Kamikaze Writing Project

I'm participating in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), so I am going to, rather than making my usual sporadic posts about the joys of motherhood and the saga of suburban living, post random excerpts of my writing here. Here is the first:

Though I certainly didn’t wish this on her, I went back to Cheryl’s room and knocked on her door on the off chance that she was sick, too, and had something containing an anti-histamine squirreled away in her room. I knew she had Tuesdays off, and she’d gone straight to bed last night after we watched South Park together, so I knocked again when I didn’t get an answer.
“Cher, hey, you in there? Cher wake up for a sec, would you?”
After a minute or so I got a muffled grunt in response. I cracked the door open a few inches, “Hey, sorry to wake you but I was wondering if – “ I was cut off by a rapid fire series of sneezes from the pile of comforters and pillows on Cheryl’s bed. “Gesundheit. I guess that answers my first question.” I snorted and sniffed a few times as a show of solidarity. “Do you have any cold medicine in here? We seem to be cursed and there isn’t anything in the cabinet.” A wild mass of curly black hair and a pair of bleary looking brown eyes emerged from beneath one of her purple Care Bears pillows.
“We’re out?” she croaked at me, “Are you serious? I feel like ass. And death. I feel like ass death.”
“Yeah, me too. I think that stupid boy I brought home from Gossip on Saturday was a plague rat.” I pushed the door further open against the resistance of her over-flowing laundry basket and walked over, shoved a teddy bear on to the floor to clear a spot to sit on the bed next to her and plopped down. “Scootch over and give me some blankie, woman, I’m dying out here.” Cheryl wiggled herself up until she was sitting against the headboard and held up a corner of the comforter for me. I gratefully slipped my cold legs under the blanket, pressing them against her warm ones, and leaned against her shoulder. “Whose turn is it to make a store run?”
We sat silently for a few minutes, each trying to figure out the best argument for it being the other person’s turn to go to the store, the occasional sniff and cough thrown out in a bid for sympathy. Sadly, we both seemed equally snotty, so there was no clear winner of the sniffle-fest.
I had a small thrill of triumph, “Um, I think it’s your turn. Remember, I went out to Mission for burritos and Corona last weekend when you wanted to watch Once Upon A Time In Mexico?”
“True, but I did go get us ice cream and tampons on Monday night…and it was raining.”
Shit. She was right. Period supplies trump movie night food any day. Even the Johnny Depp/Antonio Banderas/carne asada combo wasn’t powerful enough to overcome tampons and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in the rain.
“Damn, you’re right. Anything else you want while I’m at the store?”
“Soup. Definitely need soup. And those little oyster cracker things. They activate the sickness fighting powers that lie dormant in canned chicken soup.”
“Totally. I read that on Wikipedia. I think there was a link to an article about the anti-oxidants in Hostess products. So, soup, crackers, tissue and cold medicine, and maybe some Home Run pies. You wanna make some tea and get out the Chiba movies while I go? I’m thinking it’s a Dragon Princess kind of morning.”
“Sounds good. Maybe with a little Street Fighter action afterward.”