It’s He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog’s birthday next week, and he says all he wants for the big day is for me to relax.
Apparently, my lying on the couch watching a ten-hour Say Yes To The Dress marathon does not count as “relaxing.” This, HWSNBNITB says, is “re-energizing.” Much in the way a golden lioness re-energizes before the next day’s hunt, when she will eviscerate yet another gazelle on which the pride will gorge themselves.
I’m not sure I understand this analogy, but I do know this: I prefer relaxed animals to relaxed people. Because while relaxed puppies are cute, people who wobble around wearing no pants (like Ziggy) are kind of weird.
What I super love are high-energy New Yorkers. Their reputation for being rude is totally undeserved. It is not rudeness. They are just GETTING THINGS DONE.
You can usually rely on non-relaxed people (especially New Yorkers). On the very rare occasions when they mess things up, it’s because they genuinely goofed—possibly while trying to get so many things done at once, they inadvertently missed a step. This is absolutely forgivable (so long as they come straight out and admit it, apologize, and take steps to improve themselves).
This is why characters like Nick and Nora Charles and Alec Baldwin—New Yorkers, FYI—are so beloved. Because, after they’ve apologized for messing up, they usually head straight for the liquor cabinet (or in the case of Liz Lemon, her night cheese), down a martini, then go back to work.
When people around HERE tell me to relax, I want to kick the margarita out of their hand, then karate chop them in the Cuban cigar. What do they think I’m doing? By actually moving to the place where I would go to relax should I ever choose to do so, I have actually significantly cut down on the amount of travel time it would take to get here. I have taken relaxation to scientific new levels of efficiency, though some people apparently don’t choose to see it this way, which I find super annoying.
As soon as I turned in my book (Abandon, the first in a new YA series. It will be out in April. Look for more info coming soon) and finished filming the promo stuff about it (yeah. The day after I handed in the book, the filming of the promo stuff for it started), He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog announced he had booked us a birthday vacation. At a local spa. TO RELAX.
Apparently this has something to do with the fact that Abandon is mostly set in a cemetery (which it’s not really, it’s mostly set in a high school and the Underworld). He said, “That just makes me even more worried about you. You need to RELAX.”
I do not see what the problem is. The Key West cemetery is NOT where the book is set. The book is set on a fictional Floridian island. And yes, there is a cemetery in it.
And yes, the Key West cemetery is where we filmed the promos.
And yes, Tropical Storm Nicole roared in that same morning.
But I told He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog that he was worrying unnecessarily.
I highly doubt our filming in the cemetery invoked the wrath of any death deities.
I don’t know what the problem was. Just because the photo shoot for the cover looked like this:
No one actually killed that model. She was relaxing!
I do feel bad about all the dirt, though.
But when you’re playing a girl who goes flat line (which means her heart stops, for those of you who’ve never watched ER), but then she gets resuscitated, and she has to move to a new school because she kind of assaults someone (who totally deserved it), but really the person who did it was the guy she met while she was dead (and maybe he wants her back in the place where she met him in the first place), but she can’t tell anyone that because everyone already thinks she’s crazy, well, things are gonna get dirty.
But we did have to flee the cemetery during filming due to the coffins suddenly popping up out of the earth (ha, okay, not really. But it did start raining due to the tropical storm), and ended up filming the rest on my back porch.
It’s called Abandon because some of the characters die and end up in the Underworld, like in Dante’s Inferno. Get it? They ‘Abandon All Hope.’
Oh, you didn’t know there’s an Underworld? Well, this book by Edith Hamilton explains it all. Check out the Persephone and Hades chapter. Only in my version, they’re both teenagers. And they live in Florida, not Greece.
No, there’s no coffee in the Underworld. Or Coke Zero either. But we have both at my house! Which would you prefer?
After everyone left, He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog announced that now that the book is turned in, we’re done invoking the wrath of dark lords. At the spa (which is a little ways down the road), we’re going to be relaxing, doing yoga (they have classes ALL DAY LONG). They also have Dead Sea mud wraps, therapeutic aromasteam treatments (I have no idea what this is but I signed HWSNBITB up for it as a birthday surprise—don’t tell him!), a crystal steam room (this is apparently steam room, with crystals. Right? What else could it be?), a room where you can set it to rain at different levels, a Finnish sauna, multiple hydrospas, an igloo (I am not even kidding about this), and many thermal heated lounges (because you cannot get this in Florida by walking out your door).
At first, much like my character when she first finds herself being held captive in the Underworld, I was just like, “No. This is not happening.”
But then He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog was like, “I hear Turkey is very nice this time of year. Maybe we can rent a villa for a month. Turkey sounds relaxing, right?”
So then I said, “Never mind. The spa down the road for three days will be fine.”
It is VERY hard for people who like to drink a six pack of mini Coke Zeroes with her oatmeal in the morning to contemplate even a short stay at a place with something called an Herbal Laconium.
But that is where I will be, pretending to relax, because it sounds better than Turkey (no offense to anyone who is from Turkey. It’s just that I have to go to Texas in two weeks and I don’t have time to go to Turkey and back).
Updates on my progress will be posted. Unlike the Underworld, spas have wi-fi.
Wait.
Spas have wi-fi, don’t they????
More later.
Much love,
Meg
