obsession

I am so hung up on this cowboy thing, so immersed in the 1880's mindset, that I find myself thinking of cattle roundups when I go to the freezer and take out a package of hamburger: dust and bawling and pounding hooves, the smells of hot iron and manure. Lye soap.

I've had the most appalling urges to listen to bluegrass and [gasp] country music lately. This morning I was brutally reminded of why I don't listen to country music: "If heaven was a pie, it'd be cherry/cool and sweet and heavy on the tongue/Just one bite would satisfy your hunger/and there'd always be enough for everyone."

Ahem.

I find myself saying "ain't" in casual conversation. Acquaintances look at me like I'm speaking in tongues. Close friends just smirk.

Yesterday as I was driving home I saw a young black man waiting at the crosswalk and my mind immediately thought "Negro," with the other N-word close behind it. I am terribly afraid I'll slip and say "colored" in conversation.

I think I'm going to host a Victorian tea/ladies salon for my birthday. And of course I must have a new polonaise gown for it. Every morning I have a bizarre and impractical urge to wear my corset to work under my jeans. Fortunately I am not yet that far gone, but when I get my new underbust corset made my better judgment may yet fail.

I am contemplating the logistical access points of both passenger and cattle-carrier train cars, and debating the characteristics of animalistic hive-mentality vampires versus the Bram Stoker/Anne Rice variety of vampires, including methods of killing them.

I love my work.


P.S. I'm sending out "Sikeston" to Writers of the Future today.