D.F.R.

Is there anything more cathartic than really, really cleaning the bathroom?  I mean a down dirty, every-nook-and-cranny kind of clean?

Oh, but there is.  Taking down the Christmas tree that's been up since Christmas 2010! 

I did both today, and laundry, and made bread, and cleaned the living room, and I'm still going!

No writing still.

No school work still.

But godammit if I didn't finally match all the socks in the giant laundry basket o'socks!  You would just fall over to see me so adorably domestic!  I mean, guys, I hung curtains!  I mean, I did it with thumbtacks (reminded me of being like 9 years old and deciding I wanted a canopied bed with curtains come hell or high water), but they look adorably bohemian!

Ind the good news is that the living room is now clean and tidy and after some sweeping and wipe downs with the clorox wipes, it'll be ready for me to grade all the papers!  Woohoo!

XOXO donna fucking reed

Maybe

The old excuse isn't cutting it.  See, I've caught myself saying: "If I had more time..."  Well, jeeze louise, but I've had nothing BUT time this week and nary a word has been written.

So you wanna be a writer?  Write.

And I haven't.  It would seem I'm broken.  Or at least temporarily out of service. 

I've been reading and reading my stuff, trying to find a place to jump in and continue, pick up some thread and run with it.  But I'm getting editor's disease.  Now that I'm learning more and more about grammar rules and comma functions and bullshit like that, all I can see are my glaring errors.  And if I'm not noticing those then I'm fretting about the mundanity (mundaneness?) of my pitifully pedestrian storylines, characters, word choice and what the fuck ever.

Just not fun.  Not a great headspace for a writer.

And I have been avoiding, like the fucking plague, all the papers I have to grade this week.  And the lesson planning for unit three!  And yadda yadda yadda.

AND been tossing the old idea ball around.  The idea ball of :  What should I be when I grow up?  Scratch writer off the list, as I can't seem to do that.

Aaron tells me: "Of course you can write!  You're a very competent writer.  You're just as good as plenty of people who get published."

Thanks for the ringing endorsement, I tell him wryly.  D'you think that's what Dan Brown's family told him?

Aaron:  That's about the best he could hope for.  Dan, you're very capable of stringing sentences together.  Good job.

Me:  I feel great.  Thanks for the pep talk.

Anywho.  So writing is out.  So what else?

I've been racking the noodle all week, trying to devise a plan for the future that doesn't involve me killing myself trying to be something I'm just not: a teacher.

Another mediocre performance review is making me very nervous about my job prospects.  How wrtched to need a job you don't really want and aren't especially suited for! (for which you are no especially suited...)

But I've been taking my meds.  I've been trying to be optimistic.

And tossing out ideas to see if anything sticks.

Open my own starbucks
Open my own Marylous franchise
Open an artisan, independent coffee shop
Open a liquor store!
Open a vegetarian restaurant
Open a kitchen store--where I sell kitchens
Operate a high-end salvage business
Real estate
Tutor (bleck.)
Voice over work
Sound design for tv videogames and movies
bakery/confections shop
Florist
Something like a funeral parlor that isn't a traditional funeral parlor.
A book nook that actually specializes in digital readers instead of actual books?  
Wine shop



The problem with opening a shop is that I can't secure a loan.  Well, that is one of the many, many problems with opening my own business.  But of the shops I could open, I think a liquor one is the most recession proof, don't you? 

So then there's real estate.  Except I'm terrible at being a salesman.  But I love houses.  But I hate math.  And business.  And paperwork.  But I love houses and trying to figure out what would be a good fit for people... but I think I'd hate the rest of it.

Voice over work is a side job at best.  Its something that I really should have done already and have been dragging my feet for no good reason.  I've comitted to get a reel together and out there by summer.  But it isn't a game changer.  I'm hoping it may lead to a game changer--I'd like to produce voice work, be the one in the control booth.  But I'v gotta start somewhere.

Holy god get me out of my life!

Ok, sorry.  Moment of panic.

Kids, house, dreams?  Maybe someday, right?

Do your middle schoolers need another excuse to be over-dramatic, moody, sexually over-charged, and ridiculous: VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

Sheesh.

Luck?

I survived another week.  I survived another parent-teacher conferences night.  I survived another surprise evaluation--this time from the Principal herself.

I started an anti depressant yesterday.

And our streak of rotten luck continues.  With ne car down for the count and an expensive repair just done this week on White Thunder (our Buick), she up and dies on Aaron in the middle of an incredibly busy intersection at 6:45 pm last evening.

He was coming to pick me up at work. 

So naturally I had to call my mother.  To go get gas in one of those gas cans, bring it to aaron (who thought the car ran out of gas.  Our gas guage is super broken, so it was the logical conclusion.)

Aaron spends like, at least a half hour with his hazards on in the middle of a ridiculous intersection, with assholes beeping and swerving and ...ugh.  He has to call the police to help because, as I mentioned, it is a pretty major intersection.  The police come, help him coast the car out of the road; my mum comes and they put the gas in.  No luck.  Won't start.

So this AM, borrowing my Mom's car,  we are headed out in the light of day to see if we can't get her started.  If not?  We are pretty fucking screwed.

~Beth

Rah!

I am a New England Girl, raised in an Irish Catholic Household--so naturally I'm rooting for the Patriots.

But I am not actually watching the Superbowl or partaking in any of the overblown festivities. 

My husband is more of a Madonna fan than I am (his Bi side reard its head in such peculiar ways.  Like, I like Madonna, but he pretty much knows her discography.  Its pretty adorable to watch him singing along in the car.  He knows all the lyrics and I just stare at his bearded majesty sing 'pappa don't preach' in hearty falsetto, and shake my head in wonder.)  so we aren't even really bothering with the half-time show.  We don't have TV, so we'd have to find a live stream, and hell, we didn't even bother with that for the State of the Union this year (we have in years previous), so I'd feel pretty guilty...

I babysat today whilst my brother and my SIL went looking at houses.  Had fun with the neices.  Maggie told me: "I like you Auntie Bess."  (She can't form the 'th' sound, she isn't comparing me to the radiant Queen Elizabeth the First.)  She said it like it was a discovery, like she'd just decided this and needed to share.  I thanked her and told her I loved her to pieces.

I'm looking down the barrel of an all-nighter.  So much work to do.  I swear, I look at my paycheck every two weeks and despair.  There is no WAY I'm getting paid NEARLY enough.

This week we need to somehow pull together persuasive essays.  Plus there's a fucking half day this week so that I can endure the ridiculousness of Parent Teacher conferences. 

But guess what?  Then there's onbly one more week to FEBRUARY VACATION!  What?!?  I can hardly believe it!

And much of that week will be spent on the Unit exam, so... YAY!

Well, yay for me.  Not so much for the kiddies.  heeheehee.

We're down to one car and the one car has to go to the mechanic tomorrow.  Gross.  Aaron's carpooling with a friend, which will be nice, but we don't want to make a habit.

And I have to depend on my mother again.  She tricked me this weekend.  TRICKED me.  And used my lack of car against me.  Tricked me to come over and clean the bird cage, when I THOUGHT I was going over for a quick 20 minute task.  THREE HOURS LATER, and pissed the fuck off, I was driven home.  And too furious and disgruntled to do anything at all productive.

So tonight will be a marathon of getting shit the fuck done.  And a cheers season 5 marathon!  woot.  I love the little things-- the way they almost always dress Sam and Dianne in reds and blues (or pinks and blues).  So classic.  Coach is dead now, which is sad, but Woody is fanfuckingtastic.

Anyway... off to work...grumblegrumble...


Go Pats!

Ms. Reardon writes a little.

So!

I took monday off.  called out sick. 

The intention was to get grading and plannning done.

The actuality?  Far more exhilarating!  I wrote and wrote and wrote like I haven't been able to write in ages!  Now please understand that I'm not mistaking quantity for quality here, but at this point writing fluently and cogently for more than a sentence or two is a HUGE victory for me!

It felt good.  Understatement.  It felt amazing.  The scenes were more action-packed and visceral because they were from two very climactic sections of the tale.  The climax of present day and a climax from back in the day that sort of sets everything else in motion.  I think it was important that the two were pouring out of me simultaneously, because they really have to work in tandem for the balance of the story.  The one depends on the other, it is reciprocal. 

I like the echoes.  I like the repeated language and imagery.

I also wrote the same events from different character perspectives, which is a thing I enjoy doing.  It feels like real synthesis is going on.

It was frustrating, at first, trying to write.  My fingers were clumsy, my prose sluggish and stiff.  I felt dull and moronic and uninspired.  But you have to understand that I live with these characters 24/7.  When my mind is not completely occupied with pressing and immediate matters, it wanders to one of only a few places.
1st: Sex.  Sex with Aaron, sex with women, other pepeople having sex.  Sex.  The character of my stories having sex...
2nd: Regrets.  I spend far too many minutes ruminating and mulling over my various and sundry regrets.  Loves lost.  Friends gone.  Mistakes made in my career.  These thoughts are legion.  They are, however, blessedly less compelling than the other two cetegories, and so while I frequently default to thinking about regrets & 'should haves' I do not spend long periods at a time at this hobby.  Recurring but brief.
3rd:  The book.  Is it a book?  The narrative.  The fiction. The story.  The project on which I am working at present.  In this case (and the case of the last, what, year?  two years?  who can recall) it is Cedar Falls.  Before Cedar Falls it was Henry & Eleanor, before that the lesbian fairytale.  There is always a 'before that there was' and I am coming to expect that when I tire of or move on from CF, there will ever be an 'and then there was'.  But I spend the majority of my thinking on whatever my current creative project is.  

I live with these characters.  I breakfast with them, I bathe with them, I dine with them I drive with them I walk and talk and think with them.  I cook dinner with them, I daydream with them,  I fuck them I fall asleep with them.  They are always there, always waiting to be picked up again, toyed with again, tinkered with and tweaked and experimented upon.  Not always with the computer!  Most of the time just in the old noodle.  Or spoken aloud; a scene performed by one actor improvising all the roles.  Trying out dialogue.  Workshopping the plot, the characterization, the feel, the jokes. 

So they are all around; withing without, saturating my brain, sometimes so clamorous and suffocating that I can ahrdly concentrate on anything else.

Monday I was able to finally take some of those theories, those swirling scenes and get them captured, get them down in prose.  And I glowed with the release.  I was so excited.  and happy.  And proud.

No grading done.  heeheehee.

I am a terrible teacher.  But the glow of the writing is making the sting of that truth fairly insignificant :)