Trash Memories

This is how I remember you.

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 01:43:31 GMT

Tattoo Ballad

Torrents of electrons
Find vent in steel
Flickering magnetic
Bonds clapping
Open, closed
Fast as hummingbird hearts
Drive the needles’
Staccato plunge

Viscous metals
Pigments spreading
Find homes in skin
Cells accommodate
Microscopic inkblots
Permanently etched in
Slow weeping
Surface wounds

This is how I remember you.

they do not yet have piece of mind

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 07:07:10 GMT

Sad tonight, up way too late with nothing to write, I read the old journal...

"Observe the ups and downs of your own life, and you have not yet lost the Way...Observing their lives, cultured people are blameless...To observe their own lives is to observe the people at large...They observe their lives because they do not yet have piece of mind."
-- The Book of Changes, Hexagram 20, Wind over Earth, Observing.

"When I'm forty, I'm going to meet some 24 year old girl and she's gonna ask me what I did when I was her age, or something, and what am I going to tell her? "I tried to get back into a university for the fourth time" or "I worked my ass off so I could buy a car and travel across the country for six months until I ran out of money in Portland" Which sounds better to you? The fucking latter, I'll say."
-- me, 2002

compleo -plere (v) [military] to man, or to bring up to strength

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:10:43 GMT

So here I sit, looking at some guaranteed undisturbed wee hours. Pandora rocks my headphones, cranking out Sissy Boy Radio... perfect conditions for writing... But the story is done.

I've finished my little experiment: How to Write 18,000 Words in One Winter Break, or How to Be
a Sort-Of Author in Three Weeks--From Home!

The Rationale: I'm going to be in school for the rest of my life. I am a writer who wants to be published. NaNoWriMo is impossible because November is FINALS, PEOPLE! HELLO?!? Ahem. Sorry. While in school, I have weeks at a time where I'm not working 24 hours a day at stuffing my brain (NOT in November *cough*). I have the option of three months off every year. Writing (well) takes time, hours a day, in fact. I have that time. So.

The Method: During winter and summer breaks, I will work on novel-length pieces, pushing as far forward as possible during the days I have "off." I realize that I will soon be a wife and mother, and soon those "off" days will be filled with all sorts of things that aren't writing. Hell, they already are. But. During winter and summer breaks, I will write diligently on one piece the entire time. Spring break, well, that's going to be our anniversary week, so all writing deadlines can kindly fuck off. Spring breaks are for WOO and nobody can take that away from me.

During the semester, I'll write shorter pieces of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. I need to feed my brain, but also leave the creative writing field way open. During this past semester, I finished a short story in about two weeks, and I know I can do that again. It wasn't the best short story in the freaking world, but it was solid. Most importantly, it was done. There will be papers and papers and papers to write and eventually to read, so I need to keep my commitments relatively low and my deadlines relatively short. I will probably crank out lots of fluff, and I'm going to forgive myself for that. Dealing with esoteric points of literature and grammar might make me a little crazy, so steam will need to be blown off. On the other hand, school offers me the unique opportunity to research to my heart's content. This semester, I'm taking an ancient history class. Do I really need to say anything else? I mean, really? Has anybody read any fantasy? Besides a class in Medieval history, nothing could be better. Next I want to take something about Westerns or the Victorian era. OK. I digress.

The Nutshell: Winter and summer breaks are for writing like the devil's after me. School sessions are for collecting crazy literary and historical minutiae and then producing short stories and nonfiction and poetry from it.

It's working out pretty well so far.

18,000 words, not to shabby, right? That's 62 pages in MLA format, you know. Maaaaybe... a third? of those words were written in 2004. But I get points for revamping them because that shit is some work. Also, with that estimate, about 12,000 of those words are new. NEW, bitches. NEW. And that's exciting.

Kittens are dangerous. Let us never forget!

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:52:26 GMT

Moxie did this to me this morning as she jumped off my face. The picture doesn't do it justice. My nose is barely still on my face.

Moxie is lucky to be cute. Or she would be dead.

procursus -us m. : [lit. running forward] : a military advance , charge.

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:35:54 GMT

I've come to an interesting place in writing. I've learned some stuff during my "dry years" that is helping me now.

I've learned most of the niceties of grammar and mechanics. I feel confident in the tone of my writing, and how to manipulate grammar to influence tone. For example, I know when to use short sentences and when to use long. I understand that short sentences can up the drama, especially after long. I understand that some characters' voices naturally consist of short or long sentences. I also understand the grammar that underpins long sentences, and how to make them read smoothly. I'm starting to get a feel for what the sentence needs, as far as phrases and metaphor and all that frippery.

I have also (wonder of wonders) begun to get a handle on dialogue. I'm developing a feel for how real people talk, and how to translate that into letters and spaces and punctuation. Dialogue format is particularly confusing. Do you start a new paragraph when someone new is talking? Do you need a tag? Do you need a comma? Why is Microsoft Word putting that stupid green line there? It's ridiculous. My unsolicited advice for other writers about the correct form for dialogue: pick a book off your shelf and look at how the published writers do it. Then copy it. That's how I did it, and it's working pretty well so far. I suppose, if I ever get published, someone will correct me if I'm wrong. Deciding how to format dialogue and sticking to that format has freed me up to pay attention to what the characters are actually saying, which is the important stuff, after all.

So. I've learned some stuff during my "dry years" that is helping me now. But all that just led me to the boundary of what I don't know. I don't have to worry too much about grammar, self-editing, format, detail, etc. So what do I worry about? Plot.

I find myself in this place where my tools are good, maybe too good. I can write my characters into any situation I can dream up. Lovely. But what situation do I create? Now I have to look at the bigger picture and decide what best serves the plot. They can go there, but should they go there? Is that melodrama? What is melodrama?

It's tough because I'm also writing the fantastic, so I can't just ask "Would that really happen?" Yes, characters react like humans even in fantastical circumstances, so that question has helped me. But it doesn't always work.

I also have the "house of cards" problem. It's like this: Once I start fucking with one scene or plot point or story arc or whatever, the whole thing falls apart. I start questioning, and it's very hard to stop. I can work myself into a frenzy of "what if"s, and pretty soon I've convinced myself to stop writing altogether. I'm not joking. That's really happened. More than once.

I realize that this is just another stage in the process of becoming a better writer. I have to allow myself to write crap and veer into melodrama, etc, so that I know what it looks like. In a year I'll look back and say something like what said at the beginning of this entry: I've learned some stuff, but it's just led me to the boundary of what I don't know. Which is, I suppose, the point of writing.

recolo -ere : (v) - cultivate or work again; to resume

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 05:04:23 GMT

"Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself. It's far more interesting to write about others." ~ Susan Sontag

So I've decided to pick up writing again. I'd stopped writing stories for myself when I started writing papers for professors. I used to feel bad about that, but I've realized that it needed to happen that way.

Here's how it did happen: I took Creative Writing 101 this past semester, and it fired me up again in a vague way. I got to write some poetry, some nonfiction, and a short story. I got reintroduced to the writer's life (only this time plus college, minus the heavy drinking and drug use). I really enjoyed rediscovering poetry. It's not just something that 16yo me and other people write. The nonfiction wasn't thrilling, but it was necessary; I do think I have some things to say about my own life. I realized that poetry and nonfiction go together in my head, and started slow (like coral building reef slow) work on a long nonfiction/poetry piece about my mother. The short story reassured me that I still have it, and not just because of professorly praise. I was really proud of creating something that had blood running through it, did it's job, and then finished cleanly. I am proud of the clean language in the story. I'm very proud of the clean language. That's the fruit of my labor, right there.

But then that story was done. It was way past done. And my papers were done. And then the class was done. I read my Guilty Pleasure Fantasy Trilogy (Kushiel for the win!) during those first disorienting winter break days... and then I got restless. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. I fell back into my old addiction and trolled IRC (text-based RP, for teh n00bz) servers for some kind of game. That right there should have showed me that I just needed to fucking write already! But no, I am stupid.

It took reading, duh. I found the old story that I wrote in Portland after (during?) writing "Seven Hells," AKA Ethan book. (I'd been kicking around the idea of editing that, but then I read the first chapter again and recoiled in horror.) It started off as a terribly yaoi, overwrought, self-indulgent dark chocolate bonbon of a story. But then... I realize that there's some jewels there. And, wonder of wonders, the story is actually... kind of... commercial. This could work for me. Now, before you get your panties in a Marxist wad, I'm not thinking "Ooh, I'll bang out a quick vampire cyberpunk dark fantasy novel and make a million dollars!" Give me some credit. I was mostly thinking that it was accessible. And if I could use my new tools to smooth the edges and really make it solid and realistic.... wow. This could work.

So. That's what I'm doing, for those of you who care. I will probably be turning to the interwebz to bitch and moan about the process from time to time. This is, after all, also about refining my process. I'm not just dusting off this particular story; I'm relearning how to write fiction for publication. I'm refining my process so I can keep doing this for the rest of my life and eventually have something to show for it besides AA and lung cancer. ;)

My haiku

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 02:50:24 GMT

Haiku² for tziganeshadow
that pile is a little nap now phase quickly followed by the
@

Created by Grahame

Oh, Memory, you play tricks on me...

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:14:07 GMT

Christmas 2003

I found this picture today. It released a flood of memory, bittersweet. The Paper Tree. Ah, to be young and poor and creative.

Dia de los Muertos

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:06:57 GMT

In honor of All Souls Day, here are some pictures that we took in the cemetery in downtown Nacogdoches.

Probably the coolest sundail ever...
...and detail.

My favorite angel statue.

The Virgin.

Amazing creepy broken statue.

A beautiful old grave.

And, finally, the stately oak tree which guards the cemetery.

Halloweenieness

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:42:55 GMT

OK so we didn't do much for All Hallows Eve because Josh had to work and I got sick. I ended up on the futon watching Ghost Hunters LIVE and other assorted scary-esque shows.

But here's my "costume." (If cat ears and black clothes that you've had forever count as a costume.) I wore it to school. I almost voted in it, but decided at the last minute not to. I don't want to be counted as part of the "furry" constituency. ;)

And here's a picture I took at school. I kept seeing this all day and it made me smile.

Josh dressed up as his younger self, giving me a WTF look.

Anyway, hope everybody's Halloween was spooktakular! Love!

Click!

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:34:34 GMT

Wow, I just read something amazing in "The Fat Girl's Guide to Life" by Wendy Shanker.

"It's not my job to defend myself against this girl. It's her job not to attack me" (10).

Wow. That really hit me hard. It's so true for women and human beings in general. Too often we get into the habit of victim blaming. (I'm talking about every kind of victimization, from rape to racism.) It's easy. It takes the pressure off. It helps us cope with violence or uncomfortable emotions like hate. We can say that the victim "should have" done this, or could have "defended themselves" in this or that way. We say this because it helps us believe that we have options if we get in the same situation.

But all of that is a lie.

The bottom line is this: It's not our job to defend ourselves. It's other people's jobs not to attack us.

Health at Every Size

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 23:00:54 GMT

I am in an odd position regarding my fat: On one hand, I am learning to love my body as it is while on the other hand seeking to be healthier. Of course, "healthier" still equals "thinner". (As much as I'd like to deny that line of thinking, it's there.) I've been really struggling to understand this unique position. How does a fat woman stop blaming herself while simultaneously changing her habits?

Enter Health at Every Size, or HAES.

According to the wikipedia entry (and Jon Robinson), HAES has three central ideas:

Self-Acceptance: Affirmation and reinforcement of human beauty and worth irrespective of differences in weight, physical size and shape.
Physical Activity: Support for increasing social, pleasure-based movement for enjoyment and enhanced quality of life.
Normalized Eating: Support for discarding externally-imposed rules and regimens for eating and attaining a more peaceful relationship with food by relearning to eat in response to physiological hunger and fullness cues.

HAES advocates generally do not believe that the same narrow weight range (or BMI range) is maximally healthy for every individual. Rather, the HAES approach is that as individuals include physical activity in their lives, and eat in response to physical cues rather than emotional cues, they will settle towards their own, personal ideal weights. These weights, however, can be higher or lower than those described by standard medical guidelines.

This is my philosophy. This is what I'm trying to practice. I'm being more physically active, eating good food that I've made myself, and learning to listen to my body. The self-acceptance part is the hardest, but I'm working on that.

Next step, buy the book.

Fat and Fabulous

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 03:53:10 GMT

I just wanted to thank everybody for the incredibly supportive comments on my last post. It means a lot to know that I have people who like me just the way I am! It's especially nice that I've known all you people for a while now, so you've all seen me at various different sizes. That helps more than you know.

On that note, a little bit about my fat history. Turns out that, even at my natural adult lowest weight (not counting those months I lived on drugs and alcohol), I was still considered "overweight" at 25 BMI. That's kind of ridiculous. So, to be considered "normal," I have to live on acid, wine and Sprite? OK no.

I will never forget what this one person said on one of those "OMG Huge Fatties!" cable shows. It went something like this: "Being a compulsive eater is like being an alcoholic, only you are forced to have three drinks a day."

My Big Fat Confession

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:01:41 GMT

I am fat.

There, I said it. Now really hear me.

My BMI is 37. I wear a size 18/20 in pants, a 9 in underwear, a 38DD in bras, and a 6.5 in shoes. I am four feet, ten inches tall. I am 31 years old. I am fat.
I am also a writer, a tutor, a student, a fiance, a friend, a daughter, and a sister. I am not stupid or lazy or sad. I am loved. I am respected.

And I am judged because I am fat. Worse, I judge myself because I am fat.

This is what I am trying to say: I accept myself as I am. I can accept myself and also seek to improve myself. I can be fat and eat well and enjoy my food and exercise and listen to my body--all at the same time. It's not easy, but I can do it.

--------------------------
This begins a series of entries about fat acceptance. I need to write about this because I need to understand where I fit.

Ink!

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:08:49 GMT

Hey, everybody, remember this tattoo?

Well I've updated it.

This took about two hours. I kind of love the artist who did this. He's really chill and, best of all, local! (I've heard that most people in Nac go to Houston or Austin for work.)

This is just the outline stage. I'll go back once this is healed (about 2 weeks) and get it colored in. My old tat will also be re-inked so that it matches everything. Then once that's healed, I'll go back and get the other arm done. I'm going for lilies on the other arm with more Art Nouveau style vines.

Yay!! Ink!!

Our adventure with Ike

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 22:55:58 GMT

Just thought I'd let everyone know that Ike blew through my neck of the woods this weekend. Most of the damage here in East Texas was due to wind, rather than flooding. That wind was pretty damn scary.

Josh, the cats and I weathered it fairly well. We've been without power for around 60 hours now, which sucks. No idea when the power will come back on. Other than that, we're fine.

Last night, we at kolaches and drank beer by candlelight. Then tried to sleep. News flash: it's hot as hell in Texas with no air conditioning. Here's a poem I wrote about it.

"After the Hurricane"
by me

Moose with fuzzy horns
Cropping lichen in the tundra,
The last moments of the Titanic
Sinking into frozen Atlantic waters,
Inuit eating blubber fresh
From an ice-bred seal.
These are the things
We think about
After the hurricane
When the night lies still
Over us like a blanket
Fresh from the drier
And we cannot sleep.

Bienvenida Moxie!

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 02:27:31 GMT

We got a new kitten! We are crazy cat people!

Meet MOXIE!

We got Moxie from the Nacogdoches Animal Shelter today. We wanted to take home every single cat in there, but she was the best. She is four months old and has a low-jack. She is sneezy, but very happy to be in a nice home with two cuddly people and all the toys she could ever want. I don't think she's stopped purring since we let her out of the carrier.

She loves her red and yellow clackety mouse.

She is tiny and cute and she also loves to NOM!

Here's a close up of that ridiculously adorable NOM.

Yay Moxie!!

... yes, Georgia hates her. For now. I let George smell Moxie in her carrier. She looked at me and said, "What... is... that?" Then she went under the bed. That's where she lives now, since we hate her so much. I told her "Fine. Sulk." George said, "Fine. Meow."

We'll slowly introduce them over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, Moxie gets cuddles and George gets extra treats.

Food Meme

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:01:42 GMT

OK, so I stole this from spanambula. I just couldn't help it.

The Food Meme!

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you've eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.

1. Venison (I grew up in deer country, so this was unavoidable.)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile (um, yeah, so I also grew up a stone's throw from LA. Nuff said.)
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho (OMG PHO ROCKS MY WORLD! NOTHING cures a hangover faster!)
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries (Used to pick them behind my house growing up.)
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. ~~Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper (~~I'm not this crazy. Sorry.)
27. Dulce de leche (YUM!!)
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi (what IS this?)
34. Sauerkraut (I feel very sorry for anyone who's afraid of saurkraut.)
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly (Jello shots? Unfortunately.)
39. Gumbo (Again, I feel sorry for anyone who is afraid of this.)
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel (not my favorite, but I'll do it.)
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear (Nopales! YUM! I heart Texas!)
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV (Dogfish, baby! And I have to quote spanamb: God I love the Pacific Northwest's small breweries)
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips (I ate a lot of health food as a kid, and carob was one of my faves!)
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs (If done right, VERY tasty!)
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (What the heck are elephant ears?)
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. ~~Roadkill~~ (WTF? I grew up in the South, but seriously?)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail (yuck.)
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. (One day.)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish (Fresh caught! Another childhood favorite.)
95. Mole poblano (Mole is good in any form.)
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Molaris XIV

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:55:19 GMT

This was my morning.

This is what I had done. Sort of. I love how this picture portrays absolutely none of the pain, indignity and stench associated with the actual procedure. Who knew burning teeth smelled so bad? Not me! Also, it turns out that Tooth #14 was "hot," meaning so riddled with infection that it only responded to the "special" anesthetic. (Which, apparently, costs hundreds of dollars.) Fun.

So, yes, a very nice and gentle dentist gave me a root canal this morning. I am currently in the "Waiting for the Man" portion of the pain killer cycle, in which our hero bites back moans and waits patiently for the next dose to kick in. This will be followed by the "Am I OK? I think I'm OK" stage, the brief "Things are pretty" stage, the "Will everything please stop spinning now?" phase, quickly followed by the "Overwhelming Nausea" stage, and then, finally, the "I'm just going to take a little nap now" phase.

100 Best Books Meme

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:38:58 GMT

....cuz I'm a Level 50 Book Nerd. (Snagged from common_as_stone ) Now, when they do the sci-fi/fantasy meme, I'll pwn!

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) ~~Strike out~~ the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

* I commented on many, so if you reprint, beware.

~~Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen~~
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
~~The Bible~~
~~Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte~~
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (Just finished this! I wish I could underline it, like, five times!)

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare (not ALL of them, but a fair amount)
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
Emma - Jane Austen
Persuasion - Jane Austen
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (I LOVED this and "Little Women" when I was a girl!)

Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Dune - Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

The Secret History - Donna Tartt (This book made me start smoking Lucky Strikes. No joke.)

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Germinal - Emile Zola
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession - AS Byatt
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte's Web - EB White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Watership Down - Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

Into the Woods 3: We're heeere...

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:44:13 GMT

So we are finally, mostly, happily moved in! Our house looks like people live here.

Here are the latest shots of our moving in:

The living room, looking in from the front door.

The kitchen is on the right, and the hallway to the bedrooms on the left.

Looking back towards the front door, standing in the dining room area, near the hall entrance.

The books on the shelf are our cookbooks, and that's all my craft stuff lined up against the wall. Eventually, all that stuff will be more neatly arranged. I'm going to cover that table in fabric so you can't see the storage and buy a computer armoire (this one, as a matter of fact) for my sewing stuff. Note the pile of boxes on the right. That pile is a little smaller now.

We are a book-loving people.

...but we also love movies. This is our Entertainment Room (AKA Josh's Lair) containing the TV, stereo and Xbox.

You can tell it's Josh's room because of the posters. ;)

Now here's where we do our... sleeping, yes. Sleep is all we do here.

Note Georgia mugging for the camera.

Here's the REAL selling point of this place:

HUGE CLOSET! (Look at how neat we are, with our lined up shoes!)

And, last but not least, here's our awesome (bigger than the old one) patio!

Note the new fern. It's the big one. The old fern is in a new basket. It's a Spider Fern (?), with little roots like tarantula legs. It's my favorite. Josh is creeped out by it, of course. That furniture is about to be refinished, hence the blue painter's tape on the table.

Anyway, we're off for a night on the town! (Meaning dinner and a trip to the video game store. Woo.)

Into the Woods Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:25:19 GMT

So we did it! We actually packed up our stuff, ourselves and our cat and moved!

So, it got a leetle crazy... But why, you ask?

It was a blur of boxes. But then it was done. The empty space where we used to live echoes.

There are things we will miss about the old place:

1) The courtyard:

2) Our Cozy Little Patio:

3) The Awesome Bear Tree:

See the bear? Stepping out from the tree, trying to free itself?
I love this tree.

But there are things we love about the new place too! There are also trees. And love between us that is stronger than stress. And a kind of giddy contentment, relaxed yet excited... We're gonna do just fine...

....more on the new place later.... Now I need to sleep. A lot.

Into the Woods

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 05:19:51 GMT

So this blog has been a long time coming, but I guess it's time...

Josh and I are making a huge change in our lives. He's going to school, and I'm going to get a Master's. And to do that, we realized that we'd have to leave Austin, and I'd have to leave the University of Texas. We looked around, thought about it, argued about it, prayed about it in our own ways... and decided on a school we could both attend.

Stephen F Austin State University

Where the hell is that?

It's a very small town in the pine forest of East Texas. Yes, we do have trees in Texas!

So. It's going to be a huge change, but both of us are very excited about it. I've got some awesome opportunities with the writing tutoring program at SFA. Josh is really looking forward to going to school. We both feel prepared for small town life. We both need it. There's so much more, but for some reason it's hard for me to explain it all. I think I'm out practice with the blogging.

So I'm spending the next two weeks handling the logistics of moving some furniture, a precious sound system, a sewing machine, over twenty boxes of books, two people, and one cat.

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 05:58:11 GMT

I have a confession. Careful, because I'm pulling out the stops. I need to discuss something that has been building up pressure in my mind for a while now, and I'm going to lay it all out. You've been forewarned.

I seriously want to have a baby. I want to be pregnant and give birth. Very badly. I honestly don't think I can adequately describe this feeling to anyone, if they have ovaries or not. And I've been keeping it (mostly) to myself because I don't understand it. I don't want to burden my friends who have recently had babies with my jealousy. And I'm, frankly, a little ashamed of this new urge. I'm an unmarried college student and I'm in no way economically stable and I'm a feminist who had no problem aborting a pregnancy in the past. So WTF, God? Why?

Despite all of that, just now I read my gf's story of her birth experience, and I burst into tears. I'm not sure why, but I knew that it was time, once my eyes cleared enough, to write. Because I have to find answers.

First of all, this is not about the abortion. I understand just saying it makes such a statement suspect. But I wanted to get it out of the way. That was my first thought, actually, when I realized how deeply I wanted a baby. Was I regretting not going through with that pregnancy? Am I trying to make up for a past mistake? ...let me just think about that again... ... No. That's not it. Short of forcing myself to feel guilty (and believe me, that's possible) I really can't regret the decision I made. I understand that it really was the best decision for myself and that child at that moment in time. It didn't want to be born then, and I couldn't have been any kind of mother. I wasn't upset when I made the decision; I haven't been since, and I'm not now. Granted, I am in a much better place now than I was then, so I might make a different decision now. But that doesn't mean that I want to have a baby because of the decision I made then.

Could it be the media? Is that question seriously crazy or what? But, really, every movie star with working ovaries is having babies, complete with stories on ET about their "bump" and multi-million dollar deals for the baby's first photo. There have been three movies in the past year that have painted pregnancy in the rosiest of rosy lights. I'm talking about 'Waitress,' 'Knocked Up,' and of course 'Juno.' Then again, it wasn't all rosy in 'Waitress,' but it was transformative in the end. Oh, wait. Four, if you count the up-coming 'Baby Mama' or whatever with those women from SNL. Aaanydamnway. Too many movies about how wonderful and magical it is to be pregnant. Is Hollywood influencing me to want a baby? Maybe, since I am a female in our popular culture who watches television. But my cynical tirade kinda cancels that out, right? I mean, it's not like I'm anorexic or bought a Chihuahua a year ago when they were the popular living accessories. So it's not the media, except for maybe a little bit, just reinforcing what is already there.

Am I wanting to have a baby because I want to "keep my man" or somehow solidify our bond? I sure hope not! If you told me about a woman who got pregnant "just to keep him", I would feel sorry for her and suggest that she see a therapist to talk it through. I honestly think that sort of behavior is deplorable at worst and unrealistic at east. A good man would stay, maybe resenting you and the child, and a bad man would just walk out on you. So, as a relationship litmus test, it's pretty extreme. I am religiously taking my birth control, by the way; also not poking holes in condoms or any such nonsense. So, I guess I can rule out "wanting to keep my man." Hmm... a related question might be: Do I think having a baby would magically fix our relationship? I can honestly, rationally say no. We're both working on improving ourselves as human beings right now so that we can be better partners to each other. That's kind of enough to deal with. And it's also why I'm dealing with these feelings in the first place instead of just getting pregnant. Plus, I'd like to think that I'm too pragmatic to believe that a baby would do anything besides complicate our relationship right now. Of course, these feelings aren't necessarily rational, so I can't rule out the "magically fixing relationship" reason entirely. Let's put it next to "media" in the "just a little bit" category.

Here's the real question: Do I really want a baby because three...yes, three...of my good friends have recently given birth? I was able to literally be there through S's pregnancy, and was virtually there through C's because of her excellent blogging skills. They certainly brought these feelings out into the light. I've been unbelievably jealous for nine-plus months. And, let me tell you, jealousy is a difficult emotion for me to recognize, let alone deal with. Especially on this scale. It's strange, too, because I always thought of jealousy as a violent emotion, since it drives women to pull out weaves in bar-fights and suchlike. But this feeling isn't violent, of course. I don't want to hurt my friends or steal their babies or anything crazy; I just want to be like them. I want to feel what they're feeling. Even if that feeling is nauseous or exhausted or in the most extreme pain of your entire life. I just want to become a mother, and hearing their stories makes me intensely jealous. I tried very hard not to let it show because I wanted them to be happy and relaxed, but it was there, lurking, making smiles painful. Not physical pain, of course, but that emotional pain where your chest kind of aches and you want to curl around the empty space. That's part of why I cried, I think, when I read the birth story. Isn't that fucked up? Is it selfish? Or is it just human?

Damn, I don't have the answers yet. Writing this helped a lot, though. It's good to write feelings out. I'm sure that the baby-wanting-jealous-pain will come back, but I think it will have less force. That's a little victory.

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:17:07 GMT