Yes, I Did It Again

I changed my mind again and wanted to have a more subtle, simple design, and something light and fluffy.  Less Darth Vader.

You like?

My kitchen smells like brownies.  That picture is not of brownie batter, it’s of cake batter, and it’s an old picture… but aren’t you just craving brownies now?  Err… if you like chocolate, that is.

I have dinner tonight with Sammy and then work in the morning.  Yuck!  Tomorrow is a special day at work, and it always brings out the jerks.  I don’t get why people complain about something that’s free.  But whatevs.  Then work until Wednesday.  Bah.  Work.  So excited to go back to school.  School a week from Monday! Squee.  But wait until a week from Tuesday and I’ll be complaining.

Ramble ramble.

Don’t Rain On My Parade.

“Don’t tell me not to fly, I simply got to. / If someone takes a spill, it’s me and not you. / Who told you you’re allowed to rain on my parade?” ~ Barbara Streisand singing Don’t Rain on my Parade as Fanny Brice in the musical Funny Girl.

So this morning all my plans got condensed and smooshed into teeny-tiny crumbs too small for a mouse.  Sammy’s lovely, furnished basement flooded last night, and the poor dear spent many, many hours with her family containing it.  It was muchos sad, and or plans got pushed back an hour.  But I completely understood, and in her position, I probably would’ve cancelled, so I waited patiently.  This morning, I decided it would be a good plan to try to work on chapter five anyway, so I was feeling good about life.  I pretty quickly forgot about the brief lapse of disappointment and continued my day.

I sat down at my desktop.  I really like my desktop.  It’s a useless piece of crap if you want to actually do anything with it (i.e. games, internet?  Slow as a snail) but for writing, it’s ideal.  No distractions.  I sat, crossed-legged in my office chair and… nothing.  I sighed.  I spun around in circles.  I poked at the keys until eventually (five minutes later) I made a paragraph appear.  That was about all I could handle, so I tottered off to check my email on my laptop, and eat a bagel, and play two rounds of Pokemon with my brother, and play two-and-a-half hours of Rock Band.  All, naturally, incredibly productive for my writing life.

At 2:30, I left for Keene, arrived at my destination fifteen minutes before I was expected (yeowch), achieved a scoop on delicious, different mango-raspberry sorbet from Friendly’s (Free Ice Cream day for the win).  I would like to take this moment to note that I could have had anything on their menu, and I picked sorbet, which is significantly healthier than Mocha Chip or whatever yumminess I usually get.

When I got back to Sammy’s things were still a little chaotic, but I still did get to spend a little time with her.  It wasn’t as much as we were expecting, but I really enjoyed it.  I brought my typewriter for her to play with and she seemed delighted with it, and I liked to see her that happy so I’m loaning it to her for a week.  I trust her.  I know it’ll be returned in tip-top shape. Oh yeah. And I got a page of writing done, too. It wasn’t the whole chapter, but it was important progress.

After that, Bryan took me to Panera Bread (yummy!) where I tried both the Cuban Chicken sandwich (not bad, but I’ll stick to my Smokehouse Turkey) and the French Onion soup (delicious).  Today was a day of trying new things.  We spent some time together and had a delightful evening.  I felt very close to him tonight, and that was nice.  Sometimes, I step back and ask myself “what the heck am I doing with this moron?” but tonight wasn’t one of those nights.  We played half-a-game of Nightmare Before Christmas Monopoly and we sat on the wall beside my driveway and chatted for a while.  It was nice.

So today?  Today presented me with grumpy friend’s parents, a shortened visit due to water disaster, parental badgerings, heat, a troublesome too-social-for-his-means brother… and I worked through it all, had a great day, and I’m in a fabulous mood.  Tomorrow I get to tell Mattie the good news that he’s been waiting for, and you know what?  I’m really happy today.  When everything tried to go wrong, we all made it go right.

So you know what, life?  Don’t rain on my parade.  Because I can capture every drop into a great big, shimmering blue swimming pool, splash around, and have a blast.  Nothing’s going to keep me down today.  It’s a great feeling.

Reading, Writing, and ‘Rithmatic.

“I’m so excited / and I just can’t hide it. / I’m about to lose control / and I think I like it.” ~ I’m So Excited by the Pointer Sisters.

There is something about that song that disturbs me.  Every time I read the lines above, I relate it to something different.  At the moment, the image in my mind is that of a hyper-active puppy meeting an apple-red fire hydrant.  That image, naturally, is not the one I want to convey; the song always gets into my head when I am thinking about something I am excited for.

I am excited for tomorrow.  Tomorrow is Saturday.  That in itself should be enough of a perk.  I am not working tomorrow, which, despite my lack-of-paycheck this last week, is still a nice respite.  I will also be seeing Sammy tomorrow, which, in this case, I am excited for.  See, we have plans.  We are going to be writing (unless something changes).  I am bringing my typewriter (erm, and my laptop) and I am going to finish editing chapter four of Fate.  For real this time.  Maybe.

I haven’t written properly in a while.  Every once and a while, I’ll pump out a piece of flash fiction, but hardly anything worth noting.  I think I’m burnt out from writing, which is terribly, but I’m finding every excuse not to do it.  Really.  Every excuse.  I feel like I’m in elementary school again, fighting with myself to do homework.  The only way I could summon up enough willpower to do my math homework in elementary and middle school was to tell myself that if I did five problems, I could read five pages of insert-Tamora-Pierce-novel-here.  After about an hour, the math homework would usually be complete.  It was an intricate rewards system that is no longer effective now that I am in college.

Seriously, though.  Writing feels like work.  I blame my writing classes.  My college writing classes haven’t been useless, per se.  The teachers have all been very helpful.  But the students are all just like me (or the have as much enthusiasm as me, at any rate).  We’re all tired.  We did the work, just barely, so now can we go back to bed?  It’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I worked five hours at my other job today, then I had three classes, and I was up until three am trying to get homework done and I’m just not used to putting this much stress on my body.  So much to do, so little motivation.

Tomorrow, I am telling myself, will be different.  I will finish edits on chapter four of Fate.  My brother is watching Alice in Wonderland right now; maybe I’ll go join him and get motivated for Absolutely Mad.  I have a million options; all I need to do is sit in front of my computer and write (not go online).  I think Sammy will help me keep focused, and maybe I can help her keep focused.

Or, at least, amuse her with the typewriter.

Carpe Diem

“Open the gates and seize the day.  Don’t be afraid and don’t delay.” ~ David Moscow in Newsies.

Yesterday was quite a day.  I spent a little time with a friend at the end of a long, tiring, sun burnt day (and was glad I did) and so made up this poster about her current state of mind- things that she was going to do to make herself happy, things that are really bothering her, things that annoy her, lyrics that describe her feelings; things like that.  The one that really caught my eye was “things I’ve lied about recently”.  See, she and I have a lot of things in common.  One of those things is that we’re really good (and compulsive) liars.  Lately, I’ve been trying not to lie.  My lies (as of late) have been lies of omission.  Things that I feel like I should tell someone, but don’t, or can’t (for some reason; usually because I’m afraid to).  I mean, just plain-up not-telling-the-truth is a lie, right?

So, after she went back inside her house, I took a deep breath, and went and found Bryan.  Bryan and I have been working really hard to improve our relationship and find ourselves in it again.  No.  Scratch that.  Bryan’s been working really hard.  I’ve been sitting and waiting.  He hasn’t asked a lot of me, but the least I could do is be honest with him.  And I haven’t been.  So I met him at the college and we walked around downtown.  From Keene State to Cheshire Homes to the Colony Mill back to Subway and the Central Square.  It was peaceful, the temperature was just right, and I was honest with him.  As honest as I could be.  I mean… it’s really hard to explain to your boyfriend of three years that not only do you bond better with people of the opposite gender (he knew that already) but you often develop crushes on them and become overprotective of them.  That you step outside your relationship and assess what a relationship would be like with them.  Goodness knows I’ve done it so many times since I’ve been dating Bryan.  With Isaac.  With Ian.  With David (although, to my credit, David initiated that train of thought, and it lingered in my brain for a while).  With Sean.  Sean has been the worst.  David could have been the worst, but he was in a relationship with I knew him.  He’s getting married to that same woman now, next summer.  I’m really happy for him.  But it’s been different with Sean lately.

I told Bryan this.  Since I told Bryan this, it doesn’t seem weird saying it anymore.  Sean is a really nice guy.  He’s got a great sense of humor, a million stories, and he definitely has one thing that Bryan hasn’t:  empathy.  But on the other hand, I still see that he likes to drink (a lot) and he has a huge circle of friends (I’m not a social person.  Me + computer = love), he’s an athlete (never much cared for the whole sweaty body-builder whatevs thing).  I don’t find him physically attractive (I also don’t find him physically unattractive.  In his case, it’s the hair.  His hair is really thin, not luscious.  Hair is a big thing for me).  But yet, whenever I’ve been with him lately, I feel uplifted, even if only in the smallest way.  And whenever I mention my relationship to Bryan with him, I feel like I come back to “why am I with him anyway?” and we find a whole new list of incompatibilities.  It’s interesting, to say the least.  I don’t know.  Maybe I’m just looking for them.

But you know what?  I told Bryan all that.  Every word.  And he didn’t get mad, he didn’t get jealous, he didn’t get upset.  He just walked beside me and trusted me in a way that he never has before.  That meant a lot to me, so very much, and I felt like this huge burden had been lifted.  Now Bryan knows, I feel silly about it all.  Bryan never said a word against me.  He didn’t cling.  He openly admitted that things like that… they’ve happened to him in the past too.  And like me, there was nothing concrete, there was nothing better in the potentiality of a relationship with the others.  And there’s no promise of a relationship at any rate, if things had been broken off.  It felt so good, having him confide that in me.  I feel, this morning, so much better (sans sun burn and impending final exam).

I think, through Sean and Sammy’s guidance (Sammy is totally my pep talk girl.  She tells me straight up when I’m being stupid, and I love it) and Bryan and I learning to trust each other again… I’m going to be okay.  I’m still terrified about my future (so close and daunting) and I’m still a little indifferent about the world at times (honestly think it might be springtime + stress, though.  I really, really hate springtime).  But today is Thursday.  It’s not a special day, but it’s a new day.  And I’m going to step up and be a big person, and well… carpe diem.  I’m going to seize the day.

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Weather Report: It’s cool and raining again.  My sun-burnt shoulders are relieved.  Going to need to dig out a coat, though.  Maybe I’ll find my school id in one of the pockets.

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Health Report: My stomach is growling.  My diet yesterday was terrible, and I’m still regretting it.  When I got home from work I had a whole can of tomato soup mixed with water, basil, cayenne, and mozzarella cheese.  Plus five slices of white bread smothered with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.  Pretty bad, right?  But that wasn’t the worst of it.  I later had a small serving of Spanish rice with mozzarella cheese.  Then a whole pint of Ben and Jerry’s Extreme Chocolate Brownie ice cream. … … And then (wait for it) a flat bread wrap from Subway with teriyaki chicken, Monterrey Jack cheese, some onions and a small amount of sweet onions sauce.  So yeah.  I feel fat.  Over the last two days, I have spent between six and eight hours walking, but I’m pretty sure that won’t cover the Ben and Jerry’s….

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Words Worth Getting At: I wrote a Flash Fic yesterday, but then the internet went down, so I posted it this morning.  The words were crap yesterday.  And I was watching NCIS simultaneously, so it’s definitely not my best work.  You can kind of see where NCIS inspired it, though.  It’s Inspection Day.  …  I’ve also been working on a “book of cheat sheets,” I’m calling it.  Mini-character sketches with the most basic of information.  Got Daniel, Harley, and Riley done so far.  I may do some more soon-ish.  I want to get bits and pieces of the world in there too, if I can.  Just a quick reference guide that’s a little lighter and more mobile than the binder I’ve got my 20-page character sketches shoved into now.

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Social Life: I think I’ve been pretty busy this week!  Sean on Tuesday, then both Sammy and Bryan yesterday (w00t for spontaneous hang out time!) and then I’m getting up crazy early tomorrow to meet Bryan for breakfast, because we want to go the the Swanzey Diner, because they’re yummy.  I’ve already got my heart set on stuffed french toast!

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Schoolhouse Rock: I have my last final today.  Almost officially done with my junior year of college.  Holy Number 2 Pencils, Batman… that’s kinda terrifying.

Happy Meal!

“Somebody needs a happy meal.” ~ Abby Sciuto to Jethro Gibbs, NCIS S4 Ep. 16.

Some days are nice, and they usually end up being nice on accident.  Today, I woke up positively miffed because of the snow.   Then the day went forward, snow turned to rain, and eventually I had a hot chocolate and stopped noticing.  I gave Justin a ride to a meeting, spent some time with Sammy, and Bryan was wonderful through the whole thing.  Again, I’m proud of him.  He’s doing so well.  Really, it means a lot to me.

WordPress has this nifty feature that gives me my blog stats.  How many people have viewed it, and which pages, from where, et cetera.  On average I get like… four views a day.  It doesn’t count me, either.  It senses I’m logged on and it neutralizes the visit.  So that’s kind of fun.  Makes me feel like there’s someone out there, maybe just trolls, but still… someone.  Sammy’s the only one so far I’ve given the link to.  I haven’t decided who else I trust yet.  Not that I don’t trust people, it’s just… I have a difficult time bearing my soul to other people.  I don’t know why.  I think part of it was because I had a friend flip out at me in high school for being selfish and not caring about others enough and I was making my trivialities bigger than other peoples’ real-life issues.  I’ve tried to forget what she said, but I never could… and every since I’ve been hesitant to open up to people.  I’m sure there’s probably more to it than just her, though.

So I’m sitting here tonight, pretty much at peace.  My back hurts a little (from the way I’m sitting) and Bryan and I are having a mature conversation that isn’t about our relationship.  I’m having a good night.  I think I’m going to shut down, watch some NCIS, and just be happy.