My body tricks me. It says, "Hey. You're tired. Let's sleep for a while." I agree wholeheartedly. So, my head hits the pillow, I'm gone before I close my eyes, and then...
my body snaps and says, "Ha ha, stupid. I fooled you again! Two hours is all you'll get!"
Just as soon as I can count on it, it does the reverse. It says, "You know, you're not too tired...I'll bet you get right back up in just a bit!" Then, six hours later, I awake and realize the part of life in which I wanted to be involved has just passed me by.
Frustrating.
K, body. You listening to me? You refuse to hear the alarm. Curse you. I have two phones sitting next to me when I sleep. You know you can ignore those but...
can you take a vibrating cell phone with the Knight Rider theme nestled betwen the girls in my bra????
Didn't think so. You have been defeated. Now, I have to explain to The Stud why I keep my cell phone there. He's bound to find it during his middle-of-the-night gropes. Your loss, NOT mine. I am awake, and, for now, you are vanquished.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
My Hero
Grandma, I am so missing you tonight.
I always knew I had a place in the world. That place was by your side, with Grandpa on my other side.
I got married. It probably hurt you just as bad as everyone else that I got married a week before anyone found out about it, but you never gave me any indication that I hurt you. In fact, when I asked, you said, "You did fine," and left it at that.
With all the kids in our family, and I the oldest, you know I was treated more or less like an appliance, at times. You made sure I got a break. You made sure my mother stepped back and took care of her own kids so I could be one, too.
I always knew I had a place to go. When that little voice in the back of my mind cried, "I want to go home. Please take me home," I knew exactly where that was, to your front room, where you'd take one recliner, Grandpa the other recliner, and I hogged the couch, with or without kids, because didn't matter. Loud or quiet made no difference to us; we were in each other's company, and nothing else mattered.
I've been thinking about you a lot lately. I have your angel food cake pan down in the basement, where I can't see it, but whenever I go down the cake aisle, I think about it being turned upside down on that Coke bottle, waiting for the cake to cool off, where you'd apply your pink icing concoction, your standard addition to any family gathering, along with your funky Jell-O salads. I liked the applesauce creations, but I'd swallow the cottage cheese ones with a smile on my face, just because I knew you'd have an applesauce dessert again soon.
Your death was the cataclysmic punctuation to the most awful time of my life. By the time you left us, the kids lost six great-grandparents, three grandparents, and a lot of other relations or close people to us in a span of five years. My father, his mother, and mom's father (your husband) are gone, and it's tough. I knew you weren't coming back the last time I saw you. Why bother? Why fight? Grandpa waited for you, like you waited for him every night to finish his chores, mostly with you going out to help him, so the two of you could eat and reflect and host countless children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, if the opportunity presented itself, and you always made sure it did. Everyone knows the special place Grandpa had in my life, and I know you did, too, but where Grandpa just gave love, you gave love and protected my delicate psyche, right when I needed it most, and defended me like I wanted and needed to be defended.
Thank you for standing behind me for all those years. I know most everyone has a bone to pick with you because you were so direct, but you never, ever felt I did anything wrong, and that, Grandma, gave me more confidence than you'll ever know. You knew my heart. You knew I never set out to hurt anyone, just try to make life better for me. You and Grandpa gave your love unconditionally. No strings attached. Nothing but my love in return, and that you had.
My inner child shrieked, and still feels like she has nowhere to run, when your house needed torn down. I blame no one, and you know as well as I do it had to go, but that was the last place that represented you alive. Now, I have nowhere to go but your tombstone, next to grandpa's, next to uncle's, across from Dad's, and so many more. My place of eternal rest will be there, too. It's been bought and paid for. I'll have a plaque that designates my relation to you, because I want everyone to know we were always connected, for now and eternity.
When my children are grown, and I am nearing the end of my life, perhaps I will have grandchildren. Will my kids and grandkids look back and say that I fought for their future with fangs? Did I defend them when they needed it?
I'm failing where you succeeded, although Mom sometimes complains that you really didn't get good at it until she and her siblings gave birth. I want to do better now, though, Grandma. My daughter and I spoke of the pan down in the basement, and I wonder if bringing her up and teaching her to make that frustratingly hard dessert would remind me of you, keep you alive, and keep me fighting for their future, like you did for mine. I might not be a success in all eyes, but I was in yours, and that means everything.
I love you.
I always knew I had a place in the world. That place was by your side, with Grandpa on my other side.
I got married. It probably hurt you just as bad as everyone else that I got married a week before anyone found out about it, but you never gave me any indication that I hurt you. In fact, when I asked, you said, "You did fine," and left it at that.
With all the kids in our family, and I the oldest, you know I was treated more or less like an appliance, at times. You made sure I got a break. You made sure my mother stepped back and took care of her own kids so I could be one, too.
I always knew I had a place to go. When that little voice in the back of my mind cried, "I want to go home. Please take me home," I knew exactly where that was, to your front room, where you'd take one recliner, Grandpa the other recliner, and I hogged the couch, with or without kids, because didn't matter. Loud or quiet made no difference to us; we were in each other's company, and nothing else mattered.
I've been thinking about you a lot lately. I have your angel food cake pan down in the basement, where I can't see it, but whenever I go down the cake aisle, I think about it being turned upside down on that Coke bottle, waiting for the cake to cool off, where you'd apply your pink icing concoction, your standard addition to any family gathering, along with your funky Jell-O salads. I liked the applesauce creations, but I'd swallow the cottage cheese ones with a smile on my face, just because I knew you'd have an applesauce dessert again soon.
Your death was the cataclysmic punctuation to the most awful time of my life. By the time you left us, the kids lost six great-grandparents, three grandparents, and a lot of other relations or close people to us in a span of five years. My father, his mother, and mom's father (your husband) are gone, and it's tough. I knew you weren't coming back the last time I saw you. Why bother? Why fight? Grandpa waited for you, like you waited for him every night to finish his chores, mostly with you going out to help him, so the two of you could eat and reflect and host countless children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, if the opportunity presented itself, and you always made sure it did. Everyone knows the special place Grandpa had in my life, and I know you did, too, but where Grandpa just gave love, you gave love and protected my delicate psyche, right when I needed it most, and defended me like I wanted and needed to be defended.
Thank you for standing behind me for all those years. I know most everyone has a bone to pick with you because you were so direct, but you never, ever felt I did anything wrong, and that, Grandma, gave me more confidence than you'll ever know. You knew my heart. You knew I never set out to hurt anyone, just try to make life better for me. You and Grandpa gave your love unconditionally. No strings attached. Nothing but my love in return, and that you had.
My inner child shrieked, and still feels like she has nowhere to run, when your house needed torn down. I blame no one, and you know as well as I do it had to go, but that was the last place that represented you alive. Now, I have nowhere to go but your tombstone, next to grandpa's, next to uncle's, across from Dad's, and so many more. My place of eternal rest will be there, too. It's been bought and paid for. I'll have a plaque that designates my relation to you, because I want everyone to know we were always connected, for now and eternity.
When my children are grown, and I am nearing the end of my life, perhaps I will have grandchildren. Will my kids and grandkids look back and say that I fought for their future with fangs? Did I defend them when they needed it?
I'm failing where you succeeded, although Mom sometimes complains that you really didn't get good at it until she and her siblings gave birth. I want to do better now, though, Grandma. My daughter and I spoke of the pan down in the basement, and I wonder if bringing her up and teaching her to make that frustratingly hard dessert would remind me of you, keep you alive, and keep me fighting for their future, like you did for mine. I might not be a success in all eyes, but I was in yours, and that means everything.
I love you.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Hope needs to be bitch-slapped.
Do dreams really matter?
Hope is a real bitch, did you know that? Hoping for stuff for other people always seems to work out, but putting my trust in Hope always, always lets me down. I'm afraid to hope for anything anymore for myself. Really. It's like walking up a nifty red-painted ladder, only to have it give out to allow me to belly flop onto cement.
I'm an author. I have dreams. I want to be read. In addition to my "fluffy" blog, I started a new one to spin off from that. I've tried nearly everything to get more readers. I need some feedback. It's good stuff, honestly. But I'm not being read. I wonder if I ever get one of my books published if it will ever leave the shelf into someone's hands? I'd be crushed if that didn't happen.
I'm not in it for the glory. What you see here is going to be my nom de plume. I don't want people to see me. I don't want people to know my name. I don't want the money or the fame or any of that. My friend once told me how neat it would be to sign books, and I thought, yeah. It would. I envisioned it for about 10 minutes, and then I got bored trying to think of what I'd write. I couldn't do it. I couldn't kiss up to "my biggest fan." I'm more likely to sit, sipping java in Border's and counting the people who walk by the shelf with my book and cave inside when nobody stops to look at it. Besides, I have kids to consider. I want my kids to have friends that they find on their own. I want Sunny to have the gaggle of fun girls she has now, hand selected based on personality and her own determination, not by some kids who just want to rub shoulders with a title. I want my boys to have friends because they like to play baseball or basketball or Play Station...Do you understand?
I'm pathetic.
I asked Stud how to increase the traffic to my web sites.
He said, "Porn."
Yeah, like that's going to happen, especially when my stories are about my kids and family.
"Seriously," I said. "How do I get more hits?"
"Keep clicking refresh."
"I just want people to read my shit!"
"I read it."
He counts. He really, really counts. But sometimes I wonder if he's just reading to make sure I don't blog something about our personal information.
Then again, I also told him that I had dreams, too, when he started his biz, and he said something akin to "you've been working on that dream a long time, so give it up already."
Fuck. My daughter is the only one who seems how understand how vital it is for me to create. I'm the mild-mannered mom of three with a penchant for Jolly Roger and how to blow shit up with things in your garage. I have heroines, you know, and heros. They *need* to have MacGyver tendencies. Napalm is good. Right?
RSS? Feeds? How do you attach those to a system outside of the usual blog networks? I used to have friends in the writing world, but AOL sucked up too much of my time. I write at night, when nobody needs their mommy. I'm supposed to be working, but I've got conversations from imaginary people running through my head. Have you read some of Kenyan's shit lately? I do mean SHIT. Her character, Kat, had been built up for a long time over several books of the series, and then she finally makes the sappiest effort EVER to bridge it all together. Makes me want Hamilton to whip some shit out quick. Sookie from the "Dead" series caught my attention. When I can afford it, I think I'll get some more of Charlaine Harris' stuff. Yeah, I like weird mystical crap. Shoot me, but just not before my youngest graduates high school.
I have no clue where this came from...all of a sudden, I have "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" running through my head. I haven't heard/sung that since I was a kid! Why now? I don't want to be a sunbeam. I want to be lightning, a statement.
Is my writing a different form of addiction? If I didn't write, would I drink? If I didn't have a different world in my mind, would I deaden the world in which I actually live? I'm not a drinker, although I usually have a small bottle of something strong in the freezer, but it's relegated to coughs and sore throats. I can't stand it! It would be so nice just to not have this drive to manipulate people who don't exist, but there's no stopping it. Since before I was 8 years old, I made up stories while I made futile attempts to sleep. It didn't dawn on me to actually PUT THEM ON PAPER until my early 20s. I left it behind for a while. Nothing seemed to make it right, but then *bam* it hit, and it hasn't really left since, except for now, because I'm lacking the confidence in myself. This is so STUPID! Do you know how many worlds I have created? How many unique situations I have painstakingly thought out? I refuse to make my characters all powerful; that's cheating. You might as well not write a book when things are that easy. Names, places, events – all of those require symbolism in some shape or fashion. Weapons. You can't just pick one. You have to know a short sword from a sabre, because it does make a difference in the way one attacks! My daughter is learning the research angle. She hates it, but it has to be done. Tonight, she went through the name databases, looking for names with meaning. Good girl. She did a lot of research on weapons last week. She found my Internet folder for all my research, and just gaped. She thought mom just whipped it out up until then. You should see all the research I've done on cockroaches. You just can't have mutant cockroaches. They have to follow certain rules. By following those rules, that makes the story.
So, I'm not a wannabe. I am an author. I have completed stories, all very different from one another, from beginning to end, although I do need to rewrite the last battle scene for one of them. I'm lazy. Sometimes, 40 battleships on one side and three space stations and a lot of smaller ships in the mix is a lot to interweave, but it has to be done. Many of my books have the potential for sequels, so I've got so much material, because I can't just stop thinking there...I always have the "what if?" factor going on.
Aaargh. Hope, you're a real heifer. You've bitten my ass enough. Go chomp on someone else for a while.
Hope is a real bitch, did you know that? Hoping for stuff for other people always seems to work out, but putting my trust in Hope always, always lets me down. I'm afraid to hope for anything anymore for myself. Really. It's like walking up a nifty red-painted ladder, only to have it give out to allow me to belly flop onto cement.
I'm an author. I have dreams. I want to be read. In addition to my "fluffy" blog, I started a new one to spin off from that. I've tried nearly everything to get more readers. I need some feedback. It's good stuff, honestly. But I'm not being read. I wonder if I ever get one of my books published if it will ever leave the shelf into someone's hands? I'd be crushed if that didn't happen.
I'm not in it for the glory. What you see here is going to be my nom de plume. I don't want people to see me. I don't want people to know my name. I don't want the money or the fame or any of that. My friend once told me how neat it would be to sign books, and I thought, yeah. It would. I envisioned it for about 10 minutes, and then I got bored trying to think of what I'd write. I couldn't do it. I couldn't kiss up to "my biggest fan." I'm more likely to sit, sipping java in Border's and counting the people who walk by the shelf with my book and cave inside when nobody stops to look at it. Besides, I have kids to consider. I want my kids to have friends that they find on their own. I want Sunny to have the gaggle of fun girls she has now, hand selected based on personality and her own determination, not by some kids who just want to rub shoulders with a title. I want my boys to have friends because they like to play baseball or basketball or Play Station...Do you understand?
I'm pathetic.
I asked Stud how to increase the traffic to my web sites.
He said, "Porn."
Yeah, like that's going to happen, especially when my stories are about my kids and family.
"Seriously," I said. "How do I get more hits?"
"Keep clicking refresh."
"I just want people to read my shit!"
"I read it."
He counts. He really, really counts. But sometimes I wonder if he's just reading to make sure I don't blog something about our personal information.
Then again, I also told him that I had dreams, too, when he started his biz, and he said something akin to "you've been working on that dream a long time, so give it up already."
Fuck. My daughter is the only one who seems how understand how vital it is for me to create. I'm the mild-mannered mom of three with a penchant for Jolly Roger and how to blow shit up with things in your garage. I have heroines, you know, and heros. They *need* to have MacGyver tendencies. Napalm is good. Right?
RSS? Feeds? How do you attach those to a system outside of the usual blog networks? I used to have friends in the writing world, but AOL sucked up too much of my time. I write at night, when nobody needs their mommy. I'm supposed to be working, but I've got conversations from imaginary people running through my head. Have you read some of Kenyan's shit lately? I do mean SHIT. Her character, Kat, had been built up for a long time over several books of the series, and then she finally makes the sappiest effort EVER to bridge it all together. Makes me want Hamilton to whip some shit out quick. Sookie from the "Dead" series caught my attention. When I can afford it, I think I'll get some more of Charlaine Harris' stuff. Yeah, I like weird mystical crap. Shoot me, but just not before my youngest graduates high school.
I have no clue where this came from...all of a sudden, I have "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" running through my head. I haven't heard/sung that since I was a kid! Why now? I don't want to be a sunbeam. I want to be lightning, a statement.
Is my writing a different form of addiction? If I didn't write, would I drink? If I didn't have a different world in my mind, would I deaden the world in which I actually live? I'm not a drinker, although I usually have a small bottle of something strong in the freezer, but it's relegated to coughs and sore throats. I can't stand it! It would be so nice just to not have this drive to manipulate people who don't exist, but there's no stopping it. Since before I was 8 years old, I made up stories while I made futile attempts to sleep. It didn't dawn on me to actually PUT THEM ON PAPER until my early 20s. I left it behind for a while. Nothing seemed to make it right, but then *bam* it hit, and it hasn't really left since, except for now, because I'm lacking the confidence in myself. This is so STUPID! Do you know how many worlds I have created? How many unique situations I have painstakingly thought out? I refuse to make my characters all powerful; that's cheating. You might as well not write a book when things are that easy. Names, places, events – all of those require symbolism in some shape or fashion. Weapons. You can't just pick one. You have to know a short sword from a sabre, because it does make a difference in the way one attacks! My daughter is learning the research angle. She hates it, but it has to be done. Tonight, she went through the name databases, looking for names with meaning. Good girl. She did a lot of research on weapons last week. She found my Internet folder for all my research, and just gaped. She thought mom just whipped it out up until then. You should see all the research I've done on cockroaches. You just can't have mutant cockroaches. They have to follow certain rules. By following those rules, that makes the story.
So, I'm not a wannabe. I am an author. I have completed stories, all very different from one another, from beginning to end, although I do need to rewrite the last battle scene for one of them. I'm lazy. Sometimes, 40 battleships on one side and three space stations and a lot of smaller ships in the mix is a lot to interweave, but it has to be done. Many of my books have the potential for sequels, so I've got so much material, because I can't just stop thinking there...I always have the "what if?" factor going on.
Aaargh. Hope, you're a real heifer. You've bitten my ass enough. Go chomp on someone else for a while.
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