I had a bad day yesterday. It was one of those days where absolutely nothing goes right, computer “issues”, dropping things left and right, noisy neighbours at 3am, pounding headache, forgetting routine things and oh yeah, getting hit by a car.

Oh don’t worry. I’m being slightly dramatic on that last one. I was not hurt.

It began with the noisy neighbours. I suppose I should be thankful they weren’t having sex. But still, 3am’s a bit early (or late depending on your POV) to hold a normal, full-voice conversation on the other side of a wall you know to be thin from having to listen to 2 girls laughing loudly (but during normal hours) at the cat or funny Fark headlines.

So being woken up against my will is never a good thing for me. I get… grumpy. So after a groggy start to the day, I decide to stop by HyVee again after dropping the kidlet off to check if they have any of the Hint O’Mint tea I really love. I’ve stopped there in the hopes that they have it about 5 times in the past week and no joy. As I’m walking in from my car, a minivan parked illegally decides to back up just as I’m passing it. He hits me and knocks me off my balance a little. I smack his gas tank and give him a very loud, “OI!” He just looks at me like a slack-jawed idiot. No offer of apology or checking to see if I’m ok. Nope. Just a blank stare. Fucker.

And after that, HyVee STILL DID NOT HAVE MY TEA. Fuckers.

So I get to work, realize I’ve left my red Scheels sports bottle there the night before and so I have no lovely yummy Brita water to drink as is my habit. I grimace at the thought of going thirsty. I hate not having *something* to drink. I make plans to take the bottle home at lunch and fill it up. At lunch, I fill it and walk to the car, feeling better and carrying my water. Then I drop it. Now, it’s a tough sucker. The bottle bounces, and if I had better reflexes I probably could have caught it and had a good chuckle at how weird that was. But I do not have good reflexes apparently and all I could do was watch it land, the lid fly off and all my lovely Brita water spill everywhere.

I’m now late for work and besides, if I went back to refill it, the water would be tepid at best. I sigh, pick up the nearly empty bottle and head back to work where a slowbuilding headache begins powering up.

My computer decides to pick this day to do wonky things and I spend most of the afternoon wrestling with it, cursing at it, sighing frustratedly, and finding myself weighing the probability of getting fired over how satisfying it would be to pick it up, walk outside and heave it at the nearest passing semitruck. 5pm cannot come fast enough.

It finally does, and the minute I get home, I sit down, and stay there nearly catatonic until bedtime. Everything bothered me. I growled at the kid over stupid things and promptly apologised and then felt bad for being such a nitpicky bitch and finally I just crawled into bed.

Thankfully today was fine. Nice even. I didn’t drop a thing, no one ran me over, the computer behaved and I spilled no water. I even got to duck out of work 15 minutes early thanks to a surprise announcement from the kid that she had to work at 5pm and she had the car.

The cool thing I did this evening was venture out to Hastings (a bookstore along the lines of a Borders or Barnes & Noble) with the laptop with the purpose of getting started writing my book.

Other than being completely ignored by the staff there when I really would have liked to order a cup of tea (you apparently have to hunt down a clerk if you want to order stuff. I say screw that) and one screaming kid, I was quite productive in the hour and a half I was there. I was able to outline almost the entire story so that I have a base to work from. I needed that to help me focus. Otherwise I look at the blank Word doc and feel overwhelmed at not knowing where to begin.

I think I’ll try someplace else though next time because Hastings is full of crappy clerks (I did decide to name an annoying character in the story after the crappy store though 🙂 ) I’m just afraid if I go to Starbucks I will not be able to resist the siren call of the beautiful Mocha. God I miss my Mochas. Being good sucks sometimes.

Wow this is getting long. Sorry. Anyway, I made good progress on the book and I can’t wait to get in there and really flesh it out. I was looking at self-publishing options this morning (I’m not getting ahead of myself, I was just talking to a columnist at the paper who wrote a book a couple of years ago and he was telling me how he did it.) It looks like I’m going to use Lulu.com to publish it. They don’t require any dosh up front which is good because I don’t have any 🙂 I’d love to try and get the book published the old-fashioned way via a proper publisher but I don’t see that happening.

Except you know, sometimes bloggers get noticed by publishers. It worked for Dooce and that chick who blogged about being a cabbie in NYC. Those guys are part of the reason I began blogging as CherryPop. That and I want to post as her as much as possible so I can inhabit her headspace and do a good job writing this book. It’s going to be in first person so yeah, better get some practice. And if cherrypopmcgee.com happens to get some traffic along the way, then cool! Besides, it’s kind of fun 🙂 I also hooked her up with a MySpace page for the hell of it too. Why not!

Ok I’ve rambled far too much. I’ve got a Dresden book to finish up and then I think I’m off to bedfordshire. Gnighty!