So happy!

Tonight after class I stayed to talk to L, my teacher. She is awesome. I want to be her when I grow up! (Although I don't know how that would work since I'm 99% sure she is younger than me.)

The purpose of our meeting was for her to give me some feedback on the writing assignments we've handed in so far. She calls them Polished Writing Exercises and I'll be frank--some of the kids in my class don't write very polishedly (yes, I made that word up just now). Creatively speaking, they have good ideas, but their writing skills need some work. I'm not being mean or petty, but I will admit to a certain thrill when I realized that my writing, even before I talked with L, was of a higher caliber, skill-wise, then most of my classmates'.

[As an aside, I think that people who read voraciously make good writers. You see how published authors sell their books, you learn how stories are put together, your vocabulary evolves, and in my case, I think about how I might make something work better if it's awkward or hard to understand.]

So anyway, after not saying a word in class AGAIN, I walked up to L's desk (yet another shy thing I do--sit in the back of the class. This has more to do with the fact that I want to sweat in relative peace--after walking the 1/2 mile up the damned hill from the metered, dirt-and-gravel parking lot where I park my own car like a real grown-up, I am sweating profusely and want to do it in the back of the room where hopefully not many people will notice me fanning myself with a handy file folder containing the class syllabus and wiping the sweat off my face and neck) and she pinned me with her gaze. "We're meeting, yes?" I noticed that she has a teensy diamond nose ring!  I want one too! So dainty and sparkly and unexpected! I nodded enthusiastically (maybe too enthusiastically? Does she know I practically idolize her?) and we went outside.

The stale, baked-concrete-scented, hot outside.

I felt like I had just stopped sweating two minutes before class ended.

I began to sweat again. Not only because it was still warm  from the 90-degree day, but also because L was reading and critiquing and writing on my printed stories. AAAAAAGH!

And she looked up at me and said, "You write well. There's some good stuff here."

This from a published author (at least in literary journals--not sure if she's been published in books yet), a grad student who's presenting her own book-slash-dissertation in November, who's been writing for years and is earning a Doctorate in Creative Writing.  She said I write well!

She gave me some things to think about, and I understood immediately that they are all things I totally agree with, especially after reading the last couple chapters on characterization in our technique book and discussing the short stories she's assigned.

This is exactly why I'm in school. So I can evolve and learn and stay passionate about writing. I hope my professors are all as good as L is!

I have 16 children.*

I was behind a mini-van Thursday on my way to school. This van had the family stickers, you know where each person and pet is represented by a little character of some sort. This time it was the Disney ones with the Mickey Mouse ears. There were the mom and dad, and then five kids.

Five kids.

FIVE kids.

What is wrong with people today that they think five children are okay to bring into this world? One or two I get, maybe three, but five? Do you live on a farm and you need the extra hands? Are you Catholic and don't believe in birth control? Do you not know how getting pregnant happens?

Five?

You may think that because I have no children I am heartless, un-American, godless, selfish. I am none of those except maybe selfish--because one of the reasons I didn't have kids was because I didn't want to be someone's mother for the rest of my life. (For other reasons, scroll down--I have listed them towards the bottom.) I think my friends' kids are wonderful, adorable little people, who are creative and funny and super-cute. [As long as they're well-behaved.] I am all for people having children as long as it's not an "oops." As long as they plan for it and understand that their entire worlds are going to change and from then on, they're not going to have much extra money and their entire focuses (foci?) will be the kid(s). Sure, have one or two or maybe three!

Just don't expect me to baby-sit.

For people to be having that many kids today is simply wrong. The earth cannot support this many people for much longer. Not to mention it is freaking scary to think of how bad teenagers have it now. I admit, I was naive growing up and didn't realize that there were drugs in my high school, but think about how it is now with meth everywhere and movies like "Get Him to the Greek" saying that drugs are hilarious! (Don't think I'm preaching about drug use because drugs are cool--but you have to make up your own mind and know the risks before using them.Therefore, the people who should use drugs should be adults.)

So here are my reasons for not having children:

1. I didn't want to be somebody's mother for the rest of my life.
2. I didn't want to be poor.
3. I didn't want to chance passing on Crohn's Disease to another generation.
4. I didn't know if I'd be good at it.
5. With my medical history and all the drugs I'd been on (and used recreationally), I didn't know what that might do to my offspring.
6. I didn't know what a pregnancy would do to my 12-inch vertical tummy scar.
7. Pregnancy scares the shit out of me.
8. Giving birth is disgusting and scares the shit out of me.
9. My husband was on the fence and said it was okay either way.
10. My mother-in-law is a smothering person and I couldn't imagine having her around 24/7 after having a kid.
11. [This is perhaps the most important.] I wasn't sure if I wanted a kid.

That being said, I am a mother after all: to our *three dogs, one cat, rescued gecko, and eleven tarantulas. I am a care-giver to my husband and friends. I am nurturing, loving, encouraging, and giving. I love my life and job and friends.

I have sometimes wondered what it would have been like to have a baby. To have a life growing inside me that was a product of my love for my husband. To have a tiny person running around.

But those thoughts end really quickly when a kid screams in the grocery store or has a tantrum in a restaurant. Then I celebrate my childlessness and rejoice in the quiet solace of my life.

The silent treatment

I love my class. Let me just say that straight away.

I am not usually characterized as shy. I have taken an informal poll of my friends and everyone laughed when I asked them if they thought of me as shy. Then they realized I was serious and said "Hell to the no!"

But I cannot talk in my class. Even though I have the answer that L is looking for. Even though I have opinions that deserve to be heard. Even though I love my class, love learning my craft, and am not normally shy.

Each day, I psyche myself up on the drive to campus. The minute I walk through the classroom door (114!) I am rendered mute.

Tonight was the third class. I have yet to utter a word other than "Here" or make a sound besides giggling (and even that is uncharacteristically quiet). I marveled tonight at a girl who stood in the front of class and read her story out loud. She defended her writing against an informal critique by some of our classmates (but not me! I didn't say anything!). She and I walked the same way by chance after class, and I so badly wanted to tell her that I enjoyed her story. I got her first paragraph even when L said she was confused by it. I wanted to tell her that her intended point of view was not entirely what she'd thought it was, but something like that is easily fixed. So we walked together but apart and there was nothing but silence.

First day of school!

After the debacle of my summer attempt at becoming a university student, which involved crying to a very understanding girl in the registrar's office (you're the best, Meg!), reapplying to school and being reaccepted (is that even a word?) by the College of English, my first day of Creative Fiction Technique was yesterday. It was awesome! Well, after being very stressful and embarrassing--which is my lot in life.

I couldn't remember the professor's name so I checked out my class schedule during lunch. Noted: class starts at 5:15. I then peeked at her reviews on ratemyprofessor.com (a website with which a grain of salt should always be taken) and was pleased with her raves. Yay! I was excited to meet her and get going with my degree work!

My husband drove me to class. I'm spoiled, yes I am, but I didn't want to have to fight with parking (especially since I don't have my parking decal yet) and worry with traffic and finding my way around the massive campus. He dropped me off behind the building at 4:50 and it was then I realized I didn't know where my class was. I knew which building (duhh, the College of English's building), but not which room. I was confident I would find someone who would direct me. Aww, I'm so cute and naive in this portion of the story!

I found my way into the ginormous building. There were children everywhere. By children I mean kids, from freshman to seniors, milling around, lounging in front of closed classrooms, sitting on the wide windowsills. And everybody was on their phone. I of course have a cheap husband who won't pay for a data plan for my phone. I called said cheap husband and asked him to log into my class schedule with his data plan and check which room I needed to be in. He called me back a minute later (5:01)--he could not navigate the university's website via his phone. By this time I had approached a friendly-looking young girl and she couldn't help me either, other than directing me to the advisors' offices to have them look up my schedule. I made my way to the second floor and walked around. Again, I approached a friendly-looking, bookish young man wearing glasses and told him I didn't know where my class (CRW 3110) was and he directed me to the third floor. I had to tell him my class was 3110, not my room number. He shrugged and I left him to find an office with a computer or an advisor or something more helpful.

At 5:05, I stumbled into a writing lab with online computers! I could have wept! The cute, shaggy-headed, bearded hipster who greeted me laughed as I told him my tale. He explained away my stupidity by saying, "It's the first week of class, no big deal."  I logged on, got my schedule and room number (114!) and made my way back downstairs.

I promptly found the room. It was 5:09. Plenty of time! There was a moment of confusion as there were two rooms, back to back, and I saw only one sign in between them that said 114. But there is a wall separating them, I thought they can't be the same room; and then the door covering up the second room's sign was moved. Ah. Taking a deep breath, I attempted to open the door. And it was locked.

Rather than making an ass of myself in front of all the children already seated at their chosen desks, I looked wildly around for another door to the room that wasn't locked. Just then, a woman--yay, my age!--materialized next to me. Before I could say "It's locked!" she pushed open the door, saying, "The doors here just push open--most of them in the building do." I followed her inside and she went to the front of her room and put her things down. On the teacher's desk.

Yes, she is my professor.

At least I wasn't late to class (it was only 5:12)!

I quietly took a seat in the far right corner, near a handy windowsill on which to place my very heavy bag o'books and my illegal water (No Food or Drinks in Classrooms! all the signs said). She introduced herself as I looked around the class. Just as I had suspected--all children. All 20, or maybe 21. I sighed and tried to relax and concentrate on what the professor was saying. She was going to take roll. Ack! Roll! People would know my name!

I was the 4th to be called, thanks to my last name. All my life I have been near the front of the line, the beginning of the list. And horror of all horrors: I realized she had our student IDs to look at along with our names and personal histories, all displayed neatly on the classroom computer. She knew exactly where I was sitting--I couldn't hide--and as she called my name, she said "Yes, you were struggling with the door." I laughed along with a couple other students and it was okay. I was okay.

Class ended up being great. I consider myself to be a pretty good judge of character, and I think L is going to be a great professor. I look forward to learning a lot and working hard for that knowledge. I am so excited!

I'm a great student!

Today I logged onto Blackboard to see when my class starts. I think it's mid July or maybe even the last week in July.

It started yesterday. That would be June 27th. I am an idiot. What a great student I am.

I am mad!

Watch this, then pass it on.

"English teacher harassed for being an erotica writer"

Why are people so ignorant? This boy said it all. Now I'm going to buy some of Judy's works and make her her some money so that when the stupid school board fires her (which hopefully they won't, but apparently in this country, stupidity and fear win all the time), she'll be ok financially.

Good ear worm

Recently, I've been listening to the album Wish by The Cure. It's the only disc in my car right now. I know all the songs by heart and can sing along with them, but for some reason, "A Letter to Elise" struck me deeply this time. Maybe it's because of all the lyrical poetry and story lines I have running through my head as I mentally prepare myself for my upcoming writing classes. This song snagged my ears not because I'm living through heartache right now--far from it--but because of its sheer poetic quality. Robert Smith knows how to convey the heartbreak of love through his lyrics.

The part of the song that made me say "Oh!" in its magical portrayal of the futility of trying to hold on to feelings that just aren't there was this one:
"And every time I try to pick it up / Like falling sand / As fast as I pick it up / It runs away through my clutching hands..."

Simply beautiful. I see a man holding thousands of tiny glass hearts in his hands, and they slip through his fingers even as he tries to hold on to them.

Looking through The Cure's website, specifically the section called Words, I am reminded that much of Robert Smith's songbook is poetry that happens to be set to music. I suppose that songs are, in their simplest form, just that, but something about The Cure's discography speaks to me through imagery and word-magic.

I've been listening to them since the summer of '87. My cousin Shellie and I would drive to the beach everyday in her light blue convertible VW bug with the top down and The Cure's album Standing on the Beach/Staring at the Sea: Singles blasting. For me, that is their iconic songbook--"Boys Don't Cry," "10:15 on a Saturday Night," "Killing an Arab," "The Lovecats"...Shellie and I would sing our hearts out as we drove on SR 46 to New Smyrna Beach, Cape Canaveral National Seashore to be exact. This memory brings back other memories of when we were wee girls, and our families stayed at the beach in Flo and Ernie's house in New Smyrna before the feds bought that part of the beach. Back then it was just "the beach" to us. My dad, Shellie's dad (my dad's brother), and their sister and all the spouses and kids would hole up in the airy house with cedar siding and a loft that was reached by a ladder-stair--not quite a ladder, but not quite stairs, either--all summer and play in the ocean all day and have crab and shrimp boils at night. The parents would stay up late, drinking and smoking (everybody smoked back then) and playing pinochle until early the next morning. Us kids would wake up as soon as the sun hit the horizon and was just beginning to turn the sky creamy peach and run screaming in our still-damp bathing suits down the rickety wooden stairs over the dune to the surf. One unfortunate parent (I think now they had to have drawn straws) would wake up and come down to the beach to make sure none of us drowned. My cousins and I would sit on innertubes and float out as far as we dared--and sometimes that was miles it seemed away from the beach--and then use our hands as paddles and "row" back in to shore, and do it all over again. We wore zinc oxide on our noses but no other sunscreen and we would all burn to little kid-crisps--my family is of Scotch-Irish-German descent with a little Cherokee thrown in for good measure, and nobody gave any thought to the future skin cancers we would all get.

Good times.

Anyway, here are the lyrics for "A Letter to Elise." 



Oh Elise it doesn't matter what you say
I just can't stay here every yesterday
Like keep on acting out the same
The way we act out
Every way to smile
Forget
And make-believe we never needed
Any more than this
Any more than this
Oh Elise it doesn't matter what you do
I know I'll never really get inside of you
To make your eyes catch fire
The way they should
The way the blue could pull me in
If they only would
If they only would
At least I'd lose this sense of sensing something else
That hides away
From me and you
There're worlds to part
With aching looks and breaking hearts
And all the prayers your hands can make
Oh I just take as much as you can throw
And then throw it all away
Oh I throw it all away
Like throwing faces at the sky
Like throwing arms round
Yesterday
I stood and stared
Wide-eyed in front of you
And the face I saw looked back
The way I wanted to
But I just can't hold my tears away
The way you do
Elise believe I never wanted this
I thought this time I'd keep all of my promises
I thought you were the girl I always dreamed about
But I let the dream go
And the promises broke
And the make-believe ran out...
So Elise
It doesn't matter what you say
I just can't stay here every yesterday
Like keep on acting out the same
The way we act out
Every way to smile
Forget
And make-believe we never needed
Any more than this
Any more than this
And every time I try to pick it up
Like falling sand
As fast as I pick it up
It runs away through my clutching hands
But there's nothing else I can really do
There's nothing else I can really do
There's nothing else
I can really do
At all...

I don't know what I am!

Wow.  Just....wow.

Read this and see if it renders you speechlessinspiredexhaustedandscared all at once.

Fount of fonts

Hi.

I'm Amy.

I'm a Font Whore.

I just downloaded 20 fonts. I was looking for a simple font for an invitation for a housewarming party, and I ended up with 20 fonts.  All different types. Handwriting fonts. Art Deco fonts. Typewriter fonts (my personal favorites!). Initial-only fonts. Trash fonts (the picture above and to the right is one of the fonts I downloaded--Dirty Classic by Billy Argel. A trash font is something you might see in an old stained book.)

God, I love fonts.

You might ask what I do with hundreds of fonts. Well, I craft with them. When I scrapbook, or make invitations, or cards, or just 2-D paper projects, I'll use my 997 different fonts to add interest with words. I consider them to be another artistic element. Some people Photoshop--I use fonts. They can convey moods, ideas, and the past.

I spent an hour and a half looking through fonts at two different websites (here and here) and I feel like I could spend at least another hour. Ninety minutes, browsing fonts. I amaze myself.

Fun with email!

Each day, I send out emails to lots of people who use the web application I work with. I try to be as clear and concise as I can be, and always offer my help in any way.

I get replies like this one.

From: [name blocked for privacy reasons and also so they can't be made fun of more than I already have with my co-workers]
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 12:39 PM
To: Amy
Subject: RE: URGENT: Registration not accessible!

 

Dear Amy,

I am trying to create an account.I put in my name .It says I don’t exist

Please advise

Janet Smith [not her real name]

Why, of course you exist: you just sent me an awfully funny email!

I also get replies like this:

From: [name removed to protect the stupid brain-compromised]
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2011 12:12 PM
To: Amy
Subject:  RE: URGENT: Registration not accessible!

I not know can’t find my ID number I ask, since we are SMP and not the AS program do we need to register?  Thanks Samantha [not her real name]

Seriously? You sent this email without reading it over? Or maybe you did re-read before sending it and thought it sounded ok. In that case, I really hope you didn't procreate.

All I can do with these things is laugh. And blog about them.

Grace and Strength

As a friend, you hope that she never has to endure any more than she is able to. As a friend, if she can't endure what has been given to her, you help her as much as you can. As a friend, you help her to be strong and in turn, become strong yourself.

I met one of my best friends through work. It's funny to think back five years ago and remember how I perceived Mel then, before I truly knew her. I thought she was a bit stuck-up. She would come to chat with my supervisor-slash-cubicle mate, Joey, about work stuff or sometimes personal stuff, and almost ignore me. It was later that I found out she's shy around new people, the same way I am: which comes off  how? Right,  as stuck-up. I giggle every time I think about this!

As we got to know each other, we found that we have bunches of similarities: our birthdays are exactly ten years and one week apart, which makes us both Virgos (known, by the way, for being shy!); we were married exactly ten years and one week apart from each other; we are both told by our dads that we were born in the wrong era because we like the same kind of music (70s soft rock like Carly Simon, Fleetwood Mac, Carole King, and so on); we both love papercrafting and being crafty in general; and what's most interesting to me is that we have the same kind of personality--we tend to judge others too quickly, reacting with emotion instead of thought; neither of us likes any sort of change; we criticize the ones we love perhaps too much; we let ourselves be hurt too easily...I could go on and on. I think about our friendship and I am amazed that I met someone who is my psychic mirror-sister. I am so fortunate!

A little over three years ago, Mel told me she was pregnant with twins. Multiple births run in both her and her husband's families, so it was almost inevitable that she would have twins or even triplets! I felt honored because she hadn't told many people, and that "secret" brought us closer. She was so sick during the entire pregnancy--her morning sickness did not go away after the first trimester. With my belly troubles, I could sympathize with her, so we commiserated often behind closed doors.

Later in the pregnancy, about 28 weeks I think it was, Mel woke up not feeling well. She called into work, saying she had a really bad headache and was going to just come in after her OB/GYN appointment which was luckily scheduled for that day. I heard about this through the office and didn't really give it much thought. A few hours later, one of our mutual friends, also a co-worker, came to my cubicle and asked if I could go with her to the conference room. Kate told me that Mel's doctor had found no second fetal heartbeat and they were going to do an emergency C-section soon. I was devastated for Mel and her husband. No heartbeat means only one thing.

Sure enough, the second baby had died sometime the night before. A very premature Brenden was born that afternoon by C-section, and we got hourly updates all during the day. A group of us went to the hospital to visit Mel that evening after work. She was groggy from anesthesia and in the NICU unit. Baby Gavin was there with them, swaddled in what would have been his receiving blanket. Brenden, the surviving baby, needed constant oxygen and was fully hooked up to all sorts of monitors so we didn't get to see him.

Each of us girls visited with Mel and Dan separately (only one visitor at a time in NICU). I hugged her, being careful of her monitors and her sore belly. I wiped her tears away and mine too. I hugged Dan. I tried to comfort them as much as I could in the few minutes I could spend with them.

I have not seen a lot of death up close and personal, but I looked at baby Gavin for Mel and her husband. I saw his perfect, tiny features, and I recognized his daddy's nose and the shape of his mother's head. I did not hold Gavin, but I watched as Mel and Dan held him and talked to him, telling him that they loved him and missed him.

In the weeks and months that followed, I talked almost daily with Mel as she went back and forth to the hospital to be with Brenden. I told her that I was so proud of her for handling what might have torn a lesser woman apart--the death of a child. She shared with me poems she found online that women who had lost a twin had written. She told me that she could feel Gavin watching over her when she was with Brenden. I don't doubt that Gavin was there, helping his mother and brother cope.

When Brenden was finally able to come home, I visited them. He was hooked up to an oxygen machine and a heart monitor because he was still so tiny and fragile. Mel was so happy that he was home with them, completing their young family, and I was happy for them, sharing in their joy.

Through those months and the months afterwards of appointments and progress check-ups, I was there for Mel. When she talked about Gavin, I never turned away in discomfort or sadness. I looked her in the eye and told her she was a remarkable woman. She never once felt sorry for herself; she never asked "Why me?" She handled everything with grace and beauty and far more stamina than I think I could ever possess.

This week, another friend at work, one I am not very close to but still think of as a friend and not merely a co-worker, lost her husband to colon cancer. They are both younger than me; he was only 34. He had been battling it for three years; they were only married in September 2010.

I hope that they had time to say their goodbyes to one another. I hope that she has found some measure of peace in the last couple of days. I hope that, when she is able to come back to work, I can comfort her as I comforted Mel, by listening to her stories of her husband, and not turning away in sadness or embarrassment at the tears that may come. I hope that I can help her realize she is so much stronger than she ever thought she would have to be at this time in her life. I hope that in this time of grief, her grace will shine through.

As a friend, it is when she needs someone to simply listen, and not offer solutions or pity, that you find out what true friendship is about. It is helping her see herself as a woman of strength that helps you see it in yourself, too.

Brain Food

I know what you're thinking. But I'm not talking about salmon, or kale, or anything whole grain. I'm talking about books. 

Books feed my brain. I absolutely adore reading. I even like reading for my classes--mostly because when I was in AP English in high school, I skipped reading all the classics and just bullshitted my way through the quizzes. Terrible, huh? But now, with my literature classes, I'm reading all the stuff I missed and even though they're sometimes tedious, use antiquated language, or not as edge-of-my-seat cliffhanger-y as I'd like, I still enjoy them.

When I read anything, I am transported to the time and place of the story. My imagination allows me to become fully immersed in the words until I am seeing everything the characters are. My favorite genre is paranormal romance--I like vampires and werewolves and faeries, oh my! But I do enjoy reading anything, as long as it is a good story, one I can get into, and when that happens, the genre doesn't matter so much.

Yesterday, I read The History of Mary Prince, written by Mary Prince, who was a slave in Bermuda, Antigua and England (even though slavery was outlawed there, she was still treated as a slave by her owners [how I detest that word]) in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The story is written in her own words as told to a lawyer who knew it was important enough to publish. It broke my heart. I don't know how one human being can think that they could own another human being, like a cow or a chicken. Mary's story made my angry. It made me sad. It made me think.

As I was reading, I was transported to the steamy West Indies, to the saltwater ponds where Mary and the other slaves worked to get the salt out of the muck in the heat. She said they would rise at dawn, toil until noon, eat a smattering of corn soup, and go back to work until dark, and they would get to eat another bit of flavorless corn soup. And if it rained, they had to do their best to keep the salt coming and keep it dry, and if they weren't successful, they would be beaten or whipped or both. She said the heat from the sun would blister their uncovered skin, and the stagnant water would breed sores that became boils, and if they got sick from the boils, which inevitably happened, the people were still expected to work. I cannot fathom the deaths she saw.

Mary's story brought tears to my eyes, harsh words to my lips--and shame to my heart.

That is how books feed my mind. They make me think, and react, and wonder, and learn.

I follow some of my favorite authors' blogs, like Lilith Saintcrow (I was just introduced to her a few months ago) and Jen Lancaster. Lilith Saintcrow writes about a future world of demons and psionics--humans that are trained to be more by working with magic and their innate parapsychological talents (the Dante Valentine series); and another slightly less future world where the paranormal creatures (including vampires, werewolves and demons)  have been recognized and live alongside humans (the Jill Kismet series). As different from Lilith as can be, Jen Lancaster is a humor writer who first gained fame writing about how she fell from making huge bank as a dot-commer to living in the 'hood and asking her parents for rent money (Bitter is the New Black was the first memoir). Her books make me laugh out loud. I don't mean just a single "ha!" but full on guffawing-until-I'm-crying. Her blog is hilarious, too--her latest entry has a YouTube video that made me giggle so much the dogs were trying to figure out who else was in the room with me because I usually only laugh that much with my husband.

As much as I need the fantasy worlds of writers like Lilith Saintcrow and J.R. Ward, I also need the humor of Jen Lancaster, the sometimes-funny but always sexy world of Kresley Cole, and the morality challenges of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake. Recently, I've discovered Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely series of faeries living in Pennsylvania, Amanda Hocking's Trylle trilogy about beautiful trolls, and Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy (which was so good that we've watched all 3 of the Swedish-made movies). Of course, there are the dependable mysteries combined with well-written storytelling of Nora Roberts, that are like coming home--you know what to expect and the same people are always going to be there. I read Nora Roberts when I need a break from the paranormal worlds I usually inhabit.

In the last few years, I've also come to realize that the genre of Young Adult fiction is not only for young adults--take the Twilight series, the one that started it all. My friend Holley and I always marvel that when we were both working in separate bookstores in the late 90s and early 2000s, we noticed these books with red apples on the covers, but never really looked at them because they were shelved in the YA section. I mean, come on, who reads books meant for kids? We're grown-ups, right? Wrong!  Stephanie Meyers wrote those books with a flair for the dramatic and cliffhanger-y that has captured the world's imaginations. I will say this: as much as I'd like a bunch of my favorite stories to come to life via television or movies, the Twlight movies are merely...okay. The f/x are average and the actors portraying the characters are mediocre. But this criticism is not because the stories are bad; it's a reflection on the movie industry wanting to capitalize on the hotness of the books as quickly as they can. If you've heard about or seen the movies, forget them and read the books--you won't regret it.

Along with Twilight, a couple of the book series I mentioned above--Wicked Lovely and Trylle--are technically YA. But both deal with universal themes usually reserved for adult books: making decisions that affect not just oneself; romance (come on, teenagers have sex, but it doesn't have to be graphic to be good); horror; death of loved ones...in fact, how does a book get the moniker of "Young Adult"? Do the characters have to be teenagers? They are in the two series I've been talking about. But there are plenty of books written about teens that are not YA. Looks like some research is in order. What I'm saying is, don't do what I did--discount a story because it's in the YA section--you'll be missing out on some good reads.

Like food I ingest, books provide nourishment for my brain. My imagination stretches much as my stomach does to accommodate the knowledge I feed it through reading. I'm always on the lookout for new stories, new characters, and new worlds. I will read anything (but I may not finish it if I don't like it). Reading helps me in my writing, just as looking at a painting would help an artist, or watching tv would help a screenwriter. The fact that I can lose myself in my reading and forget the sometimes harsh reality--all the better for my sanity.

My dysfunctional relationship

It's true....there is a dysfunctional relationship present in my life.

It's with food. I have a love/hate (I love it; it hates me) thing with food. Food nourishes us, allowing us to grow and thrive. Food can be pleasurable or utilitarian; it can be pedestrian or avant-garde; in my case, it's usually the enemy.

There are specific foods I really enjoy, much to the detriment of my waistline--cheese and candy are two that come immediately to mind. Other foods I love are pasta and pork, also not so healthy. But on the other side of the plate, I also love fresh green salads, vegetables (especially artichokes and broccoli), beans, and most fruits. The dysfunction? I can't eat them. Pasta, cheese, pork and candy--no problem!  But the healthy things I like? More often than not, they cause me pain.

The past two days I've had lots of pain, I think due to a stomach virus, but I can never be sure. I have an autoimmune disorder called Crohn's Disease; I was diagnosed with it when I was 12. The long-term effects of having Crohn's for more than half my life are not pleasant (what diseases are pleasant?): much higher colon, stomach, rectal and other cancer rates; lots of intestinal scar tissue built up from years upon years of inflammation, which creates blockages; arthritis; eye inflammations...the list goes on and on.

But getting back to the dysfunctional relationship I have with food. When I'm feeling good, I can eat mostly anything in moderation without incident. There are some "trigger foods" that I have to stay away from all the time, like broccoli and cauliflower, popcorn, and nuts. In any quantity, these foods make me sick. And I miss them, like you can't imagine. Sometimes I "cheat" and will have a tiny piece of broccoli if it's in something I've heated up or one piece of popcorn if someone makes it at work, but any more than that and I know I'm headed for disaster.

When I'm not feeling good, my food choices are severely limited, if not completely taken away. I'm a big proponent of Ensure drinks when I can't tolerate anything solid. Also, Extra Noodle Soup by Lipton/Knorr is good, if I feel like I can "eat". But when I bounce back from a bout of stomach virus or Crohn's flare, I want to eat everything I've missed. And this is where the dysfunction comes into play.

I've often said that I think that my health history has resulted in a type of reverse eating disorder. When it comes to something that I love, like macaroni and cheese or pork tenderloin, I will continue eating even after I'm full--I will eat everything there until nothing remains. I theorize that I do this not out of simple gluttony but because there have been so many times when I wasn't able to eat anything at all.

[When I was in high school, to prevent a surgery that would cause me to miss weeks of school and to lose part of my small intestine, I was put on a no-solid-food diet for about 6 months. I drank 6 cans of Ensure a day, and supplemented those with jello, hard candies, Ensure pudding (as disgusting as it sounds), and pickle juice. Yes, pickle juice. I think I needed the sodium. You know what I missed most during those hellish months? The simple act of chewing. And the food I wanted with all my heart was bread.

I ended up having the surgery anyway.]

I have missed Thanksgivings due to either not feeling well or being on asinine diets like the no-solid-food one, or the low-residue diet. For that Thanksgiving dinner, I was able to have 2 oz roasted turkey and some cranberry sauce of the canned, jellified variety. No gravy (too much fat). No mashed potatoes or green beans or pumpkin pie (too much fiber; fiber creates residue). No stuffing because the kind my family eats is made from wheat bread (again, too much fiber). No rolls because my family doesn't do rolls on Turkey Day--but I think I might have had a piece of soft white bread with some low-fat spread on it as a "treat."

Right now, I am craving some mac n' cheese, the boxed Kraft kind. And I know if I made it, I would shove the entire thing in my mouth, more than making up for not eating anything both today and yesterday with the calorie, fat and sodium counts. Now, as a nod to my health, I would make it with fatfree milk, but I would add a generous pat of butter to each bowl along with some Parmesan cheese and garlic powder. Yum.

So, food, the thing that we all need to live, is my enemy. For lack of more eloquent phrasing, it sucks. 

Giant Fuzzy Spiders!!!

I fed two out of my four tarantulas this evening. I find that as someone who is completely skeeved out by palmetto bugs (because they have spiky legs and weird things poking out of their rears AND the fact that whenever there is one near me, it flies or runs towards me instead of acting like the bug it is and running the other way! This is a well-known fact in my house. When the palmetto bugs get in, which thankfully is not that often, they will invariably get to the bathroom and in the middle of the night when I am in there, half asleep and without my glasses so I can't see them, I end up squealing so loud that it wakes up my husband because he thinks someone is messily murdering me in bed). Yuck. I now have the creepy-crawlies.

Where was I? Oh yes, feeding the spiders. Even though palmetto bugs frighten me, the crickets that I feed to the tarantulas do not. Okay, they do, but I've learned to tolerate them. In fact, last fall I even bred some crickets and the babies were so cute!  [But aren't most baby things cute? Yeah. Except baby roaches. Gross.] But as the food source for happy, healthy spiders, crickets are okay in my book. Even with their spiky legs and weird things poking out of their rears.

I love the way the tarantulas pounce on the crickets. As pets that don't really do much except sit around looking like rocks, it's fun to watch them move quickly when they realize prey is nearby. Tarantulas are nicknamed "pet rocks" because it seems like they don't move for days. My spiders are in the family room where the dogs' beds are so I am constantly checking on them, and all but one move around quite a bit. It's especially fun to watch them climbing the walls of their enclosures. They move very deliberately and slowly.

I have one tarantula--it's my most venomous and one of the scarier, old world tarantulas--and he is affectionately known as a "pet hole." Spidey (imaginative, huh?) has a burrow and we never see him. He (I call him a he even though I'm not sure of his sex) has spun a lot of webbing in his tank and that's neat to see also. One night I was conscious enough to check on him after getting up in the middle of the night and sure enough, he was hanging out on one of the glass walls. That was the first time I'd seen him in months. He is a cobalt blue tarantula, scientific name Haplopelma lividum. Old world tarantulas are from Europe and Asia and are the most venomous spiders in the world for their size. Of course, everyone knows about the very toxic Black Widow and Brown Widow spiders. All tarantulas have venom--it's how they eat, by injecting their prey through their fangs with a neurotoxin that slowly pre-digests the insect so that the spider can just slurp up the good stuff. Yuck, huh? I find it fascinating! This is how all spiders eat, even tiny house spiders. You can just see the tarantulas' fangs because they're so big.

I have two Chilean rosehair tarantulas, scientific name Grammostola rosea. My smaller one, Rosie (again with the creative names!) has a lovely copper-sheened carapace (the main part of the body from which the legs stick out). Her hair almost looks metallic. Beautiful. I am reasonably sure she's a girl--the pet store had her labeled as such. My other Chilean rosehair is Ella, named for the old-fashioned dance, the Tarantella. From what I've read, the Tarantella was based on the St. Vitus-like dance that tarantula bite victims go through before they die. That's the romantic, and untrue, story. The real story is that it's a dance from the Apulio region in Italy (a region near the boot-heel) whose capital is Taranto.

My last spider is a Brazilian black, scientific name Grammostola pulchra. Despite his name, he is more dark brown than black, but in another couple molts, he'll get more jet-colored. G. pulchras are docile and can be handled; I have not tried with him because as a youngster, he is VERY quick and he has "attacked" the water dropper when I'm filling his water dish. He is what is termed a sling: a spiderling, a baby spider. He is about the width of a half-dollar. Again, I'm not sure of his real sex; it's easier to call him a him. This kind of tarantula takes a good five years at the very least to mature. His full-grown size will be up to 8 inches from leg to diagonal leg. G. pulchras are big tarantulas in the spider world. There are bigger ones--the Brazilian bird eater (Theraphosa blondii) can get up to 10 inches from leg to diagonal leg! For their huge size, T. blondiis are docile spiders. And no, they don't [regularly] eat birds!

The Orient Non-Express

Today was my Monday as yesterday was spent at the university in orientation. An entire day, wasted. The only thing I gleaned from 8 hours of nothing was that I enjoy my college's advisor's humor. He has a droll wit and I made him laugh (always a high for me).

The day started with my husband dropping me off by the student union where the orientees are to meet. He parked the car and walked me about halfway to my final destination and when I knew where I was going, I left him without a backwards glance, saying, "Bye! Don't embarrass me!" as if he were a parent dropping off his child on the first day of school.

Let me talk about my husband for a bit. When we met, I was attending my current university's arch rival university.  This did not truly bother him but I have endured the digs through the years, especially during football season. I simply roll my eyes and ignore him. When we moved from Central Florida to this city, it was like a dream-come-true for him. He enjoyed his college years here and while this wasn't a career goal for him, moving here was like coming home (to him). [I had a very rough time adapting when we moved, but that's another post.] So for me to attend his alma mater is yet another dream-come-true for him. He couldn't be more pleased for me to earn my degree(s) from this school.

Needless to say, he was more excited for my orientation than I was. As he walked me around the student union, I could practically feel the contentment rolling off him.Any minute I felt like I was going to be caught in the way-back machine with him as he remembered hanging out with his friends at the Union. My being blithe about leaving him was more about bringing the focus back to me than it was about being snippy towards him. So I left him in my dust as I beat feet to check-in.

After I was greeted by overly chipper children wearing gaudy vertically-striped polo colors in the school colors, I was told to "Go stand in that line" because I was missing my health form.*

(*The health form was still at my doctor's office because last Wednesday, I spent the most horrible lunch break of my life there. I received 4 vaccinations, one in each upper arm and one in each buttock (heh, heh). I am still sore from the Tdap (that would be tetanus, diptheria and pertussis to you non-medically-inclined people) injection! Because I have a weakened immune system, my doctors decided to torture me by saying "Sure! Go ahead and get vaccinated against Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, and meningitis! Oh, and throw in the tetanus shot for good measure!" At first, I was aghast--why the hell did I need to get immunized against a disease that teenagers get who live in close quarters [i.e. dorms] as well as a sexually transmitted liver destroyer? Oh, right, because I'll be attending school with promiscuous children who live 4 to a room and have festering illnesses and I have no immune system. Whose idea was this going to school thing, anyway?!?!)

So my health form was still at the torturer's (I mean doctor's) office and I had to explain this to the young woman who checked me in and she told me to get in line with the 73 other kids who didn't have their health forms so I could explain my lack of health form to yet another perky young woman after I stood in line for 30 minutes.

Luckily I had the forethought to pack my Nook in my tote bag. I read a lot yesterday. A lot.

Then the orientation began in earnest. The happy young folks sang the school's fight song which we, the newest university students, were invited to sing along with. And from there, the day went downhill. I learned how to fill out my financial aid forms (I don't need financial aid because I am employed fulltime with my own pocket money to spend on trivialities like tuition);  how to be safe on campus (I went to college during the infamous serial murders of the early 90s; I know about the buddy system and to be aware of my surroundings); and how to study (I got here, didn't I? Doesn't that count for something?). I sat there, actually wishing I was at work, swamped with all my tasks. I wished they had a program for mature students. I thought I might design one when I get to be a big name on campus. I texted my husband and friends. I wanted to pull out my Nook but thought that might be a tad rude.

The afternoon eventually rolled around. We all split off into our little groups, lead by our frisky orientation (read: camp) counselors. We trouped to an older building and the trio of kids showed us how to register for our classes. Then, we were split up further into groups based on our majors and told to walk to the colleges' main buildings.

Have I mentioned the hilliness of this campus? And the fact that I am not in shape? Add those two things to the group I was walking with--all children in their earliest 20s who thought that the faster we got to the English building, the better. I have shinsplints today from walking 9 miles uphill the whole way [really it was less than half a mile; I am just really out of shape and almost 40, for chrissakes!].

After I cooled down and visited the restroom, we sat through a PowerPoint hosted by the droll advisor mentioned above and then, THEN, we were able to actually talk to said advisor. I now have my classes planned out for Summer, Fall and Spring, and they're all classes I am excited about!

(*Picked up my health form from the doctor's office on the way home yesterday. Did not open the envelope until this morning at work. The health form is NOT SIGNED. Spent my lunch hour driving back to the doctor's office to get the damned form signed. Grr.)

Newsy

Without giving too much personal detail away, this week I was asked to pull data for Florida's legislators that was like comparing apples to chimpanzees. These men (and women, but mostly men) don't know the specifics of the program I work with and request information that makes no sense if one looks at it side-by-side. Hence, the title of this blog. I'm not sure what I want to make of this new endeavor; I only know that I want to write each day, provide a little snapshot into my daily goings-ons.

Something inside me seems to be stretching and reaching with changes. I was accepted as a junior one week ago into the local university's Creative Writing program. I received a promotion at work two weeks ago and my responsibilities seem to have tripled. Other, smaller changes are being made and it feels like I'm not an active participant in my life, but yet I adapt. Am adapting. It's incongruous with my old self. I am morphing into a new me and kind of like it!

Change is inherently scary and I used to not handle it well--anything new might throw me into a tailspin, make me shut down and curl into a metaphoric ball. But lately, change has been welcome and I embrace it. Sure, I embrace it with shaky arms and trembling hands, but embrace it just the same.

Comparisons can be made with similar objects--like apples to oranges. They're both round, both fruits, both have seeds inside, both taste sweet and are juicy. But comparisons sometimes work if you have two disparate objects--apples and say, chimpanzees. Trying to find their similarities instead can highlight how different they are. How unique.And if I strive to be anything, it's unique. Me. Only one of 'em in the whole universe. (Well, that I know of.)