This morning I woke up and I did that thing I love doing that I haven’t been able to do for a while: I sat in bed and checked my email. You see, I have this really old laptop computer that Heidi gave to me. It barely runs Firefox and Word at the same time, and it’s basically just a glorified word processor but hey! It has wifi and it was free and it’s what I use to work on my book, so I kind of like that it can’t do much fancy stuff cuz it helps me focus.

Anyway, a few weeks ago the keyboard of my laptop died, and I was wondering should I get a new laptop? They’re so cheap now! But then my friend Damon convinced me that no: all I needed to do was buy a $25 replacement keyboard for my old laptop, and he would fix it. And so I did, and he did, and now I’ve got my shitty laptop again! So this morning I sat in bed and checked my email and drank the milky sweet tea that I drink every morning, but it tasted that much better because I was still in bed, and did I mention that I was checking my email?

Then it our realtor (!) showed up and we went and looked at houses. Because yes: we got pre-approved for a decent fixed-rate mortgage, and now we can really move forward with buying a house. Which is really cool and scary at the same time. And another good reason why I shouldn’t be buying a new laptop right now because, like, I’m about to go halvesies on a $250k loan with my, uh, husband. And who needs a laptop when you can buy a house!

We went and looked at six or seven different houses, and saw a couple we sort of liked. One in particular was pretty cool, but eh: we haven’t seen enough houses to know for sure, so we’re not bidding on anything. There’s also just not that much on the market right now, and there’s no rush. We’re trying to be smart about these things.

Then we came home, ate portabella mushroom burgers, cuddled and took a nap. That’s one of my favorite things to do on a Saturday afternoon.

But then! I woke up! And it was time to get to work. Because, need I remind you that I had my laptop back? So I could write again? It’s all part of my PROCESS and yes we WRITERS do have our weird little PROCESSES, and mine involves sitting on an orange couch under my hippie disco ball, watching moemoe baby nod on the coffee table as I have a smoke, light some incense, and then start clack clack clacking on my laptop. So I sat down and spent five hours or so working on my book proposal. Thanks to each of you who contributed your stories for it. I’ll probably be asking for more help in the future, but I think I’m good for now.

So dairy [sic], in summary today was about my laptop (thanks, Heidi and Damon), real estate (thanks, Joygantic), my nap (thanks, Andreas), and my book (thanks, everyone). Tomorrow I have to go to work (!) because it’s Oscar night. If any of you are going to be watching and have your laptops handy, I’ll be on instant messenger all night at work and I’d love it if you’d feed me snarky funny messages that I could plagiarize. That would be cool!

Love,
Ariel.