Yesterday, it was Fluffy's birthday. I forgot three times that it was her birthday, after wishing her a great day in the morning. But, there is always more. In this case, I've hand-made almost every card I've given her. One year was was crayons ("My Idaho baked potato with sour cream and chives" unabashedly stolen from the Taz cartoon series), another was a painting. This year, I wrote a short essay in the shape of a birthday cake. In retrospect, if you are writing an essay in the shape of a birthday cake, it is a lot more readable if you follow some basic rules:

• Yeah, it's cute, but you don't HAVE to follow the line of frosting.
• As above, but you also don't have to write upside down to follow the curve.

I doubt she could read it, but she really liked it. And that is what's important. Next year, I'll plan a bit better on her gift. Plus, I'm running out of mediums. I've done a couple paintings, a comic book, some poems, some essays, love letters, crayons and pastels. Maybe I should convince her TV "boyfriend", George Duran, to pose for me and I can make a statue or something. Haven't worked in clay in a while.

In other news, I've been writing this short story series because I'm enjoying it, it feels good to write, and basically to basically get over that "goddess, I suck!" stage of writing. Last night, while combining the nine parts together, I realized I'm writing a novel. 20k words in basically 1.5 weeks. The character development has already gotten some nice compliments, the build-up is novel style instead of short story style--basically longer introductions, more depth in the character--and I'm even got the plot foreshadowing in. I'm at 1/4 of a short novel length and about 1/4 done with the story. I sense a pattern. I'll see how it irons out, but maybe I'll follow through with it and use that for my novel for the year.