Deadline Fever

I'm supposed to be working on a story to submit to the 2009 Palancas before the end of the month, but here I am listening to a funk/house version of The Smiths' "Stop Me", nursing a stomach ache from eating too many cheetos with my coffee, blogging. It's the first time in weeks that I haven't been sent a translation job, the perfect opportunity to spend one full day on earnest work for the contest closest to my heart, but for some reason I could only manage to tap out two and a half paragraphs and get as far as page three of what may end up a seven-page manuscript. The rest of my day I spent dawdling over my email, catching up on the news via Yahoo, watching the first half of 50 First Dates while drying my hair, daydreaming about a man in a blue shirt and a white coat, fiddling with the budget (yay! I'm in the black) and defrosting the refrigerator. Who knows, maybe I can muster enough activity in my lump of fungus for a brain to cobble two more paragraphs before I lose consciousness this evening, and thereby hook a finger into page four. It's only 10:58 PM anyway, and there's time yet to spend in front of this machine. But first, dinner (the holy week staple of chicken afritada swimming in tomato broth), and then a small stack of paperwork from the office. And then it's the Palancas all the way till 2AM. I swear. Unless there's something interesting on Youtube.