In my brain with a fisheye lens…

‘kay… tomorrow is Zoomboy’s b-day, but all the pictures of cake & ice cream at grandmas are on Mate’s phone, and the Six-Foot Rat nightmare is next week, so I’m going to do something different today. I’ve got a new release on Wednesday (so you can expect a book cover up on the top for a while– sorry, I know that gets old, but I really like to get the word out!) and in the meantime, the sleeping animal thing continues. What can I say? They were cute. I mean… look at him… he didn’t even finish his puzzle!

Anyway, some of you read the interview, and one of the things on it was, (roughly) “So, is Amy Lane the same person who goes and gets groceries?” and my reply was that I was actually too distracted to do a good job of that. This occurred to me today as I was grocery shopping, and I had this idea, right, to make a blogpost about what it’s like to have a brain on high-inspiration-alert… and then, well, life-as-irony appeared, and, you’ll see what I mean.

Going to get groceries. Need soda first. So.da. soooooooodddddddaaaaaaa.. SODA! OH, bless you McD’s, extra large diet coke my savior my drug my mmmmmmm…… (So, what’s it like to be addicted to something stronger than caffeine? You’ve seen it fuck up some perfectly good people… what’s that draw like? Smoking? Alcohol? Heroin? What’s that feel like? How do you overcome it? My brother has some perfectly good vices, what’s it like to not kick those by forty…forty one? Forty two? Hell… when’s his birthday?)

OH SHIT! I need to get Zoomboy a birthday card to go with that monstrously horrible birthday present we got for him. Mom will like it… I’ll let her go in on it. I’ll need to. It cost a frickin’ fortune! Zoomboy… God he’s cute. Isn’t he funny when he’s on defense with his talking buddy? Two boys, young, falling in desperate love on the soccer field at seven, ten, twelve, a first look, a first kiss, a disapproving mother, an accepting mother, a boy falling into that chemical addiction to supplant the approval addiction he’s been deprived of, another boy heartbroken as he matures and his first love does not, a separation, a funeral, a eulogy, a grieving lover, connection, plotbunny, plot DRAGON… BACK MOTHERFUCKER, BACK! I’M STILL WRITING THE LOCKER ROOM YOU BASTARD AND I’M ALMOST DONE, DAMMIT! LEAVE ME ALONE!

Here we are, at the grocery store. This parking lot looks like ass, but I love this store, and they love me. Oh, look. A bakery. I’m going to have to ask to get a cake for Zoomboy, or a pie. Pie. Cory likes pie. Will she be able to eat pie pregnant? Will Grace even let her eat it? Is she going to have pregnancy diabetes? High blood pressure?Will the twins be affected? Would Green be able to cure that? If I ate pie when I was pregnant, I’d be chuking all over the place… will Bracken hold her head? Will their anger connection make that freaky? Will Green have to step up? Will Nicky be able to deal?

Carrots, tomatoes, avocados, yoghurt… I don’t know… do we still have yoghurt from last trip? Doesn’t matter. Can never have too much yoghurt. Or crackers. No, I don’t know what’s for dinner tomorrow. Hey–that manager with my given name is working tonight. She’s nice. Grocer. He’s smart, got a degree, but likes the money and the people. He’s a manager, the kind everybody likes. And then… enter a mad bomber, and a love interest in a hurry for a blind date, and he’s stronger than he looks, and he disarms a bomb and then him and Mr. Blind-date misser get it on in the meat freezer… oh shit. Too campy. But maybe I’d have to learn to shop to write it…

Or cook! Look– cookbooks! No, can’t buy cookbooks–I never use them. Yeah… but it looks so good. And you’d have to check out whole sections of the store that you don’t usually shop from, and it might stop me from just throwing shit into the cart and oh yeah–friendly pharmacist, wave to him, smile, offer to race the little old lady in the walker, enjoy her laugh, enjoy the pharmacists laugh and What if the pharmacist is her grandson, and she’s dying. She just wants to see him mated off before she goes. Hey… he could get it on with the florists, I still like writing het… but what if the florist is a man? Ooooohhh… that could work. And maybe the meat cutter has had a crush for a while. And then we could make the florist a woman but make the meat cutter really manly and aggressive. Could we have the guy who makes the Chinese food into a threesome? I don’t know, depends on what he looks like Oh HELL noes! Ewwww! Perfectly nice man, but I may never write grocery store romance again!

Oh wait. Did I remember to buy toilet paper? Fuck. Back around the frickin’ aisles again. And wait–I didn’t get meat. Or sauce for the pasta. Or… oh, for crying out loud, don’t we already have seventy-eleven goddamned cans of chili? Hope not. I’m not putting that shit back. That’s another trip around the fucking store. Just throw in some hotdogs to go with that… and some baked beans… and some brown sugar… and… oh hell. What am I bringing to my mom’s tonight? And what am I making for Thanksgiving? And whose house am I going to? And… oh shit. Who’s getting Alexa and can someone do that one way? When are both dinners? Crap… will I be able to get the house in order in time to cook? Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit…

No, I’m sorry. I don’t have my card–but I have my phone number. Yeah, I’ll sign up for that internet thing later. I just don’t think about it when I sit down to the computer. All I do is write. Oh… wow. I need another cart? Well, I was going to take it all out myself, but if I need another cart, I guess not. Thanks for the help by the way. Wow– hot today for November. And this wind! Skeery! Apocalyptic weather, actually. With the November light and the wind and the heat, it’s almost steampunk. I could write m/m steampunk… I mean really, it’s all about the glasses and the scarf, right? And metal bugs and Victorian gentleman who dress in purple and twisted religious iconography and frightening machines made of shiny welded metal with leather joints and faintly magical power sources… that would be cool. Metal spiders with active intelligence? Too evil… metal chameleons? Perfect… I would call it Bertrand, and it would make a noise like Perry the Platypus when I oiled him just so…

Hey– I know that homeless man… he looks better. Someone must care for him. He always smells of cigarettes and sweat, but his hair is brushed back and trimmed, and his mustache is trimmed, and… Jesus. He’s really pissed off. He’s yelling and gesturing and trying hard to listen to what the other person is saying. Who is he talking too? They’re hidden by that post… I hope he’s okay. He seems hostile most of the time, but I’m used to seeing him in the neighborhood… who didn’t avoid making eye contact… oh. Nobody. He’s having that conversation with himself. Wow. That was weird. He was listening for responses and changing his expressions and everything.

Wow. Paranoid Schizophrenia at it’s most frightening. Who knew.

Okay… is it possible that paranoid schizophrenia is really a writer’s imagination without the brakes? Must ask Mate what I really look like when I’m talking to myself. Do I wait for pauses? Should I write about someone in love with his Paranoid Delusion? Ohhhh… that could be tragic…

I’m home! No… I didn’t remember that birthday card for Zoomboy. Shit. shit shit shit shit shit shit…

But I DID remember soda!