Words: meh...
Caffeine: ask me again later
Evil Calories: Heath Bar cookies
Bad Reality TV: ANTM reruns
Oh, my poor neglected little blog. Thanks to my super-awesome writer friend Ray Veen, I'm finally giving you some much needed attention. Awesome guy Ray nominated me for a super special blog award.
Ain't it purty? So,in order for me to accept, I must:
1. Thank the person who gave you the award and link them.
2. Add the award to your blog.
3. Tell six outrageous lies about yourself and one truth.4. Nominate six creative liars ... I mean, writers and link them.5. Let your nominees know they've been nominated.
So, first, I'd like to thank Ray, who is totally my hero. He's an amazing, talented writer and his resilience and devotion to the craft is inspiring. Plus, he drinks Guinness and aspires to live in a castle with robots. See? Super cool dude.
Next, the outrageous lies and the one truth. I'll let you figure out which is which.
1. My dad works for a secret, highly classified department of the government. I know the truth about UFOs and have proof that Ryan Seacrest is an evil hybrid android hungry for deviled eggs and human flesh. When my sister and I were little, we had our fingerprints permanently burned off for security reasons. It kinda hurt, but they gave us blue Rocket Pops after, which made it all okay.
2. I once broke my pinky toe simply by sneezing and hiccuping at the same time. I later found out that this is very common.
3. I used to live a haunted house in New York. One night my Grandma was staying with us and she said I walked into her room saying I was scared and that I wanted to sleep with her. She said I crawled into her bed, but when she rolled over a few minutes later, there was no one there. Then corpses started floating in our pool and my sister got sucked into the TV.
4. My mother is obsessed with geese. She has a strange, ethereal connection with them. It's a beautiful thing to witness. Seriously, brings tears to the eyes, people.
5. I'm a total right wing conservative. Ann Coulter is my hero. Her soul is so blindingly pure. Like snow, really. One day I hope to be just like her.
6. The following are my favorite bands of all time: Offspring, Nickelback, Hinder and Puddle of Mud.
7. I hate traveling. Especially to Las Vegas. Worst. City. Ever.
Now, I know the six creative liars I nominate should be fellow bloggers, but I'm going to do things a bit different. Mostly because I have a Pop Tart in the toaster and don't have a whole lot of time. So, here goes:
Of course, I have to nominate my super fabulous sister, Amy Ellis. I'd also like to nominate my son, who doesn't have a blog but makes amazing shit up all time (ie. the cat ate my X-wing so we need to go to Toys R Us to get another one). Then there is my awesome husband, who tries to convince me he didn't delete my episodes of Barefoot Contessa off the DVR to make room for more racing shows on the Speed Channel. Next, I'll go for the barista at my Starbucks who claims he giving my non-fat milk when I know it's really 2% (don't worry pal, I'll send you my liposuction bills). Actually, I'd like to nominate him twice, since he always tells me to have a "super delicious day". That's just weird. And I don't believe him. I think he wants me to really have a fat, sour, bloated day. And lastly, I'd like to nominate Maggie, my dear friend from high school, who told me, after getting the worst spiral perm known to man, that my hair looked good. I'll never forget that. She's good people.
(I thought those were the correct lyrics to Winter Wonderland until about a year ago. Yep. I should really consider donating by brain to science.)
Words: shit-tons
Caffeine: midafternoon mocha
Evil Calories: Fudge, fudge and fudge. With a little fudge. Oh, and fudge.
First of all, since I know you're all planning to buy me Christmas presents, let's clear up any confusion. I do not need soap (or any incarnation of soap ie. body wash, body oil, body scrub, body butter, body brine, body engine coolant, body fertilizer etc). Nor do I need a dry heave-inducing sweater from the clearance rack at Sears. I know it's tempting because it's only 75 cents, but seriously, just walk away. I also have little need for a porcelain statue of a droopy eyed dog with a bonnet in its mouth. Yes, I know. I'm dead inside.
I do, however, need this:
Yes. It's a Princess Leia Polly Pockets fashion set. My favorite part is the little framed picture of Han Solo. Though, just between you and me, I doubt Princess Leia would ever have a framed picture of Han on her wall. That's just not how she rolls.
I would also settle for a Chia Pet, a Snuggie (zebra print, please) or the Clapper.
On another note, you all may (or probably not at all) be wondering what's going on with my writing. It's funny, because I notice that when I'm heavy into my writing, I rarely blog about it, and when I barely manage to eek out a paragraph over a three month span, I'll yap about my writing incessantly. So, read between the lines. I'm not talking about my writing. (Okay, well I am right now, but I'm just trying to make a point.) Not talking about my writing, meaning, things are moving, progressing, and I see something, sparkling off in the distance. Actually not in the distance. A lot closer than in the distance. We'll call it "just up ahead and slightly on the left".
SHAZAM! is all I have to say about that.
And lastly, I'd just like to take this opportunity to wish you, my faithful reader, bonnes fêtes, which, thanks to my awesome sister and her drive-by, ambush emailed French lessons, I now know means "happy holidays".
Words: 1245
Caffeine: morning cup + midday cinnamon spiced tea
Evil Calories: Milkshake from the Sander's store at the mall. Don't know what came over me. I blame Jon and Kate Goslin. Just cuz.
You know what I love? The mall at Christmas. Yes, it's a complete zoo and the parking lots alone are like an episode of American Gladiators, but there's a certain charm to it that I cannot resist. Of course, I love the decorations and the music and hung over Santa who looks like he's going to honk Milwaukee's Best all over a set of triplets in matching pink dresses. But what I really love are the people. You know which people I'm talking about, right? The little old ladies in high water green pants with their purses strapped around their shoulders, triple knotted and bungee corded to their waists to stave off the pickpockets after the thirty-two cents in their wallets (I can make fun because I will be one of these goofy old bats one day). The dude in the mustard stained Tasmanian Devil Harley-Davidson t-shirt sucking on a Super Big Gulp as he gawks at the sale window in Spencer Gifts. The angry man in ill-fitting slacks and a comb over. No one knows what has made him so mad. You'd think relying on four wispy strands of hair to give the illusion of a full quaff would make you more of a "glass half full" person, but no. He's pissed, and dammit, and you best get the f!@# out of his way, pronto! Then there's the disgruntled MAC girl on her fifteen, stuck in line at Starbucks behind an elderly couple who look as if they haven't left their house since 1972 and want to know what "expresso" is. And then my personal favorite, the people who decide to have defcon-5 shit-fits on the poor, underpaid sales people. I know it's frustrating when your 50% off coupon from 1987 is no longer valid, but that's no reason to go all Gary Busey. You do realize there are people who live with war in their countries, right? Just pay for your crap and SHUT IT.
I'm sensitive because I was once one of these poor, underpaid sales people. I lived in the Bay Area and worked at a Gloria Jeans in the mall in my late teens. One Christmas, I actually had a woman pour a Mocha on me because we didn't have the cow-in-a-moo-moo sugar and creamer set she was looking for. And then there was the guy who told me I'd live a long, sad, lonely life and die in a gutter with rats eating at my eyes because I wouldn't call the Gloria Jeans in San Francisco (who we had NO affiliation with) and have someone drive a pound of Jamaican Blue Mountain to his mother's house in Berkley. Cuz, you know, it's totally normal for a coffee shop to make house calls.
I'm much happier now just being a distant observer of the coo-coo pants behavior. (Though...okay, I DID elbow my way into the line at Starbucks and made the tween in front of me paranoid about her weight just to get my hands on the last banana chip muffin, but that's it. Other than that, I've been totally sane.)
Words: 1543
Caffeine: Harney & Sons Holiday Tea
Evil Calories: Someone please take the bag of Halloween candy. Please. My fat pants are starting to feel tight
I'm trying to decide whether or not it's good to get feedback when you're in the middle of your WIP. Even if you're on a second or third rewrite. It's sort of like getting dressed up, and asking someones opinion on how you look before you've had a chance to do your make up and put your shoes on. Without these final little details, you can look like a total shlump. And if you were to take someones advice to change your dress or wear your hair differently to avert any possible shlumpiness, you may end up not looking as fabulous as you could have had you stuck with your original plan.
I'm thumb wrestling with idea of sending my WIP out to a few trusted sources to get some feedback. Mostly because I feel like my WIP and I are floating out on the ocean in a bubble a million miles away from civilization. I'm pretty sure my writing has structure and that there is, in fact, a mildly entertaining story there somewhere, but I could really use a few smoke signals or a reassuring call from a coconut telephone.
Or maybe I just need donuts. With sprinkles. Yes, maybe that's all I really need.
On another note...how are all my Nano-ing mates doing? Feel like putting your head in the waffle maker yet? Yep. Me too.
Words: 1000
Caffeine: skipped morning cup altogether and went straight for a cappuccino because the boy woke me up at 6:00 to tell me that Spongebob doesn't have nipples. Don't ask me to explain because I cannot.
Evil Calories: was forced to eat chicken mcnuggets for lunch. They. Are. Disgusting.
Before I go into detail about the wickedness that will soon be invading my soul, I'd like to just take a quick moment to talk to my treadmill.
Dear treadmill aka Lucifer - You're fired. We've been doing this for many, many months now, and I look nothing like the girl on the infomercial. Screw you and the sales guy at Sears who claimed you were the most effective machine on the market. You're shaped funny and sometimes you smell like rubber scented poo. I hate you. Go away.
Anyhoo...
So, in just one week, I will once again be subjecting myself to the mind altering, soul squishing, self-esteem destroying phenomenon known as NaNoWriMo. (If you don't know what NaNoWriMo is, go here.) Now, there are some people I know who claim that the 50K word goal is a total cake walk, but for us normal humans, 50K words in 30 days is a-freakin'-lot. That averages to about 1600 words a day. This can often result in bouts of hysterical crying and cramming pencils into your eye. Even with the best word sprinting schedule, at some point you end up totally Barton Finking out. That being said...YOU SHOULD DO IT! It's a great creative work out and at the end you find yourself with the makings of a novel (I said makings. Meaning, mostly it will look like a steaming pile of garbage, but in between the moldy socks and stinky banana peels, you'll find some sparkly little nuggets of joy).
If you are NaNo-ing, please add me as your buddy so we can go coo-coo together. Then go visit my sister, Amy Ellis at Girlworks, and convince her to do it, too. She thinks she can be all relaxed during the month of November while I descend into the seventh level of creative hell. Ummm, no way. If I'm going down, I'm taking her with me!
Daily Stats:Words: yep
Caffeine: morning cup so far
Evil Calories: made homemade caramel sauce last night, and for a brief moment I thought I was going to set myself on fire, but I didn't and it was super yummy with Empire apples.
Due to minor technical difficulties, and the fact the blogger seems to have teamed with the forces of bad hair days to work against me, my banner seems to have disappeared. A normal person with wits and forethought would have their banner in a file somewhere on their computer as back up, but I am not a normal person with wits and forethought. I sometimes where my slippers outside and have occasionally put my outgoing mail into the return slot at the library. So, until I can figure out which portable hard drive my banner file is hiding on, I'm going simple (meaning I'm far too lazy to actually walk upstairs into the office, turn the light on and look around).
By the way, has anyone noticed that it's FALL???!!!! My oh-so-favorite holiday ever. Crisp leaves, pumpkin spice lattes, cider mills and fresh-out-of-the-fryer-then-eat-four-and-go-directly-to-the-hospital donuts. And, of course, Halloween. There is no measure for this love I have for Halloween. Maybe if you lined up cupcakes and about 400 Clive Owens, you could get a vague idea. And naturally, whenever anything Halloween related is on TV, I watch it. Like last night on the Food Network, they had a pumpkin carving challenge. I figured they'd have cake decorators or sculptors, maybe that Goodfellas-like dude from that Cake Boss show. But no. They had professional pumpkin carvers. Yes. Professional pumpkin carvers. I don't remember that being listed in any of our career planning material in school, do you? And, get this, one of the judges was the president of the haunted house association. I SO want that job. "This year I'd like to focus on splattering brain matter, people. And eyeballs! I want eyeballs launched through the splattering brain matter! And zombie babies. In skinny jeans! Yes, zombie babies in skinny jeans swimming in eyeball launching splattering brain matter. Go team!"
Actually, if I were really the president of the haunted house association, I'd kick it totally old school, like those old Disney haunted house records. Those. Are. Freaky. It would be all about subtlety. I'd take the things-that-go-bump-in-the-night approach. Ghostly screams, doors slamming, chains dragging. I think people should use their imaginations more instead of having splattering brain matter, eyeballs and zombie babies spoon fed to them. When you have an active imagination, you don't need a whole lot to scare the ever loving crap out of you. All you need are a few small suggestions, and you'll fill in the rest.
Of course I wanted the boy to dress as a Jedi for Halloween, but his obsession with robots trumped any of my ideas. I liked it better when he was 2 and I dressed him as Yoda and there was nothing he could do about it. Now he's all full of opinions. What. Ever.
Daily Stats:Words: some
Caffeine: morning cup so far
Evil Calories: suspended due to fear that I won't fit into my winter clothes from last year. Will live on shaved ice salads for a week until I work up the nerve to try them on.
This past week has been a momentous one in our house. My darling son has started to enjoy his very first Star Wars toys. (For the record, I had intended on my 12" Boba Fett being his first toy, but our evil feline monster ate his clothes, wookie scalp and rocket pack before little dude was born. Just FYI, they did not make Boba anatomically correct. Poor guy.) Now, I admit that I was a little more excited than he was as we stood in the toy isle at Target, mostly because after digging around I found a Han Solo action figure (the one where he's dressed as a Storm Trooper. Hello, nurse!) And, okay, I did have to keep dragging darling son's attention away from the Transformers toys behind us. "No, no, who cares about the Optimus Prime voice changer helmet! Look at the R2-D2 with sound effects and remote control!". (Note to the lady in head to toe Juicy Couture and four inch heels who was passing by and looked at me like my head was a knock-off Fendi - just FYI, You'd look better with more hot pink eyeshadow. And, perhaps, with my shoe crammed up your nose.)
Anyway, after a thorough deliberation over which toy to purchase (meaning the first thing I could grab before darling son had a thermonuclear meltdown over me refusing to buy a Hanna Montana guitar), we ended up with a Snow Speeder action set with a probe droid and Luke and Dak action figures. He thinks Luke's Lightsaber is a bat and keeps calling Dak the UPS man, but he is running through the house with the speeder making spaceship sounds. Gotta start somewhere, right?
On a lighter, less totally geeky note, I finally found long lost chapter 3. See, I was sitting at the library the other day writing and went into my "poo lives" folder to find and older version of chapter 3 that I thought might have some most excellent material, and I couldn't find it. Of course, much cursing ensued, especially when I considered that it may have been something I didn't get chance to pull off my old computer before it bit the dust. However, I dug around one of our portable hard drives and, sweet mother crap, there it was. Crisis averted. I would have been very distraught. Of course, I opened it and went, "geez, no wonder I scrapped this hunk of drivel". But, there were two valuable paragraphs I managed to pilfer. I love me. Through the oceans of crap, I sometimes manage to spew a few gems.
