Earth shattering decisions

Daily Stats:
Words: gobs and gobs
Caffeine: morning cup, midmorning cappuccino and late afternoon cup of coffee
Evil Calories: had lunch at a Coney Island...hospital please...
Reality TV: Tim Gunn's Guide to Style

Up until yesterday, I had my feeble little mind made up about my piece for NaNoWriMo this year. However, it dawned on me this morning that the back story of said piece is very loosely based on actual events involving my dad. And, as fate would have it, my parental units will be invading camp Alden come the second week of November. Now I'm a little concerned that my dad sitting three feet from me in my living room may monkey with my creative mojo.

Now, I should clarify that this back story involving my dad isn't really that scandalous of a morsel. In a nutshell, my dad was engaged to another girl when he met my mom. He was attending engineering school in Minnesota, and he ended up marrying my mom without even letting this poor girl know that he'd met someone else. And the weirdest thing is that, in one of our family photo albums, there's a picture of my dad and this girl, from prom or homecoming or something. When my sister and I would ask about it, we'd always get this light and airy response, like "oh, hahaha, that's you're dad's old fiance. Goofy, ain't it?" It wasn't until earlier this year that I really began to think about it. This poor girl's fiance goes off to engineering school and marries someone else. In fact, I think that my grandmother had to actually tell her that he'd married someone else. Nothin' but love for you dad, but...you were kind of an ass.

Anyway, from this little crumb of an incident spewed forth a loaf of a story, about a girl, a strange box of letters, a woman named Pepper Ann and a quirky little town in Washington State. Aside from the back story, there are vague elements in my book that echo my own issues with my dad, and I'm a little worried I might drum up some repressed feelings while he's here. What if, right in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner, I spring up, throw the green bean casserole at him and scream, "WHY DID YOU LAUGH AT ME WHEN I SAID I WANTED TO GROW UP TO BE PRINCESS LEIA????" (hmmm...now, that would be a good story...girl confronts parents at family gathering about dismissing her hopes of being a super hero when she was young. They laugh at her again and call her silly. She wakes up next morning, sews stylish suit out of super-hero themed halloween costumes and becomes vigilante...saves Han Solo-ish guy from evil gangsters...joins secret society of super hero wanna-be vigilantes...)

Ehem...anyway....(sorry)

My point (I have one, I swear) is that I'm now thinking I should do something else for NaNo. Perhaps jump to my back burner idea, The Grim Life of Kat Clark, a little light-hearted tale about a girl with a shitty (I mean really shitty) job (and you always assumed the grim reaper was a creepy dude in a cloak wielding a scythe. Ha!)

So, that's what I'm thinking.

I'm also thinking about having waffles for dinner.

(my intellect is dizzying, no?)

(ps...i still want to be princess Leia when I grow up)