{"id":779,"date":"2010-11-26T12:08:14","date_gmt":"2010-11-26T18:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/?p=779"},"modified":"2010-11-26T12:08:14","modified_gmt":"2010-11-26T18:08:14","slug":"its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/?p=779","title":{"rendered":"It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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26. A photo of you at Christmastime. 12\/24\/1979. An unhealthy addiction to video games is born.<\/p><\/div>\n

34 Christmastimes have produced a bunch of choice pictures. I debated sharing one of the photos from my awkward years – long hair, baseball hat, bad skin, ugly sweater, stone washed jeans, high tops, etc. – but I have a particular love for this photo. We’re in Pittsburgh at Grandmommy and Granddaddy’s (Mom’s parents’) house. Dad and I are playing my brand new handheld baseball video game (well, it was all LEDs and beeping noises, but still) on Christmas Eve. I am wearing my brand new “Mork” suspenders. I dig the closeness, the father-son nature of this picture. Not pictured is a bigger family bond — my Jewish-raised-then-Unitarian-living father celebrating (in a secular manner) Christmas with his wife and kids and his wife’s parents. The year before is even more interesting: Grandma and Grandpa (Dad’s parents) also joined us there. 2 Jews, 2 Presbys and 4 Unitarians, all getting together and hanging out.<\/p>\n

Well, it’s just kinda cool.<\/p>\n

Word count: 42,302 (84.6%)<\/p>\n

Here is the brand new beginning of the novel, required to round out what will eventually become the end of the story.<\/p>\n

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The cicadas are here, hovering about my head, mating on the wing, getting ready to die. I am too, I suppose. Getting ready to die, that is. I wish I could say I had a good run at it, but that just wouldn’t be true. It would be nothing more than a comforting lie, an attempt to placate myself at the very end. It would serve no other purpose but to make these last few weeks, or days, or minutes — there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no telling how much longer there is — more bearable.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

34 Christmastimes have produced a bunch of choice pictures. I debated sharing one of the photos from my awkward years – long hair, baseball hat, bad skin, ugly sweater, stone washed jeans, high tops, etc. – but I have a particular love for this photo. We’re in Pittsburgh at Grandmommy and Granddaddy’s (Mom’s parents’) house. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[257,265,128,16,126,230],"class_list":["post-779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nanowrimo","tag-aphotoaday","tag-christmas","tag-dad","tag-excerpt","tag-family","tag-word-count"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.illinoir.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}