I’m on the tail-end of a deadline. My third book in the Katie Parker Production series is due July 15. And I still have a lot to do. So as usual on the tail-end of a deadline with a ton to do, I find other tasks to occupy my time when I should be writing. It’s usually on the last week of a deadline when I have not allowed myself time to do more than sit, type, and occasionally breathe, that I get this overwhelming urge to clean the garage or sweep out gutters.

So this past week I have been pulling out my old tried and true and much read Julie Garwood and Judith McNaught books. Once a upon a time these ladies wrote historical romance, the first of their kind really to put any decent humor in it. (They now write contemporary fiction, but I don’t really want to talk about it.) So I will start one, write a little, then go back to finish the book late into the night. Wake up the next morning feeling like a freight train ran over me, get up and write for a few hours, then pick a new dusty book from my shelf by the two authors. Repeat next day. And the next.

But then I decided—no more! I must be responsible about this! (Okay, actually I ran out of books.) So even though I have two new books sitting in my living room, waiting for me and calling my name. (The Kite Runner, which is supposed to be fabulous, but is all serious, and probably won’t do much for my simplistic brain. And the one I’m the most excited about Spells and Sleeping Bags, the thrilling installment to the hilarious YA series by Sarah Mlynowski. And before people get all offended, it’s not like take me to the dark side stuff, but more like Bewitched for teens. So funny.)

Anyway, so last night I wrote and wrote. And when I was finished I had at least an hour or so before I would be ready to call it a night. And my new books stared at me. And I refused to acknowledge them, knowing if I started one I would read it the entire next day. So I turned on the TV. Now I don’t watch a lot of TV, but it’s amazing what you can find when you HAVE to watch it. Here are a few things I’ve learned.

Christopher Columbus saw three mermaids on one of his voyages. He said they were “Not as beautiful as he expected.” Men. Never happy with what they’ve got. Plus scientists believe what he actually saw were manatees. I guess when you’re a year or so without the presence of the lady folk, anything can look semi-attractive.

I want a Wii.

There’s a spider than can spend it’s entire life underwater. It spins a web and creates an air bubble for itself. This bubble is also where it kills its victims. Like I needed another reason not to swim in our local lake.

The Office is hilarious. Why didn’t someone tell me? Steve Carell is a comedic genius. His timing is amazing. And I loved the bloopers on the season two DVD set. Those people crack each other up, which is always fun to see.

Did you know a lot of media outlets put a moratorium on Paris Hilton news? Seriously, even US magazine refused to so much as mention her name this week. So I was really disheartened when I turned on CNN and there’s Anderson Cooper yakking it up about the former inmate. Anderson, I trusted you. Don’t you have a Darfur update or something you could talk about instead? I will never look at your and your prematurely gray hair the same again.

On one channel I learned that country music legend Glen Campbell now has a mullet. This is not good. Now wonder his career is not exactly in its prime. But then I flipped to another channel and found another mullet-—the Dog Bounty Hunter. Frankly, if I’m looking for an on-the-run loved one, I want my bounty hunter to have a mullet. If you look at the Dog’s recovery stats, I think there must be a correlation. And frankly, you can’t take your eyes off of it.

Twinkies now come in a banana flavor. I think this upset me the most. Number one, don’t mess with Twinkies. And number two—banana? What idiot thought of this? Nobody likes artificial banana taste. Nobody. Why wouldn’t you try some basics first—chocolate? Strawberry? Peanut butter? But banana? That’s like saying, “Hey, let’s add a flavor to Reese’s. I want to try prunes.” So illogical.

The Discovery Channel has a lot of really irrelevant shows. But it’s put a lot of dorks to work. Though they should not be allowed to write their own dialog. For example on Myth Busters, two guys wanted to test if a snapping cord could cut a person in half. So they used this giant, dead pig (Very attractive. Brought back all sorts of high school lab nightmares) to test it. But it did not snap the poor swine in two.
Host one says, “A rope snapping at 227 miles per hour won’t kill you. It
doesn’t have enough beef to it. Or should I say pork.”

I found another show that was riveting. Hilarious even—but probably not in the way intended. It’s called Honey: We’re Killing the Kids, on TLC. But that’s for another day. For it deserves a blog all by itself.

Now back to writing. Or garage cleaning.