Mark, marketing and marks

Waking at 4:35 a.m. and finally getting back to sleep at 6:30 a.m. and then being awakened by the phone while attending to nature's call doesn't make for a good start to the morning . . . unless a good friend calls and leaves you laughing and another friend gives you a great marketing idea for your books. It's not even noon and already my day has been quite eventful. Does that mean it's downhill from here?

The forecast is for a heavy winter storm so I think I'll take out the trash today instead of waiting until later, which means I'll also have to put the mail out today as well. I do not want to have to slog through the storm into the teeth of a freezing gale tomorrow morning when I'm barely awake and probably didn't sleep well the night before, as has been the case for the past two weeks. I want to go back to sleeping for six or seven hours straight and waking refreshed and ready to tackle another day. Unfortunately, my body seems to have other ideas and forgot to inform me of its twisted and obscene plans to deprive me of sleep and making me uncomfortable and cranky. It didn't help that when the HVAC guys came to fix the furnace on Friday one of them fell and landed on the top of the brand new vanity and cracked the porcelain in two long jagged oblique almost all the way across the top places. The porcelain is chipped in several areas and my beautiful vanity is not beautiful any more -- but they managed not to break the glass (one of two remaining glasses) the knocked off onto the rug on the terra cotta tile floor. I hope the landlord, Mark, takes care of the vanity top quicker than he's taken care of the leaking roof over my office (still not done).

Mark has a strange sense of humor. When he returned my call about the furnace not working he suggested I put on a sweater and wear fingerless gloves to keep my hands warm. I told him I was wearing my fleece jacket and didn't have any fingerless gloves. He offered to loan me a pair for the winter in lieu of fixing the furnace. After all, the oven still works and it will keep at least the front half of the cottage warm and I can bundle up in all my clothes while working in the back half of the cottage. Like I said, Mark has a strange sense of humor. He really is a good guy though and he doesn't intrude -- even when I want him to intrude, like when attending to repairs like roofs and furnaces, and now the vanity top.

My friend with the marketing idea also gave me an idea for another book. Now that I'm almost finished with the editing and rewrites on the two books I've already written this years, I think it will make a love story to be remembered. I mean, how many people fall in love with their bisexual brother-in-law-to-be only to lose them to AIDS? The tentative title is Marrying Mr. Wrong. Okay, so I'm not good with titles, but something will come along. I could do a series of mainstream love stories with grammar-based titles, a sort of branding that seems to work so well in marketing. It's just the germ of an idea rapidly becoming a sprout, but it is a beginning.

I hope y'all are having a lovely and quiet Sunday with your friends and loved ones -- or happily by yourself if you prefer.

That is all. Disperse.