I Would Do A New Year's Celebration Dance For All of You, But Then I'd Have to Apologize

First of all, Happy New Year, y’all! I hope everyone had a fantastically safe New Year’s Eve and you all have an even better New Year! Can you believe it’s 2010 already? I know that I sure can’t. Where did time go? Did someone eat it?

Speaking of time, this segues ever so nicely into the part of the blog where I would normally apologize for being MIA, but instead, I'm not going to. The truth is, I have been extremely busy and have probably been on the computer to do something outside of working on my novel for a total of somewhere between ten and twenty hours since mid September. I know this sounds like a lot, but when you factor in that I was either checking my e-mail, shopping for great deals for Christmas, or catching up and making plans with someone and then running off into the dark of night (did I just make myself sound like a hooker?), it really isn’t. I’ve wanted to write, but was absent of a lot of stories to tell in the insanity that has ensued in the last few months.

Now I finally have some stories to tell, having come out of the holidays totally unscathed. How did you all do?

The novel is coming along, but not as well as I would have liked. I really want to make this novel something I’m proud of, and take the time I believe it deserves to write it. I want to know when I take this to a publisher and shop it around, that it is something I am truly proud of and wouldn’t want to change a thing, or think I could have done something better. That way, if it’s rejected, I can never say I didn’t put my best foot forward, and from there I will continue on, write some new stuff, and self publish my book for those of you who have requested a copy. I thank you for that. You will definitely get one, one way or another. (Which just makes me want to sing the song, but I’ll do it quietly while I type.)

I write differently than most writers, and I knew going into this novel, being as it was my first shot at writing one, that considered and my health, too, it was realistically going to take me somewhere around two years to finish. I wanted to be done at the end of 2009, but I knew it was unrealistic when I made that goal. There’s a lot of things that come along with writing a novel that I didn’t expect, and it’s certainly much different than writing out short stories to post on the internet.

When I write, I always start by writing a first draft of the entire story, each chapter between eight to ten pages, and then make character profiles for each character from there. Then, I go in and do my second draft, which is the novel version that I have to get right. The reason I do this is because I already know exactly how the story will go from writing the first draft, and I’m happy with the first draft as a whole. When I go back in and do a second draft, this allows me the opportunity to expand upon each chapter to tie in with later chapters, while knowing exactly how the story ends. This also allows me to fix pieces that I wasn’t sure of, as when I do my first draft, I write straight through with the intention of fixing things later. In the second draft, it’s do or die. I consider the third draft the draft where I do nothing but fix small grammatical errors and the like, but by the time I reach that draft, the story is done and exactly how I want it.

I’m enjoying this process, and finding that it’s much more difficult than I thought, because the little things I think I can change easily, never end up being that little or that easy. Sometimes it feels like I’m staring down the belly of the beast, and they become larger than life. That’s when I have to walk away and get my head together for the sake of the story, and then come back to it. In the mean time, I have plenty of other ideas that are shaping up nicely. Who knows, maybe the story I started and thought would be my first novel, will end up not being the first one that I finish? I’m just enjoying the ride knowing that the important thing here is that I one hundred percent keep writing, and have faith that something beautiful and right will come out of it.

All in all, sometimes I lose my will power to keep writing, and I need to get back into reality for awhile, because it’s easy to spend too much time inside of your head while spending ten plus hours a day doing nothing but writing a story your imagination discovered. I had to take a good break from my computer, and especially from the internet world, and focus on myself and getting better, because in all of this writing and social networking, I forgot about taking care of myself. Knowing my current health, there were nights I stayed up way too late just to finish a chapter, and paid for it dearly the next day. I’ve been feeling a lot better since I’ve gotten on a more regulated sleeping schedule, and have taken a good bit of the stress out of my life by backing away from constantly feeling like I had to keep up with a ton of networking sites on top of writing a story. It was exhausting and stupid on my part.

I know for sure I will keep this blog going, and hopefully I will write more, because I do love to write on here. I’m also considering started a blog specifically to talk about the writing process and what not. If I do start that blog, I will let you know. I also plan on keeping my Twitter, because, as little as it is used, it also takes a full two seconds to write something onto that. After that, I’m unsure. Having a mild case of OCD, Facebook and it’s non cohesive layout and feed of absolute junk and confusion just kills me. I actually don’t mind Myspace, but in a way it’s starting to feel like organized stalking. Essentially, Twitter is, too, but I feel like, in a lot of ways, it’s less invasive than Myspace. Maybe I’m wrong? Plus, Myspace is time consuming and I keep being told that “no one uses Myspace anymore.” Am I getting old that my response to that tends to be, "but I remember when Myspace was the shit?" Wait, I know the answer to that.

I have no idea what I’m doing with those sites yet, but I do know that anything outside of those sites will most likely be gone. I just can’t see spending hours a day updating a bunch of sites, and doing them all half assed just to network. I’d rather have a few that I do well and go from there. In the day and age of the internet, it’s easy to really feel lost in real life, and forget that there are real people outside of the computer screen. I don’t want to get sucked into that more than I already have. The computer age is good, but there’s a lot of things about it that just aren’t real, that you can’t touch.

I’m going to work on getting everything set up for 2010 and go from there. Actually, let me just process that it's 2010 already, and go from there instead.

Let’s talk holidays. There’s no way something funny hasn’t happened to you this holiday season, and by holiday season, I’m including anything that’s happened between Thanksgiving and 2010, so let’s start sharing stories and telling secrets like best girlfriends, shall we?

A week before Christmas, I found myself at the mall with a friend of mine, who I met through another friend. This was our first time hanging out just the two of us, so I didn’t know what to expect really, especially considering he was uber shy any other time I had been around him, but just as nice when he did speak, and a gracious host when I was at this house. This prompts me to share something else with you before I get into what I want to tell you, just because it’s so funny.

One time I ended up at this particular friend's house. We will call him Mike, mostly because that is his name. If I’ve talked about a Mike before, which I can’t remember if I have, this is a totally different Mike. Anyway, Mike lived with his parents and his brother who was two years his junior. His brother was a bit of an odd commodity, and never peeped out of his room in the basement except to eat, use the bathroom or leave. He didn’t even say much to Mike, so they just accepted this was who the brother was, as did all of Mike’s friends, and went along with their day. Then one day it happened. The parents were out of town and Mike’s brother comes up to him and says...and I quote, “I’m having a party in the kitchen tomorrow. You’re can come if you want.”

What makes this particularly great is that, not only was that the only thing his brother had said to him all week, but Mike was invited to a party in his very own home in which he lives. To make this ten times better, the only television in the house is down in the family room, and to get to the family room from anywhere in the house but the basement, you must go through the kitchen. To get to any of the cars to leave the house, you must go through the kitchen. There’s just an oodle of reasons you have to go through the kitchen in that house, so even if Mike wasn’t invited to the party, it’s unlikely he wouldn’t have had to somehow become part of it at one point in the day just to navigate his own house. Oh, and did I mention that Mike then invited my other friend and myself to the party that he was invited to by default? We didn’t go, but we should have. We heard all of his brother’s friends were nerds and they all sat around and literally stared at each other and said about two words to each other the whole night, and it was the lamest party in the history of the nation, so then again, maybe it’s good we missed it.

But back to the original story. Mike and I met up at the mall. He had Christmas gifts to still get, I did not, but I needed out of the house a little. We walked around, talked and then headed to get something to eat, but not after passing a guy who was tiny, white, dressed like a gansta, and wearing headphones and rapping, three times. THREE TIMES WE PASSED HIM! Epic.

Naturally, we’re sitting at the food court and Mike’s eating, whereas I wasn’t hungry, and we get into a discussion about music, which evolves into Mike telling me this. He is the kind of person, much like myself, that has to have some music going on while in the car. His mother, on the other hand, along with his father, both like complete and utter silence. For awhile Mike had been trying to convince his parents to let him play music when he was riding with them, to which they refused. Finally one day he was in the car with his mom and it was dead silent and killing him. He worked hard to convince her to let them listen to music, and she finally, after awhile of begging, obliged and hit the button on the CD player. Unbeknownst to him, apparently she listen to music in her car, even though she always told him she likes it completely silent. What’s better? Very loud, heavy, bitches and hoes rap music starts blaring through the speakers. Naturally, Mike is horrified. This is his mother listening to heavy rap. Then it happened, he turned to her, asked her what she was listening to, and she proceeded to rattle off the name just as a fifty something would rattle of Bette Midler, and continued driving like nothing happened. He, of course, wanted out of the car and never again asks to listen to music while riding with her anymore.

What still remains unknown is if the real reason his mom didn’t want to listen to music in the car when he was there was because this is what she listens to and she didn’t want him to know. What also remains unknown is how a fifty something found out about and got into Lil John and the East Side Boyz. Maybe somethings are better left to the imagination...or just laid to rest. To top it off, neither Mike nor I knew who Lil John and the East Side Boyz were prior to this, and both had to Google them. Sad and backwards? I think so.

As Paul would say: “I blame rap music.” Touche, Paul, touche.

I think by now everyone knows that I’m so out of the loop when it comes to cool things at the ripe old age of twenty four, but if you ask me anything about Disney Channel, particularly The Wizards of Waverly Place, I could tell you anything you wanted to know. This led to an interesting encounter between my mom and a random stranger, both who were Christmas shopping at Target.

My mom searched out and found The Wizards of Waverly Place movie at the same time that another woman also had. My mom then proceeds to look at the other woman and have a conversation similar to this. My mom reads this blog, so I’m sure she’ll correct me and let me know that this is not exactly how it happened, but I like to think it is, and the ending is all the same. The ending, by the way, is the good part.

Mom: “My daughter LOVES this show. She LOVES Selena Gomez.”

Other Lady: “My daughter, too.”

Insert more parts about me and this lady’s daughter, and how we all realize I could be obvious besties with her daughter, with sleepovers and WOWP marathons included. Then it all comes crashing down.

Mom: “Wow. Twenty bucks is just too much to pay for this movie. It will be on Disney Channel again, and my daughter’s already seen it.”

Other Lady: “But it’s Christmas.”

Mom: “Yeah, but my daughter’s twenty four. She’ll get over it.”

The look on the other lady’s face turns from understanding, to confused, to shock, to confused again over if my mom is serious or not that I’m twenty four and I sound like her daughter. 


Other Lady: “Oh, well my daughter is ten.”

Mom: “Well, that’s a little different.”

Other Lady: “Yeah, but you’re right, this is too much.”

*Both walk away from movie*

Look, Little Awesome Ten Year Old, of whom I do not know. First of all, let me say sorry that you didn’t get WOWP. It’s all my fault. Not directly, but it is. Secondly, I will buy you the movie with my Christmas money if you will talk WOWP and Selena Gomez with me without laughing. I’m not trying to be creepy, but I need a friend who understands how awesome Disney and Selena are. We can also color. I'll bring the crayons.

Oh, did I mention I got crayons for Christmas? I didn’t? Well, I did and Aunt Bev laughed and thought my mom was kidding about getting me crayons. In order to combat this, I colored Aunt Bev a picture for Christmas. I think this worked out quite swimmingly.

I also need to add a few more things. One - I submitted a story to MyVeryWorstDate.com. It was the Thanksgiving feature. You can see it here. I’m thinking this is probably really, really sad, but somehow the fact that it got posted makes me happy. It’s good to know others can laugh at something that I now laugh at, even if it wasn’t funny then.

Two - Gram is another reason I’ve been MIA, but even though she’s still terminal, obviously, she’s still hanging in there. Pray for her, you guys.

I also have to add to a previous post where I told a story about being at the hospital, and waiting to get an ultrasound. My mom informed me that I forgot to mention Fred, so here goes.

There was a guy in the waiting room named Fred. Fred looked and acted like a serial killer. How, you ask? Well, good ole’ Fred was suspicious from the get-go, what with his moving chairs to sit by new people who had been sitting in their place long before he came along, every couple of minutes and what not. He also lurked suspiciously behind his paper, as well as gave people the evil eye. He resembled closely every generic villain on Walker, Texas Ranger, and did a slew of other things that my mom can probably remember, but I can’t say that I can. So really Fred is probably a perfectly nice guy who can’t seem to make friends with any certain seat, but we’re just gonna say he’s a serial killer and leave it at that.

To round out this blog, I will also tell another story that comes to us via a friend who I will allow to remain nameless. Several years ago, this certain friend took her brother into a local sporting goods store to get him something he needed for his baseball team. As she’s standing there, jacket and all, a woman comes up to her and asks her where the bathrooms are. She tells the woman she doesn’t know. The woman then insists she works there. After my friend argues that it’s obvious she doesn’t, the lady then goes “but you should still know where the bathrooms are.” Finally my friend looks at her and says this exactly, “I’M A FAT KID IN A SPORTING GOODS STORE! DOES IT LOOK LIKE I COME HERE OFTEN?” And this is why I love my friends.

On a side note, does anyone else find the guy who plays Dr. Spencer Reid on Criminal Minds oddly attractive? I feel like the only one, and I have to admit, I'm a little embarrassed by this. I always did love the nerdy guys. Gees, someone make me feel better about this, please.

Oh, and y'all, please check out my mom's blog here.