stalin, the bolshevik and my glass baby

sometimes when i look kids' records up on the computer i am unclear as to what is their first name and what is their middle name. obviously it should go Last Name, First Name Middle Name. but sometimes it's in the wrong order. so when a young man came up to read down his fines and i looked up his record only to find it read smith, stalin frederick ... i could only assume that this was a mistake. i prayed that this child was really named frederick stalin smith (names have been changed to protect the innocent).

i know i am dating a commie and all, but really ... naming your child stalin? maybe that means something different in latino cultures that i am not aware of? but i digress. young stalin is off in a corner, reading a captain underpants book ...

as many of you may already know, my beloved bolshevik has set off for several weeks of world travel SANS everyone's favorite bibliophile, miss dewey d. so unfair. but before he left, i promised that i would email him my novel (in progress) so that he could read it on the plane on his way to the land down under. this may not seem like a big deal, but it kinda is ...

you see, many moons ago when i first started dating the bolshevik, he had asked me if he could read my novel. and i said, "oh no, you can't see it. it's my baby ... it's fragile." then the bolshevik, being the logician that he is, said that babies are not actually fragile. they're quite resilient. you can drop them even. (note to parents: do not hire the bolshevik as your babysitter) then i changed my stance, saying that my novel was fragile, like glass ... like a glass baby. and since that time i have been rather strict about not letting the bolshevik read my novel.

so last week when i was getting it all together for him i was quite curious to see just how much novel i actually had. well, lo and behold i have 40,000 words! typically, novels start at about 70,000 words. so this means that i am officially half-way done! you see, i've been telling people i'm about half-way done, but i thought i was lying. kind of like when you get so used to adding a half-inch to your height, that you forget you're not actually that height. not that i do that. i'm totally 5'7''. moving on! so it was exciting to see that i actually am half-way through, and not just lying to everyone.

in other news i've been riding my bike to and from work (about 11 miles round-trip) in hopes of returning to the long lost svelteness. there has been little progress on that front. grrrr.

ok, mr. smith came back and his first name is in fact stalin. crazy.

and that is my life.