The Game is Afoot (Finally!)

Once again, I stopped posting for awhile mainly because...well, not much has happened in the past month and it has been a generally crappy month anyway. Although the weather forecasters said that the La Nina in the Pacific would bring us a mild winter in the Mid-Atlantic states, we have had to contend with some vicious cold since early December. Then we had a bizarre thundersnow blizzard which dumped eight or nine inches of very wet, very heavy snow that refused to melt because of the freezing temperatures.

This week, we finally got a reprieve with temperatures in the 50s and 60s, but there are still giant mounds of filthy snow in the parking lot of my apartment complex. Anyway, it's been just plain dreary and, to make matters worse, Geoffrey did not make contact with me during the entire month of January. I thought at first I had thrown off his game by taking matters into my own hands and getting a job at a bar in Chestertown where he was operating. We ran into each other one night while I was waitressing, and he came in with a couple of his construction buddies (Geoffrey's masquerading as a construction worker named Hank). We made eye contact, but he never said a word to me. The plan, worked out back in December, was that we would somehow become romantically involved (for pretend sake, of course). I thought for sure, once he saw me working in the bar, he would start showing up and courting me, for lack of a better term.

That did not happen.

Instead, I spent night after night, serving drinks and cleaning up vomit in the rest rooms, waiting for Geoffrey to come around. Strangely enough, I haven't really minded working in the bar. My boss, Prune, is really easy going and the patrons, for the most part, are pretty cool. You get the occasional asshole on a Saturday night, but that just gives me an excuse to practice some of my hand-to-hand skills. I think Prune appreciates having a strong arm around to handle the rowdy ones.

Outside of the bar, however, things have been just as gloomy as the weather. I've spent most of my off hours working on the novel I started back in November. Although I have the basic story down, I'm going back through, polishing and elaborating on the events. Initially, I just wrote down what happened to me during my assignment in Vermont last fall. After reading through it, though, I realized how flat it all sounded, like a dry assignment report I would submit for work. If anyone was going to want to read this, I thought, I needed to spice it up, even if I had to play fast and loose with the facts. Although the main story is what I experienced, there's some creative license on certain specifics, just to make it more fun to read. No one will believe it anyway, so I might as well turn it into a tall tale.

So that was January and a good bit of February. I was reaching a boiling point with regard to Geoffrey and I was just about to contact The Colonel for advice when, last Saturday night, who so happens to walk into the bar but Geoffrey, aka Hank. He came in with some people I hadn't seen before, three guys I would guess were about 10 years his junior. The fact that he was buying them beers probably had something to do with the easing of any generation gap, and they were getting pretty loud. I could see Prune eying them nervously from the bar, so I took the opportunity to show a little tough love to my so-called partner.

"Say, you guys wanna keep it down," I said to them. "My boss gets jittery when the decibel level gets above 150."

"Who do you think you're talkin' to?" Geoffrey barked back at me. "Do you see how much cash I'm puttin' in your register? You've got some f___in' nerve talkin' to me and my friends like that!"

Blah, blah, blah. Lots of bravado and crap. I started giving it to him right back, and the rest of the customers got kind of silent. Finally, I grabbed Geoffrey by his flannel jacket and hauled his ass out the door and into the alley.

"All right, now just what the hell is the game plan here," I yelled at him in a whispered tone so no one but him would hear. "You know I've been in this bar for a month and a half now and you've made no contact. I'm ready to bug out and head back to DC if this shit keeps up."

"Sorry, but I've been tied up," Geoffrey replied, sounding almost sheepish. A far cry from the blowhard he was playing a few minutes earlier. "I've been having trouble winning over our target. I decided to take a new approach. Did you notice the guy at my table with the red hair and denim jacket?"

"I guess."

"His name is Chester Schifflet. He's friends with our target and part of the domestic terrorist cell we're trying to crack. I thought if I could get on his good side, he might lead me to Ryan."

Ryan was the man we were really after. I was happy to at least get a progress report, such as it was, but I still felt like I was out in the cold, literally and figuratively. "So when are you bringing me in on all this?"

He beamed his winning smile and, strangely, I felt calmer. "Don't worry. Just keep doing what you're doing. Now sock me in the eye."

The way I was feeling, I was only too willing to comply. I gave him a pretty good shiner, too, given how small my fist is. We stumbled back into the bar, pretending like we had just gone a few rounds in the alley. Nursing his sore eye, Geoffrey told his friends the bar was a dive and they were better off spending their money elsewhere. At least, that's the sanitized version of what he said.

Two days later, Valentine's Day, he was back with some of his construction buddies. I was feeling slightly annoyed by the lovey-dovey couples in the bar, playing sappy songs on the jukebox and making out over their bottles of Budweiser. Valentine's Day is so annoying when you are not attached. Anyway, every time I would bring a round over to Geoffrey's table, he would make some flirtatious remark to me. At first, it caught me off guard, but soon I started giving it right back to him. To strengthen my nerve, I would take a shot of bourbon each time I went back to the bar. After a couple hours of this, I started feeling a little giddy and, yes, a tad bit horny. I started dancing around the bar, flashing some seductive glances toward Geoffrey. By the time I reached the pool table, he had raced over and wrapped me up in a pretty steamy embrace. The crowd started hooting and clapping. I had never been the focus of such a display, but it felt kinda nice.

The crazy thing was, I think Geoffrey was really into it. I've had some play-acting kisses before, and this was not one of them. I felt a little breathless afterward. Even the next morning, my knees were a little weak. I haven't seen Geoffrey since then, but I'm kind of curious what his next move will be.

Where Have I Been All This Time?

For anyone who was curious, I haven't been shot or blown up or abducted by aliens during the last month. I simply slipped into a strange holiday funk and couldn't bring myself to share my backpack of personal woes with the ether world. Only now that I've settled into a new identity and a new life can I finally work up the energy to talk a little bit.

My malaise started to envelope me shortly before Christmas. The Colonel and one of our field operatives, Geoffrey, were planning to involve me in a case Geoffrey is working on. I was to become a love interest for him during his undercover work on Maryland's Eastern Shore. I would be Carla Puckett, a slightly trashy party girl who sinks her talons into Geoffrey and becomes his constant companion. This would allow me to stay close as he develops a relationship with our targets. Anyway, intel indicated that there was no immediate threat, so The Colonel told me I could start my new assignment after the holidays. Normally this would have been good news, but this year, I knew Christmas would have to be spent with Mom's new boyfriend and his annoying daughter. As the day approached, my anxiety increased. I missed my dad and couldn't bear to make nice-nice with Mom's new "family." On Christmas Eve, I decided I had to leave. After packing my bags, I gave my mother her presents and told her I had to leave on an emergency business trip. She was stunned and a bit angry, but she took it better than I thought she would. By 9 p.m., I was in my car headed for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

No formal arrangements had yet been made for my new cover, so I was sort of winging it. I holed up in a Motel Six near Chestertown for the weekend, watching Christmas shows and football games. The heavy snow kept me pinned down for a couple days more, but I finally managed to get out and apartment hunt by the middle of the week. I found myself a little dump of an apartment to suit my cover. The heat doesn't work all that well and the electric stove takes an hour to boil a pot of water. Didn't matter. The whole dreary vibe suits my mood. Although I was using my cover name and all the fake IDs and credit cards, I didn't tell either The Colonel or Geoffrey that I was in town. I just wanted to disappear from everyone for awhile.

New Year's Eve rolled around, only exacerbating my horrid mood. If you are depressed and alone, there's nothing like a day where everyone insists you should be happy and partying to drive you further down the pit. The nicotine-stained walls of my apartment were closing in on me. By 6 p.m., I couldn't take it anymore and drove out to the first dive bar I could find.

It was relatively early, so the place was mostly empty. I ordered one of their draft beers (something that wasn't Budweiser) and sat at the bar. The bartender, whom everyone called Plum, started to talk to me. Maybe he sensed I was down and needed someone to chat with or maybe he just wanted to strike up a conversation with the only woman in the bar. Either way, Plum was a nice guy. We talked about the bad weather and how the Ravens were going to the playoffs, and then he brought up about how he'd just had a fight with one of his waitresses and she walked out on him.

"On New Year's Eve, for chrissakes," he cried. "What a bite in the ass that is! This place'll be crazy as hell in a couple of hours."

I'm not totally sure what possessed me, but I impulsively told him I would be happy to fill in for the night. In real life, I had never had a waitressing job in my life, but I figured that Carla Puckett must've had plenty of them. Somehow, I convinced myself that this would be perfectly natural.

Plum reached under the counter and tossed an apron at me. "Finish your beer. You're on duty."

The rest of the night was a blur. Having observed waitresses my whole life, I just behaved the way I thought I was supposed to. That didn't make the drink trays any lighter, or the drunken customers any easier to deal with, but it was New Year's and I was totally new, so Plum was forgiving about the broken glasses and botched drink orders. In fact, I must've done most things right because he offered me a regular job.

So that's what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks. The money's not bad, actually, even though we aren't getting the Wall Street crowd in here. Wear a low cut blouse and you can walk away with a tidy sum in tips. The smell of stale beer gets to me sometimes, and some of the guys can be annoying douchebags, but it beats doing online porn anyday.

Oh, the other thing I wanted to mention. I hadn't made contact with Geoffrey yet, but lo and behold, he just happened to walk into the bar one night out of the blue. We made eye contact, but quickly looked away so as to not tip our hands. He was there with some buddies from work. Apparently, he is now Hank, a construction worker. This was perfect. Now we can become involved and it will look completely natural. It helps that he is really cute. My spirits are lifting.

A Little Christmas Interlude

I've been busy all week doing research and having meetings to prepare for my new assignment, so I don't have much to tell you. Instead, I thought I'd share something that sent me into convulsions of laughter when I saw it a couple years ago. First, a little background:

During my college years, I always looked forward to coming home for Christmas. Even though the family homestead was only a short drive away, I lived in a dorm, mainly because I was an independent sort and wanted to be on my own as soon as possible. All the same, the holidays were one time of the year when I wanted to be close to my family, so after the semester was over, I moved back into my old room for a couple of weeks.

My mom loves Christmas music, so during the time leading up to Christmas, she would keep the radio tuned to a station that played Christmas music 24/7 between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Unfortunately, the station used some sort of music service which provided only a handful of songs that cycled over and over again, many of which weren't very good. So while I was yearning to hear about a White Christmas or that Santa Claus is Coming to Town, I was instead tortured with the insipid tale of Christmas Shoes. This manipulative, moronic song with all the quasi-rock ballad bells and whistles that only a Christian rock band can shamelessly muster haunted those Christmases like the specter of chainsaw-wielding fruitcakes. Here's the video, if you can stand it:


Horrible, right? I had already forced this Christmas nightmare from my brain when I came across this video on YouTube. It features one of my favorite comedians, Patton Oswalt, giving his take on this holiday song accompanied by some really funny animation. Be warned, this is probably not office appropriate, but it is truly hilarious!



Only 14 more shopping days 'til Christmas!

November is Finally Over!

Sorry I've been mostly absent from the Twitterverse this week. I spent most of the weekend and almost all of Monday and Tuesday writing like a crazy person, trying to meet the all important goal of 50,000 words in order to win NaNoWriMo. Sometime around 9 p.m. on Tuesday evening, I passed that number of words and finished the chapter I was working on with a couple hundred words to spare. As quickly as I could, I hopped onto the NaNoWriMo Web site and uploaded my manuscript so their automated word counter could officially count the length of my novel thus far. How thrilled I was to be bumped to a new page which said, "Congratulations!" It was such a rush to feel that sense of accomplishment. I have never written a story of this length in my life, and it still isn't finished.

Of course, the fear is that I won't finish it. I've dropped projects before, but this one feels really important to me. Not only do I want the sense of accomplishment which will no doubt come from completing a novel, I want this story to be told. I may catch hell from my superiors, but I do hope to have it published some day.

Outside of the novel writing, I took some time out on Saturday to do a little fence mending with my mother's boyfriend's daughter. I was concerned that I may have misjudged Roxanne, or at least judged her too harshly, when she was at our house for Thanksgiving. Perhaps the tornado of emotions I was feeling that day clouded my faculties and my impression of her as a shallow, spoiled bitch was not altogether fair. I was feeling a bit guilty about how things had gone, so I called her on Friday to make a date for lunch and some shopping before she went back to college. To my surprise, she had not picked up on any hostility from me on Thursday and accepted my offer cheerfully, as if we had gotten along just fine the day before.

Anyway, I picked her up at Mr. Huggins house and we went to Lebanese Taverna. After having eaten Thanksgiving dinner two days in a row (thanks to an overabundance of leftovers), I wanted a meal distinctly different from the All-American Feast. Roxanne was not so enthusiastic. While I ordered an array of appetizers from meat pies to lamb tartare to calamari, Roxanne ordered a fairly ordinary house salad and a yogurt dip. This I could have lived with - it's not my place to just people's eating habits after all - if she hadn't been so ridiculously rude to the very polite waiter.

Not only was she abrupt and dismissive, she noticed on the menu that, instead of hummus, they used the variation spelling of hommos. This led to some loud cackling and embarrassing jokes like, "Look, they have a trio of hommos (pronouncing it ho-mos). Maybe they can come over to my house and organize my closet!"  

Being rude to wait staff is a huge pet peeve of mine. Since you have to interact with the waiter or waitress frequently during the course of the meal, I almost view them as another dining guest. As such, I want to be  warm and welcoming to them, just as I expect them to be warm and welcoming toward me. If one is barking orders at the waiter like he is a common slave, the waiter is obviously not going to feel at ease, nor is anyone else sitting at the table. Therefore, the service will likely suffer and the whole experience is uncomfortable. Needless to say, Roxanne made me uncomfortable and I felt sorry for the soft spoken and clearly injured waiter who had to endure her needlessly rude antics. Besides, he was about her age and very cute. She could've gotten a date out of it if she had played her cards right.

But, alas, I guess she feels she is above such people. God knows why she would think that. She's still in college; she hasn't done anything with her life yet. Moreover, she's the daughter of a high school principal! Get off your high horse, Missy!

After lunch, I wanted to leave Roxanne at the curb, but I soldiered on with our shopping. She generally bitched and griped the whole time about the crowds (it was Black Friday Plus 1, after all), the poor selection of merchandise, and my apparently questionable level of taste when it came to clothes. Granted, I've never been much into fashion, but her snobby attitude wore on my last raw nerve. By the end of the day, I swore never to speak to this woman ever again, which will be quite tricky with the holidays only weeks away.

With a new assignment looming, I'm actually praying that I will have to go undercover and disappear before Christmas. As much as I will miss my mom, I just can't deal with this new family she has surrounded herself with. Moving on feels like the better option right now.

Thanksgiving - The Aftermath

I'm still nursing a hangover as I write this, so bear with me. The tension of spending Thanksgiving with people who are essentially strangers got the best of me, I guess, and I drank more than I should have. Now I'm left feeling like there's cotton in my head and a hole in my heart.

Thanksgiving morning started out like most others I spent at home. I put the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on the tube and watched the festivities while Mom and I got the bird in the oven and prepped the other dishes. I was beginning to get that warm and fuzzy feeling I used to have about the holidays when I was a kid. Then Mr. Huggins and his daughter came over.

I've gotten used to Mr. Huggins at this point. He's not such a bad guy. Not someone I would willingly go out to have a drink with, but decent enough in small doses. Since my mom has become quite serious about him, I've learned to accept him. His daughter Roxanne, whom I just met yesterday, is a different matter altogether. Even though she's only eight years younger than I, it felt like we were light years apart. She came all decked out in some trashy looking mini-dress and too much jewelry. In fact, it was too much everything: too much makeup, too much attitude, and too much chatter. Talkative people are not a problem if they have interesting things to say, but more often than not, the people who dominate conversations have the most banal things to talk about, and they go on about them in excruciating detail.

Roxanne should have her own reality TV show, because she is as shallow and insipid as any Kardashian girl and embodies everything that is wrong with our country, in my humble opinion. The Irish government is on the brink of economic collapse, but the U.S. news can't be bothered to cover that because they have to tell us that Jessica Simpson is engaged or Lindsey Lohan is in rehab again. Roxanne filled us in on all the gossip, along with what's in fashion this season and numerous other details I couldn't care less about. And she did it in that exasperating girly dialect where every sentence sounds like a question: "So I went to Sephora the other day? To see if they had the new fragrance by Jennifer Lopez?" I feel like I'm being quizzed on my telepathic ability. After 20 minutes of that crap, I made a tall shaker full of cranberry martinis and polished it off myself.

The meal itself turned out pretty well. Mom's had years of practice and I'm a capable sous chef, but of course we had to forgo Mom's legendary stuffing because Mr. Huggins wanted to bring his own. Okay, I suppose, but there was some strange sweet bit in there, like raisins or something. Not the same. After dessert, I excused myself and retreated to my room. I used my novel writing as an excuse, but I really wanted to escape.

It's obvious to me that the life I knew before the Navy is gone. I took for granted that everything at home would stay the same and that I could retreat to it whenever I was finished with my wanderlust. Now I know that that's not the case. Dad has moved on to the Great Beyond and Mom has moved on with another family. A family I do not want to be a part of. I have to move out of this house and get back to forging my own life, but I don't want to apartment shop just yet. Not with the potential for a new undercover assignment looming in the very near future. Our man Geoffrey has struck up a friendship with our target, and it looks like it's just about time for Geoffrey to find a girlfriend.

But that will have to wait. I have four more days to finish 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo and I'm a little over 40,000 right now. This weekend will be nothing but writing, writing, writing. Wish me luck.

Preparing for Thanksgiving

My novel has been the main priority this week, as I felt like I was falling behind with my word count. I spent most of the weekend holed up in my bedroom pounding away on my laptop. Then I wrote as much as I could at work and during the evenings this week. I'm now at over 30,000 words, but I'm still not sure if I can make it to 50K by the end of November.

Meanwhile, there's still no word about when or if I will be joining agent Geoffrey on his current assignment. He's currently based in Chestertown on Maryland's Eastern Shore, trying to work his way into the good graces of our target. I'm hoping he will choose to bring me in for back-up. It's no secret to anyone who's read this blog that I feel like I'm in office purgatory right now and want desperately to get back in the field. Of course, it would help if I didn't get called in to action until after November, so I can finish this NaNoWriMo activity.

And then there's Thanksgiving coming up. All my enthusiasm for the season is slowing waning as our first Thanksgiving dinner without my father approaches. Last year was the first time in many years that I was able to be with my family on Thanksgiving. During my five years in the Navy, I was always deployed somewhere else during the holidays, but I got used to that. It wasn't until we were all together again that I realized how much I missed being with my family and going through all the usual rituals. It gave me a sense of continuity with my past and was sort of comforting to know that, no matter how much my life had changed in other ways, family and tradition would always be there. Then Dad passed away and that sense of security went with  it.

I was hoping Mom and I could still continue those traditions, like eating toast and tea while watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Then there was all the cooking details: peeling potatoes, cleaning the string beans, and checking on the turkey in the oven. Mom would use the gizzards and other internal bits of the bird to make the most fantastic stuffing. Dad usually handled the turkey carving duties, but I figured I could do that this year. I'm pretty good with a knife.

I even thought we might try to lure some of our relatives from out of state, like Aunt Trudy and cousin Bill and his wife, to come to our home since it would just be Mom and I, but that went out the window when Mom declared that Mr. Huggins would be coming to dinner. It was probably inevitable, given how close my mother had become to my one-time high school principal, but somehow it felt like an invasion. The matter took a turn for the worst when Mom told me Mr. Huggins' daughter Roxanne was coming home from college to be with us. Now, instead of a cozy family gathering, it's going to be an awkward dinner party with me scrambling to conjure up lies about my occupation and Mom telling embarrassing stories about my childhood.

Just to add the final insult, Mom tells me yesterday that Mr. Huggins wants to make his own special stuffing. Apparently, this was his big contribution to their Thanksgiving feast every year, and he wants to hang onto this connection from the past. I guess they didn't realize that my eating Mom's fantastic stuffing was my connection with the past. Oh well, I survived Iraq, I can survive this. He just better not put raisins or something weird in there.

I'll let you know how everything went next week. In the meantime, have a terrific Turkey Day and while you're counting your blessings on Thanksgiving, don't forget the blessing of freedom.

Restless No More!

What a difference a few days makes! Last Sunday, I was flying high from watching the Baltimore Ravens beat the Miami Dolphins at M&T Bank Stadium. This morning, I'm bemoaning the last minute loss by the Ravens to the Atlanta Falcons. Football season is not for the faint of heart.

Actually, I'm enjoying this fall more than I have in previous years. My summer in Las Vegas was something like a fever dream, and I can see now that being pulled out of there was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. My mission in Vermont was an incredible, mind-bending experience which I am now chronicling in the novel I am writing (20K words so far), and living back home with Mom is giving me a chance to appreciate the way my life was before joining the Navy. After taking a good long gander at those greener grasses, it's easier for me to realize how nice my life was growing up, and it makes me wonder what I was fighting against as a teen.

Who am I kidding? I know exactly what I was fighting: my own eternal sense of restlessness. I get bored easily, and a life of routine quickly wears on my nerves. I got so bored last week that, before going to the Ravens game, I dyed purple highlights in my hair. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but as I was leaving the stadium, I realized my boss The Colonel would not approve.

Sitting in my cubicle on Monday, I waited for The Colonel to stroll by and catch a glimpse of me. As I expected, he gave me a long, judgmental stare, but did not say a word. My stomach sank. I was expecting to see a memo circulate regarding proper office attire and grooming. It never came though, and he made no further mention of it.

Later in the week, I discovered why. The Colonel called me into a meeting yesterday. The regular support staff were on holiday for Veterans Day, so the building was eerily quiet and most of the overhead lights were turned off to save on electricity. When I reached The Colonel's office, I was shocked to see him wearing a polo shirt and khaki slacks rather than his usual gray suit (is it the same suit or multiple, identical suits?). Butterflies were already in my stomach because one of the attendees listed on the appointment e-mail was Geoffrey, the handsome operative I'd seen walking in and out of the boss's office for the past couple weeks.

When he arrived, I was slightly disappointed to see that his hair had grown out to an unruly length. What little curl his hair had was pulled down by the weight of his locks and it looked slightly dirty. Even worse was the cheesy, Burt Reynolds mustache he was cultivating. Despite all that, his penetrating eyes and easy smile were still plainly evident and my heart tapped my stomach for an instant. I know it all sounds like silly, schoolgirl stuff, but trust me, he's that hot!

Anyway, the reason we were in this meeting, along with a couple of intelligence analysts, was to discuss a new operation we were laying out to get inside a homegrown terrorist cell on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I can't reveal any details right now, but it involves some Caucasian, working-class people with extreme hatred for the U.S. government. Geoffrey was already making moves to get in with the group, hence his new, shabby appearance. I was being briefed because The Colonel believed that he may need a second undercover operative in place to support Geoffrey. Apparently, when he saw my purple-streaked hair, he thought I had just the right look for the part. Strange how these things work out.

I'm being held in reserve for the time being until Geoffrey can get a better lay of the land and a bigger sting operation can be worked out, but it looks like I'll soon be working closely with Geoffrey on a top priority assignment! With this news and the impending holidays, I'm really happy for the first time in quite a long while. The restlessness can be put in closet again.