So, I've been talking about writing something for a long time. Among my catalogue of ideas:
- a young adult series featuring super cool pre-teen amalgams of Ramona Quimby, Kristy Thomas, and Nancy Drew
- a Choose-Your-Own Manifesto that has you make hardcore philosophical choices in order to determine your natural politico-religious tendencies
- an Allende-style saga exploring three generations of women and dancing.

But I finally have an idea that I am ready to act on. This fabulous idea has suppressed my appetite and filled my morning and afternoon. And I realize... I have no idea how to write fiction. But I am going to try anyway. We all must start somewhere.

Here's a story for you in the mean time extracted from the weird dreams that entertain me while I sleep.

O Bill Murray!
By Mandounette's Subconscious Mind

I have been transported to a Canadian winter sometime in the 1970s. I am in the suburbs of some big Canadian city like Ottawa or Toronto or Edmonton. I am a single mother, who doesn't seem to be too upset by the absence of the father of her 8-month old boy named Vincent. He's a pretty cool baby. He laughs a lot, has big brown eyes and is completely bald. It is Christmas time and I go to a suburban shopping center (or centre I should say as we are in Canada) where a street performer--who is in fact a 25 year-old Bill Murray--catches Vincent's eye. The Bill Murray busker makes the baby laugh and Bill Murray asks me, "Do you think I am funny?" I reply (as I am conscious that I have been transplanted from the future), "You're going to be a huge star."
"Yes, but am I funny?"
"The baby thinks so." (Vincent is laughing hysterically.) I start to walk away.
"But do YOU think I am funny." Looking over my should, the baby in my arms, I shout back in a coy sorta way, "A little."

As I am walking home--the grass between the sidewalk and the street studded with little piles of stale plowed snow and a white-gray sky--Vincent begins to disintegrate, leaving behind only a little bean, like what Jack must have gotten to grow his beanstalk. I am heartbroken. The center of my life and the little person I loved more than anything had turned into a bean! I promised to never lose the bean and to never forget Vincent.

Baby out of the picture, I return to the shopping center to see Bill Murray. He asks me to lunch and takes me to this Swedish restaurant that is decked out in magenta velour with little round tables hidden from each other by matching sheer curtains. Later, on the phone to a girlfriend living in 2006, I mock him, "You should have seen this kitschy place he took me too! It was sooo 70s."
"Well, you are living in the 70s," modern friend reminds me.
"Right…"

The mocking was more of a gentle teasing anyway. So when Bill Murray calls to ask me to dinner, I agree. When he asks me where I want to go, I say, "McDonald's, definitely McDonald's."
"You're easy to please."
Honestly, I didn't know if I was ready to start dating, considering I was still mourning my son-cum-bean, and McDonald's seemed the least seductive of options.

I hear a knock on the door of my first floor brown and orange, fully-carpeted (even the walls it seems) railroad apartment in an old Victorian house. I open the door and the storm door only to find one of Bill Murray's friends--who is in fact a young Dan Aykroyd--on my stoop. He is very friendly. He says that Bill told him to meet him here. I offer him a drink. He asks for straight gin.

Bill Murray is late and Dan Aykroyd is getting tipsy. He starts getting aggressive. I manage to wrestle the now stumbling Dan Aykroyd out of the apartment and I lock the doors. He is pounding to get in. I call Bill Murray in a panic and he says he will be right over. He arrives, shouts that he is going to drive Dan Aykroyd home and then come pick me up to go to McDonald's. The story ends with a happy couple eating parsley and french fries at the local MickeyD's. As I add more salt to my fries, I think, Thank heavens for Bill Murray.