I saw a television commercial recently where a plump Mary Lincoln asked Honest Abe "Does this dress make my backside look big?" and he was caught, shuffling uncomfortably for several seconds because he didn't want to lie but he also didn't want to hurt his wife's feelings. In the end he admitted softly, "just a little bit" and Mary huffed out of the room.
I started thinking about whether it's better to be kind or honest -- certainly you don't want to hurt someone's feelings when they ask you about how they look, cook, sing, or even write. Especially a family member -- they're generally around all the time and some of them hold grudges, so you could find yourself always served the grizzle-filled piece of beef at the holidays or getting something in plaid at every birthday. Not that I know this from personal experience. Maybe it's just a coincidence that I have a fear of plaid.
But you shouldn't lie either. It doesn't help when you gush about someone's prowess at whatever they're trying to do or however they're trying to appear if you tell them they're great when they actually could use a little improvement. In the case of singing this is especially important, since telling someone who sounds like a cat on fire that they're the next Pavarotti could get all of the other relatives mad at you. Then suddenly there are only lima beans left for you at family gatherings, where this person insists upon entertaining. I'm just saying.
There needs to be a balance when someone wants feedback. You don't want to be the person lying to avoid the risk you'll hurt them or create a rift between you -- there's a chance someone else may come along and start screaming "Liar, Liar, Pants on fire!" and the next thing you know you'll be standing there in a poof of smoke. The person who wanted feedback will see your duplicity -- and not just because you're pantless and your leg hair's been singed. And you will have cheated them of knowing they could do better, learn, and develop some more. You should never be mean, but you shouldn't fib, either.
And if you are the person asking if your backside's too big, or your recipe's too spicy, or your story's too boring or weird or grammatically indecipherable (you writers know where I'm going with this, don't you...), don't be oversensitive. You opened yourself to the answer; you've put yourself out there and that takes courage and has a value of its own. Revel in that at least. I had a client tell me recently he cursed me most of the way through my edits, but we agreed his was still a great story and we had another drink. We both knew he needed improvement but it was nothing personal -- the goal was to respectfully work toward making something better. And he had the option to take my opinion -- which was only one opinion -- or leave it. No huffing out of the room.
And with that I sign off for 2012. Here's looking toward a new year filled with joy, prosperity, kindness, honesty, and .... well, less lima beans for one thing.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Friday, November 30, 2012
Oh my expressive prowess, or, um, something like that....
One of the biggest problems I find I'm facing lately, as a person beyond a certain age and also as a person who seriously doesn't get enough sleep, is finding the right words to speak or write. This may seem like no big deal to some people. It happens. You say 'dishwasher' when you mean 'washing machine' or you call your kid by your dog's name. You find yourself staring into space in the middle of a conversation, completely at a loss as to how to finish a sentence, because you can't remember how you started it.
Most of the time, for many people, this isn't really an issue. Both the dishwasher and the washing machine use water to clean stuff, and sometimes if you're lucky, the person or persons you live with will switch the words in their heads too, corresponding with your mistake, so you don't find you've put the Lenox wine goblets through a heavy duty spin cycle. And screwing up the kid's name with the dog's isn't so bad -- you can tell the kid you love the dog just like you love them and they (nine times out of, say, thirteen) get over it. The dog, honestly, doesn't care what you call her as long as you're still feeding her and letting her out on a regular basis.
This is an especially big problem for me, however, since words are my job. I have to know their proper use and forms, spelling, definitions, and sometimes even their origins -- and I have to be able to retrieve them from the multitudinous file cabinets in my brain with relative ease and speed, since time is money. (No, really. I generally get paid by the hour so there's no slow-poking when I'm on the clock, and yes, that's why I sound grumpy when you call me to chat during work hours. You know who you are.) The problem I seem to be facing lately is that some of the drawers on some of the file cabinets are getting a bit stuck.
So, hoping to remedy this situation, I have decided to do three things:
1) Ingest more fish oil. I understand fish oil is the WD-40 of the brain, and hope this might loosen some of those rusty spots. I promise to avoid breathing on anyone without carefully brushing and flossing first, however, since I hear fish oil has a few unattractive side effects. Look, do you want me smart or do you just want to kiss me all the time?
2) Sleep better. That may sound grammatically incorrect, but I meant it exactly the way I said it. The truth is I spend a lot of time on the couch -- it is the best horizontal cushioned surface in our house, and napping is freaking awesome. However, napping for two hours at night, working for two, then napping for two, then working for two, then slipping into bed hoping the BHE* won't notice I haven't been there until forty-five minutes before I have to get up to get my daughter ready for school is really not the best way to experience restorative REMs. Also I hear I look a little like the Wild Woman of Borneo and have frightened my neighbors when I come out in the morning for the newspaper after a couple of nights of that. I am going to go to bed at a reasonable hour and stay there and sleep -- um, just not tonight. I have to get this blog out first.
3) Rely more frequently on external reference sources, such as dictionaries, thesauruses (thesaurisi? See? I'm going to have to go look that up now), and various grammatical and structural style guides. In truth I've always done this, but now I'm just going to have to do it more often. I have already gradually increased this practice, and guess what? I'm actually learning new stuff and re-learning stuff I'd forgotten! And I love to learn stuff, so it's okay. I can swallow my editorial pride for the greater good, that being learning and continuing to do what I love -- defending the English language. Semi-colons especially.
I don't know if all of this will fend off the inevitable -- I hear as we age it becomes more and more difficult to retrieve details and vocabulary and short-term memory -- but I'm going to give it my best shot. I would hate to have to re-name the kid and only use paper cups.
*BHE= Best Husband Ever, copyright 2012 Various Milliner, Ltd., an extremely small publishing services firm based in the northeastern United States. All rights reserved.
Most of the time, for many people, this isn't really an issue. Both the dishwasher and the washing machine use water to clean stuff, and sometimes if you're lucky, the person or persons you live with will switch the words in their heads too, corresponding with your mistake, so you don't find you've put the Lenox wine goblets through a heavy duty spin cycle. And screwing up the kid's name with the dog's isn't so bad -- you can tell the kid you love the dog just like you love them and they (nine times out of, say, thirteen) get over it. The dog, honestly, doesn't care what you call her as long as you're still feeding her and letting her out on a regular basis.
This is an especially big problem for me, however, since words are my job. I have to know their proper use and forms, spelling, definitions, and sometimes even their origins -- and I have to be able to retrieve them from the multitudinous file cabinets in my brain with relative ease and speed, since time is money. (No, really. I generally get paid by the hour so there's no slow-poking when I'm on the clock, and yes, that's why I sound grumpy when you call me to chat during work hours. You know who you are.) The problem I seem to be facing lately is that some of the drawers on some of the file cabinets are getting a bit stuck.
So, hoping to remedy this situation, I have decided to do three things:
1) Ingest more fish oil. I understand fish oil is the WD-40 of the brain, and hope this might loosen some of those rusty spots. I promise to avoid breathing on anyone without carefully brushing and flossing first, however, since I hear fish oil has a few unattractive side effects. Look, do you want me smart or do you just want to kiss me all the time?
2) Sleep better. That may sound grammatically incorrect, but I meant it exactly the way I said it. The truth is I spend a lot of time on the couch -- it is the best horizontal cushioned surface in our house, and napping is freaking awesome. However, napping for two hours at night, working for two, then napping for two, then working for two, then slipping into bed hoping the BHE* won't notice I haven't been there until forty-five minutes before I have to get up to get my daughter ready for school is really not the best way to experience restorative REMs. Also I hear I look a little like the Wild Woman of Borneo and have frightened my neighbors when I come out in the morning for the newspaper after a couple of nights of that. I am going to go to bed at a reasonable hour and stay there and sleep -- um, just not tonight. I have to get this blog out first.
3) Rely more frequently on external reference sources, such as dictionaries, thesauruses (thesaurisi? See? I'm going to have to go look that up now), and various grammatical and structural style guides. In truth I've always done this, but now I'm just going to have to do it more often. I have already gradually increased this practice, and guess what? I'm actually learning new stuff and re-learning stuff I'd forgotten! And I love to learn stuff, so it's okay. I can swallow my editorial pride for the greater good, that being learning and continuing to do what I love -- defending the English language. Semi-colons especially.
I don't know if all of this will fend off the inevitable -- I hear as we age it becomes more and more difficult to retrieve details and vocabulary and short-term memory -- but I'm going to give it my best shot. I would hate to have to re-name the kid and only use paper cups.
*BHE= Best Husband Ever, copyright 2012 Various Milliner, Ltd., an extremely small publishing services firm based in the northeastern United States. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Don't Judge a Book (or a Dog) by Its Cover
I have one of the best assistants in the world. Her name is Ginger.
Since I run an extremely small publishing services company, there really isn't need for a large staff. I can sharpen my own red pencils, and for the most part there isn't much need for an IT department or even a commercial shipping account. I have a relatively quiet office space and rarely have the need for anyone other than Ginger to step in and help.
Let me tell you about her:
She's dependable. She has never called in sick, and even on days when her arthritis or a stomach ailment might be bothering her, she shows up on time and ready to go.
She doesn't gossip or use the phone for personal purposes. We eat lunch together almost every single day, and I can honestly say I've never, ever heard her utter a bad word about anyone. You'll never catch her chatting it up with her mother-in-law when she should be doing something else, and I've never seen extra charges on the bill for horoscope lines or even to check movie listings.
She lets me know when packages arrive the very minute the FedEx or UPS delivery person is heading up our street. There's never a delay in my mail, no sirree.
I can depend upon her to listen to my troubles patiently. She never walks away in disgust and never tells me to get over myself. She unfailingly greets me with a smile and is rarely more than four feet away.
She works cheap. Breakfast at 6:30, a couple of cookies in the mid-afternoon, dinner at 5:30 sharp -- she is, after all, a senior citizen. Otherwise, I cover her healthcare benefits and she's fine if I throw her an occasional bone. She only takes a few bathroom breaks during the day, but honestly that works for both of us, since I should really get up from my desk more often.
I just wish she had thumbs and could read.
Ginger is a Pit Bull. We adopted her when she was six months old, at a shelter where we'd gone even though I thought I wanted either a beagle or a chocolate labrador. We knew nothing much about pit bulls except for their reputation, but she was adorable so we took her anyway and educated ourselves.
It wasn't easy to keep Ginger. My daughter lost most of her playmates on the street because one of their mothers pronounced Ginger (who was sickly and under 30 pounds when we got her) a dangerous animal. Suddenly several people around us, some dog owners themselves, claimed to have a fear of dogs. We had to put up a fence in the middle of our back yard to keep her from hurting herself running through the rose bushes on one side when the next-door neighbor's dog used to tease her. And while Ginger loves humans (there's only ever been one she didn't like -- and I got a real creepy feeling from him myself), she didn't like that neighbor's dog. There was a day when the police were called because both dogs got loose, and the neighbor's dog bit me in fear once I'd disengaged his ear from Ginger's mouth. Ginger came out of that badly too, with people beating her with sticks and shovel handles. And I won't try to absolve her here -- but when it's in the nature of a little dog, even a tenacious terrier, to go after something, the outcome is likely to be far different from when a dog of Ginger's breed, at 70 muscular pounds, does. The neighbors who owned the other dog, by the way, understood. They loved her too.
She is the smartest animal we have ever shared a home with, and that's saying a lot -- because of her breed we were required to take her to obedience classes. Ginger not only learned those commands; she understood "Go Home", "Wait", and "Walkies?", and pretty much anything else we'd say. (So when I say she doesn't gossip, that's a very good thing.) The few times she got out of the yard, I discovered that it was far more effective to yell "Carrot!" rather than her name, since she will pretty much look for them, even if she seems to be in a coma, in the next room, in the middle of the night, if you open the refrigerator door. You could be up at three a.m. and Ginger could be upstairs and (you think) out like a light, and when you open the fridge to put together lunch for the next day there's suddenly a large square head under your armpit trying to nose open the vegetable drawer.
Why am I telling you this?
I don't know, really. I still burn over that ignorant woman convincing other parents to completely exclude my then four-year-old child from playing with theirs because of a puppy. I get incensed over irresponsible and hateful people who abuse these dogs and condition them for their own sick purposes -- and just plain dumb people who let their own pets run free and untrained. My pit bull won't jump on you or the furniture, and she doesn't bark at you from the car window or strain off the leash to run after cars or joggers.
All I'm saying is, don't judge the book by its cover -- or the dog by its breed.
And to that former, ignorant neighbor woman? You're probably still in the same part-time job you've had for years. Ginger's moved up to executive assistant.
Since I run an extremely small publishing services company, there really isn't need for a large staff. I can sharpen my own red pencils, and for the most part there isn't much need for an IT department or even a commercial shipping account. I have a relatively quiet office space and rarely have the need for anyone other than Ginger to step in and help.
Let me tell you about her:
She's dependable. She has never called in sick, and even on days when her arthritis or a stomach ailment might be bothering her, she shows up on time and ready to go.
She doesn't gossip or use the phone for personal purposes. We eat lunch together almost every single day, and I can honestly say I've never, ever heard her utter a bad word about anyone. You'll never catch her chatting it up with her mother-in-law when she should be doing something else, and I've never seen extra charges on the bill for horoscope lines or even to check movie listings.
She lets me know when packages arrive the very minute the FedEx or UPS delivery person is heading up our street. There's never a delay in my mail, no sirree.
I can depend upon her to listen to my troubles patiently. She never walks away in disgust and never tells me to get over myself. She unfailingly greets me with a smile and is rarely more than four feet away.
She works cheap. Breakfast at 6:30, a couple of cookies in the mid-afternoon, dinner at 5:30 sharp -- she is, after all, a senior citizen. Otherwise, I cover her healthcare benefits and she's fine if I throw her an occasional bone. She only takes a few bathroom breaks during the day, but honestly that works for both of us, since I should really get up from my desk more often.
I just wish she had thumbs and could read.
Ginger is a Pit Bull. We adopted her when she was six months old, at a shelter where we'd gone even though I thought I wanted either a beagle or a chocolate labrador. We knew nothing much about pit bulls except for their reputation, but she was adorable so we took her anyway and educated ourselves.
It wasn't easy to keep Ginger. My daughter lost most of her playmates on the street because one of their mothers pronounced Ginger (who was sickly and under 30 pounds when we got her) a dangerous animal. Suddenly several people around us, some dog owners themselves, claimed to have a fear of dogs. We had to put up a fence in the middle of our back yard to keep her from hurting herself running through the rose bushes on one side when the next-door neighbor's dog used to tease her. And while Ginger loves humans (there's only ever been one she didn't like -- and I got a real creepy feeling from him myself), she didn't like that neighbor's dog. There was a day when the police were called because both dogs got loose, and the neighbor's dog bit me in fear once I'd disengaged his ear from Ginger's mouth. Ginger came out of that badly too, with people beating her with sticks and shovel handles. And I won't try to absolve her here -- but when it's in the nature of a little dog, even a tenacious terrier, to go after something, the outcome is likely to be far different from when a dog of Ginger's breed, at 70 muscular pounds, does. The neighbors who owned the other dog, by the way, understood. They loved her too.
She is the smartest animal we have ever shared a home with, and that's saying a lot -- because of her breed we were required to take her to obedience classes. Ginger not only learned those commands; she understood "Go Home", "Wait", and "Walkies?", and pretty much anything else we'd say. (So when I say she doesn't gossip, that's a very good thing.) The few times she got out of the yard, I discovered that it was far more effective to yell "Carrot!" rather than her name, since she will pretty much look for them, even if she seems to be in a coma, in the next room, in the middle of the night, if you open the refrigerator door. You could be up at three a.m. and Ginger could be upstairs and (you think) out like a light, and when you open the fridge to put together lunch for the next day there's suddenly a large square head under your armpit trying to nose open the vegetable drawer.
Why am I telling you this?
I don't know, really. I still burn over that ignorant woman convincing other parents to completely exclude my then four-year-old child from playing with theirs because of a puppy. I get incensed over irresponsible and hateful people who abuse these dogs and condition them for their own sick purposes -- and just plain dumb people who let their own pets run free and untrained. My pit bull won't jump on you or the furniture, and she doesn't bark at you from the car window or strain off the leash to run after cars or joggers.
All I'm saying is, don't judge the book by its cover -- or the dog by its breed.
And to that former, ignorant neighbor woman? You're probably still in the same part-time job you've had for years. Ginger's moved up to executive assistant.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Completely Unofficial Yet Good Reasons Why Writing in the Autumn is Better Than Writing in the Summer
I have seven. If you have more, I'd love to hear from you. Here they are:
1. You can go back to covering your legs with yoga pants -- less of that "shaving in case I have to wear shorts" baloney wasting valuable minutes you could be using to write a car chase / edit a dream sequence / sort all of your index cards.
2. You can wear sweaters again. Everyone knows that writers look smarter in sweaters. Cardigans especially. Unless we're wearing those corduroy jackets with the suede elbows -- those make everybody look smart. Although they haven't really made those jackets since the 1950s, and some of us just don't have the shoulders for them. Actually I have the best combination -- a 1940s wool cardigan with suede patches at the elbows. Itchy but oh so writer chic. Also, sweaters are warm when you're huddled over a keyboard because you'll be damned if you're turning on the heat until the end of October. Damned, I say.
3. You can drink hot cocoa. This is a most efficient dietary staple. Not only does this liquid keep you hydrated, but the sugar and caffeine give you energy, so you gain fluids and energy at the same time! Also hot cocoa is yummy.
4. You can exercise off the hot cocoa calories and write (!) in front of Wii Fit with the help of your kid's music stand now that they're back in school. (This is not an actual commercial endorsement of Wii Fit; I just don't know how to work any of the other electronic devices we own.) Think of it as re-purposing something they're not there to use. You put your laptop or your manuscript on the stand (no, no, it's strong enough; just find a good angle and stabilize everything with duct tape like we do in our house) and try using Ski Jump. When you're in that jump position holding steady on your toes and hoping for the most air time, what better way to take your mind off the fact that your calves are killing you and you don't know how much longer you can hold this position without passing out, than by reading over those last edits you made on page 73? There'll be time between jumps to turn pages or make notations. The Wii will wait for you to get back on. Yes it will.
NOTE: Do not try this with that Ninja Step exercise -- it will be hard to explain to the Geek Squad how your laptop fell off the music stand (again) when you lost your balance (again) doing step aerobics with angry-looking, fiercely disciplined cartoon characters.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: Don't have kids? You know that annoying boy down the street who practiced the bassoon at 7 a.m. every day all summer when you thought you'd finally get to sleep in a little because there weren't other kids shrieking at the bus stop in front of your house at that godforsaken hour? He has a music stand. And his parents have got to rake the back lawn sometime this fall. And they never ever lock the front door. Just bring something to keep the dog quiet. What. It's theft with a higher purpose. Look, a healthy writer is a productive writer. You start doing major bestseller work and finally making those home improvements you've been trying to get to for years and their real estate value goes up, too. They'll forgive a little B&E.
AND ONE MORE NOTE: Do you know just how much bassoons cost? If they can afford to buy him a bassoon, they can spring for another stand. You may even get a day or two's bassoon-less peace out of it while they're out shopping for a replacement.
5. You can close the windows. This will be great, especially if that bassoon-playing little twerp gets his stand replaced right away. But it will also keep your neighbor -- the one who thinks "work at home" means you watch old Oprah episodes and eat bon bons all day -- from being unable to believe you just can't hear her when she's called you for the fourth time this morning from her patio behind your office to come "hang out". What did you say? What? Try it. Close the window. Turn your back. You might hear the mumble of a call, but do not turn around. Closed windows in autumn are perfectly justified. Now get back to writing that scene where your heroine rescues the orphanage children from her creepy ex-fiance who's turned out to be... wait a minute. It's your book. You take it from here. Your neighbor will go back inside. Eventually.
6. You can more easily imagine wintry love scenes. You know the ones: a hunky yet sensitive and completely sexually skilled male and a vulnerable yet sassy female, trapped in a solitary cabin in the middle of a blizzard, with only candlelight, a blazing fire, a nice faux fur bearskin, and each other...
I PROMISE THIS IS THE LAST NOTE: My advocacy of faux fur has nothing to do with animal rights. It's washable. Oh, come on. Tell me you've never read something called "erotica" and thought, "Jees, are these two ever going to take a shower or what?" Would you want your children or your kitten to play on that bearskin? Ever tried to wash real fur? It isn't pretty. And you can't imagine what it does to the lint bin in the dryer.
7. You can take long walks with your dog (in your sweater! and your yoga pants!) while you work out your next scene or dialog in your head, and 1) you won't need sunscreen; 2) it's exercise, in case the Wii (or XBox, or Playstation, whatever) sessions have gotten too embarrassing ever since your neighbor caught you at it because you forgot to close the blinds (oh. I didn't mention that you should do that, did I.); 3) you can rehearse your dialog out loud and people will just think you're training your dog; and 4) you probably won't die of heatstroke trying to get back up the hill to your house since it's not a hundred zillion degrees with three thousand percent humidity anymore. Probably. Depends, really, on the cocoa intake, and just how heavy that sweater is.
1. You can go back to covering your legs with yoga pants -- less of that "shaving in case I have to wear shorts" baloney wasting valuable minutes you could be using to write a car chase / edit a dream sequence / sort all of your index cards.
2. You can wear sweaters again. Everyone knows that writers look smarter in sweaters. Cardigans especially. Unless we're wearing those corduroy jackets with the suede elbows -- those make everybody look smart. Although they haven't really made those jackets since the 1950s, and some of us just don't have the shoulders for them. Actually I have the best combination -- a 1940s wool cardigan with suede patches at the elbows. Itchy but oh so writer chic. Also, sweaters are warm when you're huddled over a keyboard because you'll be damned if you're turning on the heat until the end of October. Damned, I say.
3. You can drink hot cocoa. This is a most efficient dietary staple. Not only does this liquid keep you hydrated, but the sugar and caffeine give you energy, so you gain fluids and energy at the same time! Also hot cocoa is yummy.
4. You can exercise off the hot cocoa calories and write (!) in front of Wii Fit with the help of your kid's music stand now that they're back in school. (This is not an actual commercial endorsement of Wii Fit; I just don't know how to work any of the other electronic devices we own.) Think of it as re-purposing something they're not there to use. You put your laptop or your manuscript on the stand (no, no, it's strong enough; just find a good angle and stabilize everything with duct tape like we do in our house) and try using Ski Jump. When you're in that jump position holding steady on your toes and hoping for the most air time, what better way to take your mind off the fact that your calves are killing you and you don't know how much longer you can hold this position without passing out, than by reading over those last edits you made on page 73? There'll be time between jumps to turn pages or make notations. The Wii will wait for you to get back on. Yes it will.
NOTE: Do not try this with that Ninja Step exercise -- it will be hard to explain to the Geek Squad how your laptop fell off the music stand (again) when you lost your balance (again) doing step aerobics with angry-looking, fiercely disciplined cartoon characters.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: Don't have kids? You know that annoying boy down the street who practiced the bassoon at 7 a.m. every day all summer when you thought you'd finally get to sleep in a little because there weren't other kids shrieking at the bus stop in front of your house at that godforsaken hour? He has a music stand. And his parents have got to rake the back lawn sometime this fall. And they never ever lock the front door. Just bring something to keep the dog quiet. What. It's theft with a higher purpose. Look, a healthy writer is a productive writer. You start doing major bestseller work and finally making those home improvements you've been trying to get to for years and their real estate value goes up, too. They'll forgive a little B&E.
AND ONE MORE NOTE: Do you know just how much bassoons cost? If they can afford to buy him a bassoon, they can spring for another stand. You may even get a day or two's bassoon-less peace out of it while they're out shopping for a replacement.
5. You can close the windows. This will be great, especially if that bassoon-playing little twerp gets his stand replaced right away. But it will also keep your neighbor -- the one who thinks "work at home" means you watch old Oprah episodes and eat bon bons all day -- from being unable to believe you just can't hear her when she's called you for the fourth time this morning from her patio behind your office to come "hang out". What did you say? What? Try it. Close the window. Turn your back. You might hear the mumble of a call, but do not turn around. Closed windows in autumn are perfectly justified. Now get back to writing that scene where your heroine rescues the orphanage children from her creepy ex-fiance who's turned out to be... wait a minute. It's your book. You take it from here. Your neighbor will go back inside. Eventually.
6. You can more easily imagine wintry love scenes. You know the ones: a hunky yet sensitive and completely sexually skilled male and a vulnerable yet sassy female, trapped in a solitary cabin in the middle of a blizzard, with only candlelight, a blazing fire, a nice faux fur bearskin, and each other...
I PROMISE THIS IS THE LAST NOTE: My advocacy of faux fur has nothing to do with animal rights. It's washable. Oh, come on. Tell me you've never read something called "erotica" and thought, "Jees, are these two ever going to take a shower or what?" Would you want your children or your kitten to play on that bearskin? Ever tried to wash real fur? It isn't pretty. And you can't imagine what it does to the lint bin in the dryer.
7. You can take long walks with your dog (in your sweater! and your yoga pants!) while you work out your next scene or dialog in your head, and 1) you won't need sunscreen; 2) it's exercise, in case the Wii (or XBox, or Playstation, whatever) sessions have gotten too embarrassing ever since your neighbor caught you at it because you forgot to close the blinds (oh. I didn't mention that you should do that, did I.); 3) you can rehearse your dialog out loud and people will just think you're training your dog; and 4) you probably won't die of heatstroke trying to get back up the hill to your house since it's not a hundred zillion degrees with three thousand percent humidity anymore. Probably. Depends, really, on the cocoa intake, and just how heavy that sweater is.
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