Once upon a time, my total m.o. was in trying to get an 'A' for effort. I hated actually *working* but became somewhat of a specialist in making it look like I was trying really hard. Not that I ever did much besides pretend. Hey, we were a lot of kids very close in age growing up. Maybe I needed the attention.

Our first trip to Europe: Rome.  Note I'm the one out in front, looking like the tour guide. — Our first trip to Europe: Rome. Note I'm the one out in front, looking like the tour guide.

Or maybe, as one of my own children (at the age of five) accused me, I'm "just mean. And LAY - ZEEE."

On the other hand, nobody wants to be normal and that word 'dissociated' sounds so post-modern and existential. Maybe that's what I was.

Whoops. Just looked up 'dissociated personality' in the Oxford Dictionaries which says it's another term for *multiple personalities*. Let's drop this.

What I was trying to get at is that it feels like I'm suffering from a hangover of that childhood behavior today: I like everybody to know how hard I work. It's embarrassing to admit. Some people like to pretend that everything just happens with a wave of the hand. I'm way over on the other end of the scale wanting everybody to ... what? Feel sorry for me? Be in awe of my stamina? Give me a break on any success cause, heck, she's killing herself!

So here I am scrambling to finish this darn HIGHLIGHTS REEL.

I fear you're sick to death of all my yammering on about it but anyway, last night we had the second power failure in three days. The first one was at midday, last night's ended at midnight. Your guess is as good as mine as to the cause because you can do all the twitter searches you want about "power outage upstate NY" to no avail. As Mr. Green shouted to me in the dark (over the generator of the people across the road) I'm probably the only person in a ten mile radius on twitter. If that.

And so today, rather than wringing my hands in bed when I woke at four in a panic, I got up and went over to my studio. (Did you catch that? I got up at four.) It wasn't long before Mother Nature proceeded to unleash the loudest crash BAMM thunder and lightning storm (with torrential downpours) for hours. We didn't lose power but, hello, guess who's still not finished with her bloody highlights reel. My tech support friend called tonight from the plane, on his way to go camping in Yosemite. Our sound editor is leaving Sunday but (I think) holding Saturday open to do the job if I can get done in time.

How are you supposed to record Louise's inner voice over a chorus of crickets that would drown out Times Square? I'm going to bed. Tomorrow is another day.

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 196 (Neither rain nor thunder nor crickets... with Everett Quinton and Marie Christine)

Go Big or Go Bust: Day 192 (on not getting enough attention as a child, power outages and a very noisy generator)