The hills are alive with red around here – or at least the leaves that insist to my senses to pay attention to them are the red oaks, sumacs, parts of the sweet gum, those little perfectly manicured bushes I drive by that beam. I swear some of them are full of pride, which is weird to think about, a bush with vanity, but it is a living thing. Unfurling leaves and petals in the spring are a vigorous horror fest of ugly green. Hostas are particularly creepy, reaching up to the sky like fingers from that hand thrust from the grave in Stephen King’s “Carrie.” Their alien, emerging shape insisting on an audience, too, so maybe it isn’t vanity but me assigning moral attributes and failings to things rarely thought of as having such things because I’m bored.
And I’m not bored, but avoiding some work. Mostly cleaning. Some plotting, some renaming, some rereading, some more horror films watched and then I think I’ll be ready for November. I’m considering going back to the “happy writing day board.” It was a paper calendar on the refrigerator where I wrote my word count each day. Stamps were put on the days I made my count or went over 1667 words. One time it was stickers. Husband could also look at it and praise or ask jokingly if he needed to put a lock on the library door because I was short. I don’t remember where or when (yes I do, part of the exercise/calorie counting insanity I am still prone to participate in because it is another control issue I rarely own up to) I learned that about myself – that visuals help with a goal. Yes, say it with me now, I am going to win NaNoWriMo. I have an “it” which rhymes with bit and that’s just the start of the story.
Another thing I know is that I should never talk about “it,” just write it, but it isn’t November and I crave that structure because it’s worked before so I’m here, binging on movies. It’s nearly Halloween so the basis for selection is “Does it sound scary?” and to me, “Wicker Park” sounded scary. It is not. It’s odd and I’ll need to watch it again – and I will because it’s shot in Chicago and you can tell that it is real snow in some of those shots. The Elisabeth Moss “Invisible Man” is great and lovely but I couldn’t help remembering “Sleeping with the Enemy” as I watched it. “The Hollow Man” remains 6 degrees of stupid. “What Lies Beneath” – plenty of scares, but so little sense. Who brings up a box thrown in the lake back to the house, where the potential killer is, to open it when you had the key and could have done it on the dock? And omg the creep factor of Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer to begin with, and then he says the line about her daughter and…just…I…was struck wordlessly gross. “Ghost Story” was bad, “A Quiet Place,” eh, and the standards of “Hocus Pocus,” “The Addams Family,” and “Beetlejuice” hold up. I don’t know what I’ll watch tonight, but probably two movies I’ve not watched before.
I’ve started quite a lot of essays spinning off the first one currently called, “A Taste of the Good Stuff.” For some reason, I’ve sent it off to what I know are not faceless editors, but there is still a distance. Should it ever get published, I’m not sure I want to share it with friends unless I regain some weight. It felt exactly like the slide down the scale opened up a view of another time I was not expecting to visit. And it was a rotten thing and I wrote about it. I know part of it wasn’t my fault, but part of it was. A choice I made because I thought I had to and now I wonder why. I don’t like writing cnf since it exposes me harshly – at least in my own mind. It shows I’m such a moronic person, full of vanity and pride so afraid of what others would think of me, I want to turn into a tree. Or a bush that resembles a warm flame when its leaves turn. Better yet, a hosta planted on a dark hillside under tamaracks and walnut trees.
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Until we meet again, I wish you good health and joy. Thank you for stopping by and for the read!
T. L. Sherwood 
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