rest of the BEAUTIFUL afternoon laying on the couch atop a carefully constructed mountain of pillows and blankets designed for maximum padding of the hurtiest part of my back with an electric hand warmer shoved up the back of my bra for want of a hot water bottle. Livin' the dream. I had done such a good job of engineering my Back Bracing Blankets that I started to think I should just sleep on the couch! I decided I felt like watching something educational, which is how I ended up falling asleep watching a documentary about the Nürnberg Trials. Here's some advice you can have for free: Never, EVER, fall asleep watching ANYTHING holocaust-related. FAIL #2.  When I woke up screaming (and having fallen off my Back Bracing Blankets in the course of fighting the Nazis), I decided maybe I should go to bed after all. And with the aid of powerful narcotics, that's exactly what I did.

This morning I awoke to the news that I will be without a car for most of the next 48 hours, so I and my bad back needed to get the hell up and go shop for supplies. I'm not exactly what you would call a "morning person" anyway, and this news was not helping. Still, I was determined to make the best of it! The shopping itself was pretty uneventful, but on the 5-minute drive home, I had this experience, in this order:
1. A guy in an SUV made a U-turn the wrong way down a one-way street, which meant he was coming directly toward me. I stopped, he realized he was going the wrong way, and started to back up.
2. A guy on a motorcycle going WAY too fast came flying up behind the SUV and just managed to stop before hitting him.
3. When SUV guy reached the bottom of the hill ahead of me, he stopped and did a weird maneuver into another lane. As I approached the bottom of the hill myself, I realized why...
4. A woman in a minivan was slowly and determinedly attempting to make her way up the hill...going the wrong way up a one-way street. Right at me.
For those of you counting at home, that's two narrowly-missed head-on collisions and the near-witnessing of a dead motorcyclist...in a 5-minute drive. I MUST be on a staycation! FAIL #3.

I have to admit, things have been better since I got back home. I mean, I had 2 bowls of Frosted Flakes, so how bad can it be? But I did lose 2 hours searching things like "gothic tiny person creature" trying to get the internet to remind me of a word I had forgotten ("Homunculus"), so it's still kind of a mixed bag.

This Dickensian Street Urchin Sponsored by Reaganomics!

Due to, ahem, uncertain circumstances in the near future, I have been scrambling these last few weeks to squirrel away massive percentages of every paycheck in the hopes that, should the worst case scenario come to pass, I can sleep for three straight months before I have to start looking for work again. Up til now, my personal financial philosophy has been: "There are some things that are worth splashing out on, and a lot of things that aren't." To give you an example of how that works: I will gladly pay $4-5 for a decent/responsibly-sourced cup of coffee, but I will not replace a pair of jeans until they literally fall off my body. And when I do replace them, I will not spend more than $40 (that's 10 cups of coffee!).

My new personal financial philsophy is: "THIS MATTRESS FULL OF QUARTERS IS MINE AND YOU CAN'T HAVE IT!!!!" By and large, it's working fine, with the minor caveat that apparently I'm not entitled to goods and services of any kind unless I part with my money. That's how they get ya! So my master plan to shrug off air conditioning didn't really pan out. And there really is a point at which it makes more sense to throw the mushrooms out and buy more, rather than eat them and pay the associated medical bills. Live and learn, right? Oh - and if you think you'll be Extra Super Smart and refinance/modify your mortgage, be sure to hold the phone at least 4 inches from your ear so you won't bust a cochlea when the bank's Mortgage Bastard looks up your home's value and laughs so hard chocolate milk comes out of his nose. Just speaking from experience.

Today I brought a frozen meal for lunch (Amy's Mattar Tofu - $3.39 before tax! Why didn't I just buy gold-plated toilet paper while I was at it?!?!). But when I went to heat it up, I found that someone somewhere in my building had had a Jason's Deli-catered lunch. I know this because the dregs had been left out in the breakroom in keeping with local tradition. There were pickles! There was pasta salad! There was POTATO salad! I discreetly replaced the Amy's lunch in the fridge, fetched my grande coffee mug, and stuffed it full of potato salad. As I scarfed it down at my desk, I smugly reflected on the $3.39 meal I had managed to save for another day, and how fortuitous it was that someone had left a big bowl of fat-smothered salted carbohydrates of unknown provenance in my path. If only it had a sign that said "EAT ME", my Alice in Wonderland fantasy would finally be complete!

Then I thought "This is one step removed from eating out of a trash can." Some days I'm just so darned proud to be me. So yeah, the whole "trickle down" thing is definitely working -  my trash can overfloweth!

WHY AM I HITTING MYSELF? WHY AM I HITTING MYSELF?...

I thought that would be a funny title for a blog post on Wednesday, 8/whatever-last-Wednesday-was/2011. I had just come home from a self-defense workshop with my fellow improv actors (what's funnier than improv actors doing improv? Improv actors doing self-defense!), and I was struck by the fact that in 2 hours of punching, eyeball-poking, kicking, and pinching, I had done no damage whatsoever to anyone or anything else. I had, however, really given my own right knee what for! I had kneed SO many fake groins SO hard that I had a combination bruise/swelling/friction burn thing. I hobbled for most of Thursday, and the scabs still haven't healed up and fallen off. Basically, if that night was any indication, a violent attacker in a parking lot or dark alley will be met with me yelling "GIVE ME THAT!", taking his gun, and shooting myself in the face. It seems this is how I roll. You're welcome, hardened criminals.

But that blog post title was substantially less funny when it occurred to me again today. You see, I live in a condo complex with a parking garage. Among this parking garage's ultra-modern features:
- grossly undersized parking spaces, so you have to enter and exit them with surgical precision, even if you drive a little Barbie's Dreamcar Mazda Miata
- lanes too narrow to accommodate more than one car at a time, so you must be ready to dive into a space at any moment to avoid collision
- MASSIVE concrete columns every 10 feet on either side of the lane, which are convenient for testing the efficacy of your airbag, blocking available space you might otherwise use to avoid collision, and conveniently preventing you from seeing what's coming when backing out of a space. I like to think of them as Complacency Prevention Measures.
- a 7-year old whose asshole parents categorically REFUSE to prevent him from zipping through the parking garage on various non-automobile conveyances, no matter how many times the newsletter specifically states that no one should be electro-scootering, rollerblading, skateboarding, etc. in the crowded and dangerous parking garage. Dear That Kid's Parents: Be sure to take out a life insurance policy on him! Love, Darwin

I lost my passenger side mirror to a concrete column the first week I lived here, but in the subsequent four years have developed good parking garage survival instincts and avoided further trouble. Until Saturday...

On my way to the gate, I found myself at one of the many points where the lane is not wide enough for 2 cars to turn in opposing directions at the same time. Being a fundamentally polite person, I stopped and waited for the oncoming car to move past me. Then I waited for the next one. And the next. And the next. Around car #6, I couldn't help feeling that in all fairness, my turn had come, and since car #7 had fallen a little behind, I figured I could start my turn, he would see me/stop, and then I could move forward. Instead, I pulled forward, he saw me...and decided to play chicken with me.

I am nothing if not a huge chicken.

Unfortunately, he was such an aggressive sportsman that he had advanced too quickly for a simple stop to be sufficient to avoid head-on collision, so I also had to swerve...thereby slamming the back half of my car into the concrete column on my right.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but people are HUGE assholes. Seriously.

I heard the crunch zone of my rear passenger door surrendering to the concrete, and I immediately went into my Vehicular Emergency Coping Procedure:
Step 1: Close eyes. Think "That did not just happen. That did not just happen. That did not just happen."
Step 2: Open eyes. Faced with the unavoidable reality that something bad did just happen, find the nearest place to pull over. Convey your vehicle to that point for assessment.
Step 3: Unlock all doors, knowing you are having a breakdown and are INCREDIBLY likely to accidentally lock yourself out. Then go have a look.
Step 4: Crumble into a heap.

And just in case you think I'm kidding about Step 1, I once had an accident in which I rolled into the car ahead of me in bumper-to-bumper rain-induced traffic. After the initial BAM, I commenced Step 1. When the car behind me rolled into me and I felt the subsequent identical BAM, I became completely and utterly convinced that I had been swallowed up into a temporal loop, and was doomed to sit in that bucket seat, slamming into the car in front of me over and over and over, for the rest of eternity. I am not kidding. The only way I eventually realized I wasn't in Purgatory was when I saw the rain-soaked face of the driver from the car behind me, knocking on my window and asking if I was alright.

But I digress. The thing is, I was completely devastated by Saturday's turn of events. Not because I'm that materialistic and can't cope with cosmetic damage to my car, but because 1) I DO NOT have the funds to cover the repair of the damage caused when I essentially drove into a concrete column of my own accord ("WHY AM I HITTING MYSELF?") and 2) if you've stumbled upon my little "About Me" page, you'll know that I have a bad habit of naming/anthropomorphizing inanimate objects. This was not cosmetic damage to my car; this was me being wholly responsible for harming Arionrhod - a wonderful companion who has been nothing but good to me.

Rion in happier times, on the day I got her. MY POOR BABY! WHYYYYYYYYYY??????

I couldn't have felt worse if I had sucker-punched my best friend for no reason. And I would feel really badly about that. To make matters worse, these injuries to my current ride were eerily reminiscent of those sustained by my very first car, Rex, in my very first accident:

The Baby Jesus Dodging Incident

I was 17. I'd had Rex for about 6 months. Christmas was coming. I was going to go to Sunday School, mostly because all of my friends were there. I drove to the church I had attended from the age of 5. I turned down the parking lot aisle in which my family had parked since I was 5. But my way was blocked by the Christmas-y addition of a manger, in which lay the baby Jesus.

A dumpster prevented me from seeing traffic behind me, so I couldn't back into the main thoroughfare. But I also couldn't park in the middle of the lane, as I would be blocking the 4 cars that had gotten the only 4 available spaces. I assessed the situation.

This was the reality of the situation.

This was my perception of the situation.

As you can see from the illustration above, I was pretty sure my car was an aircraft carrier, and the son of God was, quite literally, all around me. Perhaps I should point out that the "baby Jesus" was not an actual baby, but a doll, as you probably expect. My paranoia was not about hitting him and/or caving his manger in on him. The problem was that I was 17 years old. If I had done anything that damaged the manger and/or the representation of the Christ child, I would spend the rest of high school being "The Girl Who Ran Over Jesus". NOBODY'S reputation can take that. NOBODY. So my focus was that I would not, under any circumstances, take out the manger. I took my foot off the brake and started to inch forward. Once Mary and Joseph were even with my side mirror, I figured I was in the clear.

That's when I heard the crunch of surrender on my passenger side and felt Rex come to a total standstill. In my concern to avoid hitting the manger, I had managed to get snagged on the rear corner of the church van. So I was embarrassed, devastated, and unable to free my car from the van's grip. Ultimately a kind soul sent his wife and daughters into the church while he stood in the cold and directed me through the steps to liberate Rex, at which point I engaged in Steps 3 and 4 for the first time in my life.

So I wasn't The Girl Who Ran Over Jesus. Instead, I was The Girl Who Destroyed Her Own Car and a Church Van in Order to Avoid Running Over Jesus. So I saved Jesus, who then saved everybody else, which basically means I am the savior of mankind. You're all welcome. I'm going to hell.

MY POINT IS: there are few things in this life that will make you feel dumber/more publicly humiliated than doing thousands of dollars of damage to your own car all by yourself. Arionrhod's journey back to wholeness will begin on Monday, but I have no idea when (or if) my ego will ever bounce back. I sure hope the asshat who spooked me into the column enjoyed his afternoon at the pool! I'm off to take some more sedatives to try and stop the flashbacks.

Sketch Challenge, 3rd Set: "Ack"

I'm applying the "Accountability" label here, even though it doesn't really fit. Because I am completely letting myself off scot-free.

According the various and constant warning alarms on my iPhone, iPod, and laptop, tomorrow is the deadline for the 3rd set of sketches. And John Finnemore blogged about having a show at the Albany tomorrow night, which is basically like a backup alarm for same. So what's my progress looking like?

Nothing. Not a single sketch. Please don't steal my terrible ideas, but this is what the current set looks like, compared with the last set:

Oops.

Wha' Ha' Happen' Was...

*Clears throat* I spent a day visiting my brother in Augusta and when I came back I found a stray dog and he kept me up all night and I didn't get rid of him until the next day and then I was supposed to leave town but my cat sitter went AWOL 12 hours before departure and I had to take an extra day off work to hunt her down or find a new one and I drove all over Buckhead to drop off a key and then I went to Florida with my family so there was no way I could concentrate and when I came back I was too sunburned to move and then I had to go back to work and apparently we're being bought so I had to go to a bunch of special meetings and I was going to write after rehearsal on Wednesday but it was the Summer of Fun so we had a surprise party and I stayed out til 11 and came home too drunk to focus and then I got cast in a show last night and now I have less than 24 hours to write 60 pages of sketches!!!!
(end of excuses)

I barely even scribbled down any ideas for sketches in my trusty notebook. It's been a real setback. And my initial intention when I got up this morning was to power through and try to finish on time, but I've had a realization, and it is as follows: The major problem was being out of town for 4 days. The other things were largely out of my control (with the exception of the sunburn and the drinking) and genuinely prevented me from writing. The perfectionist voice in my head feels very strongly that I have to adhere to the original schedule because the whole point was to write on exactly the same schedule as John Finnemore's Sketch Night. But just between you and me, I rather suspect that JF had some warning about this whole thing and could move his travel plans accordingly. Whereas I literally just woke up one morning and said, "Hey! I know what would be a good idea!" So the 3rd set is hereby postponed, and an additional fortnight of sketch-writing is hereby tacked onto the tail end of Kimberly Welsh's Agonizingly Slow Sketch Suicide, Currently With No Sketches About Coffee, Screaming Children, Or Anything Else For That Matter.

The focus for the next two days will now be internet writing (since I've only written one pitiful little blog post this week, and that was interrupted FIVE TIMES by lengthy phone calls). But it might interest you to know about the one thing I did manage to accomplish: I updated the photos and captions on the home page slideshow AND stashed 4 "pages" (which are not the same thing as "posts") around the blog. Secretly. Like Easter Eggs. Happy hunting!