I’m freezing and tired and just want to crawl into bed with you. I’m cranky from a day of sitting on the floor at Barnes and Noble doing research, without coffee, or even cozy clothes. I read about gardens and hemlocks, clouds, and jellyfish, and the sea-cow. Then I looked at books dedicated to color.

How many ways can I write the word "red" without saying brick, or fire, scarlet, or damn crimson? Without it sounding so damn written. Sometimes red is just red. It doesn’t have to be cranberry, cherry, strawberry, or Chinese apple red. Harlot or waitress red. But when I use it a thousand times, I’ve got to vary it up some. So it becomes academy red, radio flyer red, radicchio red (it’s not even red, by the way). Socialist, communist, admiral, brigade red. Oscar red. St. Nick red. Dog bowl red.

And that’s what’s it like living in my siren head going through the editorial process for Moose, clipping out the "suddenly"s and the adverbs. Circling the sentences that seem too much about the writing instead of the story. There’s still so much I want to cram in, but it will have to wait for tomorrow.

Then I think of my day and review it. It began at the pediatrician’s, for their one year wellness exam. The chicken pox vaccination. Chicken pox red doesn’t work either. Kill me now, okay?

And then it dawns on me that the slimnastics instructor wore a dusty rose leotard with matching sweatbands. Decidedly not red at all, but pink, in a Betty Boob, legwarmers, Jane Fonda videos, kinda way. Am I dead yet?