Patterns

I have butterflies in my stomach that won't go away.

I hate them.

For me they aren't a harbinger of good things, exciting things, happy things.

For me they remind me of the feeling of 'about to die'.  They signal that I'm right on the edge of total disaster.  I'm not doing what I need to do.

And I start another impossibly busy week behind the eight ball.  Unprepared.  Not on top of my game.

I'm beginning to think this isn't my game at all, and that I was never meant to be playing.

As I lay in bed the other day, with the butterflies insistent and distracting and alarming, I told Aaron why I hated them so much.


"They remind me of the feeling I had when I laid down in your bed, all those years ago, and waited to fall asleep forever.  Waited to die."


He held me close and stroked my hair.  Then: "Sometimes I feel like you're still laying there; that you never got up; that you're still just waiting to die."


I burst into tears, because I have been living my life like that; waiting to die; somewhate reluctant to accept that I ever got up, that I stubbornly cling to an existence I had been ready to abandon, give-up, discard.


Here I am.  I persist, but only minimally.  I am alive but not really.  I am, but to what end?


And so I start another week and my shit is not together.  I start another week and without a clear game plan and falling behind deadlines and dancing with complete ruin.


And I wish I were back on that bed all those years ago.  Wish I had the chance, once again, to lay there, still and groggy, mentally making peace with the path I'd taken.  Wish I had had the guts to close my eyes and accept the fate I'd ingested, instead of panicking and scrambling for help.


OR.


Or I wish I'd woken up, taken life by the balls, and made a complete and fearsome turnaround.  Wish I'd thrown off the mantle of mourning and regret and passive suicidal tendencies, and become a completely kick-ass individual.  Wish I'd been reborn in that instant, remade into a stronger, fiercer, more incomparable individual full of fire and full of vitality because I'd looked my own mortality in the eye and told it to fuck off.


Instead I look backward at the years in my wake and see wasted potential, avoided opportunity, cowardice, cringing self-loathing, and desperate bleakness.


I see a half-dead person allowed to subsist and pass as one living.  I see an emotional zombie.  A stunted, broke, weak and pitiable thing.


And she now has to get her clothes on, get her hair and teeth brushed, and get to her meaningless job.  Unprepared for another week.  unequipped for the mess she's made for herself.  Unenthused to be breathing in-and-out-and-in-and-out for yet another loathesome, regrettable week.


What a waste she is and has been.  What an utter mediocrity.  What a lamentable tragedy of the human condition.

Big titties, and streamline cocks

Drunk Sex is way more awesome than Hungover Sex.  Still... sex is great.


Read THIS this morning.  Loved it.  Adored it.  Want you to read it.  I love her voice.  And I want to put her enormous tits in my mouth.... did I miss the point of the article?  Nah.  READ IT. It is a thousand times more entertaining than my blog.

Hearts!

I'll give you a post mortem on the show another day.  Today I want to enjoy the sun, enjoy the lack of real responsibility, and plan my next phase of life.  It is gunna be a BIG DEAL, guys.  A big deal.

I'm barrelling past the threshold guardians, bidding farewell to the wise old men, and taking my journey firmly in hand.  I'mma learn more about the goddess within, and I'm going to make huge and lasting changes.

Also, I feel like you ought to know that at this moment Aaron and I are engaged in a heated debate about circumcision.  It is a subject I think about alot; the debate, hats vs. haircuts.

I've researched the fuck out of it.  And I waffle.  And Aaron has been absolutely unswerving.  His certainty makes me uneasy and suspicious.  But he is such an effective debater!  He is logical, he is not emotional, he is pragmatic, he is hilarious.  In the last ten minutes he has compared foreskin to a hairlip and an appendix. 

"If our child's appendix was on the outside of its body I'd say 'hell yes, cut that off too!' It's a vestigial organ that serves no purpose and only opens you up for risk of infection and complications down the road!"

He cracks me up.  I bring this up because he wants to start an 'anti breast reduction' movement.  I teased him because he was all like 'that's the way nature made you' and 'you shouldn't 'fix' what you are' and what not, and he feels the same way about the awful parents who make the decision to have their baby daughter's clitorises (cliteri? Cliteratti? who the fuck knows?) reduced in size if they are larger than the accepted 'norm'.  So I called him a hypocrite, and at this moment have re-opened the old snip-the-tip debate.

Aaron: "The only people you ever hear complaining about circumcision are uncircumsized men, and women."

Me: "what, a woman's view isn't worth anything?"

Aaron: "No, no, I'm not talking women who are like: 'oh, I'm way more attracted to foreskin', no, that's not what you find most often, most often the kind of women who have a problem with it are expectant mothers who are all: 'Oh no! I don't want to mutilate my baby!'"

(A beat)

Me: "I don't want to mutilate my baby!"

(I am not expectant, but have always sort have felt like a potential mother since about 14 years old)

Later....

Aaron:  So if the baby's born with a hairlip you just want to leave it?  that's elective surgury, and the kid could live a perfectly normal life, don't need to put him 'at risk' for something that's purely 'cosmetic!'

Me: Ew.  No.  We fix that shit right away.

Aaron (looking smug.):  Yeah.  Thought so.



It's saturday.  go enjoy it.  I'm gunna.

Ciao!

Alas, Poor Yorick...

As I repeatedly burn my fingers and even my toes on molten glue and searing metal, whilst attempting to attach feathers and jewels and miscellany to a costume piece, and suck down caffeine in order to stay up and assemble a playlist and wonder when in hell I'll get to paint that damned skull...

I can't decode if I love this or am over it. 

I hum  little tune, one of the old standards, no business like show business, right?  or just another openin' of another show, perhaps, or I'm just a broadway baby...

I hum it and I hold as 'twere, the mirror up to nature, and wonder if I like what i see or want to scrap it all and start over brand new.

"Why not both instead?  There's the answer, if you're clever...  Must it all be either less or more, either plain or grand, is it always 'OR' is it never 'AND'?"

Hoping i can manage to stay awake and cheerful though tomorrow!

Painful

No interviews.

Some flat-out rejections.

No prospects.

Some serious doubts.

When can i stop feeling like a lonely seed, floating on the breeze, at the whim of fortune and fate?  When can i land in fertile soil and put down rooths and grow?

I'm supposed to be calmly listening to the universe.  turns out I don't know what to listen for, or even if I speak the same language as the universe... what if i miss my cue?  What if my opportunity comes and goes without me because I couldn't recognize it when it called to me?

I really can't do all this for another whole year.

I really can not.

On a mostly unrelated note:  how do you teach contractions to a first grader without just blatantly giving away the answers?  You try it.  I bet you you will end up just telling them the mystery word.  It is so hard to explain 'will' and 'could' and 'are' (i mean ARE?!?! this one is especially tricky because of it the whole 'am' 'is' thing! jesus.) without just blurting them out.

That's Entertainment!

Two  midnights gone...

Revised finale is shaping up.  shaky, but better than nothing.

My lack of an assumed glue-gun has ruined a night of major prop building.  So I made a show playlist instead!

I want to sleep for a year.

What are your memorial day plans?

One midnight gone...

Monday of tech week:  Cut an entire scene from the show.  The finale, in fact.

What will tuesday bring?

The to-do list is wayyy too long for the tuesday of tech week.  I'm turning into the kind of director I hate.

***Holy Cedar Falls Update!!!***

The refrain so familiar to those in the theatre, that it has become slogan-ized on t-shirts, stickers, mugs, and pins!

Okay folks, I am about to enter Hell Week #1 of my spring.  Break a leg, right?  Keep your fingers crossed.

You may not be seeing alot of me. 

So, to tide you over, check out the CEDAR FALLS BLOG, and get some pleasure reading done!  There are TWELVE, count 'em, TWELVE installments of FAMILY DINNER.  Velvet arranges a little getting-to-know-you for the newly weds, and we see the evening from multiple perspectives and characters.  Fun Fun.

Um, they are numbered, so I'd go in order, were I the reader. 

Starting with ONE, in the usual fashion!

ENJOY!!

(incidentally, I have a few faves, but I especially love the idea of gross-out chicken covered in vignette # 12, as well as the engagement story, awww.)

and even worse than regular rehearsal...

Magnets too, apparently!

Lockdown

Wild day.  Lockdown drill at work.  draining and interesting and just all kinds of weird.

I'd like to say that ever since I decided not to pursue writing in any formal way, my brain seems to have decided to give me the big old middle finger.  Turns out my brain\creativity\talent\whatever does NOT like to hear itself referred to as 'a hobbyist' and so has given me the big: "Fuck, YOU, Bitch", and gone on vacation or maybe gone for good.

Because even though I think about my characters all day every day I haven't written a single thing!  The delaneys et al are up in my noodle, things are a-stirrin', but when I sit down to write?  Nada.  Nadie.  Nunca.  Nothing.  Blank.  a cypher.  a big fat zero.  a blinking cruser on a big white screen.

So, who knows?  Maybe the impulse wil return, the happy felicity of writing, and maybe it won't.  Who can say?  I am listening to the universe, trying to find my path, and the more elusive my ability to write proves, the more assured I am that doing such a thing for a CAREER is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.

For the readers of CF: not to fret.  I seriously have like A HUNDRED more vignettes to post to the blog, to keep you reading for probably months!  The only thing I can't promise is a nice, neat ending.  Now that I probably can't write anymore.  Maybe, when all is said and done, I'll take and post guest submissions for how you readers would end it!  That would be wildly fun (for me...)!

I enter production week after today.  SO I may be scarce around these parts.  It kicks off a month and a half of craziness, so I might be off the radar for a while.

Hey, while stuck in lockdown today in a classroom, there was a book on the teacher's desk, and I was intrigued.  It was a collection of women's diary entries.  Women accross time and continents.  Some famous, live George Sand and Virginia Wolfe and Anne Frank, and others were just women living there life in whatever times they lived and keeping a journal.  It was fascinating.  and spoke to why we blog.

I think I'll order it on amazon and really give it a good read through. 

Still really blue.  Especially because work was so weird. 

I cried this morning.  Aaron was an angel.  And tonight I go to drama rehearsal.  I can't tell you how much I really want to quit everything and just go on a vision quest or something.

Wah, right?  Wah, wah, wah.

I know.  Half of why I'm so blue is because I am aware of how ridiculous it is for me to be so blue, and what an asshole I sound like\look like\seem like when I mope like this. very frustrating.

I'll be sure to let you know when I'm a happy egg again!

Wish I were celebrating National Masturbation Month....

The Lusty Month of May!

how did I get half way through May without knowing this?!?!?


National Masturbation Month!

Enjoy the self love, folks.

What an absolute sourpuss I have been today.  I honestly feel like this guy:

GRUMPY!

Only I want to move to India instead of Australia.  But.  At this point, I'll take what I can get.

Today I was fragile, weepy, surly, glum, taciturn, hopeless, desolate, blue.  I was basically the sad egg creature from those anti depressant commercials. 

Leave me the fuck alone, Butterfly!

I seriously wanted, for most of the day, to return to my apartment, curl up under a blanket, and never ever ever have to deal with another thing ever ever ever ever.

Today was not my day at all.

Mr. Grumpkins

I am being forced to really look, really take a good look at my future, my prospects, my ambitions, my plans and comb through them with great scrutiny.  And it is a rat's nest.  A snarled tangle of no real substance, just a big hairy mess.

And it makes me want to run away.

Honestly?  It makes me want to cease existing. 

Heeheehee.

then I think about that poor egg.  Maybe I just need a pill to make me better?  Maybe this is a chemical imbalance?

Me?  I think it's less a chemical imbalance and more a combination of crushing debt, no job prospects, career choice dissatisfaction, identity crisis, and a bunch of other shit.  But maybe a special pill will help me feel all "glass half full" about my sitch?

I would eat her out.

In any case, it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.  And I was a gloomy gus.  A tubby grumpkins.  A sourface.  A real fucking stormcloud :(

Sadface emoticon.

This made me giggle.  Ahhh, self awareness.

Soup, Salad, not so much the breadsticks :(

It was day 1 of Math MCAS today.

Mildly fun and interesting:  3 hooligans needed a special proctor over at the hooligan highschool (off shoot of BHS at a separate locale for discipline issue students), and they sent me to do it!  As I am essentially trained in reading aloud, this job was right up my alley!  Plus, it got me out of the main highschool for a healthy chunk of the day, which is awesome as a change of pace!

The other day I decided to go on a soup diet.  Soup and salad diet, maybe.  I bought a ton of soup.  Then I remembered how unfulfilling soup can be :(  It will take some real effort.  And will power.  But I gotta do something.  I have been overloading on carbs and sweets.  First day of the soup diet, yesterday, was largely unsuccessful.  Had a wake-up wrap from dunks (which I am supposed to have forsaken! woe is me...), had peanut butter crackers for lunch, then got SOUP (yay) and a half sandwich from panera for between work and aftercare (really more of a lunch), gave aaron mac n cheese and the other half of the sandwich, then had pizza for dinner.

So yes, I HAD soup, but no, that wasn't much of a diet.

Day 2, today, had a fucking donut for breakfast (no...2 donuts, but one was a plain... no better? ah well, shucks...)  A SALAD for lunch (also purchased what was supposed to be a cheese quesadilla and turned out to be--due to a last minute menu switch--a ground beef quesadilla, so my diet was saved by fickle lunch service workers and NOT my own willpower), An APPLE for snack but then also chex mix for snack...  And so far for dinner?  Couple of PB&Js.  I am eyeballing either leftover fajitas or SOUP for real dinner.  The fajita had veggies, tons of greens, but also the carby wraps.  The soup is Tomato Feta, smells divine, and could be swell... but I kinda want the fajita....

I'll keep you posted.  This was also the week that I was supposed to get up early and excersize.  Hmmm.  Nope.  I will keep trying, folks.

Meanwhile, send me your favorite soup and salad suggestions!!!!!!  YAY!!

tentative

Exhausting, draining, miserable, soul-sucking sunday.

Long work day monday.

My soul is unsettled.  My heart is bruised and aching.  My world is eggshells and broken glass and tangled up yards of string and viscera.

And so many things press down on me, and so many demands drag on me, and so many tasks need my attention to accomplish, and so many woes and so many fears and so many trouble and so many dangers and so many countless worries and stresses and triggers and pitfalls and roadblock and deadlines and due dates and ....

And I feel cold.  And confused.  And lost. and so, so very tentative all the time. 

Oh my!

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Revelations

EEEK! 

Looks like a few days since my last post.  Things have been getting crazy busy, is all.  I love to post, and wish wish wish the internet at work did not block blogspot :(  Becasue I have SOOOOOO much downtime most days at work.  Ah well.  I used alot of that downtime this week to type up some of my longhand vignettes that I wrote before I got nettie, or in places where pulling out a nettie is inappropriate (like the SATs) but somehow writing with a pen on paper is a-okay.

I am fast approaching tech week for my senior drama showcase, which is not senior citizens, but teenagers.  It is.... it's yikes right now. I will try and keep you posted, but to be honest I am a little too freaked out to talk about it.  They don't come to rehearsal, they show up unprepared... IDK guys... it will be a wing and a prayer kind of event, I'm thinking.  And I wonder if I, as the instuctor, did something wrong, somehow set u an environment where this sort of behavior would be tolerated... I dunno. 

Then, after that I got two more in June!  Fun Fun.

A couple of things happened in rapid succession this weekend that have thrown my POV into disarray.  First, I saw the BHS musical and felt.... numb?  I was ridiculously proud of some students that I've taught or worked with before--some I've known since they were ten!!   S=I was crazy proud of some student I don't even know, just because they were great and working their little butts off out there... but mostly?  Shrugs.  Meh.  I felt detatched and disinterested and dead inside.  I kept trying to, like, FEEL some way or the other about it all.  I tried to say to myself: Oh, this would have been WAYYYY better if you'd been involved! But this is baloney and I recognized the bullshit immediately.  So then I tried to tell myself that this dead feeling will go away once I have my own drama club and what not.... Nah.  Because I am the sole director of these thursday night classes and I feel pretty MEH about all that too. 

And I guess I just looked at my life and wondered what the fuck I'm supposed to do with this career built in and on the arts and theatre, when I can't find it in me to be a passionate advocate for them. 

So.

I sorta thought: Welp, I've been leaning toward writing lately, so maybe this is a SIGN!  Maybe I really need to leave the theatre behind, leave teaching behind for a while, and really really go for it; take the leap!

K.

So this morning Aaron and I had some fun sex, but then I had to rush off to starline to teach this crucial saturday rehearsal as we gear up for tech week (4 of the 7 girls bothered to show...).  When I got home Aaron says:  "I wrote while you were gone."
This is always exciting, because AAron is an incredibly gifted writer, but doesn't write that often for a whole selw of reasons.  So, with excitement, I sit down at the computer and begin to read.

And.

I kid you not, this stuff is so goddamn beautiful it moved me to tears.  And I am weeping at the beauty, and I'll admit it, I'm weeping a little because in like two hours, three tops, the man sits down and basically proves what a real writer is, and I relaize that he has more talent and SKILL in his little finger than I do in my entire being and it, well, that's like a sucker punch that knocks the wind out of you.

It is seriously amazing, this small piece he wrote.  I wonder if he'll let me share it with you.  It is not CF related, but rather a piece of creative fiction in its own time and space.  I loved it.  It was powerful and breathtaking and deep and visceral and mesmerizing.

So, after talking with him about it and assuring him how great it is (I really felt like there were no words that would meet the occasion.  I felt like anything I could say in praise would pale in comparison. Feel lame beside it, you know??), I tell him I just need to rest for a bit, and I climb up into my loft and fret.  And fall asleep, depressed and disillusioned.  Because, now, it seems, I've been reminded that no, I am not actually a writer at all.  I'm a hobbyist.  I enjoy pretending and spinning yarns, but I am no true author.

So I pretty much had a depression nap.  I think, seriously, that the only reason I didn't just sleep the rest of the day and night away was becasue I had to babysit. 

So I woke up, we had some mexican for lunch (Aaron: "Oh, I always enjoy eating a little mexican"  Me: "yummmm!!  Let's find one and bring her home!!!), and went to babysit.

I don't feel depressed anymore; I mean really?  I have learned that I really oughtn't compare myself to Aaron in any arena because he can best me at everything.  EVERYTHING.  He isn't doing it to be a dick or anything, he's just a phenomenal individual with talent just bursting out of him in every direction.  I shouldn't take it so hard.  I am ridiculously lucky to be married to such an incredible, incomparable individual.

But.  Now what, about the future career?  A toughie.  Tuffy?  Whatever.  You get what I'm saying.

I guess I will do my best to keep an open mind and an open heart and keep asking the universe to send me some clear signals, light some signs for me, point me to where my future will be.

This is the deal though:  I'm going to stop trying to decide it.  To make myself fit into a category.  Force a path before it is fully revealed to me.  I'm going to grip my divining rod and have a little faith that it will point me to the good stuff. 

So, no labels, for now, no answers just yet.  No solid plans, no expectations....just....a wing and a prayer?  Maybe not even the wing.  I'm in freefall, and we'll have to see where I land, and if I survive the fall.

Deep Breath...

Shit Eating Grin

GAH!

Pulled in a thousand directions! 

Aaron can't find his mammoth's tooth.

Our piggy bank just grinned at me.

The BHS muscal goes up this weekend and I had no part in it and it is going up without me and I feel so insignificant.

I have about a billion and a half things to do for my thursday night drama classes.

I have no job prospects for next year, not even an interview.

Did I mention that a minute ago the piggy bank grinned?  He did.  And when I looked back he was stoic and inscrutable once more.

I had a coffee coolatta today for the first time.  Unfortunatley, it was de-fucking-lish.  So now I might need to get more of those, just as I vowed to give up Dunks forever.

I don't trust the piggy bank now.  But.  I imagine I'd hear him coming, right?  Kinda jingly.  It'll be like a lil pink Jacob Marley; not subtle at all.  I wonder how he'll manage to climb the ladder to the loft.

Hilarious.

He's just staring at me now, as though he didn't flash me a facetious, obnoxious grin a few minutes ago.  But he and I both know what happened.

NEW CF

Hi!  I am super excited to keep this rolling, so here are a few more Cedar falls updates.

Some backstory on JOnah and Viola in Principal Delaney;  (He's our PAL, remember that old spelling trick? lol.)

Tensions crop up in a recent flashback with Nolan and Grey just after Nolan has figured out just who is wooing Maggie in She's A Good Girl

Back to the honeymoon with Catholics and Croissants ~ one of the author's favorite vignettes, btw.

And another guilty pleasure Author fave is the sex scene in this glimpse into The Other Woman (and learn more about our favorite Villain), the infamous heiress Threnody Aschere in Nature Versus Nature; In Her Sights.  I know we haven't seen alot of Ms. Aschere, but this peripheral character is lurking, watching, and likely to play an interesting role.  She seems to exist to fuck things up for folks, lol.  We shall see.

Happy Reading.

Um.  Is anyone following?  Can anyone let me know if the jumping around in time and character and storyline is fun or if it is just confusing?  Keep me posted.

~Beth

What are yeh, some kind of Half-Assed Astronaut?

This is the time of year that both drags and hurtles to a hasty finish.  The days seem longer, but deadlines bolt toward you at alarming speeds.  The hours drag past while you're at work, because you know that the precious few hours you have when you're freed from the mundane busy work of your job will be too few to accomodate all that you need to accomplish.

In short?  I'm busy.

I am half-assed directing three shows, I am half-assed applying for dozens of jobs, I am half-assed doing my MTA job, I am half-assed advertising for STAGE, and I feel like ass about it.  I'm not super at math, but I am great with asses, and it seems to me that I have too many half-asses here for one body.  Which means I'm over-stretching myself, right?  Right.

And I'm half assed being a friend to many wonderful people, and I'm half-assed being a wife to an amazing man, and I'm half-assed writing.

And somehow I gotta make this equation work. 

 **CEDAR FALLS UPDATE**

~Mary Help Her (A Maggie& Grey Flashback)
~The Bet (A Grey & Maggie Flashback that reveals a little about a little wager...)
~To See and Be Seen  (The Calder-Grey affair, this time from Jonah's perspective)
~The Other Woman (Getting to know a bit more about the other Heiress in CF...)
~Chataje  (Spanish for Blackmail... Maggie & Grey flashback)
~The Lawyer  (Intorducing Grey's lawyer Ward Everett)
~The Briefcase  (Ah, Vaughan Grey, you filthy fuck.)
~Meet The Folks  (Sunday dinner at Ma and Pop's!)

I got to babysit for my Niece, the Z Monster this weekend!  Woot Woot!  I was so jazzed to get the call!  Aunties love babysitting :)

We hung out for a while before her bedtime, and it was so awesome to be a part of her nightitme routine.  She warmed up to me and was gabbing away at me, jibber-jabbering and singing and laughing ans especially doing peek-a-boo!  It was wonderful and very special to me to see the little family unit in action as they read stories, got her in PJs and guided her thorugh the whole routine. 

And they did a great effing job, too, because once they got her to sleep, she was out like a light!  nary a peep from that adorable little bean the whole night!

So that gave me plenty-o-time to organize my writing and also to zone out like a zombie in front of their tv, staring like a heavily-medicated mental patient on the catatonic ward or something, and sort of letting the E! Channel wash over me.  God, sometimes I miss tv.

Anyway, organizing my writing has lead to some new posts up at the Cedar Falls Blog!  Please enjoy.  I am so jazzed about CF lately.  I want to tell this story and I am so excited about it!  Enjoy!!

***D!!!!!!****  New to you:  Chantaje and Meet the Folks (and maybe the The Bet?  I can't remember if I posted that one on the old bloggie...)  So ENJOY, asap, and let's talk!!

To all the mothers...

Happy Mother's Day!

How many times does my body have to kick my ass and take my name before I finally kick the junk-food\fast-food binge habit?

Seriously.

Fast food makes me ill.  Like, without fail.  Everytime this happens I vow that this will be the last time! By God!  I'll never be hungry enough again that I will order Dominoes or stop for fries at BK AGAIN! Hear me?  I'll never be THAT hungry AGAIN! (Scarlett O'Hara fist shaking at the blazing sunset in silhouette implied)

And yet.  Every few months or so I break down and repeat this terribly unhealthy mistake.  I wrote a line in a vignette recently that begins: "It was a stupid mistake..."  It is a sizzler, btws, and I can't wait to share it...eventually, but anyway, it ends like this, this is the last few sentences of the vignette:

She promised herself she’d forget all about that terrible mistake.

But when it happens a second time, and a third, and happens again after that—can that be fairly characterized as a mistake?  When does continued commission of a ‘mistake’ become more accurately termed a deliberate transgression?  A sordid habit?  A dirty little secret?

Oooh, tantalizing!  Anyway, that's a little how I feel about this ridiculous weakness I seem to have for crappy, valueless gnosh that wreaks havoc on my body!  Why do I do this???  At least this mistake won't cost me my marriage or get me knocked up (one hopes... eeek!), but still, though.  It is yucky.  And I regret it.  And my walk of shame may be shorter, just from the couch to the bathroom and then up to bed, but it still rankles, because I SHOULD KNOW BETTER BY NOW!!  Is it a self esteem thing? lol.  No, in this case I'm pretty certain I don't have daddy issues, more laziness issues.  I completely didn't want to cook after a long week with the kitchen already a mess waiting to be tackled.  So we ordered food to be delivered.  And her I lay, wasted and yuck and full of regrets.

So no more.  No more fast food.  You heard me. Mark my words, and bludgeon me with a handy cudgel if ever you see me eyeballing some menu or putting my blinker on for BK fries.

And the thing that kills me is that I have already given up so many various and sundry fast foods for moral reasons or political statements.  I haven't eaten at McDonalds in literally YEARS.  I haven't touched Wendy's for as long, either.  BK I do the fries and the Hershey Pies, but that is IT!! There's obviously nothing for me at KFC, and every once in a very blue moon do I go for Taco bell (cuz it is absolutely gross, but oh so tasty gross) (and we totally buy the taco bell seasoning kit for our veggie tacos at home sometimes, lol. yummier than ortega!).  And Dunks?  gross.  I had a wake-up wrap the other day and felt uber guilty.  I can practically feel the hormones from those yucky death-mill eggs infecting my body!  But, yum, that awful-for-you-government0issue-american-cheese is oh-so melty!

But pretty much most any fried foods or overly greasy foods will do this to me.  So certain take-out shops and big name pizza chains are right-out.  Dominoes is one of these.  I know this.  I should not have done this.  But I did.  Alas.  And I am paying the instant-karma kind of price.

Also I was offered and ate a really yummy piece of chocolate today.  And it was so yummy and exotic that I asked to see the box.  And wanted to slap my idiot self for not asking for the box upfront, like I ALWAYS do since becoming a vegetarian.  Because, sho' 'nuff, the shit had Gelatin in it.  FUCK!  And the kicker is, that this was offered to me by my work friend, who is a VEGETARIAN and has been for YEARS and YEARS and YEARS!!  WTF?  And I KNOW she's a 'don't eat gelatin' girl, so what the hell?  Jesus.  Thank goodness it was a wee piece.  It was so good, but I am so pissed!

So my body and my soul are super displeased with me tonight.

And I'm waking up hella early and doing the SATs tomorrow!  Woot to extra money, less woot to waking up earlysauce on my saturday and wasting half a day watching other people take a test.

I think I need a soothing tea and a cozy bed.

Night folks!

And don't let me eat this shit AGAIN!!!!

My baby is a year old?

Today I was feeling nostalgic for last spring.  The days of unemployment, the hours spent with good friends, the holding my breath and the hours and hours of writing.  Wring inside all cozy, writing outside in the fresh spring air.  Writing and writing and dreaming.

And it occurred to me, as thought follows thought, that I must have been writing for many months now.

My first post of Cedar Falls.  April 28th of 2010.  The first part of The Sundeck.

I have been writing Cedar falls for over a year.  A motherfucking (or, should I say daughter-fucking? oooh, bad taste...) year.  Of my life.  And yours.  Guys.  A year.

I don't actually know whether this calls for celebration or, um, mourning.  My first instinct was to mark the anniversary in some exciting way, but then I discovered that the anniversary passed, unmarked!  So now I am just left with all these feelings and thoughts about this huge endeavor in my life.  And nothing, I gotta say, is real clear in my head, or my heart, or my soul.

A year.  It lend it a certain air of legitimacy, I suppose.  If this were a relationship it would be a pretty big deal.  And at times this has certainly felt like a relationship.  Ups, downs, turn-ons, turn-offs.  Sometimes I've even felt like breaking up, throwing in the towel.  Sometimes  I can't seem to break through communication blocks.  Sometimes it is ridiculously rewarding, othertimes draining and stressful.

But I am still in love.

  And I'm still in it.

So should I put a ring on it?  Hmmm. 

Maybe it is just the fresh spring air making me feel froggy, but something tells me I outta jump; jump in with both feet.  Stop waffling.  Stop pretending this is a hobby or a minor part of who I am.

A year.  A year, 200+ vignettes completed, at least half of those published to the interwebs, out there in the world.  A year and its own DEDICATED BLOG launched.  A year and some great fucking off-shoot stories from guest contributers, jazzing up our imaginations and whetting our appetite for ever more!A year of reading them and re-reading them and editing them and crafting them and thinking about them and wondering about them and minorly obsessing over them and loving them and ....

I might just be a writer.  I'm certainly prolific, even if I can't make promises on the quality.  I think about these storylines all day, every day.  I think about scenes and characters and backstory and  subtext and symbolism and mythology and allusions and...

A year.  Wow.

I'm still not sure If I should be humbled or humiliated.  A year.  Where the fuck did this year go?

And, so, where will this next year go?  Have I invested way too much time\effort\energy\delusion into this?

And what would the next step even look like?  How does that next step go?  How does it happen?  I don't have a book, I still only have a series of storylines, of vignettes and stories and episodes, but not a book.  Not one book, anyway. 

I have this sprawling mess (of WONDERFUL FUN!), and what the hell is it?

And who, besides D, will even want to look at it, let alone help me whip it into shape and tame it into something sellable?  Oh god, sellable.  That made me feel yucky, a little.  And excited, a little.  "Well, excited AND scared..."

Maybe this summer I will make some big decisions.  I have this drum beating inside of me, this marching forward to a climax, and I feel like I'm just scrambling to find the time to sit down and pour out these scenes and vignettes inside me!  And when I do find a moment the writing is so shoddy and slapdash because I'm just dying to get it out!  Blasted double-edged sword!!

And then part of me never wants to tie up all the loose ends, never wants to close the last page.  there are so many little tales I want to tell about these characters!!

But maybe there are other fabulous stories to be told in Cedar Falls, other voices and secrets...

Or maybe there's something else altogether!  Like my homosexual fairytale adenture books, or my Eleanor of Aquitaine stuff, or something as yet undiscovered!!

One year.

Golly.

Happy Anniversary Cedar Falls. 

I love you. 

And.

Thank You.

You've saved my life many times.  Inspired me, challenged me, made me laugh, helped me discover an important part of who I am and who I will be.

Thank you to Danielle, for always always reading.  Reading and actually engaging me in conversation.  And helping me brainstorm, and getting me all psyched up and giddy and smiley.  Thank you for being there through thick and thin, and always recharging my battery and giving me drive when I was in doubt.  You are the angel of this whole endeavor!!

Thank you to Julia for being among the very first to legitimize my inclination to write.  For calling me a writer before I was ready to commit to anything so grand and ambitious.  Thank you for helping me see through a different pair of eyes; eyes that saw me as something more than a silly keyboard masher or hack or hobbyist.  Thank you.  Your voice came at the right time and struck the perfect chord.

Thank you to Aaron, who supports, who encourages, who gives, who indulges, and who is my sounding board, my idea-storming partner, my constant reference for grammar, for character motivation, for male perspective, for checking-to-see-if-maybe-I've-gone-wayyyy-too-far-into-the-taboo-and-morally-reprehensible...  Thank you to the best husband in the world.  Thank you for listening to rough drafts sometimes and for reading aloud to me so that I can hear it from someone else's tongue.  Thank you for telling me I'm a writer.

Thanks to all my friends who have been enthusuastic, encouraging, giving, and sweet though all my mood swings about this.  Thank you for lending professional insights, Andrea; for lending delicious story thread ideas, Emmy; for offering wild, twisting, secrets and for giving me mini-workshops on libations and potent potables Adam;  Thank you for lighting up and saying YES, Go FOR IT Kerry, and Kim, and Jeff.

Thank you to anyone else reading.  I made my decision.  Even if this year amounts to nothing more than a year spent writing a fun story for myself and my friends and the internet, I am humbled.  And grateful.  And full of love.

Happy Anniversary to Beth the Writer!

CEDAR FALLS UPDATE

Cedar Falls Updates!

Some 'flashbacks' and some 'present day' stuff mixed all up.

Zahra's Secret

Honeymoon Suite

Picnic Set

3 Basic Varieties of Virgin

Phelan Everett

Avalon Delaney

I wonder if I'll ever get to post my new stuff?  I have sooooo much.  I kinda hate that I ever started a CEDAR FALLS ONLY blog.  I like it, in some ways.  In other ways?  Meh.

Bleck.

It is a beautiful day, the sun is shining, it is a weekend and for whatever reason I am pissed off and irritable.  I am tubby grumpkins. 

I totally shouldn't be.  The sex these past few days has been out of this world amazing, my husband is incredible, my friends are fabulous, I'm trying to get a handle on my financial sitch, and there is so much to be grateful for.

But right now I am so glum and irritated and bitchy!

Whatever.

This is a stupid blog post.  

I wrote today and it is only so-so.  And the mood in that piece was tense and irritable.  I wonder sometimes if I get too into it and absorb, like a sponge, the mood of whatever I'm writing.  I get turned on often enough while writing the sexy bits--it only stands to reason that I would shift moods with the story when it turns tense or sad or angry, right?

Sigh.  Huff.  Tisk. grumble.

Now aaron is mad at me because of my irrational irritability.  He's being all sweet as pie and I am being a raging bitch.

What the fuck ever. 

I have to go.