So very exciting

I am sending this from my phone tonight because my internets are still gone and david is out with the car. Where could he be? Well...ok, my car is not with him but its not with me either. David is on a ride along with one of beaumonts finest. Score. I am very excited to hear tales of crack heads wearing wigs and broken tail light dude's brick of cocaine in the butt. Other than car theft and teenage loitering, i dont know what kind of crime beaumont really has. But i will now! And you will too provided he didnt sign any confidentiality disclosures. This is going to be great. Im thinking about staying up till he gets home, possibly at 2am. I will at the very least let you know tomorrow that he made it home in one piece. Even if the piece is bullet ridden, but i dont think there are many shootings in beaumont, thats banning where that happens.

The Friday Night Knitting Club

Another book review, it seems that I only just posted one but I sped through this book pretty fast. This is The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs that I'm talking about, but before you click away because knitting isn't your bag, I promise you that you do not have to be a knitter to enjoy the book.

The story is about Georgia Walker, a single mother who owns and runs a yarn shop. She has several quirky friends and customers who like to loiter in her store after hours, and somehow it ended up becoming a club. You've got Anita, the classic grandmother knitter who works in the shop and knits vests for her husband, even though he's been dead for 10 years. There's K.C. who knits...sorta, but she's better at making videos. Lucy, she's 43 and single, has no plans of getting married, but she wants a baby so she basically uses some guy from a dating website for his sperm so she can get knocked up. Peri makes felted purses and sells them to Bloomingdales. And my favorite character, Darwin. She's not a knitter, but rather a college student who is studying how basically things like knitting set women back hundreds of years, and plans to use the Friday Night Knitting Club as her research for her big important assignment.

Anyway, Georgia's daughter Dakota, who spends her days baking batches and batches of muffins and cookies, lives with Georgia in the apartment above the yarn shop. Being a single mother was tough and everything, but she made it alright without having to delve into the bank account that she set up for whatever money Dakota's father sent their way over the years.

Out of the blue, Dakota's father James shows up and decides that he's finally going to be a father, 12 years later. Dakota is of course excited, but Georgia is less than happy about his return. She feels that he has no right to just barge into their lives after being completely absent for the child's whole life. And to make matters worse, around the same time is when Georgia's old high school best friend Cat (who had betrayed her many years ago) shows up and practically throws her money around, commissioning Georgia to knit her a gown for some big party that she has coming up.

Georgia tries to remain strong and in control of the situations throughout the book, while Dakota wants to know more about her roots and where she comes from. We read along as the characters all develop in their own ways, Anita trying again at love, the huge demand for Peri's pocket books, Lucy's choice to become a single mother, K.C.'s career path, and Darwin learning that there is more to knitting than just yarn and needles.

The interesting thing here is why James left. See, James is black, and James's mama told him to never bring a white woman into her house. But when he tries to use this excuse against his mom 12 years later, she says "Once that baby was conceived, it was no longer about what your father and I wanted for you, it became about the fact that you created a child and you needed to be there for her!" Exactly.

Then tragedy strikes, and the group is devastated. I was devastated.

USA Today says that the book is like Steel Magnolias set in Manhattan. I don't know nothing about no Steel Magnolias but I get the drift. The book is really hard to put down, because you're so attached to the characters.

I'll put it this way, if Georgia Walker had a blog, and wrote about her days in the yarn shop, her knitting club, posted pictures of her latest projects, and gushed about her little girl, I guarantee that blog would be a smash hit. I say that because the characters are so loveable, you're drawn to their stories. This is one of those books that I didn't want to end.

The Friday Night Knitting Club is by far a good read. I admit that I wasn't really into it until about 50 pages in, it seemed a little disorganized, but once it picked up it really held my interest. It's a good read, go buy it.

I also just finished a book of Beatles interviews that I will probably do a video review of, and now I am working on a book about simplifying your life. Not that my life is that complicated, and I'm not entirely sure that I like the book. More on that later.

But seriously, Friday Night Knitting Club, read it. It's good.

The Rebuttal To Sending A Guy To Buy Tampons

He tells me at 10:30 on Friday night that "Oh, I must have lost more weight. None of my dress clothes fit me, they're all like really big."

He's only had those clothes for...not even a year. His suits, his nice shirts, even the stuff that he got when he worked at Polo Ralph Lauren. His $45 Oxfords that cost him $5, all too big now. I suppose this is a good thing, it means that he really is working out at 6:00 in the morning, and not just laughing and driving over to Mana Donuts. He's almost running two miles now, he's a little behind because of the three weeks he took off when he was sick and his allergies were flaring, but he's no longer allowed to pussy out unless he's puking. It's the law.

So I am at Walmart in the men's section looking for dress clothes. I don't know DICK about picking out dress clothes for men. Casual stuff yeah, I can find a pair of shorts to go with that t-shirt, shoot. Easier than dressing myself. But all I had written on the little pink post it was "Large or 16 shirt, 36x30 pants. Undershirts." But what if the large shirts say 40-42 on them, and nothing about a 16?

By the way, I am doing this because he's sleeping. He even left his pizza job early to come home and sleep.

I told him to put his phone by his face so I could call him if I needed help. And help I did need.

"What? 40-42 is the chest size. Don't worry about 16 then, that's the neck but it doesn't really matter. Just get large, 40-42."

Got it. Shit.

"What now?"

"Short or long sleeve?"

"Short."

"Ok, cool."

Shit.

"WHAT?"

"Solids or stripes?"

"SOLIDS, KHAKI!"

"Ok ok! Sorry!"

David is a total bitch when he's sleeping. But he should have been more specific and not have trusted my judgement so much.

There was a guy walking around in the dress clothes section, he looked and smelled nice. He looked like someone who I could turn to for help, you know, the old "Scuse me mister, would you wear this outfit, or does it look bad? Really? Can you help me pick something? My husband has a really big test tomorrow for a job..."

But it's 11:00 at night and it's Walmart. Dude is probably a pedophile, or at the very least scoping out damsels in distress like me to lure into the dressing rooms. I decide to go it alone.

After hemming and hawing over a blue shirt and a cream shirt, I end up with a mint green microsuede shirt. Not only for its pretty color, but because it is also super soft and snuggly. I will have you know that I buy the expensive toilet paper because I like soft things, so this shirt was for the win. That's right, I buy my man's shirts based on the same principles as my toilet paper, and I am not ashamed.

So then the pants...well, that part was easy. On the right there were shelves with khaki dress pants all folded up. "Pleated" they said. On the left there were pants hanging, and the first tag I saw said "Khaki Dress Pants 36x30." Yep, that's what I'm here for. I threw them in the cart. But then it got hard again (that's what he said, ba-dum-pum) when I had to find undershirts. I automatically knew to stay away from the wife beaters, you don't have to tell that to me. But the problem became clear when there was a choice between regular tees and v-neck tees. Oh my god, what the fuck...what do men wear?

Is an undershirt like a bra for men in the sense that they wear one so that you cant see their nipples through their thin dress shirt but they don't actually want anyone knowing that they're wearing one? Or do you want it to show so that people will say "Look at him, he even wore an undershirt! First class!" I looked at the green shirt for answers, but it wasn't talking, so instead I started looking around.

Never ever stare at two small products for a long time and then start looking around. You look like a shoplifter.

So then Mr. Nice Man Security Guard starts casually flipping through some dress shirts. Interesting, because I didn't know that they could shop on duty. Well, they cant, and that's the thing. He was eyeballing me. I wasn't going to steal, but I was glad he was there, because I saw his undershirt. Thank you! Regular tees it is. I grabbed a pair of argyle socks for good measure, even though he already has two pairs from Polo, but you can never have too many pairs of argyle socks, and I went to checkout. $50 later, we had ourselves an outfit to wear to the test.

The whole ordeal was maddening. It was like sending a guy to buy tampons, and watching them trying to decide between super absorbent and extra absorbent. No fair, because I've never sent David to do that, I do my own damn dirty work, but I get stuck buying the undershirts at 11:00 at night. Jeez.

But as for the test, he said that it was the easiest test he ever took in his life. It was easier than the test that he took to graduate early from high school. He said that it was mostly on reading comprehension, which is one of his strong points. He also said that maybe 1/3 of the crowd was dressed nice, and that hardly anyone was shaved. Thank you so much, internets, for not letting him wear "just whatever." You probably got him a job.

So what happens now? In six to eight days the Sgt. will contact him if he passed and tell him that he needs to do the physical ability test. Sgt. told the group that next time, they had better be shaved and clean cut, because you don't want the officers up in your face about the fact that you didn't bother to shave. He also said "No tint on your driver and passenger side windows," and like eight people got up and left. Because totally black windows is way more important than a career that pays $70k the first year. (Yeah, seriously. It includes the sign on bonuses and all of the raises that you get. It's all in the pamphlets.)

Say it with me, "David for the win."

David Needs Your Love

David, Back Room Dave, Dick Around Dave, T-Bag, David T, Can Man, Pizza Man, The Clavicle...
takes his test for CHP Saturday morning at 8:00. Please wish him well by repeating the following mantra throughout the day to random strangers:

David is full of win.

You could also say:

I think David's a pretty cool guy. eh's going to pass his test and doesnt afraid of anything.

A Postcard From 2003: Your Paper Route

No, David did not get fired. What, did you think he would be? Yeah, actually his boss showed up this morning to tell him that he's actually getting a raise, so score! And subsequently, LOL at Burly and Pissy.

But since I've sort of been on the topic of jobs this week, what with David's big test coming up on Saturday as well as the post that I did yesterday, I thought that it was time that I finally told the internets the story about the time that you had a paper route for the Press Enterprise here in Beaumont back when you were very first married. Don't you remember? Ok, I'll have to remind you. It was back when you used to live in Banning.

So a paper route isn't just for 12 year olds anymore. They're mostly for crack heads. You got the job because your husband was making something like $130 a week at Staters, and the Staters he worked at was in Rialto, so it was an 80 mile round trip every time he went to work. So even though you are not a crack head, you needed the money, which wasn't all that bad. Your route had an average of 250 papers, and you got something like $.7 a paper, $.10 on Sundays. But they make you pay for rubber bands and poly bags, and you use your own car and gas. So it wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. It was money.

You show up to the DC (distribution center) at about 1:00 in the morning. Sometimes the truck with the papers on it isn't there yet, so you can go out to the parking lot and snooze in the car, or you can smoke your crack or what have you. The truck unloads carts with the right amount of papers for each route on them, like B-001 would get 250, so they would put 250 on the B-001 cart.

You have B-001, for the record. In case you forgot.

The papers are stacked like how they are in the news stands, so you have to go to your supervisor Terry the Crack Head and ask for poly bags to put your papers in. Yes, the poly bags are more expensive than rubber bands, but less wet papers means less complaints about wet papers which means more money, because you have to pay for those papers that you missed/destroyed, so you always sprang for the bags. Terry the Crack Head would be chain smoking, and between long powerful drags he would say "That'll be $10."

You would just stare at him, because you dont actually have to pay for anything, they just take it out of your check. You wait for him to get his lulz, then get your bags so you can go back to work.

Terry would bust up laughing "I'm just pullin' yer leg," as he handed you the bags, then he would hack up a couple lungs for the next six minutes.

Back at the folding tables, you get to meet and greet the other crack heads/poor people with paper routes. There's the Mexican girl who doesn't speak English, Dean who is a short little old man who lets you know nightly that he'd like to lick your clit, the guy who lives in Banning who has like 15 kids with nine of them being foster who calls himself Benny, and then there's Gary. Gary is a very portly gay man who is insanely jealous of your route, because his neighborhood is on your route, and he's been begging Terry the Crack Head for B-001 for years and he's never gotten it.

And I mention that he's gay because you have to understand that he wasn't trying to strong arm you like other guys do, he was like getting all bitchy and pissy over it like a girl. Which is funny.

He tried to trade you one of his routes when you first started. Gary has like four routes, and he wanted to give you one that had the same amount of papers but closer to your house in Banning, but you didn't want to because you had your route already memorized and you didn't even really have to look at the map anymore. He threw his tizzy, and continued to call in every morning to say that you threw his neighbor's papers in the gutters, or you were late or something (because you have to get them delivered by 6:00, 7:00 on Sundays.) It was all lies, and they knew this, so you went about your business. Also, you cant complain about someone else's paper, the subscriber has to do it themselves, so they never really listened to Gary anyway.

So then you'd go out and start throwing the papers. You have a bit of a hook shot, so you would usually have to drive a little bit past the house in order to get it to boomerang right into the yard. You drive on the wrong side of the road, and often swerve from one side to another, which sometimes results in cops pulling you over for drunk driving. They see all of the papers piled up in the back of your Civic and they apologize for stopping you while you're working. Except for one asshole who accused you of being drunk AND stealing over 200 papers from peoples yards on your drunken rampage.

There were a few places that got names. A motel on 6th shall forever be referred to as "ding dong ditch," because it had a lit doorbell, and the owner wanted the paper right on the porch, so you would always try to aim for the doorbell with the paper. You actually hit it a few times, once with a Sunday paper, but then you drove off really fast giggling and pissing your pants. Then there was the Smoker Society. These apartments over on 8th were the kind that you had to get out and walk around in, because there were apartments that were upstairs and not near the street. You hated apartments for that reason, but anyway, this place was creepy. It wasn't very well lit, so you would walk around and plop the papers down on the porches while having this eerie feeling of being watched. This is confirmed when you notice the soft glow of several cigarettes belonging to people out on their balconies just watching you. Occasionally, they would say hi, but mostly they just smoked and watched you silently.

You drive around with your window down and your heater on full blast. But the radio is tricky. Your favorite desert rock station only broadcasts to a certain point in Beaumont, which happens to be in the middle of your route, and it turns into some evangelist radio show. When you drove down one street, it would be like the angel on the left and the devil on the right as the lyrics of Blink 182 and Metallica would battle with "I can feel the LAAAAWD within my veins, PRAISE JESUS!" So eventually you switch to AM radio, and you discover Art Bell. Art Bell talks about ghosts, aliens, zombies, what have you, and his listeners call in to tell their stories and sightings. Not a good idea to listen to that kind of shit when you're alone in the car and it is dark and foggy. One night you scare yourself shitless after hearing a story about a monster and you have to go home to get your sleeping husband and baby and make them come with you to finish the route because you're scared that it's going to get you.

And then there were real fears. Like being a woman, alone, walking through dark apartment complexes at night. Think about the kind of people who are awake at that time of night. You aren't like those people, you dont do the crack, nor do you want to be raped or murdered, you're just trying to do your job. You weren't afraid of the dark until you worked that job.

But there were fun times too. One of your co workers decides to come with you one night, because her job is basically just to be a stand in just incase someone doesn't show. She spots a white hatchback Civic and screams "THE SUN!" She's referring to the person who delivers the rival paper, The Sun Telegram, who is driving said Civic. "You have to follow him! FOLLOW HIM! HE'S INCREDIBLY HOT!" It turns out that you and Sunny Boy basically had the same route, and you had never really noticed that this car was almost always where you were on the route. I think he started earlier, that's why you didn't always see him, therefore put two and two together. Finally, you get almost to the end of the route and you find him parked at a tow yard that you both deliver to. He's snoozing in his car, and your co worker says "I'll see you tomorrow night," and gets out and hops in his car. You're pretty sure that she seduced him and they had paper boy sex in the little white hatchback Civic.

And there was the time that a road that you needed to go down was blocked by like three fire trucks, and a group of 10 or so fire men in uniform were standing around talking. You pull up and ask if you can go through. "Pffft, um...yeah?" they say, making you feel stupid. Then one asks "Wait, why do you need to get through?" and you hold up a paper to show them that you're trying to deliver it to someone on the street. They laugh and wave you through. Then, for the lulz, you toss the paper to them and it lands in front of them, and they all laugh in unison, totally amused that you delivered them a paper.

Tips were always nice. A guy in a wheelchair once came out and gave you a $5. A guy who wanted you to put the paper directly into his mailbox would leave the occasional $20 inside for you to find. You didn't work during Christmas so you never sent out cards saying "Hi, I throw your paper into the sprinklers on occasion by accident, sorry, but it's Christmas so can I have some money now plz? kthanx."

So how did you lose the dream job? That Gary guy was like the block captain (possibly self appointed) for his neighborhood, and he ended up getting like 20 or 30 of his neighbors to call in complaints one morning, and that many complaints will make Terry the Crack Head tell you not to come back. Even though you tried to quit like a month before this happened because you knew that Gary was up to something and you were horrified of aliens coming out of the cemetery and the society of smokers and they wouldn't let you because they had nobody to replace you, they technically one upped you and your route was taken away and given to someone else.

But not to Gary, because they liked to fuck with Gary and make him cry.

Well, that's the story of the time that you worked a paper route. It's something that you'll try not to look back on in your later years, but it was a time that was full of lulzy stories, and perhaps one day it will end up in your blog.

The People That He Meets

It's 5:02, and David starts closing up his site. A truck pulls up, and the guy and his girlfriend go to take their stuff out of the bed of the truck, which was full. Like a $100 order full. But it's 5:02, so as of two minutes ago, it's no longer David's problem.

"Sorry, I'm closed," he says politely yet sternly.

"What? Fuck that," says Burly Man, and he and his girlfriend continue to take their stuff out of the truck. David laughs to himself and ignores them as he ties off his trash bag and tosses it into a grocery cart. After a minute, they turn around and realize that he's closed up the shack, and he's not attending to them at all.

"Hey, cant you just do this real quick?" the Burly asks.

"No," he answers plainly.

Miss Pissy-Pants walks over to David and says "Oh yeah? Well We'll MAKE you, or else!" David just ignores her. "Hey! I'm talking to you! You know what, never mind. What's your manager's name?"

"I am the manager."

"What's your supervisor's name? No, what's his number? You're so fired, buddy."

"It's the 1-800 number on the side of the bin."

They laugh. "You're SO fired, seriously. And we were going to give you $10 to stay open, but you blew it."

"Yeah, well I have a second job to get to that pays a lot more than $10 so...yeah. Good luck getting me fired."

"Oh we don't need luck, you're plain OUT OF HERE, asshole. What's your name?"

"You don't need to know my name," he laughs. "Just call the number and say that you were at the site at Cross Street and Main Road, and that you got here two minutes after five and I said I couldn't help you out."

Again, they laugh as Miss Pissy starts dialing. "He just doesn't get it!" she tells Burly.

"He'll get it when he don't got a job to come to tomorrow," Burly says.

See, the thing is that David is #2 in the 14 site zone, #1 being the supervisor. And even if he wasn't, the place closes at 5:00, and he doesn't have to take a single can after that point. All these people accomplished was that when they do show back up, it will be uncomfortable because, you know...there's that asshole from the day before who they threatened to fire still working there. Fail threat is fail.

And the funny part is that when you call the number after 5:00, nobody answers because even headquarters is closed at 5:00. Epic lulz.

I have to wonder how many calls that place gets after 5:00 and during lunch. Considering how many sites are in Southern California, and how many complete ass rags who cant read signs there are here, I mean, I just cant imagine a person getting past the busy signal. There's someone almost every day screaming into their cell phone "He's not here! He's got it all closed up!" as he gets out of the car. Then they go "Oh...there he is," and sort of grumble to themselves as they hang up. David's cool though, he doesn't say a word to them. He doesn't have to.

So then he comes home, gets ready for his pizza job, and he goes to take out the trash. He's at the dumpster, and there is a guy wearing a shirt with a big recycling symbol on it. David notices it because it's actually a woman's shirt, and he knows this because I bought the same shirt from the Misses section at Target like three weeks ago. David stares for a second, a second too long, and the guy notices.

"Just back here throwing away the trash, son," the guy says to him...which is stupid because the guy is maybe 25, not nearly old enough to be calling a 20 year old "son" without looking like a douche bag.

"Yeah," says David. "The funny part is that you're throwing away a bag full of cans and bottles, but you're wearing a recycling symbol on your shirt."

The guy stops. He looks at his shirt. Then at the bag of cans.

"Oh...wow. Yeah, yeah that's pretty ironic, isn't it? Yeah." he trails off.

"Have a nice day," says David as he walks away. The dude stood there for another few minutes, possibly because he was stoned. Or possibly, he was seriously thinking about the irony.

Then he gets to the pizza place. There's an EMT in there ordering pizza for carry out.

"Yeah, a construction worker was killed today right down the street from here, we're trying to dig him out right now."

"Dig him out?" David asks.

"Yeah, he was down in a hole, I don't know what for, digging I guess. Anyway, the walls of the hole just like collapsed on him, swallowed 'em up."

"Swallowed him?"

"Yeah, ground was like sclerrrrrrp around him. Crushed him. Yeah and I was like looking in the hole, and I was like 'Yep, he's dead. He aint coming out of there, yeah, he suffocated, he's dead.' But see, we cant get him out, because the more we dig, the farther down he goes."

David, future law enforcement guy, is hanging on his every morbid word.

"If you gotta go East on Ramsey, don't man. They got it all blocked off. They got a crane that they're using to get him out."

"That's terrible," David says, shocked.

"No, what's terrible is that the family showed up! We're all like 'he's in that hole, go look. Oh but he's dead though, so...yeah, sorry.' Anyway, you folks have a good night. Mmmm this smells good," he says as he walks out the door.

Everyone in the store just kind of looks at each other. David's phone rings, it's me calling to tell him that the boys are in their room singing C Moon only Wade is saying "Gee Moo," and he says "Hey honey, guess what? There's a dead guy stuck in a hole down the street. It's really sad, but you should have heard this EMT. The way he was telling the story, I mean you could tell that he was totally desensitized, and he was probably no older than me. That could be me some day."

"What, dead guy in a hole or desensitized?"

He paused. "Both if things don't go right, I guess. But I meant desensitized enough that I can talk about dead guy in a hole and order my food at the same time."

"Ah."

"But one thing I know is that I wont be callous like that guy. I'll be desensitized but compassionate, and I'll doesn't afraid of anything."

"You're a good man, Charlie Brown."

The Ever Present Past Of Joel Smith

When David got to work this morning, there were a few random barrels sitting by his shack. He often finds bags of recyclables that people leave in the night, too busy to care about getting any money for them, just happy to get them off their hands. These barrels were empty, except for one which had several prize ribbons in it. They were all first place ribbons for swimming at various high schools in the area, awarded to Joel Smith in 1990. Yucaipa High School, Fontana High School (Fo-Hi as we call it,) Redlands High School, all first place, all from 1990, all belonging to Joel.

But why did Joel throw away his ribbons, and why at the recycling center?

Maybe he was tired of thinking back to when he was young, and the ribbons only reminded him of that time. Maybe Joel didn't throw away the ribbons, maybe it was his mother. Maybe Joel's mom got sad when she looked at the ribbons that her son earned, the son who never calls anymore. What if Joel moved and accidentally left the ribbons behind in his old house, and when the new people moved in they went "Who the hell is Joel?" and threw away the ribbons.

You see on the news sometimes when someone finds an old class ring from the 50's out in the woods somewhere, or down in the bottom of a lake, and the person tracks down the rightful owner. The cameras watch as the senior citizen is reunited with a piece of metal that they more than likely gave to a girl who threw it in a lake upon the breakup anyway. It probably wouldn't be hard to find out which school Joel came from, find where he is now, then return his ribbons to him. But at what point in your life do you no longer want to be reminded of who you were in high school?

For me it was when I got rid of my diaries, packed away my letterman, and sold my trombone.

Maybe for Joel, it was when he abandoned his first place ribbons from swimming in a trash barrel at the recycling center.

I used to have trophies and awards, some from soccer back when I was a kid. I lost most of them when I went into a foster home. I got a trophy my senior year from that awful band teacher who I mentioned the other day, David did too. Remembering where they came from, we ended up throwing them in the dumpster when we moved here from Banning. That was only, what, two years after we got them. Joel waited 18 years to toss his.

Perhaps Joel is dead, and whoever has been holding on to the ribbons for the past 18 years finally decided that they can rid themselves of the ribbons, possibly to signify the end of the grieving. Or maybe Joel is a big fat cheater and eventually the guilt ate him alive and he ditched the ribbons because he felt that he didn't deserve them.

Oh the things you find while working at a recycling center.

Joel Smith, living in or around Beaumont California, if you ever Google your own name and find this blog, please tell us what the deal is with these awards, and why they were found in an empty barrel at the recycling place.

And if it was done accidentally, I'm sorry but I cant get them back to you. A bum took the barrel back to his van that he lives in down by the river, and the awards were still inside.

I wonder if you care.

Do Me Up Like A Cop

David has a written test for CHP this Saturday. It's like...really happening now.

He went to the hair cut place today and said "Do me up like a cop," so they gave him the modified crew cut that cops get and shaved off his awful facial hair. I hate facial hair, but I gave up the fight when he broke his clavicle and got all weepy and mopey and "if only I could grow a devil beard and mutton chops I would feel so much better, and it wouldn't hurt so much." Facial hair therapy, like retail therapy but uglier.

He said that he thinks that he looks like a baby now with no hair, I said that he looks more respectable and less like a dirty hippie who lives in the recycle box in the parking lot. Like maybe he can give directions and help you change your bike tire instead of ranting about petroleum products and...you know, whatever else dirty hippies do. Smoke things, yeah. Not that the facial hair made him do any of that, he's a downright decent fellah who can give good directions and fix a bike tire, but it is nice to see the scruff go.

He even went to a gas station to buy his new sunglasses. $3 at the Shell.

The test is early in the morning out in Riverside, and I asked him what he plans to wear. He says "whatever."

It seems to me that he shouldn't just wear whatever, even if this is just a written test, because what if the way he's dressed is part of the test its self?

Like walking in and ripping up the test, stomping on it and saying "Screw you teacher! I'm not taking your stupid test!" and the teacher says "Congratulations, Cadet. That was the test." Then everyone stands up and claps and the theme song from that show Wings plays as he triumphantly runs out of the classroom, jumping and clapping the bottoms of his shoes together as he busts through the door.

Or, you know...like the guy in the dress shirt's test gets a few extra credit points and the guy who wears the Metallica shirt's test gets "filed separately," know what I mean?

The thing is, we don't know what he is supposed to wear. We don't even know what the test is on, whether it is just like a personality test, or a basic math test, we have no way of knowing. We are fairly certain that it isn't going to be on penal codes or something that you have to outright study for, it will probably just be like a "True or false: drugs are cool and drinking while driving is a challenge that we all must take at some point in our lives to prove our worth as men."

He said false to that when I read it out loud, by the way.

I didn't actually think he would answer.

I think he's half asleep.

Anyway, I'm no good at giving advice for job related things because I am obviously a bit rusty, and I was never really a model employee anyway. So if any of you working stiffs have any good advice for Officer David, including how he should dress for a written test, let me know in the comments. I know that some of you have experience with this kind of thing or know someone in your family who does (Connie? Liz P? Debi? I'm looking at you guys.) He's of course very excited about this, and I am too.

I think Officer David is a pretty cool guy, eh gets to carry a gun and doesn't afraid of anything.

Breaking Tradition

We usually do the same thing every year for Easter, which is a big day long shebang thing at my Fight Club. But this year, Fight Club was canceled (possibly because someone broke rules 1 and 2?) so we did other things instead.

Happy Easter from my brother in law Matt, who made this beautiful egg...

The Easter bunny hid eggs at my sister's house because we dont have a yard.



Then we left to go to my niece Nina's 10th birthday party...



The party was also Mexican Easter, which involves smashing confetti filled egg shells on each other (in good sport, and they usually dont say fuck you asshole on them.)



Nina loves Hanna Montana and she fights dirty. Observe in this next photo how David is playfully shooting her with a squirt gun and she is whacking him with a rather large stick.



But baby Aiden was also there. Sporting a Mohawk no less...



Another of the adorable little poop machine for good measure



Then we went over to David's parent's house and there were eggs there. Tiny eggs.





They belong to this tiny bird...



Not a great picture, but we couldnt get close or else she would stab us with her face needle. It was horrifying! She was a violent little thing, but all to protect her babies.

And lets close it out with Flying Baby. G'night.

Ty Dye

I only supervised, he did the work.

meh

sorry, too tired to invade your internets tonight. too lazy to drive the car over to the next building for 10 minutes of internet time so im sending this from my phone. i think my neighbors are deadbeats and forgot to pay verizon. i am not a deadbeat i am a freeloader so dont even. i have an idea, please tell me the story of the second time you ever had sex. oh and i can read your comments but i cant publish them from the phone. ok bye, dont speed dont do speed.

Tits Or GTFO

I sat on the balcony, knitting. I almost had both front panels of the Editor Sweater finished, but then I realized that I had mismeasured an arm hole on the first one, so I had to frog it. Measure twice, bind off once they say. Not that I ever listen to them...which is why I had to destroy a good percentage of a beautiful gray wool sweater knit with a fine gauged stockinet stitch. I put it down so that I could work on a brown zipper jacket that I am making for myself, I just started it today. David's Bleu Cheese sweater is now in his hands to finish, just one sleeve left. I would do it, but the pattern was written out in a really screwy way and I cant figure it out on my own, nor can David write it out correctly for me, so he's finishing up the sleeves himself and well...you know how fast that will get done.

I look out across the way and see two Mormon missionaries making their rounds through the complex.

"Jesus Christ," I mutter as I get up to go inside and pretend not to be home, "Or Joseph Smith I should say..."

I set up my pattern and my yarn on the couch and continue working while David thumbs through the Lion Brand yarn catalog that came in the mail the other day. On the cover is Vanna White, Lion Brand's mascot.

"Where are her boobs?" asks David.

"What?"

"Vanna White, see? No boobs."

I say nothing and continue with the ribbing for my jacket. I think I'll name this one Brownie, or Chocolate Chunk I think to myself.

"She's wearing a low cut shirt and it appears that she doesn't even have cleavage." He holds up the magazine to show me. "Why doesn't Vanna have boobs?"

"I don't know, David," I say as I get up to go to the bathroom. For one, I have to poop, and two, I don't really give a shit about Vanna White's lack of boobs.

Wait, let me stop right there. Lets talk about the poop thing, I've been wanting to say something about this for a while. I had a friend a while back who had convinced her live in boyfriend that not only did she not poop, but no girls pooped. Granted he was a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but her point in telling him this was because she didn't want him knowing that she was doing that in the bathroom. From what I understand, there are a LOT of women out there who "don't poop," and I don't understand it. We want equal rights in the work place, but when it comes to bathroom time, "What's taking you so long in there?"

"NOTHING! POWDERING NOSE! GO AWAY! OCCUPIED!"

Powdering noses, what the hell is that anyway? Seriously, girls poop, and it's fine. I'm not asking you to announce it every time you have to do it, but just...I don't know, embrace the dukie I guess.

/rant

I shut the door and I start reading my book. David comes up and opens the door, he still has the catalog in his hand. "Didn't Vanna have boobs when she did the letters?" he asks.

"Did the letters?"

"The show...Jeopardy, or whatever she's on."

"Vanna White is not Alex Trebek."

"Oh. Well if she was it would explain why she doesn't have boobs." He closes the door. I read, but only for a moment, because the door swings open again.

"Is it possible that maybe she breast fed and her boobs turned into tube socks? Is that even true?" he asks.

"I don't know, David. I don't know if she breast fed."

"No, is it true that boobs turn into tube socks when you breast feed?"

"I don't know David, we bottle fed."

"Well that's good that we did, because if it is true, you could end up looking like Vanna. That isn't to say that Vanna isn't attractive, because she's a pretty lady for being...what...50? 60? It's just that she doesn't have any boobs."

"Why does it matter?" I ask, exhausted of his constant tit-banter tonight.

"Because she's Vanna White! She does the letters! WHERE are her boobs? If she doesn't have them...then why, WHY is she-"

"David," I interrupt. "I'm reading." I said reading because if I'd of said pooping he'd of said "So? You're always pooping." I'm not one of those girls who pretends not to poop.

"Oh, sorry" he says and shuts the door. Never to open it again. He understands what it's like to be interrupted while you're reading.

Perhaps women aren't embarrassed by their bowel movements. Maybe they just don't want their husbands getting too comfortable with their pooping to where they just barge in and demand to know what happened to the breasts of Vanna White.

I can write a story, I can knit a sweater, and I can tell a person to their face that they're awful, rude or annoying, but I cant get David to leave me alone in the shitter.

Vanna, I blame you. Take some of that money that you get for "doing the letters" and buy a pair. I'd like to poop in peace some time this century.

A Funny Story About Me

Liz in Seattle said that I should screw writing fiction and just write a funny story about me.

Uh, guys...this IS the funny story about me. The blog. You get to read it for free.

Blogs are the written equivalent of "reality show," every Dick, Jane and emo can have one. I happened to pick one up just about three years ago and I've kept it updated regularly ever since. I was going to write a sort of autobiography a long time ago, but really my life is anything but funny. And I realized that I've either leaked or will leak in the future the sordid details of how I got here, and if I reveal all of the secrets then nobody will come to my magic show anymore. Like when that masked magician revealed the magicians secrets, but he said that he did it because he wanted to challenge the magic industry, and push them all into learning new tricks.

But my fiction work, these books that I write...don't you see that they're not really fiction based fiction for the sake of being fiction? Lets take A Powdery Tattoo for example, which you can read about in my sidebar here or at Jessie-Terwilliger.com. Dagger is me, and he's also David, and David's friend, and my ex boyfriend. The story is an exaggeration of my experience in high school. Jackie, Grace and Greg all exist, I just created a story about them. The settings are all real, and they're all places that I know well.

I asked David if it would be small minded of me if all of my novels are basically set in the same two towns, or the same area as a whole. He said, "write what you know. How can you write a book about living in Chicago if you've never been there?"

I cant write a book about Chicago. I can only write about Yucaipa and Beaumont, and maybe that makes me unique. Or just like every other author who writes what they know.

You might have seen the other upcoming titles that I listed on the Jessie T site, the ones that have no info or description. Yes, Maestro is another fictionalized story of something that really happened. My senior year of high school, the band teacher quit and was quickly replaced by this real take charge kind of guy, and he seemed like he was going to do something really good for the program. The students were all excited, the parents were happy, except that the guy was basically hired on the spot and the school did no research whatsoever because he charmed them as well. The guy, throughout the year, got creepy. He made a lot of sexual comments toward a lot of the girls. He asked me one time if I liked to "navigate the pornography websites," reminded me privately on several occasions that I was 18 and I could do whatever I wanted. One time, out of nowhere he's talking about something in class, and he mentions rape.

"Oh wouldn't it be sad if (student) got raped? How would all of us cope if something like that were to happen?"

Now, the student in question happened to be a black girl. One theory is that he said that BECAUSE she was black, another is that he just singled her out of the crowd because she was black. Basically the dude was a weirdo and after I graduated I sent a letter to the school district about the shit that had gone on. I couldn't do it while I was still his student because that rat bastard ruined my credibility. He knew that I was going to say something, so he called me to the office for a conference with the school councilor, and made it seem that I was just some girl with a crush on her teacher and that I was the one who was coming on to him.

Turns out, the letter was just one of many complaints about the dude, which sparked an investigation. Here's the kicker, the guy's credential had been revoked in another state for sexual harassment, only months before he came to work at our school.

Anyway, the only purely fictional story that I'm writing is the one that I had most recently worked on, Cemetery View. But even though it's fictional, it's really just me living vicariously through a character. She lives in the house that I want, and she does the things that I want to do. Well, not entirely. Her marriage is really more like a room mate situation and she's actually a rather tragic character. Oh and she's got a crazy mother in law, I mean ca-razy. She makes Dianne look like a peach. I cant divulge too many details, but trust me, it's a mindfuck. When you read it, you'll shit bricks. Hell I shat several bricks while writing it, and giggled wildly at Coco's when I realized what the major plot twist would be.

"Write that down right fucking now!" David commanded. I pulled out my handy dandy notebook and scribbled four little words that will make that story, do for it what "Luke, I am your father" did for Star Wars. I cant tell you all the words, but I will tell you two. *blank* with a *blank.*

Could be monkey with a gun, could be anything. But I assure you, it's perfect.

So basically, I'm in all of my writing. It's all just funny stories about me, or things I've done, people I've known. The blog is just an unorganized version, and the books will be short, sweet and to the mindfuck.

When I blog, you have to wait for the mindfuck, muddling through stories about the kids and shopping to get to the broken clavicles, car theft, and whatever else could possibly happen to us this year.

Economically Stimulating

I decided to take a break from writing. No, not blogging, but writing, like manuscript work. Not for any particular reason other than I just feel like knitting instead. In the past month I have finished a manuscript for a lighter book that I want to market toward adults, but have it still be appropriate enough that some of those adults can say to their teens "read this book, it's really good, I know the author." Sort of like Terwilliger-lite, no F-words or super heavy subject matter, but still good enough that when you read it, you'll shit bricks. Also I began writing another story which is like Desperate Housewives meets Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters, which I will get more into later.

Most importantly, I designed my five year plan, outlining the structures for each novel that I plan to release from now until 2012. I also bought a Dot Com that I am strictly using for my books, one that's a lot more Terwilliger-lite than sending your Granny or your gal pals from church to than this blog, and you will find it at Jessie-Terwilliger.com. There is where you can check out what is available now, look at my upcoming titles, read more about Golden Dawn (including its release date) and pretty soon you'll have reviews, excerpts, and even a book trailer for Golden Dawn (in the works at the moment.)

And now that I've accomplished all of that, I'm going to take a writing sabbatical...is that the right word?

I've made significant progress on the Editor Sweater, the whole back and most of one front panel knitted up, which is saying a lot because the yarn and needles are tiny. But the fine gage is going to make this sweater look downright pretty when it gets done.

Then yesterday in the mail we got both a yarn catalog and a letter from the Gubment saying that we're getting magical money out of nowhere come summer. Yeah, YOU get yours in May, but David's our head of house hold and his social security number happens to end in some pretty high numbers, which means we don't get that money till July.

Either way, I think it was a sign that I am supposed to spend the whole thing on yarn.

Actually, we already discussed the $1,800. And by the way, even though only a small percentage of the nation is actually going to spend it, the rest of the population either investing it or paying bills, we plan to use it for its intended purpose. David wants to buy a laptop with his $600, nothing fancy, but not like an Acer or Dell, probably something like a Compaq. If he has anything left over, he's getting a tattoo.

"Is getting a tattoo going to help the economy?" I ask him.

"Yes, because the business owner will be paid for a service, how does that not stimulate the economy?"

"What if you spent it all on hookers and blow, would that count?"

"Yes, ur...no, it wouldn't. Hookers and blow do not stimulate the economy."

But a tattoo does. Go figure.

The $600 for the kids will be spent on school clothes/clothes in general and birthday whatever. Maybe Disneyland or something, I haven't really thought about it, and it also depends on whether or not David is even here. He could be in Sacramento by the time we get the money, and if that's the case, then I know what I am spending my $600 on: a friend.

People, I will be awfully lonely here and I will need a companion. Since hookers wont stimulate the economy, and I cant have a dog, I am going to buy a bird. A big one. One that talks, and will laugh at my jokes. Or imitate laughter, whatever. But it will be my friend, and it will hang out with me even though nobody else will.

There is a wonderful bird farm in our area that hand raises the sweetest baby birds ever. I will probably get a little sun conure. We met a macaw at the bird farm the other day, it saw Wade and made its way over to him and said "Hello," and then he said "agua." The resident African Grays say "come here" and if they're really talkative that day they'll tell you that you're such a pretty boy.

I realize that a bird is not like the first choice of companion that most people would make, but I like them. I had a magpie when I was little, I'm not really sure why we had it but one time it tried to steal our Thanksgiving turkey right from the table, it just swooped in and dug its claws in and tried to fly off. I think we fed him fresh roast beef most of the time.

Imagine, I could be sitting on a stockpile of yarn and listening to my bird talk at me. I'm going to be a crazy old lady before I even know it.

Best summer plans ever.

And So This Is Christmas...

No. It's March still. But look what happened yesterday.

He actually threw it and got snow all over my $350 camera. I almost kicked him straight in the nuts, swear to god.





But, storms mess with my internets so yeah, I've been blogging from the car since Thursday. But aint it purdy anyhow?

A Postcard From 1997: Oh My God! It's The Leprechaun You Guys! GET HIM!

This was back when my sister first started teaching, and she had been given second graders.

St. Patrick's Day was coming up, and she was teaching the kids about leprechauns and all that jazz. My sister often borrowed ideas from what she saw my teacher do back when she was a volunteer in my kindergarten class, like snagging that "The Turkey Shot Out Of The Oven" song, and the runaway gingerbread man thing. Well my kindergarten teacher Mrs. Goodrich once made us kids all think that some nutty leprechaun had gotten loose in our classroom and made messes and mixed up our stuff. The proof was that the sneaky little bastard left tiny green footprints everywhere!

It was rather unfortunate for him because it appeared that the footprints that he left were a result of him stepping in some green tempera paint.

Anyway, so my sister's idea was to take this to the next level. One of her classroom aides had a redheaded son who was probably four or five. I don't remember his name, but lets call him Ryan for the sake of this story.

My sister had Ryan's mom hit her sewing machine and come up with a perfectly adorable leprechaun costume for him. We're talking hat, funny little jacket, pants, the whole deal. The whole GREEN deal. And with the scraggly red hair, he looked just like a cute little leprechaun.

On St. Patrick's Day, Ryan's job was to make an appearance as the leprechaun, who my sister had insisted all week was the one responsible for disorganizing their desks and making messes all about the room while they were at recess. Now, these were second graders, and convincing older kids that leprechauns even existed was not really an easy task. At that age they're discovering the whole Santa thing, and the parents don't work as hard at creating the illusion of the holiday characters as they did back when the kid was too early to remember any of it. This is why she needed Ryan, or else they would figure out for sure that it was her all along.

So the day comes, and mysterious mischief such as overturned desks happens throughout the day. Most of the kids believe that it's a ruse, some aren't sure, and some are totally believing it. My sister is teaching, and she walks over toward the window to grab something, and the kids watched her as she moved about the room.

And there he was. A leprechaun was outside the classroom peeking in through the window, then quickly ran away. All 30 kids stand up and scream at what they just saw. "Teacher! Teacher! The leprechaun was peeking in at us! Teacher! DAAAAAAAAAAH!" they all piped.

20 something minutes later she got them to all calm back down, telling them that there couldn't have been a leprechaun because she had just played a joke on them, and that leprechauns weren't real and that it was all just a game.

"No Teacher, we saw him, he was out there looking at us! The leprechaun is real!"

It doesn't end there. When recess came around, Ryan was instructed to hide, and then come out where the kids would see him. But he had to be far enough away that he could drop his bag of gold and run back into hiding. The students would see him, run toward him, get his gold, and rejoice. That was the plan anyway.

The kids are all at recess, and "Look! He's BACK!" they yell when they see the leprechaun out on the grassy knoll. A group of kids go running after him. On cue, Ryan drops his bag of gold and skips merrily back toward his hiding spot between some classrooms, which would lead him to where his mother was waiting so that she could gather him up.

Only, the kids could care less about the stupid bag of gold, they wanted blood. They pass the fallen bag and run full force toward him. Ryan screams and runs for his life, barely making his escape before these kids tore him to shreds. Luckily the kids in the lead still weren't quick enough to see where he went, so they turned around and went after the bag instead. Everyone had delicious Lucky Charms cereal and chocolate filled gold coins that day.

And somewhere there is a group of kids about David's age who still believe in leprechauns to this day.

Subsequently, there is a red headed teenaged boy who has post traumatic stress induced flash backs that flare up around this time of year.

From Every Perspective

David:

Ok so anyway, I'm walking toward the Chinese food place, and I see the manager from Stater's and a bag girl standing by this car, right? The manager is on his cell phone, and they're like looking in the windows. I cant hear what he's saying, but then all of the sudden the guy in the next car over gets out, some words are exchanged, and he gets one of those battering ram things that cops bust people's doors down with, and he busts in the side window of the car. Just then, this guy comes running up and is like "Hey yo, what are you doing?"

Stater's manager:

Ok so anyway, this bag girl comes in and is all like "Someone left their baby in the car!" so I'm like "I'M ON IT!" and we go outside and call 911. But before the cops get there, this off duty SWAT officer pulls up and says he's got something on him that we can use. So then he busts in the window with one of those battering ram things that cops bust down people's doors with, and we open the door to get the baby, when all of the sudden we see the guy coming out of the store! He comes running up and he's like "Hey yo, what are you doing?" and the cop starts yelling at him for leaving the baby in the car.

Off duty SWAT guy:

Ok so anyway, I'm on my way to get some broccoli beef, and I see some commotion happening around this car involving some Stater's Employees. I get out of my car and ask if there is anything I can help them with, and they inform me that there is a baby in the car. I just happened to have my battering ram thing that cops knock doors down with on me at the time, so I used it to pop out the front passenger side window and rescue sleeping Junior inside. The suspected neglectful parent then runs out of the grocery store and yells "Hey yo, what are you doing?" and I inform him that it is both dangerous and illegal to leave minors alone in the car for any length of time, despite weather conditions. I then waited with the man and gave him a stern talking to until Beaumont PD arrived on the scene.

Douche-Dad

Ok so anyway, I needs to get some beer n' shit so I go to Staters, but the baby is asleep so I'm like "whatever" right? So I figure I'll just be like a half hour or something in the store, so I go in and buy a bunch of shit for my party, right? Dude, Irish Car Bombs, right? Ever had one? Oh my god, it gets you like SO fucked up, you don't even know, it's cool man. So I get out of the store, and these guys are like trying to break into my car, and I'm like "Hey yo, what are you doing?" because I don't want them to like find my crack or whatever, right? Anyway they tell me that I'm in trouble for leaving the baby in the car, and I'm like "You cant tell me what I can and cant do with my own kid, man," and then I like went to jail and shit. My girlfriends are going to kill me. And my wife'll be pissed too I'm sure, since they like took the baby and everything. Ha ha...guess it's pretty funny, 'sept that I have to get a new window now. Stupid fucking cops.

Baby:

Ok so anyway, I'm like in my dad's car being a baby right? I'm like goo-goo-gaa-gaa or whatever, and then they bust the window of the car and I'm like "Hey yo, what are you doing?" only it came out like "WAAAH WAAAAH WAAAAAH!" because I'm like still a baby. I think I might have crapped myself. Anyway, I found a nice family to live with now, but I kinda want to know when that Officer Nice Man is going to give me back my nose. It's not a joke anymore, man, I need that thing.

Car window:

Ok so anyway, I'm like sitting there being glass, right? Or Plexiglas or whatever, anyway, that douchebag left the kid in the car again, and I'm like being all up and everything so nobody can just reach in and take him, but do you know what they done? They busted my shit up with a battering ram thing that cops use to knock down doors, and I'm like "Hey yo, what are you doing?" cuz I'm a window not a door right? Anyway, they took the baby. The thanks I get.

Battering ram thing that cops use to knock down doors:

Ok so anyway, I'm like not really supposed to go home with this guy, but he likes to use me to smash beer cans in the back yard. So I'm like in the back of his car, and then all of the sudden, just when I think he's stopping for Chinese food or something, he grabs me and shoves me right through the window of this car, and I'm like "Hey yo, what are you doing?" but then I realized that there was a baby in the car left unattended, so I was like "Oh ok, that's cool man."

Air:

Ok so anyway, I'm like just everywhere, right? Because I'm air? There's people walking around and I move and get breathed, then all of the sudden this dude holding this big battering ram thing like cops use to knock down doors like swings it back, and then forward really fast, so my molecules are all displaced in a gust of wind. I'm like "Hey yo, what are you doing?" but he couldn't hear me because I'm air.

The Law Of Physics:

Ok so anyway, I'm sitting there being a law, and then all of the sudden this guy takes this big battering ram thing like cops use to knock down doors to a car window, and I was like "I'M ON IT!" Awesome.

Uneaten broccoli beef:

Ok so anyway, I was going to be this off duty SWAT officer's lunch or whatever, but he got slowed up because some douchebag left his kid in a car and he had to use his battering ram thing that cops use to knock down doors to save him. Then this fucking asshole in a green shirt comes up and orders me, and I realize that he's that guy from the recycling center in the parking lot, and I'm like "Hey yo, what are you doing?" because I was the last little bit of the broccoli beef and I was supposed to be ordered by the SWAT guy, but this asshole ate me instead. In about six hours, I will be posting my perspective as "pooped out broccoli beef" from the bowl of the toilet if this party is still going.

Jessie:

Ok so anyway, David told me that he saw Marty and this box girl standing by this car and looking in the windows, and then an off duty SWAT guy pulled out a battering ram thing that cops use to knock down doors and busted in the car window, and the car owner came out just right after it happened yelling "Hey yo, what are you doing?" Turns out there was a baby in the car. Hmm...how can I stretch that into a full blog entry?

Blog readers:

Ok so anyway, I went to go read one of my favorite blogs today, hoping that she had mentioned the Scientology Protests or something random like she does, but she had up this stupid entry that was basically just the same story told over and over again from different perspectives, repeating stupid phrases like "battering ram thing that cops use to knock down doors" over and over, and it sort of made light of a very serious situation, so I thought about leaving a comment and saying "Hey yo, what are you doing?" but then I realized that I only enable her when she does these things by reading them all the way through like this. One of these days I'm just going to stop reading, I swear to god.

Epic Win:

Ok so anyway, I'm epic win, and I'm like cruising the internets because it's a Saturday night and the only people on the internet on a Saturday night are full of me, right? So then I come across this blog post where this chick from California is like telling this story from like every possible perspective...

Meme: How It's Done

I will remind you that I havent posted one of these in lieu of a real post in quite some time, AND I did not just randomly lift this from another blog or some Myspace bulliten. Sara directly requested me to fill this out via email.

Now here is where I am going to school your asses and show you how to go from doing daily memes to just rolling them all up into one entry, and filling the others with real content.

1. What time did you get up this morning?

I was awake at 8:00, but I laid in bed like a lump until David left at 8:30 because I like to be warm.

2. Do you like Diamonds or pearls?

Hate diamonds, but I have a soft spot for pearls because that's my middle name. I own one pearl necklace, it was given to me by someone who lured a man on the internet into falling in love with a fake version of me, because he had sent me the necklace, and even though I wasnt involved in the situation, she felt that I deserved to have it.

3. What was the last film you saw at the movies?

The Simpsons Movie. We dont get out much, I dont even know what's playing anymore.

4. What is your favorite TV show?

I no longer watch television in my home, but when I visit other people's houses, I enjoy only a few shows. One of them being Dead Like Me, I just got into watching the re-runs. But my favorite is Man vs Wild with Bear Grylls (pictured above.) Have you seen this show? Holy hot dicks from hell, this man is a survivalist, and Ive seen the dude drink his piss in order to survive in the desert. He's also eaten scorpions, skinned a mountain goat and wore it for warmth even though it was all rotten and bloated, and one time he cut open a camel and took out its poop, then squeezed it out and drank the yummy fluids that came out of it. I love him more than I love the Mythbusters.

5. What do you usually have for breakfast?

Fiber One granola bars. Have you tried these things? Holy hot dicks from hell. Ive been looking for a new granola bar and I found it. I also enjoy cold pizza, if David happened to bring some home the night before.

6. What is your middle name?

Pearl

7. What food do you dislike?

I dislike many foods. I particularly dislike saucy things, salad related things, anything that may poison me, etc.

8. What is your favorite CD at the moment?

I have a playlist, and it is on shuffle, so this question does not apply. However, the full albums that I have loaded into that playlist are as follows: Beatles "Abbey Road," Beatles "White Album" disk one and two, Beatles "Beatles For Sale," Beatles "Love," Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour," Beatles "Sgt. Pepper's," Beatles Greatest Hits, The Doors, The Dresden Dolls, The Dresden Dolls "A Is For Accident," The Dresden Dolls "Yes Virginia," Orgy "Candyass," Paul McCartney "All The Best," Paul McCartney "Memory Almost Full," Queen "The Platinum Collection," Tom Petty "Greatest Hits," and Nouvelle Vague. I am working on downloading The Cure's diskology and Nouvelle Vague's "Bande A Part."

9. What kind of car do you drive?

A bright red 2000 Oldsmobile Alero

10. Favorite sandwich?

There's a place in Yucaipa called Subs Of USA and they make a sandwich called the avogobble. Turkey + avocado on a sub = win. And oh god, with pickles and bacon, holy hot dicks from hell.

11. What characteristics do you despise?

Douchebags, raw stupidity, immaturity (and I dont mean in the playful way, I mean 23 year olds who would rather get stoned than take care of their baby,) know it alls, asshats, crack heads, fast talkers, bible humpers, people who absolutely should not be driving but do anyway, tallentless hacks, Youtubers who believe that they are celebrities, bloggers who dont interact with their readers in the slightest, people who refuse to get the point, people who try to touch me, people who complain about their job, people who complain about my lack of a job, slobs in general...

12. Favorite item of clothing?

My super comfy leather sandals.

13. If you could go anywhere in the world for a Vacation, where would you go?

Portland, Oregon. I dont have a lot of choices, I dont fly so it limits me to the bordering states.

14. Favorite brand of clothing?

I dont wear brands, I never spend more than $20 on anything that I wear. Is Target a brand? If it is, then that's it.

15. Where would you retire?

I suppose when David is old enough to retire, we will probably stay right where we are at the time. We plan to buy a house and actually live in it. I know that's a strange concept these days, but we are going to live in the house that we buy until it burns down or we die in it. We will probably buy a house in Calimesa, because Yucaipa is really trashy and people in Beaumont will steal your wheels in the night. Everywhere else is dangerous.

16. Most memorable birthday?

My 18th. Great story, you should read that.

17. Favorite Sport to watch?

Compeditive high school band field marching. Man, I saw this show once, and they did a tribute to the Vietnam war, and they played Paint It Black. What made it cool was during the song, they all dropped their instruments and picked up rifles. Also, some of them played dead and had to be carried off the "battle field" by color guard members with stretchers. Is this awesome? Yes.

18. Furthest place you are sending this?

The world wide interweb is a vast place that does not exist, but it is very far and yet everywhere all at once. Beat that.

19. Who do you least expect to send this back to you?

The two siblings that I have reading this who pretend that I cant see them, my father in law, people who read but dont comment because they dont want to admit that they still read here, and YOU.

20. Person you expect to send it back first?

Nobody, my readers dont like to participate in my shit anymore. I offer them things, and they sit on their thumbs.

21. Favorite saying?

"No, YOU!" (You thought I was going to say holy hot dicks from hell, didnt you?)

22. When is your birthday?

December 20th, but dont worry, even Jesus doesnt remember it anymore.

23 . Are you a morning person or a night person?

It doesnt really matter, when Im up Im up.

24. What is your shoe size?

9 1/2

25. Pets?

The bunny who has a name, but we just call her Bunny. Also Bella the parakeet. She's awesome, a little bitchy, but she's funny to watch.

26. What did you want to be when you were little?

A paperback writer, swear to god.

27. What are you today?

Paperback writer, stay at home parent, as you can see it all worked out.

28. What is your favorite candy?

Junior Mints

29. What is your favorite flower?

The kind that David picks for me randomly from a yard or parking lot. Usually some kind of bulb.

30. What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to?

The Ides Of March even though I wont be able to make it to the protest, Easter because I like doing that stuff with the kids, and whatever date in May I pick for the release of The Fight for Golden Dawn

31. What church/temple do you attend?

None, I do not comply, this does not apply.

32. What are you listening to right now?

The Ballad Of John And Yoko. What a hoakie song.

33. What was the last thing you ate?

A Cadbury Cream Egg, holy hot dicks from hell.

34. Do you believe in Angels?

Oh sure I do, just probably not on the same level that other people do.

35. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

Probably something between orange and brown.

36. What is your pet peeve?

People who tell me that I need to get right with Jesus just because I write things like "holy hot dicks from hell" on my blog, also liars, the sound of the toenail clippers, unsupervised kids, and trash left on the counter.

37. Last person you spoke to on the phone?

Matt, my brother in law. We are going to the DMV together on Saturday to get the plates for my car and transfer the title to my name.

38. Favorite soft drink?

A liter'a cola (what's that from?) No, Diet Dr. Pepper

39. Favorite restaurant?

Nowhere, it all went downhill. Service lately is shit, most food is overpriced, and it will give you worms. WORMS. We went to Black Angus a while back, and it was so not worth it. We havent been anywhere since and we dont plan to even try.

40. Hair Color?

Oh my god, I finally got a color to come out right! Normally I dye it blonde and it goes red, and when I dye it red it goes brown, but this time I went with a color called "Spiced Tea," and it came out exactly the right shade of red. Not orange, or crayon red, but a nice...well, spiced tea color.

41. Siblings?

Six, there's Richard, Sandy, Jim, Robert, Malissa, and Jonny, who is my long lost brother and Ive never met him. I dont know if he knows that I exist.

42. Favorite day of the year?

Christmas!

43. Hugs or kisses?

Neither, dont fucking touch me.

44. Chocolate or vanilla?

Chocolate candy, vanilla ice cream (lactose free ice cream anyway.)

45. Do you want your friends to e-mail you back?

They wont. But I do.

46. When was the last time you cried?

When David got back from the impound and told me that the car was not only stripped, but they took Ty's carseat. Also, I almost cried when The Boring Dispatcher's death was announced.

47. What is under your bed?

I dont know, I dont put anything under it, but Im sure things have fallen under there.

48. Who is the friend you've had longest?

Chawny if you want to get technical, since we were gradeschool friends and we re-met as adults. But really it's probably David. We've known each other for six years and we always get along.

49. What did you do last night?

Worked on my manuscript, read, talked to David, cooked chicken, finished laundry.

50. Favorite smell?

Oil Of Olay products. They ALL smell nice, my god.

51. What are you afraid of?

Being touched, someone breaking in to my house, pedophiles, a certain word that I wont ever ever say nor type nor even hint as to what it is, car accidents, somehow losing our apartment.

52. How many keys on your key ring?

Four, one is to the car, one is to The Club (thanks Liz,) one is for my house, and one is for my sister's house.

53. How many years at your current job?

Almost three years of being home, and it's been about a year since I started my first serious manuscript that I intended (and succeded) to publish, so Ive been an author for a year I guess.

54. Favorite day of the week?

Sunday or Monday, his days off.

55. How many towns have you lived in?

Calimesa, Yucaipa, Banning, Beaumont, and one time I lived in Loma Linda.

56. Do you make friends easily?

Does it look like I make friends easily? Do I seem to be dripping with social skills? Yeah, that's a big NO.

57. How many folks will you send this to?

According to Statcounter, somewhere between 714 and 926 people this week

Think it ends there? 57 questions, and you think it ends there? Nope. This morning, A Girl sent me "44 odd things about YOU" and Im doing it here. Thats right. Double hitter. Double meme. Double fuck you (unless you really like reading these things, then it's like double yay for you.)

1. Do you like blue cheese?

I dont ever recall trying it. Now I cant try it. I hope Im not missing anything special.

2. Have you ever smoked heroin?

Ive never smoked anything, not even a cig. And Ive never done the drugs that you dont smoke either.

3. Do you own a gun?

Not yet, but David is insisting that I'll get one when he's a cop. Something small and girly that I can point at intruders.

4. What flavor do you add to your drink at Sonic?

The fucking fuck is Sonic?

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments?

No, but I do get impatient. Except for when I had that really cute OB/GYN, he was always on time with his appointments and always dashingly handsome. I wasnt nervous, just happy. And hormonal/pregnant.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?

Hot dogs are one of the leading problems for childhood obesity. It seems that they are marketed in many different ways, including "healthier" or "chicken" or "on a stick," when truly they are all basically the same thing, tube shaped cholesterol. Give a bunch of those to a 4 year old and youll see little Timmy racking up the poundage. I'd tell you more, but you'd have to buy the book.

7. Favorite Christmas song?

It's not really a Christmas song, but "Prelude And Fugue in B" by Bach. We played it at my Christmas concerts every year in band, and there's a triumphant 2nd trombone solo that was always played by me.

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?

Celestial Seasoning's raspberry zinger.

9. Can you do pushups?

Absolutely not. My upper body strength is seriously lacking.

10. What's your favorite piece of jewelry?

I dont really wear much, but I never take off my wedding rings or the sapphire journey necklace that he got me last Christmas, which was my one and only present (from him,) but totally worth it.

11. Favorite hobby?

Since I count writing as more of a profession now (suck it!) I will say photography, knitting, and reading in that order.

12. Do you have A.D.D.?

Are you kidding me? I hate the overdiagnosis of this, and I especially hate it when adults say "oh I have ADD LULZ!" when they've probably never even talked to a doctor about it, and if they had they lied to get the drugs. That's not to say that every adult with ADD does this, but many do. No, I do not have ADD just because I can get distracted, and I dont need a lable for anything I do.

13. What's one trait that you hate about yourself?

My seemingly irrational theme of reoccouring bad luck. But this is the life that I chose, I guess.

14. Middle name?

You know that you are doing too many memes when the questions overlap.

15. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment.

"I have 'An American Girl' by Tom Petty Stuck in my head."

"David walked to work this morning."

"This cup of tea isnt as good as the last."

16. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink?

Diet Dr Pepper, raspberry zinger tea, and vanilla chai tea with soy.

17. Current worry right now?

I wanted to get my book listed on Amazon this weekend but my editor hasnt sent me back my manuscript so I couldnt do a god damn thing.

18. Current hate right now?

The management here at my apartment. They've had a package of mine for a week and they never told me, also they are putting up new fences but they wont put in a security gate because they're too expensive.

19. Favorite place to be?

THE INTERNET! WHERE CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!

20. How did you bring in the New Year?

Oh this is great, I never told this story. We were house sitting for my sister, and we were going to watch the ball drop. But it was like 11:30 and the kids were tired, so I said that we should go home and drop our own balls, know what I mean? Well David locks his keys in the house. It's like 30 something degrees, and the kids and I are stuck in the car in the cold. Eventually we coaxed Wade into going in through the cat door and turning on the light in the hallway so that Ty could go through the cat door and unlock the deadbolt. We got back in with five minutes to spare to watch the ball drop and drink hot cocoa.

21. Like to go?

To Target, and the yarn store. My sister's, the mountains, no place really.

22. Name three people who will complete this?

YOU, You, and you.

23. Do you own slippers?

No, but I own nothing but slip ons and sandals because I enjoy the same laziness and comfort that slippers share with these types of shoes.

24. What color shirt are you wearing?

The shirt it's self is an undershirt and it's dark blue, but I am actually wearing a light turqoise half sweater today.

25. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets?

I thought only trashy people slept on those. No, I enjoy flannel and "t-shirt" sheets.

26. Can you whistle?

No.

27. Favorite color?

Lime green, brown.

28. Would you be a pirate?

Pictured right ---->

29. What songs do you sing in the shower?

I dont usually sing in the shower, but when I am alone I sing along with whatever Im listening to.

30. Favorite girl's name?

Brooke, havent quite struck a middle name that I love yet.

31. Favorite boy's name?

Lake Wyatt. But also, I've always loved Nickolas, which is Wade's middle name. Who doesnt love that name? Neeeeekolus! Neeeeeeeeeeeekolus! Best boys name ever. It would have been Ty's name but there is already a Nick Terwilliger out there and I dont much get along with him.

32. What's in your pocket right now?

Apple Cranberry Cyder Lip Smackers. Yeah, Im 24 and I still use Lip Smackers to this day. The girl who got me hooked on it in 8th grade probably still uses it too.

32. Last thing that made you laugh?

Unfortunately I was laughing at my own joke. David was laying on the couch, and I go "Can I sit here" and then made dry heave noises. Then I laughed. I said, "Would you let someone sit by you if they were dry heaving?" He said no. Then I asked him if he were to ever be able to have sex with like THEEE hottest woman on the planet, but she was going to throw up on him the whole time, if he would still do it. I dont remember his answer.

33. Best bed sheets as a child?

Um...Lion King for a while. I think just like whatever Walmart sells for the cheapest is what I had.

34. Worst injury you've ever had?

If post labor stuff doesnt count, then probably like a toothache or that boil that I had on my elbow when I was pregnant with Wade. (I dont hurt myself a lot.) That boil though, I got it to drain by putting a mixture of golden flax seed and beaver tail cactus on it, and it drained white, green, red and brown stuff for like three hours. You should have seen it, it was like a golf ball, and I couldnt bend my arm.

35. Do you love where you live?

No, Im over Blowmont, so over it. It's windy, it's getting too many businesses, and there are car theives. The apartment it's self, Im over it, but I cant go anywhere else. We have the cheapest place avaiable anywhere, and they're raising the rent to $763 in May. That's still the cheapest, if you can believe it.

36. How many TVs do you have in your house?

None. I feel so liberated.

37. Who is your loudest friend?

Me. I am usually the one that is the loudest of the friends, and people choose to be my friend because of this. "I think Jessie is a pretty ok chick, seh says what is on erh mind and doesnt afraid of anything."

38. How many pets do you have?

A bunny and a bird, but I think I already answered this up top.

39. Does someone have a crush on you?

Possibly staring girl. Also possibly this guy who lives across the way from us. It seems that he's always in the store at the same time as me and he sends his daughter up to talk to me. He also tries to sync his laundry doing with me so he has an excuse to talk to me while Im in there. Big dopey fella with curly mop hair.

40. What is your favorite book?

Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. Read that one first, and you will be hooked. I also love Clown Girl by Monica Drake, she's actually from Chuck's writing group. My most recent favorite is The Curious Insident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon.

41. What is your favorite candy?

Already answered?

42. Favorite Sports Team?

Hate sports. Hate em.

43. What were you doing 12 AM last night?

Sleeping

44. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up?

Oh god, am I getting sick? I need to go make some tea...

And lets close it out with the five random facts that everyone has tagged me with.

1. Jessie Terwilliger is actually a sock puppet. I never changed my name at the social security office. Im not chicken, I just dont really care, and it's never been a problem. The only time it comes up is tax time, other than that it's never an issue.

2. I lied about everything when I was in jr high. Why? Because I had a pretty crappy home life and so I fabricated stuff so that it would make me happy. By pretty crappy home life I mean that I was tossed from home to home between my siblings, because none of them really wanted me. How does it make a kid feel when NOBODY wants you? Like shit. So you start lying about things, and it makes you feel good. Then I decided to stop doing that in high school, and it meant that there were a lot of indescrepencies, and I had a lot of splainin to do. So I dont lie anymore, it's too much work.

3. I dislike my fetuses, and I like my newborns so-so. But then after a few weeks I decide that they're cute and loveable. I dont share this because I want my kids to read this some day and go "MOM! HOW COULD YOU?" but because there are probably lots of people out there like that who are too afraid to admit it because they dont want to sound like a bad parent or something. Dont feel guilty about it, I dont.

4. Spring time = mating season for me. Which is odd because I always get knocked up in November.

5. I choose the names of the characters in my novels by going to babynames.com and searching by meaning. If I need a strong willed woman, I search "strong" and "leader." If I need a handsome and yet distant husband, I search "charming, away, far, distance." I also think about the age of the character, and maybe search the names that were popular in the year 1971 or whenever they were born. And sometimes I just use names that I like, or names that pop up in my head. Thoughts are things, and we think them for a reason.

Toilet, Laundry Room, Same Difference.

The icky sticky fuzzy wuzzy tinglie wingelies are gone, so I can touch things again. I spent most of the day purging up chunky hacks.

Like hackie sacks but, you know, completely unrelated.

Never are you more happy to see a quarter sized ball of mucous than when you've just hacked it up. And don't tell me that it's only second to the pregnancy mucous plug, because that one is more like a "oh snap, it's going down now" sort of thing, and not nearly as rewarding than lugie bombs. (The mucous ball its self, not the whole baby thing, you know what I mean.)

Don't believe me? Come on over and I'll lick your face so you can experience it for yourself. Get up, come on, get down with the sickness.

Ah but your cheery comments kept me entertained throughout the day, along with writing. Yeah, so what, I'm working on yet another book. My kids are kinda sick and Ty is actually trying to ignore it because he was afraid that I wouldn't send him to school. No fever, and he wasn't hacking, but he's really fatigued. Oh but there's always that bright side to the kids being sick, like how they slept in till 8:00 (as opposed to two hours or more earlier) and they don't have the gumption to misbehave at all.

That might sound callous, but it's the only way that I know that they're really sick, if they AREN'T destroying things or screaming songs about their penises in their room. That's when I know that they need gentle coaxing into their beds for "quiet time."

I happen to also love quiet time, and I am not ashamed.

So anyway, Liz in Seattle who I met back in February sent me an article to read during my downtime. Oh boy! Quoted text! Now with added bold text to highlight importantness!

Woman sits on boyfriend's toilet for 2 years

Girlfriend was physically stuck to the seat — her skin had grown around it

NESS CITY, Kan. - Deputies said a woman in western Kansas sat on her boyfriend's toilet for two years, and they're investigating whether she was mistreated.

Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said a man called his office last month to report that something was wrong with his girlfriend.

Whipple said it appeared the 35-year-old Ness City woman’s skin had grown around the seat. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

“We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital,” Whipple said. “The hospital removed it.”

Whipple said investigators planned to present their report Wednesday to the county attorney, who will determine whether any charges should be filed against the woman's 36-year-old boyfriend.

“She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body,” Whipple said. “It is hard to imagine. ... I still have a hard time imagining it myself.”

He told investigators he brought his girlfriend food and water, and asked her every day to come out of the bathroom.

“And her reply would be, ‘Maybe tomorrow,”’ Whipple said. “According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom.”

The boyfriend called police on Feb. 27 to report that “there was something wrong with his girlfriend,” Whipple said, adding that he never explained why it took him two years to call.

Police found the clothed woman sitting on the toilet, her sweat pants down to her mid-thigh. She was “somewhat disoriented,” and her legs looked like they had atrophied, Whipple said.

“She said that she didn’t need any help, that she was OK and did not want to leave,” he said.

(follow the linkage for the rest of the story.)

Ok, I don't know what the ladie's deal was, whether she was abused, mentally ill, or just genuinely didn't want to leave the bathroom, but the only thing that I could think of when I read about how the boyfriend would ask her if she was ready to come out and she would say "maybe tomorrow," was my mother.

Dear old Ma, she lived in our laundry room for two years. No, she wasn't stuck to anything, she was just on a lot of drugs and vodka and super paranoid. She said that there were people in leaf suits hiding in the trees, she even shot at them once! With a real loaded gun and everything! There was also a "silent invisible helicopter" that hovered over our house. No party vans though. Just leaf people and invisible helicopters, praise Jesus, ammiright?

If you've ever had questions as to why I was raised by my sister, this partially explains it.

Thing is, I didn't think it was really that weird at the time, I mean I was only 6 or 7. She wasn't always crazy though from what I hear, a little off but at least she wasn't holed up in closets or anything. She was the president of the Yucaipa Valley Garden Club and had a thumb greener than than the Jolly Green Giant himself.

I never knew that woman. My mom was batshit and she made my brother just as crazy by feeding him her bullshit lies. I broke the cycle by taking a drug and alcohol free path with my life, because I cant imagine being in a situation where they're prying me off of my porcelain throne in my sweat pants as I'm saying "I'm not ready to leave yet!"

People wonder why I loathe crackheads and boozehounds, it's because I've seen what that shit does to people.

Until you've seen your mom downing vodka and doing lines and raving about how the neighbors across the street are spying on us, don't fucking tell me to lighten up.

And now to wrap up this post with one of my classic lighthearted zingers to deter from the seriousness, "I'm going to go get myself stuck to the toilet seat for a while, I drank way too much juice yesterday. Call 911 if you don't see me sometime in the next two years."

Viral Blog

I should be the last person on earth to get sick. I don't really go anywhere, I don't touch anyone I don't know, and I even sanitize the shopping cart handles now. But yeah, I got the flu. I haven't been sick like this in a long time.

And I know where it came from, too. Yes, David interacts with 100+ people a day and practically lives in a box filled with people's mouth germs, and we send Ty to that bacterial breeding ground school full of filthy diseased little brats kids who don't always cover their cough or wash their hands, but I know that this came from tainted enchiladas.

Like tainted love, but saucier.

His parents were all sick last week, and Jerry calls up and say "Hay Dayve, we're sick rat now, and we got these enchelaadas we aint gunna eat, you want them?"

And Dayve is like "Sure!"

DO NOT ACCEPT FOOD FROM SICK PEOPLE. I've had the hardest time convincing him these things, he just doesn't listen. Guy who digs through dumpsters to find recyclables brings him a hot dog and fried egg sandwich. And he eats it. Someone threw away half of their lunch, it's just sitting on top of the trash can. And he eats it.

He may have lost 70 pounds since we married, but he's still a fat kid at heart. I swear to god that he will end up getting into someone's van if they offer him a popsicle.

My symptoms include: horrible cough, fever, crawling skin, snotty nose, puking up snot wads, a sore neck and back, "I cant feel my body" syndrome, and "got the heater up to 78 because I'm freezing" disease. Some symptoms are contradictory, which is why this clearly sucks ass.

My line of defense is Aleve, Kleenex with mysterious germ killing powers, praying to every god of every religion excluding Lord Xenu, oatmeal, hot tea, and this stuff called Emergen-C. I saw the doctors in the ER drinking this shit by the gallon when we were there fixing David's clavicle. It says it's 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C. It's just a powder that you mix into your drink, it's slightly carbonated and tastes best in juice, which is how I've been taking it. According to the Supplement Facts label, one serving (one packet) gives you 1,667% of your daily value of vitamin C. It also boasts 417% B12. Those doctors were putting three packets each into their orange juice.

I had three glasses of orange juice with the stuff in it before I ran out of juice. So combined with the packets and the 100% vitamin C that the juice alone provides, I've had 5,331% of my daily value of vitamin C.

I am going to kick this thing's ASS.

In the mean time, my house looks like shit, and I think that there may be a foul odor coming from somewhere, but I am no good at playing "find the stench" right now because it seems that I cut off my nose to spite my face, or it simply isn't working due to snot blockage.

Like cock blockage, but snottier.

Wade was already sick with it, about a day after David came down with it. I Lysoled the shit out of every surface in my house, and I even bought a thing that automatically sprays Lysol every 9 minutes. But still, I got sick. Ty's the only one left, and if he gets it, PLEASE let it be while I am sick so that I wont care that he's missing school. Normally I care, even though the reward for a month's perfect attendance is fucking Applebee's gift certificates. Why cant they just go back to the Denny's certificates? WHY? Don't make me go to fucking Applebee's. But then I would have to take care of him, and he's a male. I SO do not want to be taking care of anyone right now, especially a male. I went through it with David already.

"I have West Nile, I just know it."

"David, you do not have West Nile. If you had West Nile, we would KNOW."

"Nu-uh, because I saw a mosquito the other night when I was delivering pizza."

"Ok, now did the mosquito bite you, or did you just see it? Because there's a big difference."

"I think I just saw it, but it might have bitten me and I didn't know."

"Yeah, ok, well I'll be sure to tell the doctor that when you slip into the coma."

Wade I can handle being sick, because he's still like a baby so it's heartbreaking when he's all red faced and whiny. Ty, well, I'm not sure how he acts when he's sick since he's never had anything worse than a cold. But I'm sure that he's going to say that it's West Nile or the Bird Flu or something.

I cant get a clear enough head to do any productive writing, other than this, I cant knit because I don't like the way that the yarn feels between my fingers because of that awful feeling of my skin crawling, so basically I'm useless. The kids had apples for lunch because I refused to make anything. I want to sleep, but my brain is busy and I still have to at least pretend to supervise the boys. Even if they stay locked in their room the whole time as I bark commands from the couch and pour bowl after bowl of crackers, it's still considered supervising, and I have to will myself to do it until they fall asleep at 7:00, possibly earlier if I bribe them just right.

Shit, now I'm hot. Off with the leg warmers, on with the ceiling fan.

What did I do to deserve this? I didn't even eat those damn enchiladas. What, do I have to up my daily value of Lysol by drinking that in my orange juice too?

The Laboratory Meditation

I just got done reading "Conversations With The Other Side" by Sylvia Browne. It was a fast read, I read it basically over the weekend, it's only 148 pages long, and it's actually written by "Francine," which is her spirit guide, if you follow the whole Sylvia Browne thing. Anyway, it basically answered questions about The Other Side (or heaven) which I find interesting. Religious texts are always neat to read, both to criticize and to feed my open mind, and Sylvia...well, she's way out there in her books, but it satisfies my curiosity. These books have a the policy of "take what you like and leave the rest," which is my policy on this kind of stuff, so it really appeals to me. (Though I am on the lookout for a good religious book that I can tear to shreds, figuratively speaking, so if you know of something that would anger me, let me know. I need to get pissed about something.)

You may or not know this, but I dabble in hypnosis. David is my favorite hypnotic guinea pig, because he's really easy to put under, and his mind is incredibly clear, he also has control over his subconscious which is very useful in hypnosis for obvious reasons. I had someone pee their pants and cry once, so David is much more fun to work with/on.

In Conversations With The Other Side, Sylvia/Francine, whoever, mentions a self hypnosis technique called "The Laboratory Technique." I'm going to quote some text here, hang on.

I want to teach you a very powerful method for dealing with any problems, whether they are mental or physical. This is a general healing technique that can be used by anyone. We (the people on the other side, like spirit guides and such) call it the "Laboratory." It is a place that you construct in your mind, where you can receive healing, counseling, or help with a problem. On the Other Side, thoughts are things, and when you mentally construct something, we can see it, go there with you, and help you. But you must create the reality for us.

Ok, essentially this is based on the belief that angels and spirit guides basically do God's work, in a sense that they are sent from God to do it anyway. Basically, praying to Jesus to fix your liver has wonderful sentimental value, but the ones who actually do the fixing are the guides and angels and what not, because they are the ones sent to deal with it. Understand? Anyway, more quoted text.

You create the lab in your mind. Here's the basic layout of the area that you should visualize. In your mind's eye, build a rectangular room. The far wall will be an open space where you have a nice view of a water scene, which will add power to the healing. The other three walls are light green, also to signify healing. In the center of the room, imagine a table large enough for you to lie on.

The room shouldn't be too stark, so place a few things around you, chairs, artwork, anything that you find familiar and comfortable. Now, imagine a stained glass window in the open wall. The window can be designed as you like, but the colors must be very bright. Fashion the window with large blocks or bands of blue, purple, gold, and green.

Once you've constructed the lab, mentally walk into it. The best time to do this is at night as you're going to sleep. But please, complete this meditation before falling asleep or the lab will disappear.

Then it goes on to say that you need to stand in front of the window and let the colors absorb into you, sort of like when you stand in front of stained glass and it reflects colors onto you. It says to "ask for the white light of the Holy Spirit to surround you and make you well."

At this time, go to the table and lie down, still wrapped in the glow of God's love. Invite master teachers and doctors to work on a particular area of the body. You must specify the area of concern and target only one problem area at a time during each session. You can ask to be relieved of emotional and mental pressures. Surrender completely into their hands, as they are directly from God. Once you've gotten to the table, you may fall asleep because the room has already been created, you've asked for help. and specified the problem.

David tried this last night because he's got a pretty bad cold/flu thing that he's having a hard time getting over. Here's how it went. He laid down, I told him how to do it, the details and all, and he did it himself, because it's more of a meditation/self hypnosis thing. He said that he talked to Ross, who you might remember is his spirit guide, told him that he's just dry hacking and it's making his chest hurt really bad. After a few minutes, he fell asleep, and I can attest to this because I was there trying to go to sleep myself. All of the sudden, he starts hacking, and he gets out of bed to go spit. He said that he hacked up several chunks of mucous, which is what we like to call "productive coughing," because you're getting the bad stuff out of you. He also said that his chest didn't hurt.

This morning, he said that his sore throat is gone, and that the medicine is finally working. Have you noticed that medicine, like cold medicine, just doesn't work anymore? Like maybe the viruses have gotten wise to it over the past 10 years, and mutated in order to beat them? We've been trying to stick to natural remedies, but everyone knows that there is a point where you're just so sick that you have to try something else. None of the medicines were even remotely working until this morning after he went into "surgery" at his lab.

Interesting? Very.

More interesting is that he told me about what he did when he was under, about the conversation that he had with Ross, and Ross leaving the room and returning with a doctor type lady, and "some old guy with a white beard." I didn't tell him this, but the book also mentions "elders," which are basically just people who have perfected their soul and generally oversee things and give advice, and these people appear as old men with white beards. Sort of like the traditional portrayal of "god."

The fact that he saw that on his own in his mind without prompting is really something.

See, this is why I read things like this. It's neat. At the same time, it makes you wonder what sort of self healing powers people have if they just figure out how to use them. If you can clear your mind, and put your thoughts to something, it just might manifest. This is why people believe that prayer works. The mind is a really really powerful tool.

Now I am reading The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs. It's a little heftier and with smaller spaced print, so it should keep me busy for a while.

He Doesn't Even Realize That He's Doing It

Today we have random footage from the weekend. This includes exciting features such as the kids coloring with sidewalk chalk, Bella, and David showing us what's hes learned on his guitar. Take note of the horribly distorted faces he makes while playing. He wasn't even aware that he was doing it until he saw the video. Funny part is that he has a cousin who does the same thing while he plays the drums.

Music is "(Wishing) If I Had A Photograph Of You" by Nouvelle Vague (originally by A Flock Of Seagulls.)

Wade Did It.

You didn't deliver. I asked for new reading material, and though you did comment, you didn't leave linkage, so you're not off the hook for that meme I threatened, but I have to tell you what I did today.

We dropped the kids off with my sister for the whole day so that we could deal with their room. By deal with, I mean shampoo the carpet (because it smelled funny) go through the toys to find broken ones, and PAINT. Why paint? Because someone decided to take crayon to the walls. Who would do such a thing? If you ask Ty, he will tell you that Wade did it. That's interesting, because I had no idea that Wade knew how to spell Mom.

Not only did 2 1/2 year old Wade spell Mom, but he put a period at the end of the word, something that Ty must have taught him, right? Oh yes, and Wade also wrote Ty's name backwards on the wall.

And when he realized that he had wrote it backwards, Wade drew a two-directional arrow to symbolize to anyone reading the name that they need to "strike that, reverse it." Because that's so like Wade. Anyway, we worked pretty much all day on painting, carpet cleaning, cleaning the wood on their bunk beds (which was smudgy,) laundry, toy organization, and making the beds.

You might notice a few things about the beds. One, they don't have comforters on them, and two, the sheets are black and yellow. To explain, the kids don't like comforters or big blankets, only "kikis," or small snuggly blankets. They usually have two or three on the bed, and the comforter gets shoved onto the floor. And the sheets are black and yellow because I let them pick their sheets last week when Target had twin t-shirt sheets on sale for $10, Wade picked yellow, and Ty picked black. He picked black because he is now telling people that his name is "Tire" and tires are black. This = totally awesome to him.

Here's their toys all organized. I left the crayon on the green boxes, because meh, that's why. The white plastic thing is actually a laundry basket, but it's short and it has wheels and handles, and we thought that it would serve us well. Oh, and the green garbage truck that's piggybacking the Tonka, it talks. This is the one that is supposed to be saying "headed for the dump" but it really sounds like "pay her for the dope."

And we put up new curtains. They're just solid blue. I'm surprised that they haven't obliterated that lamp yet, we've had it for almost six months now and it still works, even though it came in the box with a broken base. Things don't usually last long with my boys. They are ungrateful little shits most of the time. Maybe with these dark curtains they will sleep later in the mornings.

So lets ask Wade, "Wade, did you color the walls?"

Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

I don't know what the hell happened to everybody. Most of the blogs that I have in my feed are either posting once every several weeks, or posting nothing but memes and "day of the week whatever" blog carnival shit.

Look, I was really into Stuff Portrait Friday when it existed, and Half Naked Thursday was fun for a while, particularly when there was that naked cowboy man who showed his privates. Cowboy nuts drive me butts. (Ah, that sounded WRONG) but anyway, when I did that stuff, I wouldn't usually post it in lieu of a real post, I would post it as part of the regularly scheduled content. I'm getting really tired of the lack of content around these parts.

I understand the meme. I understand its usefulness in telling your readers things that they probably don't know about you, and falling back on one when you're having a bit of writers block. But in posting these things, and participating in the dreadful act of "tagging" other people to do it, all we are is creating a memesphere. There are no blogs, only memes. Thousands and thousands of memes that ask "what time did you wake up this morning?" and "have you ever had your heart broken?"

It used to be that I didn't have time to read books because my blog feeds were active, and I've always said that I like blogs better than most books because blogs pretty much don't end. Have you ever read a book and been sad that it was over? That's how I felt about Clown Girl by Monica Drake. That book was awesome, she's a balloon animal clown, but she's poor so the only balloon tying book she could afford was "Balloon Tying For Jesus" and all she can make are balloon crowns of thorns and balloon wisemen and balloon Virgin Mary's. I never wanted that book to end, it was so good! Like when good bloggers just decide to post nothing but memes. It makes me so sad, because I want to hear more of the story.

But if you wont deliver, books will. Books are awesome, and I have a To Be Read list that's like 24 books long. Hopefully some of them will be the "too good to go back to trying to find good blogs" kind.

And then there are books that make you want to die. I completed the third and final book in the Sleeping Beauty series by Anne Rice, or her sock puppet A. N. Roquelaure anyway. The first book was excellent, and it had to be, or else I wouldn't have clamored to read book two and three.

This snippet from the Encyclopedia Dramatica article on Anne Rice pretty much sums up my feelings on the author and her poorly edited series.

Anne Rice is a novelist whose vampire novels have served as inspiration for countless fangirls, cosplayers, gay teenagers, and, of course, goths. Indeed, even to this day — some thirty years after her first work was published — she maintains a loyal following among 16 year old girls and angsty teens.

And you DO SO NEED AN EDITOR, YOU PRETENTIOUS PIECE OF SHIT!!

Many fans attribute Rice's success to her talent as a writer but it was happenstance that resulted in her fame and prosperity. Had Rice been born later in the century, she would not have written Interview with the Vampire, her first and most famous piece of slashfic, but instead would have signed up for LiveJournal. With that done, Rice's overly illustrative and stream of consciousness ramblings would have made her an Internet celebrity, causing her to forgo writing IRL in favor of the attention garnered by her fanfic.

AN Roquelaure is the sock puppet used by Ms. Rice when she really wants to get nasty. In The Claiming of Beauty, Beauty's Punishment, and Beauty Goes To Hogwarts, she covers the adventures of a captured sex slave who looks just like Ms. Rice, except that she is young, beautiful, and intelligent.

Do you see what you slackers have driven me to? Not the book reading in general, that's cool, I do need to read more books, and I have been. But you've driven me to boredom, to where I didn't just put the crappy books back on Paperbackswap.com where I got them when I realized that they were crap, I wanted to finish them so that I can stretch out my To Be Read pile. Like eating celery and rice (!!!) cakes all day so that you can have enough calories to eat out at your big fancy dinner.

And what happened? They lived happily ever after. For the love of Christ, WHY? The book was about savory, and BSDM, and spanking, and whips, and phalluses. Where in the hell does that even remotely equate to "she marries her lover and lives happily ever after?" You're not supposed to marry your lover! You're supposed to fuck...or, in that book SPANK, BEAT, and TORTURE them for the rest of your life!

Why was it a series? WHY? If she had sent the shit to an editor, they'd of cut it down to one nice 400 page long novel, and it might have been one of those really damn good books that everyone loves, and even when it does end happily ever after you aren't angry because you only invested 400 pages into it. But no, I read a combined total of over 700 pages for nothing. Crap, all crap.

Anne Rice has officially claimed the top spot on my celebrity hatred list. Sommers, there is hope for you still. Unless Rice doesn't count as a celebrity, which I don't think she does.

And besides the bloggers going to shit, where the hell are the commenters going? It's strange, because my visitor numbers are way up, but my comment numbers are way down. Are you guys reading this shit or am I just talking to myself? Hey, I blog for me and all, but if you're going to play along then do so. Don't just sit there. I'm not comment whoring, but seriously.

You know what confuses me the most? The fact that I post content on a regular basis, like actual content I mean, and I get no comments. But the people who post daily memes, surveys, and other non-nutritious fillers like corn syrup, they get several comments on each entry. I have to wonder if it's the work of sock puppet blogger accounts, or if the new stream of bloggers have just decided that blogging involves tons and tons of memes.

Where, people? Where have all the flowers gone? Leave me some of your best blog reads in the comments today, tell me where to go, and please don't send me into meme hell. Photo hell is fine though, I like pictures.

Do it now, or I post a meme tomorrow. And it will be long winded and boring, I can assure you.

Drinking Problem

I was headed out to Target yesterday for fabric softener and toilet paper. I could have saved the gas money by going to Walmart, but after being trapped there for several hours the other day, I felt like going to Target.

Driving down Beaumont Ave, I sort of had a bit of a weird cough and then something foul tasting in my mouth, so I had to stop to get a drink somewhere. I went through McDonalds and got a Mr Pibb, because people, there is nothing better than the flavor of the Pibb/Pepper flavored sodas, seriously. They're the only ones of the colas that don't taste like malted battery acid.

I drove off, and fiddled with the straw wrapper for a bit before I was able to take the first drink.

Oh god, it was pure carbonation.

Have you ever had this happen to you? If you eat out a lot, you've probably experienced this. It's when the soda machine runs out of syrup and just spits out bubbles. It's a horrible flavor, like someone put dirty shoe in your soda, or more like "chemical product that you shouldn't be drinking." The opposite effect of this is no carbonation and completely flat soda, which is a real bummer.

I curled my tongue to form a bowl to hold the nasty liquid in, like how you might do when you have other nasty tasting liquids in your mouth. I realized that I was going 65 down the freeway, and I couldn't just spit it out the window, and trying to spit it back down into the straw wasn't on my mind at the time, so I ended up swallowing it with a tentative gulp.

You know what I mean. nnn...gulllp?...uuuugh, AAGH...nyuah, god, fuck.

I was thirsty, and now I had a double nasty taste in my mouth, and I thought about maybe just stopping at the next McDonalds and dumping it and getting my free refill. Note: I'm not sure if the free refill rules apply when you leave the restaurant to go to another, so don't try this at home. I would have done this if I didn't have the kids with me, because I could have been all inconspicuous and on the sly as I walked in and just got myself another drink. But with the kids, I would be saying "No" and "Stop it" a lot and people would have noticed me, I wouldn't have blended in. So I decided that I could wait until I got to Target so that I could go to the Starbucks that is inside.

The one and only thing that I get at Starbucks is the vanilla soy chai tea latte. If I'm oot and aboot, it's iced. If I'm working on my computer, it's hot. As I've said many times, I don't particularly like the Starbucks products, but my little drive through cafe is closed for repairs right now, so the only choice for soy chai vanilla lattes is Starbucks. Also, I was having an emergency, you know.

David says that nobody actually likes Starbucks, it's just that we see it as convenience. Oh hey, want some coffee? There's a Starbucks right there. I want a treat, oh hey, look, there's a Starbucks right next to my house!

Question is, why does my grocery store now not only carry Starbucks coffee beans, but Dunkin Donuts coffee beans as well?

Anyway, so I pushed my kid filled cart up to the Starbucks counter, and the barista girl greeted me sweetly.

"Hiiiiiiiii, welcome to Starbucks, what would you like today?"

"Hi, can I get an (and here is where I talk slow so that they hear me and so that I don't forget a part) iced-soy-vanilla-chai-tea-latte, in (I forget what size I said, whatever they call medium there, I have to be looking at the labeled cup sizes at the counter to remember.)"

She says sure, and gets to work, after verifying the "soy" and the "vanilla."

Then she starts talking to the boy that is working with her quietly. "Do you like chai tea, Michael?"

"Oh god no, it smells like crotch. I don't know how people drink this shit."

Hi, I'm right here, drinking your crotch smelling serum.

"I've never tried it myself," she says to him. "Have you ever tried soy?"

"Shit no! Oh my god, WHY does anyone drink soy? Milk comes from cows, DUH!"

She giggles.

"Hey," I go, "I drink it because I'm allergic to cows milk." I try to maintain a friendly tone, because I hate looking like the I'm going to call your manager and get you fired bitch because I dealt with enough of that when I was working. "It isn't great really, like it needs to be in a drink. I would never just drink it straight, it's slimy," I add.

"Oh. Yeah," he says and stares at me blankly. The look he gave me was similar to the look that one car salesman gave me when I told him that I don't work but my husband does.

They sort of talk to each other low enough that I cant hear what they're saying, probably upset that I dared to interject with a constructive comment about why people drink soy milk, since they obviously have no clue. And let me tell you. That chai was the spiciest I had ever had, and it ruined my whole drink. Then the ice melted and it got watered down and it wasn't so bad. After going to Target I went to Staters, and while I was shopping, David comes up behind me and surprises me with Starbucks.

"Wow," I laughed, "Thanks, I just had some, but thanks."

"Damnit! I wanted to score points!" I take the cup from his hand.

"Well if you want to score points, you don't have to do it by offering Starbucks of all things." But I was thankful that he thought of me, and hopeful that this drink would be better than the last.

Down the hatch...

I did that tongue bowl thing again. I swallowed hard.

"What did you get me?" I ask accusingly.

"The chai soy vanilla latte thing, what's wrong with it?"

"It's COFFEE!" I hate coffee, but also I was expecting chai, and you know how that is.

"Oh god, I'm sorry! Ill go take it back right away!" he says as he runs back out the door of the store. For the record, yeah he was supposed to be working at the time, but business was dead and he was on a break to go pay the electric bill anyway.

Now the nasty mouth taste cycle has started all over again. I went out to his work, and he had his mostly drinken frap thing in one hand and my corrected chai latte in the other. "They gave me a free drink," he says, "but I'm really thirsty, can I just have this one? You don't really like Starbucks anyway."

"Yeah, that's fine." Think it ends there? No, because remember, I still have to wash the flavor of nasty coffee out of my mouth. So I get home, and before getting the kids set up in the bedroom to play for a few minutes while I get the groceries, I decide to have some orange juice.

Bad idea. Tasted awful. David later explained that he had left it out on the counter one morning, and he thought he threw it away, but it seems that he just put it back in the fridge absentmindedly. Hmm.

Why cant I just get something to drink? Why does there always have to be some kind of problem? For fuck's sake.

And to top it off, my Dr Pepper scented car air freshener thing doesn't smell like Dr Pepper at all.

It was the ultimate day for bad beverage experiences.

Options

Ty:

"Options are like I can go in my classroom and take off my backpack, and I can either sit on the carpet and read or I can play the blocks. Or I can have a peanut butter sandwich or grapes. Those are options. There are lots and lots and lots of options. Options are everywhere."

I have the option to either draw in potential book buyers by posting the first few chapters of my book in my blog, or I can make it completely unavailable for preview, hoping that this will ward away any lazy people who see it as a problem, a threat if you will, who want to have something to fume over.

I'm not talking about critics, or trolls. I'm talking about the fact that my first novel is a fictionalized account of something similar to something that happened to me in real life. The issue isn't that I'm embarrassed, or afraid of making a stand and telling the world a story, the issue is that the parties who believe that they are involved with the story are rather dangerous, and it has come to my attention that these people, particularly one person, is aware of the book that I will soon be selling.

I haven't spoken to my brother since, well...it happened. That was October of 2006. I've seen him here and there, but I avoid acknowledging him.

As far as I am concerned, I have no brother. And as much as I would like to go about my business and pretend that this fellow doesn't even exist, the problem is that he unfortunately DOES exist, and from what I've come to understand, he's gotten worse, more dangerous, since we parted ways.

Now, there is the question as to HOW he knows about it. Could it have been that the uh, "nobody" from my family has been leaking/feeding information? Or is he coming here of his own accord? Neither would surprise me.

I have the option to decide whether publishing this book would be too dangerous, or if I should not let myself be bullied just because I'm everybody's little sister.

I have the option to go forward with this, or let my brother's knowledge of the book hold me back.

I choose to not live in fear.

That isn't to say that I wont live without awareness, because I'm not stuck on stupid, that's partially why I am putting this predicament out in public. Whether or not he's got other family members of mine convinced that he's just a little off and not really a danger, that isn't the point. I know that he's disturbed and I don't need anyone to back me up on that.

I wrote a fiction story, with fictional names, and fictional circumstances, though when I look back on the part of my life that inspired the book, it seemed that I was the only one who wasn't fictionalizing the situation. I talked to David, asked him what he thought. He said that it has been long enough that he's probably been distracted with other things, and since we no longer have what he wants (his daughter) that he might just continue being butthurt or angry, but that there isn't any "clear and present danger," as they say.

Would he have actually killed to get his messiah daughter back? I wasn't going to stick around to find out, but I know now, almost two years later, that he didn't. I don't know anything about what went on with the family that took her, but I'm 99.9% certain that they are all alive and well. I seriously have to consider this in my decision in going through with publishing the book.

I stand by what I wrote, and I stand by my statement that it has nothing to do with him anyway, it's fiction. It's all just fiction, a false reality. That point needs to come through loud and clear.

Remember how way back when I first started blogging, I said "blog stays, no matter what?" Id like to just say here and now that BOOK stays, no matter what.

I don't expect it to become a problem, but if it does somehow, I wont hesitate to file the restraining order that she never did.

Hudspa: I Has It

Check these out...

Self designed book covers, one of the main things that drew me to self publishing. Because the truth is that people DO judge a book by its cover, and I want people to judge something that I have control over. That way if I get a bad response to it, I'm not stuck with it.

The original cover for Golden Dawn got a lot of "It's nice, but..." comments, so I changed it. And what's this other one, this "Powdery Tattoo" thing? Well, that's the cover for that other book that I was working on last month. If you go over to my side bar and scroll down to the Literature section, you can read a description. It is set to be released in 2009 at this point.

I got a letter back from a book promotion company out here in the desert today. I had contacted them a while back and told them about how I'm a young local author looking for some publicity. Their company helps with distribution and public venues, like readings at coffee shops and libraries. It seemed like a cool thing to do, because as I know the logistics of HOW to get myself out there, I wouldn't mind having a few professionals on board to help.

The guy said that I have little to no chance of becoming a successful client because I use Print On Demand publishing, and that I would be looking at paying them $1,500 a month for a minimum of three months to enlist their help. He also said that my best route is to print out 2,000 copies of my book (budget permitting) and to basically peddle it myself to chain stores.

God am I glad I did my homework, or I'd of fell for it.

One of the biggest hurtles a self published author has to jump over is the assumption that you need to invest in printing several hundred (or thousand) copies of your book in order to get it sold. Wake up people! There's an internet out there! If your book has an ISBN, you'll be on your way to global distribution. That's not exactly cruise control for book sales, but it gets you started.

The good thing about Print On Demand publishing is that it works like Jack In The Box, "we dont make it till you order it." This way, you dont end up with 2000 unsold books sitting in boxes in your attic. When you list at online stores like Amazon, a small amount of books are printed and shipped to their distribution center. And with an ISBN you can get your book into Barnes and Noble and Borders, among several other places if you do your research.

My first book did not have an ISBN, which is partially why it flopped. Also, people begged me to write it, swore they would be the first to buy a copy, and not one of those people has bought a copy, or if they did they didn't tell me about it. Just goes to show, you can lead a horse to water but you cant make it buy your book.

The lack of moral and emotional support from family was also a pretty big kick in the nads as well. Thanks guys. Love yuns.

I'm changing my tactics and my attitude this time around. I have to be prepared to do things like contact bookstore managers and say "Hi, my book is in your system, I would like to do a reading at your store," and call the 1-800 number to the Walmart product sales people to try to convince them to order some copies of my book.

I'm not a fan of Walmart, but it's the only book retailer in my town.

This all would have been taken care of if I had published through traditional means, but I am both impatient and possessive, which makes that route the wrong route for me. I can handle rejection, after all, Dr Seuss was turned down by something like 38 publishers until someone was finally inspired and said "yes." I just have issues with giving up control of my work, which either makes me stubborn or smart, I'm not sure which. But I chose the more difficult path here, and so I have to do all of this work myself.

See, that's why I wanted that company's help, because I'm not exactly a social butterfly and doing these things are a little awkward for me. I also worry that I'll blow it somehow. I realized that I would have to pay SOME money into it, but not $4,000 worth, and not to a company that doesn't 100% believe in the possibility of success.

Then again, it all comes down to an individual's definition of success.

The point is that I have a book or three to publish and I am in poverty, and if I cant get decently priced help (like editing work in exchange for a sweater) then Ill take my business elsewhere...like my living room.

David has read the first draft of A Powdery Tattoo, and most of the first draft of Golden Dawn, and he said for me to absolutely not give up, and that I should really focus on getting discovered. He said that he's investing in me, starting with the $10 to buy me another Dot Com to direct to my Lulu storefront (which I would have probably done whether I had his support or not, in before "go back to kitchen/make me a sammich" etc.) He also said that I shouldn't get upset if I don't get discovered right away. He knows that I'm entering the fierce "fiction" market, and he said that he doesn't think that I will be discovered until I'm older. "But it will happen," he says. "Don't give up."

I guess you could say that Im heading in with "the big dogs," but you know what? Ive got the hudspa. This lulzy picture says it all...

Play Nice In The Sand Box

I don't generally interact with a whole lot of people on a daily basis. That's why I mostly write about people from the grocery store. But I've been irked about a certain family for some time now, and I think it's alright to finally mention it here.

It is a bit awkward, because if your kid goes to school with Ty, then you know who I am, and you will probably know who I am talking about, even though I don't believe that anyone from the preschool reads here, I never can tell for sure. For the sake of some privacy, I wont name names, nor will I say anything about the kid, because I've got nothing against the kid. But I have a bone to pick.

In order to describe this family, I first have to start with the grandma. Grandma parks in the red zone, which pisses off the bus drivers. Essentially, this woman is one of those self entitled douche bitches. She is usually very VERY rude to David when she's recycling, and when I worked at Dowlings she was a horribly bitchy customer. However, when she sees us outside of the work setting, she's sweet as pie, and likes to talk shit about other people to you. I avoid her, I don't like people who are rude to the waiter so to speak. And seriously it's not like parking is atrocious at the school, you do NOT have to park in the red zone, there is just no reason for it!

Dad is no better. Dad likes to park in the handicapped spot, the red zone, wherever he can squeeze his ass in. Red zone is one thing, handicapped spot is another thing entirely, am I right?

Today as I was dropping Ty off, Dad was there with some older kid, maybe the kid's brother or cousin or something, and the older kid had a dog. It was on a leash and all, but he stood right by the door. My kids are scared of dogs, Wade especially, so we couldn't go near the building until Miss Penny noticed our plight, and she asked the boy to take the dog somewhere else.

Only an idiot would take a dog to a school, am I right?

Then I went to pick him up after school, and the family was there, just the Dad and two or three kids. No dog, thankfully. Dad goes inside to sign his kid out, and the kids outside, who were no younger than nine but no older than 12, were left unsupervised. So what do they do?

SAND FIGHT!

Yeah, they totally started hucking handfuls of sand at each other.

We weren't near the line of fire, but Wade and I rushed to get inside. As I was getting ready to pull open the door, Dad pushed it open from the other side. "Ill get them," he says as he heads out. The kids inside are all saying "Our sand! Oh no!" and they're all really upset and surprised at what is going on outside.

But you know, I wouldn't have mentioned this on my blog if it weren't for the reactions of the adults. I would have just told David about it, and stored it in my memory as one more reason that this family annoys me, but it's what Miss Dime and Miss Quarter did that warranted immediate blogging.

(Dime and Quarter are classroom aids. If you remember, Penny and Nickel are the teachers.)

Miss Dime and Miss Quarter rush to the window.

"Oh my goodness, I cannot believe this!" says Miss Quarter. "My kids haven't thrown sand since they were in diapers!"

"No Kidding" says Dime.

"Did you see them do it?" Quarter says to Dime.

"No, I looked out just as the kids were getting upset."

"I saw it," I said.

"Oh my god, they were seriously throwing the sand at each other, I mean, did you see that?" Quarter says to me. I didn't say anything, I just went to the sign out sheet.

"We ought to send them a bill for that sand, Quarter. Sand is expensive!" Dime says, in all seriousness and everything.

"I know, because seriously? Those kids should know better," Quarter answers.

They continued to stand at the window, and watch Dad try to scrape sand back into the box with his shoe, and pull out his daughter's ponytail to shake out the sand. They were still standing there by the time Ty was finished with his book and we were heading out the door, gossiping about the sand flinging incident of 08.

Now, yeah, the kids should have been supervised, and they should have known better than to throw sand. But like I said, it wasn't really THAT big of a deal, not like parking in the handicapped spot or blocking a bus. A tisk tisk from the aids would have been appropriate, but to stand there for several minutes, talking about sending bills and all just seemed a little much.

Essentially, I'm not writing a blog about kids throwing sand, I'm writing a blog about adults getting really upset over something like kids throwing sand.

Granted, I've spent my fair share of time around teachers, and I know that they talk shit. They have students that they hate, parents who piss them off, and something tells me that they probably know about the other antics of the family, including their illegal parking, and this was just more kindling on the fire. If you dislike someone, you'll find reasons to justify it.

But Miss Quarter going "Ooooooooooh? Uh-uh, NO," for three minutes, even after the situation had stopped, I don't know, I guess it seemed a little much.

Besides, I think that these people have bigger issues to work on with this family. Screw billing them for sand, take care of the parking situation, and THEN bill them for the sand, because it would be kind of lulzy I suppose.

Like Visiting A Grave

I enslaved myself to about seven loads of laundry today, which is no easy task when you don't have the washer and dryer just right up in your apartment with you.

I was behind because last week the machine that puts money onto your card was busted, so nobody could do laundry unless they had money on their cards before it broke. With David being home today, I decided just to get it all done and out of the way, rather than try to do it all throughout the week, particularly since I cant use it at night anymore, as I mentioned a while back, because homeless people sleep down there. Not only do they smell bad, but they frighten me.

It ended up taking me all day, particularly because I had to run a few dryers twice since they suck and my clothes were still damp after a run, but I got it done. According to fitday.com, I burned over 300 calories just doing laundry. Well, including the walking to and from, and the folding and the putting away, but still. (By the way, that is one nifty website, I suggest you clicky.)

But it was a productive day in other ways as well. Ty rode his bike after school, Wade ate everything in sight, David practiced some songs on the guitar (he's now working on "Where Is My Mind?" by the Pixies which is our song, and "In My Country There Is Problem" from the Borat movie, you know, the "throw the Jew down the well" song.) And I was rather productive in the way of writing. That other book I was working on, well, I finished it last week...sorta. It's a little light on the word count, which is fine because it's a first draft and I sort of rushed to finish it because I wanted David to read it all and know how it ends, so he could help me out and give advice. Now I am going back through it and beefing it up a little, and I'm really happy about how it's turning out. I'm not quite halfway through the "beefing" process and I've already added 5,000 words to it, so I'm sure it will be a decent length novel by the time I am done.

Not only that, but I was inspired when driving by a house for sale for yet another story. Throughout the day I added more and more pieces to the plot, and by golly, I think I have myself another manuscript to write. Funny thing is, the name that I am going to use for the main character is one that I got from a spam email. Ms. Noelle Springer dropped me a line to tell me "how to make it many inches bigger overnight" and encouraged me to "press on website link." I don't know why, but I wrote that name down in my handy dandy notebook, and now it's got a story to go to.

Thank you, Nigeria.

Also, would it be wrong to pretend that I am interested in buying a house just to get the real estate lady to let me look inside?

But I wont work on that one, not until Golden Dawn is listed for presale, which should be in the coming weeks, probably this month.

We also went to this recycling center to bring in our cans today. David wanted to scope it out, check their rates and such, because he's a nerd like that. He gets assholes all the time who bring coupons to their recycling center to him, and they yell at him for not accepting competitor coupons.

Ill put it this way, would you bring a coupon for Coco's to Denny's? Ok, maybe you would, but you shouldn't.

What these people don't understand, is that his company is regulated by the state, through the department of recycling or some shit. It's not a private company, like the places who put out coupons for more per pound. He pays CRV only, he's not buying your glass bottles because they are glass bottles, he buys them so that you can get your CRV back. This is why he doesn't take things like milk jugs and wine bottles. But the place we went to does, because it's a private company.

We pulled up to an auto salvage yard with a little shack like his out front. I guess they want extra money or something, so they set up this recycling place on site. I recognized the name on the sign of the salvage yard, and I realized where we were.

When he got back in the car, I asked him. "Aren't these the people who have my car?"

"Yeah, it's right over there in fact."

"Where?" I craned my neck to see. Sure enough, I saw Tigger, immediately recognized by the crazy glue sniffing fairy sticker in the back window. Before today, whenever I saw a blue Civic on the road, I looked at the license plate to see if maybe someone fixed it up and sold it. I don't have to do that anymore, because it is obvious that Tig is being used for scrap. The trunk was open, and the tires were all missing. The tail lights were gone, and the driver's side window was still busted out.

That was not cool.

Imagine going to the cemetery to visit a loved one, and seeing their rotting and decaying body just out in the open.

I looked at it for a while, then I turned away. I looked back one more time, then I just walked back to the car.

Shiny Happy People With No Eyebrows

Wal Mart held me captive this morning for three hours.

Do you have any idea how insane a person goes when trapped in a Wal Mart for that amount of time?

I didn't either, but here we are.

We had a slow leak on one of the tires, so we went to get a patch. We were told that there would be a wait because there were a few cars ahead of us. The good thing is that you can just wander aimlessly through the store while they do the work. But what happens when they keep "forgetting" to fix to my car?

Yeah, I said it.

They make their automotive service move slow so that you will wander the store and buy their stuff. It's a total marketing mind control conspiracy, man.

I spent the first hour making my rounds through the aisles in general. I went to the book section and read a few back covers, squished some pillows, smelled some candles, but that got boring. We went back to check on our wait time, and the guy says "Uh...I dunno," then walked off. Yeah, helpful.

My second round, I ended up buying some plastic plates and cups and stuff for the kids, because they were $.94 for four packs, and they needed new dishes. So yeah, their ploy worked, I dropped $10. We talked about maybe getting lunch or something, so we went back to check on the car.

"Uh...it's at 99 minutes, you wanted what, a patch?"

"Yeah...a patch," David said.

"Ok, it will be just a little while."

We see the guys outside just chatting, walking near our car, then getting distracted by a french fry and giggling about it.

I got SO bored walking around that I went to check out the clothing section. I generally do not like to buy Wal Mart clothes, but I wanted to show David that all shorts these days are being made longer. We read tags that said things like "Real clothing for real people," which is all well and good, and it's a great campaign and all, but please, the shorts can be slightly shorter. I'm not talking hoochie mama short, but we did not see a pair of shorts that would show anything above the knee.

Yes, I am the kind of person that the "real clothing for real people" stuff is designed for, and it's a huge step forward that the fashion industry recognized that we aren't all a size two and that we have curves in more places than none, but come on. This doesn't mean that we cant have thighs showing, so long as they're nice thighs. I am not happy with this trend, and I do not love my walking shorts that I bought a while back. I do not.

But then I saw this dress, and it was a cute dress. Dresses are hard to buy for me, because many times I can get it to fit my body, but once I get to my boobs, yeah, not happening. This is why I didn't get the wedding dress that I wanted (that was actually a super cute brides maid dress, and David's Bridal refused to alter it, and this caused much butt hurt on my part.) I examined the dress, I examined the price. The dress was under $10. The dress was lovely.

"Try it on," David urges.

Meh? Should I? Well...alright.

I tried it on, and it fit, and the angels rejoiced. I came out of the dressing room, and the Wal Mart lady with no eyebrows says "Damn girl, that's a cute dress! I might get one of those!"

The things that she had painted on as eyebrows were in the shape of sperms. This perplexed me, because I wasn't sure if I should be taking compliments and fashion advice from a woman with sperm shaped eyebrows. Let alone from someone who thought that it was a good idea to paint sperm on their face in any form for any reason.

David insisted that the dress was very very cute, and that I looked great in it, and that he hasn't seen me in a dress since that maternity one that I had when I was pregnant with Wade. "Ill buy it for you," he says.

"But honey, the lady...her eyebrows were sperm, and I'm afraid of girls like that, and I don't know if I can trust her judgement."

"Don't worry about what the sperm brow lady said, you look good in it, and you know that I wouldn't lie to you."

No, he wouldn't. And I did like the dress.

Finally, after three hours, they patched the tire. All of $10 worth of work that took them 15 minutes, and we had to walk around the store with two very bored little boys for three hours. But I got a dress, and I would look good!

The lady checking us out picks up the dress and said "Oh now that's CE-UTE! Oh, I just love this dress, I'm going to have to get me one now!"

And yeah, no eyebrows, only sideways apostrophes.

I understand that a lot of people draw their eyebrows on, but they generally do it in the shape of eyebrows, am I right? What in the FUCK is it with these Wal Mart people and their semicolon foreheads? Please, explain it. I don't get it. Maybe I am dumb and behind in the world of fashion, I don't know, I don't mess with my eyebrows at all. I don't wear makeup, nor do I know how to apply it.

I briefly thought about putting the dress back at the last minute, because two browless wonders had expressed great interest in it, but it was too late, he paid for it and he was happily moving out the door by the time that I had taken my eyes off of her Sharpie'd face.

Now I have this dress, and I like it, but I'm a little worried that now I have to shave my eyebrows in order to look good in it.

A Postcard From 2002: Haunted Apartment

So here's a little story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down. I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, Ill tell you how I came the prince of a town called Bel Air. (PS Adena, I wrote that before I read your story this morning. HA!)

My first apartment was in Mentone, which is somewhere between Yucaipa and Redlands, but off to the side, off of Hwy 38, with a population of 5,000. I moved there shortly after graduation, and a few days later I found myself a room mate, who you might remember from one of my audio blogs as "the naked room mate." He was called this because he refused to wear clothes. It was a problem, and he was evicted for leaving sweaty ball prints on everything and for being downright creepy, but this isn't about him, this is about my other room mate.

It was a modest two bedroom apartment with a huge kitchen and decent living room. The first thing I did when I moved out was go out and buy everything that I needed, like dishes, cleaners, bathmats, that sort of thing. I bought some really nice glasses, and brought them home to put in my cupboard. Over the first week of living there, I noticed that my glasses would come out of the cupboard broken. I thought my room mate was just breaking them while washing them and then putting them back so that I wouldn't know that he broke them, but then one day I was sitting on the couch reading when I heard a "pop." It distinctly sounded like glass, and it sounded like it came from the cupboard, so I got up to check, and yeah, one of my glasses had spontaneously combusted.

I replaced the set with some nice thick glass tumblers, the kind that you could probably drop and they wont break, just chip maybe, but certainly not shatter unless it was on pavement and even then probably not, and those broke in the cupboard too. I ended up buying plastic after that.

Another thing that seemed to happen in the kitchen was the mystery of "who the hell keeps turning on the oven?" The oven would just magically be on all of the time, and be set to warm every time, so it wasn't like we forgot to turn it off after baking something. And it happened several times a day. Was it the naked guy messing with me? Possibly some of the time, but it would happen when he wasn't there.

Something else that kept me up at night was how the glass shower doors rattled constantly. There weren't any windows in the bathroom, or anywhere near the bathroom, so I cant imagine where a draft would be coming from, but it drove me crazy. That, and probably one of the more out and out "who the hell did that" experiences is the fact that the medicine cabinet would open its self. Not just like it creaked open, or it popped the latch or something, I mean that the medicine cabinet would open by it's self all the way, where the door was touching the wall. It would happen while you were in the shower or if you were in the bathroom at all really, and sometimes when you weren't. You could stand there and watch it open on its own.

Strange things would happen there that couldn't really be reasonably explained, and yes, I tried to reasonably explain them away. I would take the naked guy (who had put on some clothes) to work at four in the morning, come home, and my books would be off of their shelf and piled on the ground. The shelf was actually part of the wall, so it's not like it fell or collapsed, they were just on the ground like someone had torn them off. But who? The naked dude was gone, I sure as hell didn't do it.

Cats right? Yeah, cats did it. Fucking cats.

Then we started seeing it. My friend Sara was sitting at my computer, which was in the kitchen, and I was sitting on the couch reading, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a huge brown thing, a flash for only a few seconds of this big brown blob right by the desk she was sitting at. I know she saw it too because we looked at each other and said "Oh my god, did you SEE that?" It clearly wasn't just teenagers scaring each other with flashlights in a cemetery at night, I mean we saw SOMETHING, and we saw it at the same time.

One time, both Sara and David were at my place, and we were all just sitting around. Sara was on the phone with her mom at the time, and all of the sudden my kitchen faucet turned on full blast by its self. Nobody was in the kitchen, and no, it wasn't a cat. Why do people always think that it was a cat? Sara had a slightly creepier house than ours, so her and her mom were a bit used to haunted house antics, and they knew when to rule out the possibility of cats.

I would occasionally see the brown blob in the hallway. The best way that I could describe it would be to say that it was taller than me, so it had to of been over six feet tall, and if it had a weight, it would be about the size of a 350 pound man. Wearing a trench coat. Some paranormal "experts" might try to say that it was a shadow person, or "shadower," if you're into that Art Bell stuff. I don't really know what it was, but it was there. See for yourself, I have photo documentation.

Now this is not the normal form that we would see it in, in fact I didn't see anything when I was taking this picture of James. (James is the dude in the white shirt, he's really there, that other thing isn't.) Now, I want you to notice a few things. First, the picture quality overall is funky, right? Everything looks doubled and smeary. Even at 18 I wouldn't have taken a picture that was doubled and smeary, even with my $100 digital camera. Take notice that the thing is not a friend or something that got in the way, which has been suggested by a few people who I've shown. Maybe Sara walked in front of the shot. Yeah, but Sara isn't see through. You can clearly see the frame to the sliding glass door through it. And look at how seriously distorted the balcony railing is right by it. Something else to look at is the TV screen was blue, I think because we had just watched a movie, as you can see reflected on the window on the right side of the picture. Doesn't it look like it is also being reflected onto the thing there?

And for the record, the photo has not been shooped, so before you go yelling SHOOP DA WOOOOOOP at me, do a barrel roll. Assholes.

So anyways, some time after I evicted my room mate, I had a bit of a scary night. I got up in the middle of the night because I smelled gas. Hmm. So I go check the stove, and all four burners were on full blast with no flame, just spewing gas into the apartment.

Oh Jessie, maybe you did it and forgot.

Yeah, that's it. I went "Oh no, there's no flame! Let me try this one...nope, this one? Nope. That one doesnt work either. Hmm, I think Ill go to bed now."

And no, it wasn't the fucking cats.

This was either an elaborate prank, which would be really bad considering I lived alone, or it was the real deal...though I'm not sure what "the real deal" is other than that it is fucking weird as hell. Whoever it was, they were pissed that I was there and I was glad to get out of that place.

There's follow up to this story but blah blah blah, the guy is dead and I don't live there anymore so what does it matter?

Thanks for tuning in today. Buh bye.