Caught up

The craziest thing happened on Mon night.

Instead of going to bed at 11 or shortly thereafter as we usually do, I decided to stay up and watch the Graham Norton Effect on Logo, since Graham's guest was Whoopie Goldberg. I love Whoopie. When it ended at midnight, I went to bed. I didn't feel sleepy, so my mind kept going over what needed to happen with the wood floor refinishing. They said we have to completely clear the rooms before they get there. They don't move any furniture. So we've got to find a place to put the contents of our TV room, the guest bedroom, and the foyer and main floor hallways. Then I started mentally figuring out which furniture could be placed in the living room and what might have to go into the kitchen. How long will it be before we can walk on the floors? How long before we can put furniture and rugs back on them? And so on, and so on.

Then I remembered we are going to be out of town this weekend and next weekend, so we'll have to move the stuff out of those rooms the Wed or Thur night before. How long will this take? Why did we let that guest room get filled up with crap? And so on, and so on.

I tried to stop myself from these mental gymnastics, but to no avail. I finally decided to get up at 1:30 and read in order to get my mind off the house stuff. As I went into the office/study and for some odd reason I remembered a writing project I started over 10 years ago. Its my 'coming out' story. I'd typed it on a typewriter (I know - that sounds so prehistoric) back in the day, and a few months ago I retyped it onto our computer, with the idea that I'd eventually update, expand and improve it later.

The original version covers 1987 to 1996 (before I met Joe), and was 4 1/2 pages long. So, I started from the beginning and read through my draft. I began filling in lots of details and adding feelings to the draft so it would read more like a short story instead of a chronology.

I don't know if I just happened to be in the right frame of mind for the project or what, but the memories and words were flowing. I guess I just got caught up. The next thing I knew, the story had gone from 4 1/2 pages to 11 pages, and it was 7:00 in the morning!

I had no intention of staying up all night. I thought I'd fill in a few details, feel sleepy and go back to bed. But my creative juices were GUSHING and I just kept typing. Now here's the kicker: I expanded the story from 4 1/2 pages to 11 pages, but I didn't get any further than 1996 when I met Joe!!! So now I still need to update the story to describe that wonderful first week I knew Joe, when he asked me out on 3 dates within 5 days.

As I said, this is a project I started before I met him, because I wanted to document my coming out, due to all the complications from the JW stuff. But now I feel like I want to document the next decade (1996-2006) with Joe to reveal the rest of my metamorphosis.

When I told Joe about accidentally staying up all night long writing he told me that staying up all night long working on a project when you know you have to go to work the next day is a sign of mental illness. But what's funnier than that is, when I realized I'd stayed up all night long I said to myself "Joe is going to accuse me of some grave mental illness for doing this"!!!

I'm so glad I had my catchers mitt on that night when Life threw me that curve ball.

Drag Queen name of the day: Kitty Litter