I Dub Thee "Herman the Moulien"* (pronunciation updated)

So I have a (perhaps foolish) goal to submit at least two pieces of writing every month for publication this year. Yeah, yeah, I know...but it's not a sparkler-and-champagne induced resolution thing like losing weight or some other random general "goal." 

I'd like to say I have a really specific goal, such as writing 1k words every day for a year. But reality is a salty bitch, and I flat out don't have that sort of drive for anything (it's a goal I've tried in the past). 

What I DO have is a 2014 Dragons calendar with fantastic and varied artwork, all of which inspires at least one short story. I have a list of essays/article possibilities. I have two regular outlets for contest submissions both quarterly and monthly. And I am armed with a very large spreadsheet to track all this shit so I can pretend i'm an organized soul. 

I am not organized...you should see my desk. 

Anyway, yesterday was 1/31, and therefore (of course) I was doing last-minute revisions and changes because I had a invite to submit an essay in my email last THURSDAY, and the Glimmer Train monthly contest due by last night with a story only 3/4 finished. 

Why do you care? You probably don't...I probably wouldn't were I you. However, I'm behind on the blog posts I want to write (oh YES there is a spreadsheet tab for those, too) and I'm just too damn worn out today to give you a real/entertaining/funny thing that's in any cohesive form. So, that's my explanation why the rest of this post is completely random shit that isn't big enough for a real post, so it's mishmashed into this one. (Screw you spellchecker: I vote that if "selfie" can live in the Oxford English Dictionary, so can "mishmashed" so there. And how. Neener.)

• My backyard looks like a Honduran jungle. This is not a euphemism for something dirty (I'm looking at YOU and your filthy mind, of which I wholly approve): I do not mean any part of my own person, but the actual fenced-in area behind my living space in which grass and some sort of weird weeds have attempted to swallow the dogs in the past week. Unfortunately, our lawn dude seems to have vanished. I'm afraid of toes and lawn mowers...also, I've never seen the Honduran jungle...so maybe I should correct that and say Mexican or Trini (I've seen those, and so am not a liar). 
• The visitor in our house who appears to have made its home UNDER the cabinet below the kitchen sink has not only eaten every fucking roach trap in the house and NOT died, as any polite rodent would do, but it also chewed into the bag of potatoes and ate some of one. Sigh. Bastard. 
• Herman (I don't know if it's a rat or a mouse or an alien...moulien? at this point, since the fucking thing eats roach poison and doesn't die but it avoids the mouse/rat bait like a damn champ) scared the shit out of my polar bear dog the other night. He tik-tik-tiked out to he kitchen at about 3am (DEMON hour, people) on the tile, there was some indiscriminate scrabbling (I couldn't tell which critter was trying to run, but I can imagine both the Moulien AND Chewy facing opposite directions in the kitchen, legs pumping like mad on the slippery tile and going absolutely nowhere), and eventually Chewy ran back into the bedroom. Of course he came to MY side of the bed, plopped his giant noggin on my pillow and breathed like a stalker all up in my face. I told him to go back to bed...he sighed heavily like I was a lazy bitch and don't I see he's TRYING to tattle here? and lay down on the floor next to my side of the bed. 
• Herman is still out there. I'm considering dipping the poison in peanut butter or nutella or something. Maybe potato slices, since he seems to enjoy russets. He's probably a Rodent of Unusual Size waiting to get my toes while I'm cooking one day. As if I don't have ENOUGH trouble with balance as I already am. 
• Yesterday, I spent most of my afternoon spelling the word "labyrinth" about seventeen thousand different ways seven different ways. Each was incorrect. The caption for the art I was using as inspiration was DIRECTLY in front of me on my desk while I wrote. The caption? "The Dragon's Labyrinth." Awesome. 
• Yesterday, I received one of the best compliments I've ever had about a paragraph I wrote. That's not a funny vignette: just a random moment in which I thought "huh, maybe I don't suck that bad at this" and it made my day. 

And on that note, I'm off to play Mario 3D while sports are happening on the TV. I'm only interested in the Superbowl outcome to find out whether Captain America or Star Lord lost the bet anyway.

*Husband says I should clarify. "Moulien" = mouw-lee-in (mouse/alien). Apparently the mental translation "moo-lee-in" also comes to mind, and makes even less sense than the gibberish I normally accomplish.