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.