Ironing Man/Ironing Maiden

I think it was a gift for my 22nd birthday. An unromantic Sunbeam iron and ironing board from my soon-to-be starch-ridden spouse. I was not impressed, mainly because I had made it known right from the get-go that I did not get along with irons. I'm predominantly left-handed, and no matter what right-handed ironers say, it is more awkward (and dangerous) for us south-paws to wield one of those fire-breathing appliances. And I had the scars to prove it, one of which was emblazoned on my stomach from an attempt to iron a dance costume...albeit, while actually wearing the costume.

Future Spouse, aka The Ironing Man, ironed everything under the sun. Empty cans of starch lined his laundry counter like trophies. So after the I-do's were said and done, I made a few lovingly unsuccessful attempts to press his garments, which tragically wound up costing him more to replace than the value of the iron itself. I had over-zealously burned the hell out of more than one of his favorite shirts, leaving an array of Star Trek shaped emblems in undesirable locations.

So I kept my distance from that Sunbeam...until years later, after moving to Hawaii. Our munchkin Ryan was two years old and was sleeping peacefully in his bed. I was up late, perhaps working on a new piano song, when I went downstairs to use the bathroom. It was dark, and with my poor vision, I caught a glimpse of what looked like something scurrying toward Ryan's bedroom. I flipped on the light switch and there on the carpet, underneath the ironing board was a six-inch long centipede. It stopped moving when I turned on the light, so I used the foot of the ironing board to temporarily pin the beasty creature, which began to wriggle every which way in frantic desperation to eat me alive.

I had to think quick and upon noticing that Mr. Ironing Man had left his appliance plugged in, I cranked it up to the highest setting and after a few seconds, I gave it the old finger-saliva sizzle test. It was ready, but I wasn't as I made eye-contact with one angry centipede that was bound and determined to escape and wreak havoc on me and my home.

Finally, feeling like Xena, Warrior Princess, I felt a surge of adrenaline as I raised the steaming hot iron over the centipede's head (or maybe it was its tail as it's hard to tell one end from the other). In one fell swoop, I seared that buggah good. Stinking, burning centipede flesh consumed the air. In horror, I watched the other end twist and contort, so to put it out of its misery, I finished him off.

When it was all over, I turned off the Sunbeam and left the charred remains of the centipede there on the carpet as a caveat to any of his devilish friends. I went to bed with one eye opened that night, and after a long night of patrolling the graveyard shift, my husband in his stiffly pressed uniform came home in the morning to a crime scene unlike any he'd seen before. I assigned him to clean-up duty, which upon removal of the body, he would discover a permanent imprint of the centipede's mutilated form on the carpet. The imprint served as a permanent reminder to Ironing Man not to ever entrust his wife with such an appliance ever again.

NaNoWriMo Begins 24 Hours From Right Now!

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Tonight I attended the Honolulu regional kick-off party for this year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) craze. Held at Zippy’s on King Street, the eclectic gathering totaled over 30 brave participants committed to writing toward a goal of 50,000 words in 30 days.

This will be my (gasp) seventh attempt to break the 50k and become a “Winner” as deemed by founder Chris Baty and his impressive team of dedicated novel-generators. While I’ve never been crowned "Winner" yet, the fruit of my NaNo labor consists of four novels in various states of completion, the most recent also serving as a portion of my MFA thesis. At 49,000 words currently, this baby is just a few words away from an agent’s desk.

My NaNo nerves this year are at an all-time high as I am using the upcoming month of madness to pen/pound out a historical fiction piece that I’m being commissioned to write. It’s an epic plotline based on a true story of fleeing Romania during WWII. I’ve been researching for this since May of ‘08. I can even speak a few important sentences in Romanian, like, Am de fucut niste comparaturi, which means, I need to do some shopping. I also have a handful of Romanian recipes to try in order to get a literal taste of the land. And the music, it’s well, how do you say, so Romanian.

Now not only am I taking on the challenge myself, but for the past five years I have been inflicting NaNoWriMo on my English students. This year, all 119 of them are signed on with the young writer program and are (for the most part) psyched (scared out of their minds) to begin this Sunday. I listened to their plot ideas today in class, and wow, I’m so impressed with the wild outpouring of genuine creativity. Their minimum word count requirement for an A is 10,000 words, but every year I have at least one student who breaks the 50k. The record, held by current sophomore Kyle Park, stands at 63k words of sheer brilliance.

The kick-off party served its purpose. Our two delightful ML’s (Municipal Liaisons) are brand new to the state—one from somewhere in the south and the other from Long Island, New York—but they are raring to launch our mid-Pacific state into NaNo-land. We will be having word wars against Los Angeles and Long Island, two high-volume cities in previous years, as well as some other city I cannot recall at the moment. It will be exciting to see how we tally up at the end of the month.

In the meantime, I’m wondering how my blog will fare during my 30-day pilgrimage to NaNo-land. Given the collaborative nature of my Romanian mission, I probably won’t be putting up any significant excerpts, but I may resort to posting interesting pictures of my month-long journey, ie: This is me tearing out my hair strand by strand on November 29 with 8,888 words to reach the goal by midnight.

Let the madness begin!

Where The Wild Things Are—Hawaiian Style

Yesterday in the shower, I encountered a wild thing. A small wild thing, but a wild thing none-the-less. He first appeared next to my Aussie shampoo bottle, and since I don’t shower with my glasses on, I couldn’t tell right away if he was dead or alive. I jiggled the shampoo bottle and watched him wiggle top speed up the tiles until he came eye-to-eye with me. Even without my glasses, I could see his little reptilian chest pounding through his color-changing skin. I know if he could speak at this point, he’d be saying, “What! You no like geckos?” I wanted to tell him that I love geckos, especially the cute baby ones like himself and even though his enormous extended family that live behind the clock in my living room are not as cute, I’m still grateful to them for eating all the nasty cock-a-roaches that sneak in.

With my loofah hanging next to him, I wondered how I would remove it from the hook without once again terrifying my little shower friend. Like a speeding figure eight, he scurried back to the Aussie bottle. I lathered. I scrubbed. I rinsed, leaving the lizard alone, but the real drama began when I turned off the water and stepped out. Because it’s an old house, the drain takes its sweet time, leaving a few inches of water to slowly work its way down and out.

Towel-wrapped, I decided I needed to capture the little guy and set him free outside, fearing otherwise he’d become a play toy for our serial-killer cat, Blue (more on him in the future). I crouched down and cupped my hands around the lizard, but in a fitful rage he escaped through a crack between my two thumbs and plunged headfirst into the draining tub. Much to my surprise, he swam with Michael Phelps finesse. He even flipped himself upside-down twice in order to rest a second before flipping back over to finish his cross-tub journey.

Once to the other side, perhaps out of pure exhaustion, he couldn’t get himself attached to the slippery tub, so I intervened again and tried to scoop him out. This is when he released his wiggling tail into the water—a survival device—making it impossible for him to continue swimming. Panicked, I cupped the poor little tailless critter and tossed him onto the tile floor. His limp little body didn’t move, and I was sure he was tragically dead. I tapped him with my pinky finger, and he twitched. There was hope. I blew on him, tapped again, and off he went to the far corner of the bathroom.

Relieved, I left him alone…just long enough to grab my new iphone. He hadn’t moved much, but his eyes were wide open as I knelt in front of him to snap his mug shot. This time I could hear him telling me off. “Eh, what you doing now? My tail going take t’ree weeks for grow back laddat, and now you going take my pict-cha? You like me say Cheese, too?”

When I opened the bathroom door, my waterlogged friend stammered out into the hall, heading toward the sleeping cat.

I got dressed, dried my hair, and headed out to the movies to see “Where The Wild Things Are.” It was okay.

In bed last night I imagined being awakened by an angry tailless gecko. “I tell you where da kine, wild things stay,” he’d whisper. “I stay looking at one wild buggah right hea!”

Let the wild rumpus start!