It is Tuesday night December 18th at 8:11pm and she feels like writing. She feels like she has more than a few stories in her currently but if she could just pick one it would make her feel better about things.

There was a lull earlier in the night and because of this she put on too much lipstick and eyeliner. Something to break up the day for no other reason than because it was like playing dress up and because it might help chase the ideas in her head into some kind of story.

She can't just sit around wearing too much makeup and not do something with it, so she snaps a picture and then sits to write. There are several pictures that would do but she chooses the one where she looks less cute and something else. Is she looking older? Is that it, can she tell that she is starting to visibly age? Her hair silver at the temples and the lines that she has always had on her forehead since she was a rubber faced expressive teen are more noticeable or maybe it is just that they finally make sense there. These are the little details that she can tell are happening and are inevitable. She doesn't mind, she remembers when she was a teenager thinking that the 30 something Oil of Olay models always looked more beautiful than the girls in Seventeen magazine. She liked the lines and delicate cracks around their eyes. They looked more settled. Perhaps that is it, the morphing stops and the face and the body become more settled in a pleasing way. Is this acceptance? She doubts it, but wouldn't that be nice.

She is listening to an old favorite album and thinking about how simple her life really is even with the job, appointments, art career and her transatlantic relationship. She was always afraid of making it too complicated and she supposes this is why; so all of this could happen and be managed as well as it is.

She drinks hot tea because the bastards at work (she knows it was them) germs have found their way to her throat and she can feel the beginnings of something unpleasant. The edge of her cup is smeared with the extra lipstick. When this happens she knows she has put it on Robert Smith style and it only ever looks good in art photographs and music videos but in real life it looks clown like and sloppy. She doesn't care.

The album continues to play and she wants more tea. She also wants to put up her Christmas tree, decorate the house, make sugar cookies, sing carols and tell stories but that is too much trouble for just one person. But with enough tea, she might just do it for herself, for the girl in the film, the one that triumphs and has a cute little life even when alone. The one that paints the bathroom or puts new lining paper in the cupboards and makes some crafty gifts with the perfect labels. That is television living she thinks. She has always wanted that, to be the independent woman that never feels alone because she moves from one project to another and she knows people are watching anyway and cheering her on. She is our heroine.

She wants to be her own heroine. She has done it before and perhaps after the next cup of tea, she will do it again...

x.