from the annals of bicep man

I would like to correct my former diagnosis of "partial use of legs" to "occasional use of legs," as I had a brief renaissance yesterday during a Boggle match with Laura and Laura. After the Boggle match, I was able to walk for approximately ten minutes! (Thank you, Hasbro.) I figured I was probably cured until about two hours later, when I was lying on my stomach on the bed unable to move in any direction, flailing around for pain medications that weren't there, and sobbing like an idiot. I know, none of you would be sobbing. You would be grinning like casino winners and simultaneously receiving the Nobel peace prize. But you're just higher achievers than I.

Luckily, Juan is still here, manually moving my legs. If you've never had someone manually move your legs, do try. Whereas before you might not have been able to move your legs, astonishingly, when someone else picks them up and shifts them around, they attain mobility! It's a magic trick definitely worth a round of applause --- after you're done shrieking with pain, or winning the Nobel peace prize, whatever suits you.

Meanwhile, I have signed up for NaNoWriMo, national novel writing month. This is the act of a desperate person, a person whose e-mail correspondences with agents have gotten increasingly nasty in recent months:

Them: Hi! Loved your stories. Want to read more! Maybe represent you! Where's the novel?

Me: Hi! Thanks! Almost done, be right there.

Them: Where's the novel?

Me: Um, here are fifty pages from the middle. Disfrute.

Them: No, where are the first fifty pages?

Me: Apologies, I write middles first, then endings, then beginnings.

Them: You are a piece of scum born not unto man, whose organs should first be ripped out by buzzards and then distributed amongst the corners of the earth, where fires begun by moose turds will be waiting to burn them, the ashes then fished out and incorporated into McDonald's hamburgers.

Me: I thought you loved my stories?

Them: Stories are a piece of scum born not unto man, whose organs should first be ripped out by buzzards and then distributed amongst the corners of the earth, where fires begun by moose turds will be waiting to burn them, the ashes then fished out and incorporated into McDonald's hamburgers. Novels are the Lord's work.

Me: Oh. I did not know that.

So, since I can't walk, I might as well try this NaNoWriMo thing. In theory, there are more than enough hours in the day to also work on the stories and also work on the novel I already have in progress, plus write another one. I mean, I ask myself: Since everyone else in the world could write three books at once while unable to walk, I should be able to too, shouldn't I?