Decisions, Awkwardness, And More Questions

Hot dog, we have a wiener.

I promised to give away one signed copy of The Fight for Golden Dawn at the end of each month through November to people who have added me as a friend on Goodreads and marked the book as to be read (check your lists because some of you never added it, so I couldn't add your name to the draw.)

And the July winner just happens to be someone who just started following here, someone I'm sure I'll get to know now that I have her Canadian docs, and that is Leah. The rest of you are all still in the draw, and it isn't too late to get a copy yourself because there will be more draws. Or, if you cant wait another month, you can go here to buy it.

Now, as for Steppy and this whole San Diego bookstore business, as it turns out it's his cousin-in-law that owns or manages it, I'm not really sure which, but see it would require a day trip to San Diego which I so cannot afford this month with the gas prices and our already planned trip to the Aquarium of the Pacific for the kid's birthdays. Of course Steppy could and would drive me, but I don't know about being locked in tight quarters with him for that long. I tend to spill drinks on myself and get nervous and babble when I'm forced to socialize (I felt like a little girl selling cookies at the Solara library the other day) and I don't know that I really, you know, well trust isn't the right word but it's the first word that comes to mind when it comes to how comfortable I am around the guy. He's one of those very touchy-feely people who touch your arm when you talk to them and always want to hug or shake hands.

In science class, he used to pet my hair while taking notes. How creepy is that? Because as much as I don't like people touching me, I'm also too scared to speak up about it most of the time. Especially when the grocery store ladies hug me, it's like, what do I do? So I end up trapped smelling people's perfume and laundry detergent and possibly getting their hair on me, which is just eew, okay? And what if they're wet? I hate it when people are wet, because I don't know what is on them. It could be anything!

The point is that I'm not in the mood for a day trip with him, but I realize how much this could help me. I'm kind of stuck. I told him maybe in September I will go, because by then gas may have dropped and I wont have all of these damn birthdays to pay for, and I can just drive my own car down there. I told him that there is a lot of family stuff going on and right now is not the time, which is vague enough that he wont pry, even though all it is is the kid's birthdays and David's vacation time and what not. No biggie, but still.

So then we go to the doctor today because I'm a bad mother and I totally forgot to bring Ty back to have his TB shot looked at a few weeks ago so he had to come in to get another one. The doctor checked out the boys again even though he just did. He's an Asian man, and he says things to Wade like "You are easy to care for and fun to play with, aren't you?" Wade is not a guinea pig. Then the doctor tells me, "You are going to have a baby girl with blonde hair."

???

I've been getting that shit a lot lately. A lady at the grocery store, one of the ones who always hugs me or pets Wade's hair, she asked me if we were going to have another one, and I said "We're talking about it." She looked at me funny and said "Well are you talking about it or doing something about it because just talking doesn't make it happen."

I'm like, "You're the lady who bags my groceries." I didn't say that, but I thought it.

Anyway, so as we were waiting for the nurse to bring in the injection Wade and Ty are making faces at each other. Ty's got his fingers hooked around the insides of his cheeks and he's stretching his mouth out when all of the sudden he stops, looks at me, and says "How did they make me?"

"How did they make you?"

"Yeah, how did they make me? Did they just make the x-ray then filled it with cords and stomachs and stretched the skin over?"

We're at the doctor's office, remember.

"And does my pee pee have an x-ray or is it just more skin?"

Well that one I could answer, so I did, and it distracted him from the first question, which I'm sure will come up again, so I need to find some books or videos on how people are made that are appropriate for a not even five year old who thinks we are filled with cords and stomachs.

I'm thinking I should do more listening than talking on this one.

Stinger Lines

I hung out with my neighbor Mustang Sally all day. I don't know what it is about European women, but if you hang around one long enough it will rub off on you.

Hearing her speak Romanian on the phone to her family, she sounds so angry. She said it's not anger, it's being direct.

So I decided to be direct as well and I gave ol' Steppy McStepperson a call, and I was direct with him. It probably wasn't the greatest idea, but I think I had to be direct so that I could get the answers I needed.

He answers like "Hi Jessie," and I'm just all "Are you trying to have sex with me?"

"Uh, what?"

"Because I don't go in for these kind of shenanigans; you giving me tons of cash and promising me book signings in San Diego and scaring me with your cop car. You have to tell me right now, because if that's your intention then I think you've misjudged what kind of girl I am."

"I'm not trying to have sex with you."

"Yer not?" I say.

"Why would you think that I was trying to have sex with you? Are you trying to have sex with me?"

"NO!"

"Good then. At least we're on the same page."

"Okay, so then you're not in love with me," I know, too direct but it had to be said.

"In love with you? No, but I seriously envy you."

And then he said something to me that will probably stick with me for the rest of my life. One of those stinger lines in a movie or a story that sting you in both a bad and a good way. Like "you had me at hello," well...that one is old. Two recent ones I can remember were in books that I read recently. One was in Love Me by Garrison Kellior which was a story about an author who slips further and further into memory loss until finally his wife has to completely take care of him and at the end he says "All I know is that if the phone rings it's not for me." And the other was at the end of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, where the autistic boy says "I wrote a book and that means that I can do anything."

Steppy says, "I envy you because you're so fucked up and yet you know exactly who you are."

I didn't say anything after that. He told me he had to go and that he'd email me the details about the guy in San Diego with the book store, and bye.

Wow. Maybe he's not trying to nail me but he sure has me pegged.

PS I've never heard him swear before, so this must have been important.

Temperatures Cool And Things Get Weird

What a weird day! I totally almost flooded my apartment this morning, it was gnarly. See, I was cleaning, right? Just straightening and wiping down the table after the kid's breakfast, and at the same time I thought "Oh I should block the next piece of my sweater!" because I knit up all the pieces to a sweater for myself a while back but it never got put together because I was too lazy to block it. Blocking it, for you n00bs, is soaking all the pieces in water and laying them flat to dry so the edges of the pieces don't curl, which makes the finished sweater easier to sew and also it looks better. I have limited space to have these big huge pieces laying out to dry, so I have to do one piece at a time.

Right, so how I almost flooded my house is while I was cleaning, after I had already folded up the first blocked piece (which was a front panel and two pockets) I grabbed a sleeve and tossed it into the bath tub and turned on the cold water and walked away.

Now in my defense, the dishwasher was on, Roomba was going, and iTunes was shuffling so I couldn't hear the sound of the water running, particularly since I had the bathroom door closed because of Roomba. But also, I was doing too many things at once because I distraction-clean, which is like that book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." I need to pick up this dirty laundry from the bathroom floor, but I cant do that until I fold the clean laundry that is in the basket. I cant fold the laundry until I clean the table, and if I clean the table I might as well wipe the counters down while I'm at it. Now that the counters are clean I might as well put away the dishes and reload the dishwasher.

And so on. You know.

Somehow it ended with me sitting on the couch red-inking my printed manuscript for Bombshell when I suddenly go SHIT!

Well no, I didn't go shit, I said SHIT.

I got in the bathroom just as the water was brimming too high. You know how when you fill a glass too high, and there is this bubble of magic liquid that sits over the surface of the glass but it wont spill over unless you touch it? It was like that, only with a brown wool sweater sleeve floating in the midst of it. The good news is that the incident cost me nothing because it was cold water, so I didn't pay for the gas, and I don't pay the water bill here. That was pretty damn funny though. I could have wrecked a lot of shit.

Then I sit down to work on my manuscript some more, since I want Liz in Seattle to have slightly less work on her hands when I mail it to her for editing, which will create even less work for Adena, and I get up to make some delicious pasta for lunch. As I'm standing in the kitchen, my floor goes BOOM BOOM BOOM BAM CRASH BOOM! and I go SHIT!

Well no, I didn't go shit, you know what I mean by now.

Ty and Wade come out of their room and the whole apartment goes BOOM THUMPITY BOOM! My parakeet Bella is screeching its face off and my laptop podium is teetering. So I rush to the front door and poke my head out, and Mustang Sally pokes her head out, and the guys downstairs who are working on the vacant apartment poke their heads out, and we all go "DID YOU FEEL THAT?"

Like seriously, who didn't feel that?

5.8 my sources tell me.

Earthquakes are cool, especially on the second floor of the building. You just hear a lot of thuds and cracks and you feel like your house might fall off. We haven't had one in a long time, I was starting to think that this was Kansas or some shit since we had a freakin' tornado earlier this year.

David said he didn't feel it over in the parking lot, but he did say that his recruiter got back to him about what the panel said to him yesterday. He said that regarding them telling him that he doesn't stack up very high and that he needs more work experience and/or school etc? That just means, "Yes you will pass but you're at the bottom of the group." Essentially, people with military records will get their scores back first, followed by the people with lots of work history and school, and then in about four weeks they'll contact David. So they're going to take care of everyone else before they take care of him, presumably. But that really means nothing because they'll all be going to academy at the same time, so it's just a convenience factor.

But here's a look at the numbers. They'll hire on about 250 applicants. Most of them will make it up to academy. About 15 will graduate and become officers.

What it comes down to is this is very competitive and David has to hang on like hell if he wants to get in. He's willing to fight for it, so he just might make it.

So then I run out to the post office to mail off a copy of my book to the Library of Congress, and as I'm on my street I get into the turning lane, and when the light turns green this cop who was not in the turning lane waited for me to go and then turned after me. I'm the only car on the road besides him. So he's tailgating me pretty close all up the Beaumont Ave. I go SHIT!

But this time I really did shit! No, not really. But I came close.

Anyway, he's tailgating me for miles. I'm freaking out, because of course I get all irrational and think that perhaps he's trying to pull me over but his lights don't work, so I'm actually being chased! Do I pull over? Do I speed up? Do I take the Oldsmobile right into a ditch? Do I wait it out? Do I wave?

I want to turn onto another street but then he'll think I'm trying to get away. But I suppose I could say "You were following me really close for several miles and I wasn't sure if you were just driving behind me or coming after me so I turned to see if you'd follow." Right. As long as I maintain my speed and use my blinkers and all, it wont look like I'm evading him. So I turn down a street, and the fucker follows me. Now I've had some weird run ins with the police here recently, like when that one just popped up out of the ditch to ask me if I had any drugs or warrants. I can only imagine how this will end.

Then he passes me and it's Steppy. He's waving as he speeds off.

I texted him later and said "You're a pig."

He writes back something about a broken tail light.

Then he says that there's a bookstore owner in San Diego who wants to meet with me and discuss setting up a signing for Golden Dawn. He says "call me."

I haven't called. I don't know if I should.

Good.

A customer of David's suggested that I donate a few copies of Golden Dawn to the library at Solara, which is one of those heavily gated active senior living communities on a golf course here in town. Like Disneyland for the elderly, only they get to live there. I went with the red and black outfit and the necklace with all the hoopie things and the ballerina slippers.

The man at the gate was kind and he gave me a bright orange permit for my dash and directed me to where I needed to go. It's in the clubhouse, and when I walk in I just see signs that lead you into conference rooms and such and a teenager on a laptop. That place was nice! It had a gym and a nice pool, and finally I found the sign that said "library" and went there. It's much like an open hallway with about four tall bookshelves plus some books on the wall. Elementary school libraries tend to be larger than this but they seemed to have a lot to read there nonetheless.

I found a loveable oaf of a man in a polo and I introduced myself and told him what I intended to do. He tells me "Oh...okay...you can toss them in that basket and they'll be shelved eventually." He says he's not the librarian, he says she's a volunteer and she's only there every once in a while. He seemed like he wanted to help but he just didn't know much, so I asked if there was anyone else I could speak to. He directed me to reception.

That's when I met Betty White from the Golden Girls. She was very kind, and I introduced myself and told her that I'm a local author and one of the residents suggested that I donate a few copies of my novel to the library. I could have knocked her over with a feather, she was so excited to have me there doing such a sweet thing. She told me that I couldn't sell them, and I assured her that I was donating them, and I gave her a stack of bookmarks as well. She asked me what the book was about, and I gave her the short description. "It's about a two year old who gets taken from her parents by Child Protective Services and placed with her aunt, and all of the family related drama and obstacles that are born from the situation."

She told me that she would give the books to the librarian right away and thanked me profusely. She also said that she would read the book herself.

So I got myself out there. David thought that maybe this place wouldn't be the right venue, but the way I see it is that I have to put it somewhere, or else nobody will ever read it. This library was a great place to donate a few copies to because someone someone will read it and maybe even recommend it to someone else. I've put my author website in the book and also on the bookmarks so there is the possibility that I'll be looked up. How marketable is my next book with this particular crowd and age group? Probably very little to not really, but I've been told to be surprised at what wouldn't offend little old ladies. And it's not about marketing at this point, it's about presence; which I guess is a part of marketing.

I just want someone to read my book. That, and I want to be so famous that drag queens dress like me in parades when I'm dead.

And remember, if you want to win a free copy of my book, all you have to do is sign up at Goodreads.com, add me as a friend, and add my book to your shelf as "to be read" if you haven't read it. And if you have read it, go mark it as read and leave it a review. Note that the only people eligible to win a copy are the ones who marked it as to be read, because otherwise I wont know that you're interested so hurry up and sign up as I will draw names on the 31st.

So as for David's interview with the panel goes, it went much better than last time. He got all of the questions right, he gave the answers that they wanted to hear, and best of all they told him "we wont give you a failing grade." But, they concluded with the same thing as last time, which is "you need to go to school" and "you don't have enough work experience," which that last one is bull because how much work experience can a 20 year old have? Four years, exactly, and that's what he has. And he has good work experience too, he's never been fired and everyone he's worked with has good things to say about him and his work ethic. They said that he doesn't stack up very high against the people who have done military and the people with more work experience, and that just sounds like a duh to me. Of course he doesn't stack up to those people in those aspects, but David's got a lot of attributes that many of them do not have.

He's going to talk to his recruiter and ask him to decode what they said, but the key words are "we wont give you a failing grade," which of course means "we're giving you a passing grade," and at this point that is all he needs. His background investigator will delve into his work history and such to find out what a gem he is.

So all in all, today was...good...yeah, I'd call it good.

Lame Joke Time

I'm nervous because for one, I am going to a library tomorrow to donate some copies of Golden Dawn and maybe set up a signing, and for two, David has his panel tomorrow, which is what he failed out on last time he applied. Luckily this time he's way more prepared for it and knows exactly how to approach the situation and how to answer the questions, but still. Also I am helping him study for questions like "What are the duties of CHP officers" which is a 15 point answer, and "What are the 7 points of the CHP badge?" and "A hot babe gives you her card and asks to go to a hotel to 'pay off her ticket' so to speak. What do you do?"

So since my brain is garbage, I bring to the table a corny joke tonight.

A bear and a rabbit are shitting in the woods. The bear turns to the rabbit and says,

"So...do you ever have trouble with, you know, poop getting stuck in your fur?"

And the rabbit replies, "Why no, no I dont have that problem."

So the bear picks up the rabbit, wipes his ass all over him, then tosses him aside and leaves.

I lol'd.

The Nickel Tour

The photo challenge this week was to show off our neighborhoods. To take you on the nickel tour I went out for both a walk and a drive and snapped some bittersweet pictures of my lovely home here in Beaumont, which is the part of Southern California that they don't tell you about in the movies and on the TV. These are funny, sad, pretty, but most of all realistic portrayals of where I live.

Oh, and you can deposit your nickel into my Paypal, and please don't look at these pictures until you've paid. Don't be a stealer.

Now, we here in Beaumont are very concerned about our friends in wheelchairs and on other wheeled vehicles, so our sidewalks feature many of these...

Please please hold your questions till the end. Now this here is Beaumont Ave. They filmed the bike scene in E.T. right on this street, and without dropping my own docs here, I will just say that I do not reside on this street but it is in my neighborhood.

A shot at what those trees look like up top...

It's sort of a pretty neighborhood from some people's point of views. My neighborhood, as well as the rest of Beaumont, is crowded with miles upon miles of high priced affordable housing like this...

I'd like to be the one to snipe this eyesore...

And when you look at houses like that and iconic palm trees like this...

It might be hard to believe that it looks like this across the street (on my side)

FYI, homeless people sleep on those couches at night. So let's take a drive down to the end of the block to see what we can see there. PREPARE FOR RAMMING SPEED!!!

PSHEEEEEEEW! (cue Star Trek TNG music.) Okay, so here's my beloved grocery store Staters...

And my neighborhood corporate whore, also known as my office (as this is where I conduct most of my business meetings)

So let's close by saying that Beaumont is your average Anytown, USA but with far more crack heads and bums. What's it like where you live?

Wishing Luck Doesn't Always Have To Drip With Sap *UP-FUCKING-DATE*

I says to David I says, "I love you...and everything that you stand for." I dig my toe into the carpet. "So like...good luck on your tests tomorrow. You'll do it this time."

He couldn't stop smiling at me. For like three hours. He's really stoked about this.

Even the officers at the local CHP station have dropped by The Cans one by one to tell him that he's going to make it. His Sergent (who doesn't carry a taser because he's afraid he will tase himself) keeps calling him "cadet" and saying that he'll "be a good one."

Let's hope so.

Specifics: Physical agility test in Rialto at 8:00 AM on Saturday. 1500 question psychological exam to follow. Please don't call him, he'll call you.

*Update! Update! Up-fucking-date!

He passed.

Effortless, Literally.

I put in an order this morning for a birthday cake at the Stater Bros. bakery. Wade's birthday is the 3rd, and I know I know I know I'm supposed to make the cake because I did last year live on webcam and all, but sucks to that. I spent something like eight hours on the race track cake last year (top left) only for people to go "oh" and then eat like half of it, mangling all that work I did. What? Race track? Oh, I see now with the black road looking thing.

That melty one on the bottom by the way was an "ice cream" cake that was made of ice cream sandwiches, Cool Whip, and fail. It was harder than I thought.

In Rant, the book I'm reading right now, the mom puts screws, shells, bones, toothpicks, walnuts, and other things that will either stab you or break your teeth in all of her food so that you have to slow down and savor every bite in order to avoid injury. I don't even care enough to do that.

And Wade? He doesn't give a shit, seriously, he eats the tires off of his Hotwheels and Neosporin I think (it would explain where it all went to anyway.) And Ty's beehive cake gave me a cramp in my hand for days from pooping out all those damn frosting stars all over the thing. It's a lot of fun to do cakes like that and I will probably make more in the future, but this year I'm just saying "fuck it, let Stater's do it, because at least those people get paid."

Something else is that I am still food depressed and I just cant seem to drag myself out of it. You'll remember that my food depression stems from the dairy allergy that I developed a few years ago, which has thrown me off balance as far as cooking and baking goes because almost everything good that I made either contained milk or cheese, and the substitutes on the market (the soy shit) just don't cut it, particularly in baking. I still have a few good recipes that I've perfected and that I keep up my sleeve that don't contain dairy. I can still meat a good loaf and make a pot of chili so good you'll slap someone right across the face when you taste it, but otherwise I've started to hate cooking, and that makes me sad.

Don't get me wrong, I've got the meat and vegetable dinner down pretty well, I am all about the ribeye and the pork chops and the lamb and the zucchini and the broccoli and the delicious red corn, but I don't even do muffins or cookies from scratch anymore. Now that I blame my oven on, because it's a piece of shit and it lies about how hot it is, even when we adjust accordingly it changes its mind and either keeps heating up or randomly cools down, so nothing comes out right. Maintenance fixed it once, reluctantly. Didn't help anything.

But even with the possibility of just buying pre-made undecorated cakes from the bakery (yes you can buy them) that I can just poop out frosting all over, I'm just not feeling it this year. And Wade picked out the Thomas cake, and he's happy with it. That's fine with me. It comes with free ice cream, which he cant eat because of the milk, and he's already having buttercream frosting because he's slightly more tolerant of the lactose than he used to be, so fine.

Something else that made me decide to just do storebought this year is Ty. His birthday is also in August, and well...you know Ty. He may be turning five but the wheels in his head are turning way faster than that. He wont be happy with a simple bee hive this year, no. I asked him what kind of cake he wanted, and these are the blueprints (yes he called them that) for the cake he wants.

He explained it to me and everything, big long explanation, but I still don't fucking get it. All I know is that the arrows indicate movement. Yeah, he wants a cake with moving parts. Fuck that.

He's Stater's problem now.

A Real Message In A Bottle

At The Cans the other Day David found an actual message in a bottle. It was in an IBC root beer bottle, and contains the following message:

Sat July 17 2004 This is from Olive garden our best waiter

it was a good day but i lost a long lanyard

i was in 4th grade going 2 5th grade my boyfriend is Roman

I WAS TEN YEARS OLD.

The back side reads simply "Messa in a bottle!!!!!"

There's a 14 year old girl out there who doesn't know that her message will be exploited on the internet and could be used for the basis of the storyline in an upcoming novel was found and is cherished by an author who found it very inspirational.

People, I've pulled some great stuff out of my ass recently. I've created a lovable scamp of a sociopathic character in my latest novel who will make you want to hug the evil out of her. I took a real person, and wrote that person into such an awesome and amazing character that I'm now writing an entire series with (and named after) that character. I will most likely name my next born child after that character.

But nothing compares to the shit that happens in real life. Most of my fiction is based on some fact, which is true for most fiction in general. When things like a four year old message in a bottle come along out of the blue, weirdos writers like me go Oh Exploitable! and catalogue it for later use. I have no idea what I can use this for, or if I can ever use it, much like the majority of the notes that I've taken while oot and aboot.

My favorite author and partial hero Chuck Palahniuk keeps filing cabinets that he stuffs with notes. Me, I don't really have a system or anything, more like a pile.

Behold the pile!

This is on my desk, now that I have a simple podium for my laptop to rest on. In this picture you will find such nifty items as

• A stack of copies of Golden Dawn (one of which could be yours if you add me as a friend on Goodreads)
• Colorful folders in which I keep recently printed stuff I've written that needs to be read/re-read
• A wild and zany pencil pouch made from Kool-Aid Jammers, complete with a zipper
• Colored ink pens for manual correction, and a highlighter to highlight goodness
• My handy dandy notebook (for field notes)
• My 1 gig mini-vault (my backup, in case my Toshibitch blanks its hard drive again)
• BLUE INK PEN because blue ink is for winners like me
• My spoiler journal, I've shown you this before
• The note in question which has yet to be tucked between the pages of the spoiler journal
• Stripped: Twenty Years of Secrets From Inside the Strip Club is research (my research is pretty awesome, don't you think?)

Like I said, there is no real method to my madness, just a lot of piles and things found inside of other things. And Diet Dr Pepper.

50 First Dates

God bless the broken road that led me straight to David. Here's a look at that broken and very lulzy road.

Ben Honeybun (kindergarten) Not much is known about this long lost swingset hogging love of mine, including his true last name or the origin of how he became known only to me as Ben Honeybun. Current status is that I wouldn't remember him if he said hello to me, nor would I think that he would remember me at all.

Scott (pursued from sixth grade through eleventh grade) A musical genius who could play every instrument he touched with deep set green eyes and curly dark hair. I was scratching my ass in the band room when he first saw me (I thought I was alone.) I loved him. I loved him so much that it hurt, and he knew this. He would use me for the next several years by making me carry his instruments and be his always in waiting handmaiden. Whenever we got close to becoming an actual item though, it would be at the end of the year and he would say "Let's see if we still feel the same way when we come back in September." I would, but he wouldn't. He would call me and sing a lot of Les Miserables songs or munch popcorn loudly. I think he was gay in 9th grade, then got head from Jessica T on the band bus in 10th grade, then turned Mormon and dated a sweet girl who packed wheatgrass juice and French sounding salads sprinkled with pomegranate seeds for their shared lunch. It even had their names on the little lunch cooler thing. They broke up, but I still lost interest eventually. He's now an orchestral tuba player from what I hear.

Darrin "Cat Boy" (seventh grade) I went to his house for dinner during Christmas time to meet his parents. They were a lot like David's parents, except if David's parents took a lot of opium and smelled like cooked cabbage. His mom, as I recall, thought I was very cute for being the devil incarnate, and demanded that I bow my head and pray with the family over the tacos. He gave me an ash tray shaped like a Christmas tree that he painted with nail polish for my birthday/Christmas present, and eventually told me his deepest darkest secret: he was half human half cat, and his favorite after school activity was to sit in the window and lick himself. And that was the end of that. I think we were "going out" for a month. Going out being the variable here for "dating," "going together," or any other euphemisms for "boyfriend/girlfriend relationship." A few years ago he contacted me on Myspace and wanted to "hook up." He was just as creepy as ever in his pictures where he was flexing his small arm muscles in what looked like the post office.

Val (seventh grade) Not sure how we came to be, or even the time that we were together. This one only lasted a week and we hardly ever talked but he works at the Home Depot now and he looks exactly like David.

Troy (seventh grade) Not a very exciting person, but nice anyway. He broke up with me while we were on break, which left me to construct the sugar cube castle all by myself. It was a total bitch, too. Anyway, Troy and I had History class together, and some weeks after we ended it I was burned at the steak as Joan of Arc as I was tried and found guilty by a jury of my peers, and he was the fucking judge. He could have saved me, and he let me burn, BURN I tell you! Asshole! I have no idea where he is now.

Daniel (seventh grade) Never actually dated, but he did call me a lot to do impressions of Buzz and Woody from Toy Story having sex. "Oh no, why are you all wet Buzz Lightyear? Where have you been???" And besides the totally awesome new Nintendo 64, that's all he ever talked to me about. He got all cool and spiked his hair in later years, but I know nothing about where he currently is.

Garret "The Carrot Carpet Head" (seventh grade) We were only together for three days before he showed up on my doorstep and told me his family was moving to Hawaii and he came to say goodbye. He was never seen or heard from again.

JD (eighth grade) Again, we never actually dated, but we had been friends since the sixth grade when he asked me if I would have sex with him in an abandoned house that was by where we both lived. I told him no. Conveniently, years later when I brought it up after he had become somewhat of a superstar at school because he played guitar and once performed "Yesterday" on stage in front of the whole school, he had no recollection of him saying that to me. Hmm. Anyway, he got cancer in his throat a few years ago from smoking since he was 11 or 12, and he can no longer sing. Pity pity shame.

Quincy (eighth grade) My 6'5" black clarinet player boyfriend. We didn't date long, and we were really more friends than anything, but people found it both tasteless and hilarious that we went to a Halloween party together as OJ and Nicole Simpson. Epic win. Last time I saw him was on the side of the road on 3rd by the old B of A, and I asked him for his phone number from my rolled down window, but the light changed before he could give it to me. I think he found my Myspace and wrote to me once, but I wrote back and his profile had been deleted. I miss Quinky Dinky. He was one big piece of white trailer trash in a chocolate shell. But I heard that in later years he started telling girls that he was sterile and that he couldn't get a girl pregnant so he wouldn't have to use a condom. Really fucking classy, for true. Probably best that I never got in contact with him again.

Kelly and Ian (eighth grade) A couple of boys that I never dated, but we were a group of best friends for the better part of the year. Ian was obsessed with the word "abortion" and his dog Cheebie and would often talk about Cheebie having abortions. Kelly would buy popsicles from the dairy while we were walking home from school and ask me to lick them and suck on them while they watched (but I declined the use of flash photography, because yeah) and one day at Kelly's house we played truth or dare. Nothing dirty went on with me anyway, but Ian did stick his penis in the hose of a vacuum and rolled around on the carpet while Kelly played "Ode to Joy" on his clarinet. Also Kelly was dared to show me his penis and he did. Also we watched a porno that Kelly had found in the field across the street from his house. It was from the 70's and it was called "The Birds and the Beads." Just thought this was worth mentioning. Kelly is now at some Christian college and possibly in a ska band while Ian is living with the girl who used to suck off all of the actors back stage in the musicals that I was in the pit band for.

Steve (ninth grade) Steve played the sax and was a genius on the piano. His grandmother had a closet full of collectable Playboys and a room in which nobody was allowed to set foot in. Not even her. He bought me a slurpee and he wrote a lot of bad poetry, and he dated me against his parent's wishes for six months. Steve was a junior. He wrote a song on the piano for me and performed it live at a children's hospital benefit concert. I don't remember what it was called, but I thought that it sounded like the music from Edward Scissorhands to be honest. Steve believed that if you have sex wearing a condom it doesn't count as actually having sex because there is technically a barrier, and also believed that I was an angel sent to him from Heaven (lulz.) His dad the Marine broke us up after six months because he thought that was too long to date for a couple of high schoolers. He was, and still is, a closet homosexual.

George (ninth grade) The incredibly handsome 11th grader on the football team. And the best part was that he was not at all jocky, more like a band nerd who never learned to play an instrument and picked up a football instead. Took a lot of advanced calculus classes. Tried very hard to get with me, and really wanted to parade me around on his arm, which he did once or twice when he was hanging out with me and he had to go into the locker room to "get something." I saw a lot of naked mens that way. Not sure what he brought me in there for. George and I never dated, but one time he lured me away from the Homecoming game after we (the marching band) had performed our half time show and he was out for the rest of the game for some kind of ailment, and he convinced me to flash him. Bra on, of course, but he "just had to see those beautiful things up close." I flashed Scott and another band boy once because they said practically the same thing to me, so I let him have it. He asked me a few days later if I would go to an amusement park with him, but he said I had to pay my own way, so I turned him down. Probably for the better. He may or may not be a scientologist.

Other Steve (tenth grade) A boy who secretly liked to dress like a girl. He was very cute, and I would have dated him but he asked if we could talk in private one time, and that's when he asked me if I could loan him some of my old bras and maybe some pantyhose. He said he was scared because he couldn't just go out and buy that stuff, but he really needed it for reasons he couldn't figure out how to explain to me. That put an end to the idea of us ever being together, but I did give him a black nighty and an old ice skating uniform of mine. And yeah, I totally made him put them on in the boy's bathroom and show me. I thought it was a joke but he was dead serious. He really did like to dress in women's clothes. I hope he's well.

Victor (tenth grade) Rapist, furry, pedophile, terrorist, and otherwise abusive and sick fuck. Convinced me that if I broke up with him he would kill me, which I didn't doubt. Of course he seemed all sweet at first, that's how they get you. Then he went psycho. It was two years that we were together, and I eventually found his folder of child porn and got the fuck out, but not without a brief knife fight in which I was stabbed in the leg. True fact. But I got out. The only thing I miss about him is his family, who all loved me dearly. He had this old Mexican grandmother who made the most delicious food ever. But I got tired of the "come for the food, stay for the routine beatings" theme of the relationship, and not even Grandma Josie's delicious chicken mole would ever bring me back to that. Last I heard he was making $35,000 a year being one of those guys who calls people up to ask why they haven't paid their credit card bill yet. Openly homosexual last I heard from his step mom.

Officer Two Step "Steppy" (tenth grade) To read this story in detail, you can click here, or you can just settle for the long and short of it. He's the only one of the group who will forever have an alias on my blog because he's basically the only one who I have respect for. He was my handsome dance partner in PE and also my lab partner in science. He has green eyes and curly hair, and because he and I danced like angels together, he took me to a cowboy dance bar a few towns over for a delightful evening. I cheated on Victor to go on that date, but it was totally worth it. He asked me to dump my boyfriend for him and I turned him down. We made out and I felt absolutely nothing for him, which I had expected to initially but whad'ya know, right? I think we tried to avoid each other after that but somehow he ended up in almost all of my classes in the following years. Technically, I graduated on time because of him. He cant deny that he had put his economics final at such an angle so that I could copy off of it, I know he was helping me out with the answers. He's now a cop and a friend of mine, we meet for coffee often and he took me out to a swanky restaurant and gave me $1,000 recently. I think he's trying to hook up with me again using the guise of having read and truly liked my book to try to win me over. Steppy is currently cockblocked.

Kristie, Sara, Bee, etc (twelfth grade) Whoa whoa, hold on there, I was not and am still not a lesbian. BUT, some time in my senior year us girls decided that we were going on strike against the band boys because of the stupid games they played (see: Scott.) Tired of them holding the dating thing over our heads, we decided that none of them could have us, and to ensure that we all pretended to have gone gay. Band dating was halted completely, and the boys were all very confused and very horny. Some of the girls even made out in front of everyone to really lay it on thick. Me? I took pictures of all of them with their shirts off. I still have those pictures to this day. Eventually, the girls got what they wanted, and that was the boys falling at our feet begging to "turn us back." Epic. Kristie is now, from what I hear, still in Yucaipa possibly working at an animal shelter, Sara is a bitch who deserves her wheelchair as far as I am concerned after she put my children and I in serious danger, and Bee fucked the band teacher after he was fired for sexual misconduct. And also possibly before he was fired for sexual misconduct, but that's just speculation on my part.

David (twelfth grade) A freshman who at first I hated, but then came to be quite fond of. He played the tuba and liked to play Counter Strike, and was the epitome of "black sheep" of his family. He asked me if I thought he was a monster because he stopped believing in God when he was about eight, and I told him that free will is a beautiful thing. It turned out that we had a lot in common, and he was wise beyond his years...also very lulzy and would do things like fake seizures in crowds and let me take photographs of it. Being someone who can act like an ass simply for a reaction myself, I was thoroughly impressed. Somehow, we both came to the conclusion around the same time that we were meant to be together, which was very odd to both of us since I was 18 and graduating and he was 14 and going into 10th grade. We dated for the whole summer, but felt weird because of the age thing. Regardless, we had feelings for each other, and didn't really know what to do about that for sure, so we just sort of let it ride, assuming that the other would eventually want to break up. But as you can guess, that never came, and we both just sort of knew. Months later I was knocked up, we got married, and now we live in this apartment in Beaumont. He got his wedding band tattooed on him last year, and I knitted him a sweater. We are so very much in love.

But it doesn't end there.

Langdon Fox (first month or so of college) During the time that David and I were not sure if we should be dating but still held on because we wanted to, I had tried to find myself someone else to obsess over. Langdon was a pretty boy from my glass blowing class, and we shared lab time at the glory hole. (I know that sounds bad, but if you know anything about glass blowing you know what the glory hole really is.) I tried to make conversation with him, and he was pretty quiet. I used to sketch him in the cafeteria from across the room while he ate. Nothing ever came of it, I just decided I didn't really like him. I loved David and I couldn't deny that.

So that's the long and short of how I got where I am today. Remind me if I missed anyone.

Sugar And Needles And Witchcraft

My neighbor, Mustang Sally, has become fast friends with me. This is awesome for so many reasons, like the fact that she's not a dude who potentially wants to nail me, and she has endless supplies of Romanian chocolate and Romanian cheese which she gives to me at random. And as I've mentioned, she's sharing her private internets with me. And in return, I am letting her use my laundry card because she lost hers, and they are like $35 to replace. Our front doors are literally two feet away from each other so I sometimes hang out there at night after my kids have fallen asleep.

I'm very excited to finally have a neighbor that I can borrow a cup of sugar from, this is something that I have wanted for years.

She's become all buddy buddy with me because her fiance left her a month before the wedding and she's all torn up about it, understandably.

Last night we were doing laundry together, and, okay...first I have to tell you that she's not just from Romania, but Transylvania. And the more I look at her, the more I can imagine her with fangs. I swear people, it's in the face. She also finds this fact funny and cute on my dumbfuck American behalf. She's mentioned before that she doesn't want to date other Romanians because she knows "they'll pull some gypsy bullshit magic on her ass." I have no idea what that means but it is very charming in her accent.

So anyway, we were doing laundry together, and she's lamenting about him again. I'm there to be the support, to be the "yeah what a jerk" and "that's fucked up" sayer. We're walking through the grass back to our apartments and she says, "I was thinking about casting a spell on him."

I omg'd.

I say, "What for?"

She said, "To make him come back to me."

I had friends who were into this stuff at one point, you might remember this if you were reading here a few years back. But then again, they were stupid little girls with spells they got off the internet and candles they bought at Wal Mart. Mustang Sally, she's...a little bit different in where she comes from and the culture and all. Before I dropped out of college (which I did because my English professor told me to, saying that I just needed to concentrate on writing a book) I took a class called Primitive Religions which looked into tribal stuff and yeah, witchcraft. It fascinates me, sure, I admit. In fact I've incorporated it into a storyline in the novel I'm currently working on. But here's Sally with her pretty accent and too round face saying she's thinking about busting out the crazy Romanian magic on this guy.

I said, "You're from Transylvania, why don't you just sick a vampire on his ass?" She laughed and said, "I can do better than that."

Right, so my neighbor is a little creepy in a mysterious "I'm scared to ask" kind of way.

So then, today she knocks on my door. I open it, and hers is open too. I can smell incense. There's music. Weird music. She's wearing a black robe-dress thing, and she asks if I have a needle she could borrow. I presented her with my tomato pin cushion, and she carefully selects one, then goes back in her house.

I haven't heard from her since.

Perhaps she was doing the mending. David asked me if she was holding a little voodoo doll when she asked to borrow the needle.

Shit was so weird.

I will avoid drinking from any smoking cauldrons upon future visits.

Gee, Thanks Fuck Face

I've published two books. My next one is coming out in February, and I've got enough manuscripts finished or close to finished to put a book out every year for the next five years, plus a few ideas on the backburner.

My sister knows, and it's no big deal to her, because it's not like a real accomplishment or anything to have completed four full length 60,000+ word novels and one nonfiction book by the age of 24. I think that's phenomenal considering, but you know, I might be on some kind of high horse. I don't really know.

My brother who lives in Kansas came out to visit and I saw him today. He goes into the rich and pain prickling details of his divorce, which is a great big sob story from a perpetually angry man, and he says "But I guess you win because you're still my little sister and she's just my ex-bitch."

I had no idea that this fact would make me the winner to a game that I had no idea I was playing.

So how am I doing? My husband is sitting right next to me in this chair and we're still married despite your previous loud mouth predictions, our beautiful but grubby kids are well, oh and I'm a published author now, did you hear about my novel?

My brother says, "I'll read it when you're rich and famous, and if it turns out you put me in it I'll sue you for slander and get everything that you're worth."

Great, well congratulations on your bitter divorce and all. I cant seem to imagine why a chick wouldn't want to just hold on to you.

This happens a lot. Whenever I bring up my books around anyone in my family, like mentioning getting into the Library of Congress, they just stay silent for the most part. I think my sister feigns interest and support, but frankly she hasn't bought my book or even asked for a free copy of it.

I realize that the world doesn't revolve around me and my books, and that people have things going on in their lives that suck or are more important, and I'm not trying to be a whiney little bitch here. But, that being said, nobody in my family has congratulated me or said anything nice about me pursuing a writing career. Possibly because it's a joke to them, I don't know. And it's fascinating because these are well educated people, my sister is an avid reader even, you'd think that they'd have a higher respect for the art.

Interestingly enough, you know who actually gives half a crap is my in laws. Not the whole Terwilliger family because many of them are messed up in some way or they still dislike me, but his mom bought a book and is actually reading it, and plans to lend it to her friend the social worker (who oddly enough was my child councilor when I went into foster care.)

I pointed out to David the fact that I'm a writer but I'm better known for my photography, and he said "That's because a picture is worth a thousand words without having to actually read them. It takes a certain kind of person to appreciate the written word."

Yeah he's awesome I know, but he's also right.

But like I've said a billion times, when it comes down to it I'm not doing this for the money or the fame, because I don't have those things but I'm continuing on because I will do whatever I want when I want to do it, regardless of anyone else's asshole opinion.

PS, slander in the written word is called libel. HA!

The Moment

The Photo Challenge this week was "negative space," which is using all of the space around the subject to highlight the subject, and I know that I already showed you this picture earlier this week but frankly, I couldn't think of a better snap that would highlight a subject using negative space than this one titled "Fighter." And it was a lucky shot because I took it from a moving vehicle through a very dirty window, but you can't really tell how dirty it was because of the smoky trees and Southern California dry brush which, yes, catches on fire often as seen here. And I loves me a fire man (and get a load of his hose!) so I'm submitting this for the challenge.

And now for something completely different, I am lifting one of these from somewhere else.

The music......"All the young dudes" by Mott the Hoople. 1972 I think. Is this awesome? (y or n)

The food.........BBQ pork sammages and a blueberry banana smoothie (not all at once)

The clothes.....Lime green shorts with a pink skull on them, a bright pink wife beater, bare feet, and I am currently rocking a ponytail. Obviously I am dressed for success.

The mood.......On the verge of laughter with nothing to laugh at. Also horny. I miss the crap out of my husband (and it will only get worse when he heads up north.)

The goal for the day.....Finish writing the January chapter of Chelsea's Demon

The joy..............This text message that David sent earlier this morning:

You are so delicious when you're sleeping, I like to kiss you and hold you. The warmth from your soft and touchable body is like the sweetest drink on a sandy beach at sunset. :) XOXO

The hope...........That my brother from Kansas who is visiting wont be a complete douchewad tomorrow when I see him, because I will be highly annoyed with him if he is.

The view out my window.....A too green lawn that stretches to the brown iron fencing surrounding the pool, which is blocked by two tall palms and a whole mess of planted bulbs. In the pool is my neighbor and new friend with her family. I was invited to hang with her today but my kids were being brats so I had to turn her down. It's okay though, they don't look like superfun people, just like regular people. But it was the thought that counted.

What is your moment ????

Will It Blend?

Blueberries...$1.

Cheapest blender at Wal Mart...$16.

Making a video of testing the blender straight out of the box and putting it on the internet...$496.29. Nothing is priceless these days. Fuck.

But will it blend? That is the question.

Music is "So Nice, So Smart" by Kimya Dawson

Progress With Congress

This is how much I've written in 2008.

Plus stuff I haven't printed. Plus about 60 pages that David has in his back pack to read at work. Plus I blog, every day.

And that's with two kids. And a husband. And a parakeet. And very little social life.

This is serious business here folks. Serious.

The Library of Congress assigned Golden Dawn a control number that I had to add to my copyright page under the ISBN, and then they demanded that I mail a complimentary copy to them immediately.

So this is the beginning of what will be my library sales campaign. Now that I'm in with the Library of Congress, I'm soon going to be in the system at your local library, and you can go demand copies of it.

See, I told you I could do it, it just takes longer without an agent or money. It's a lot of back door stuff, but not like back door dog pile kind, nothing dirty. I just have to find my own ways in to things.

And sometimes cops that I dated in high school give me fistfuls of cash in parking lots. I have my connections, strange as they may be, I have them. I'm on my way.

As for David's progress, he's taking the physical test again at the end of this month. He's gone on four ride alongs, gone to a seminar, and talked to a recruiter that used to run that panel that he failed. His recruiter ever stopped by The Cans yesterday to tell him "You're going to make it kid, and you'll be a good one." Fuck I hope so. And the good news is that the academy is now running every three months (meaning that they're taking the new classes every three months instead of every six months, which used to be a year before that.) If he gets through this time, he leaves November 1st, and do you know how full of win that would be? He'd be gone for a few weeks, then he'd come back for Thanksgiving week, then he'd leave again, and be home for Christmas. This would be ideal.

They're all telling him down at the station that he's in for sure. There is no good reason for David not to get in at this point, because all of those ride alongs and that seminar gave him the majority of the points he will need to pass.

And now for the surprisingly hard part. The part that I am even stuck on helping him with.

"Why do I want to be a California Highway Patrol officer?"

He knows why, and he can give the kind of answer that they want to hear, but he wants to respond with an answer that will knock the wind out of them.

Sort of like describing a book in 50 words or less.

This is hard. Any ideas?

Are You Ready?

A few weeks ago I caught wind of one of those rumors that seem like a hoax simply because of the websites that it was circulating on. Something that none of the big networks (CNN, FOX, what have you) were not reporting, but what some might say "was only being reported by the underground news networks," aka conspiracy theory websites. Something that my brother Richard would be fapping to.

The rumor that I heard, in a nutshell, was that big time investors and foreigners with a lot of money in American banks were withdrawing large sums of money at such an alarming rate that the banks were putting a 24-48 hour period before they could get your money to you. Now this is just speculation, but if it were true in theory it could mean that either we are about to invade Iran, or our economy is about to collapse.

I actually had an entry written up on this when I heard about it, but for some reason I wanted to get my facts straight first. So I went straight to my fact checker Liz in Seattle because this is right up her alley since she's obsessed with finances and money and all of the grizzly details of the economy (and she's smarter than the average bear from what I can tell) and asked her if she knew anything about it. She didn't. If I didn't have backup on this, I wasn't going to mention it on my blog, which I know goes against my style because I do a lot of things that I don't have backup for, but this was people's money. I couldn't make a broad statement like that without at least getting some kind of confirmation from someone with credibility.

But then I was cruising the blogs this past weekend, and Morning Ramble of all blogs had posted that IndyMac Bank in Pasadena, CA was forced to close by the FDIC and OTS because depositors had withdrawn $1.3 billion over the past two weeks.

Come to think of it, it was about two weeks ago when I first heard about the run on the New York banks.

So I called Liz in Seattle up again and she still hadn't heard a thing about it, but told me about what's going on with the Fanny May and the Freddy Mac foundations, which is a whole different can of worms.

Well Liz in Seattle and David both text messaged me yesterday morning to say that the Pasadena bank closing was all over the papers. David says the picture showed people lined up around the bank trying to get to their money.

So then I thought, well shit.

And then David said that Bush lifted the drilling ban and I'm like double oh shit because this means that something is going on. If we're lifting drilling bans just because gas is $5 a gallon, some shit is about to go down. It's not foolish to think that when you look at all three of these major catastrophes that have happened within the past two weeks or so. Shit is about to hit the fan, and I really don't know what that means. I'm not politically educated enough to know what that means unfortunately, I mean I'm not one to spit on the ground and say that "EVERY GAT DANG THING IS BUSH'S FAULT" but I also know that I hate the republican party as much as I hate the democrats.

I'm not smart about this stuff, it's not my field of study. But I do know when something is wrong, and something is wrong.

Now I'd like to turn it over to a guy who probably knows more about this than I do. People, this is Montagraph, he's a guy I watch on YouTube, and where I originally got the information two weeks ago. Listen to what he says because he's saying some things that I think a lot of us are afraid to say on our blogs and to our friends and family, but is important nonetheless.

Imaginary Friends

This is sort of a neat quote that I just read in Chuck Palahniuk's novel Rant.

A child who relinquishes the illusions of Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, that child may come away with the most important skill set. That child may recognize the strength of his own imagination and faith. He will embrace the ability to create his own reality. That child becomes his own authority. He determines the nature of his world. His own vision. And by doing so, by the power of his example, he determines the reality of the other two types: those who cant imagine and those who cant trust.

Interesting concept, and I think I know which child I was. I think you know too.

The funny thing is that Peggy sent me this article about the do's and don't's of book signings, and one of the things on the don't list was "Don't act like your fictional characters are real or that they talk to you."

For example, "I'm sorry but I had to kill off Raphael! Mary forced me to!" Because that's enjoyable to an extent but when you really seem to believe it, things get a little creepy/weird for the readers.

I'll put it this way for me: my fiction is a running storyline in my head, usually told to me in my own voice. Or whatever my brain voice is. Of course the speaking parts might have a male or female voice, but we're talking only for dialogue.

For example Officer Green doesn't wake me up in the night and go, "make me have sex with Marina more."

I have narrated things in my head since I was very small, about Ty's age. I do listen to that voice, my brain voice, for the words I should write, and I am not ashamed to admit to that because I think that's what is going on in everyone's head.

I talk out loud sometimes. I practice what I plan to say to someone if it's important, or I will randomly say a word out loud that I'm not comfortable using in my writing, because if I cant say it then I cant write it either.

Now you want crazy then talk to David. We're laying there the other night and he says "Sometimes my imaginary friends come with me to deliver pizzas."

Oh.

"Sometimes it's Frodo Baggins, or Jack the Ripper. People from the past usually so I can freak them out with my car. I go, 'this is a car, and this is a radio!' and they go 'oh shit, we're going so fast,' and I say 'you aint seen fast yet,' then I get on the freeway and crank up Metallica, and they ask me what the food is on their lap, and when I tell them that it's pizza they ask me what pizza is."

Oh.

"Other times, it's my brother Matt. I'll throw the pizza on his lap and he'll say 'where are we going,' and I'll tell him 'Palmer,' and he'll go 'where the fuck is that?' Then we drive all that way, and half way through the canyon he says 'it's all the way out here dude?' and I go 'yeah, we aren't even close.'"

Oh.

Warped is warped, I love him just the same. I think it's time he stops delivering pizza though, so hopefully for the sake of his sanity the car parts store calls him back.

Adult Entertainment

I met Steppy very early this morning to return the wad of cash. He really wanted me to keep it like just to have it, insisting that he would invest another grand when the time comes, but that seems fishy to me. One theory, according to my internet friends, is that he wants to make sure that I am taken care of because I might be the so called "one that got away." Or he simply has pity for me. He's said many times that he realizes that I can't do this on my own, and by this he means investing money toward my writing career. But the thing is, I know exactly how much money this guy makes, and I can guess how much his mortgage is.

Investing is one thing. Investing and "here's a little something for you, go buy yourself some pretty shoes r' sompthin suga" is another.

*note that he did not call me suga or tell me to buy shoes, he just said to keep the cash. Same difference.

Furthermore I barraged him with questions. Like, "Why do you have that kind of money to just be handing out?" and "Does your wife know that you gave me $1,000?"

To the latter he said, "She doesn't handle the finances."

And I'm like, "That's not what I asked you."

I asked him "If I show up at your house and say hi to Mrs. Steppy will she know who I am and why I have $1,000 of your money?"

He said she read my book too and liked it. Again, that's not what I asked. Eventually he said "I really just like your writing," and I said "I like your gun," and he said "I dont have my gun on me" and I said "It's in your leg holster" and he laughed and then said he'd call me, and that he's eager to read books two and three of the Green series because I am amazing. Then he left.

Right. Steppy was weird today, maybe trying to act all cool after I rejected his fistful of money...or maybe he was just in cop mode, it's hard to tell. I plan to ignore him for a while.

Anyway, other than that the day was great and photo documented.

There was a brush fire in Calimesa just less than a quarter mile from the house that I grew up in, where my dad died, and where my brother still lives. I took that picture from a moving vehicle but I love it because I got the fire fighter in the shot. Very cool.

Then we drove to his parent's house and there was a blue heron by the lake, and we watched him catch a fish. We caught this right at the moment of gulpage. I mean, fishy is flapping and everything and about to be swallowed. Beautiful.

His parents watched the kids while David and I went to the casino. I lost my $20 to roulette, and David lost his there but then won it all back. Then like an idiot he went to a black jack table and lost it all because he's a dumb kid. (FYI you only have to be 18 to gamble at Morongo so no laws were broken.)

We went to the casino because my neighbor Mustang Sally gave us coupons to the buffet (she works somewhere on the res.) Funny, because Steppy took me out for that $200+ meal on the 27th floor of this hotel and I liked the food down stairs at the buffet better. Plus we were stoked because it's buy one get one free so he and I ate for like $20. I ate two dinners and two desserts and he had three dinners and two desserts. Food was excellent, and it was shrimp night. Oh and then I accidentally ate a ball of booze that I thought was just regular chocolate but it turned out to be booze. Fuck.

Then we came home and Mustang Sally made me go swimming with her, and then David and I watched that movie Juno. I actually really liked it, I don't care what the rest of you think.

So we had some adult entertainment, and not the strip club kind. Oh and gambling sucks, says David. Still though, nothing makes you feel more adult than walking through the casino and losing your money to a fucking blinky light computer screen.

One last picture...

I took this just before being yelled at by a very small blond woman who informed me that picture taking was not allowed in the casino. But like, what are they going to do? Smash my camera? Fuck that.

Also I am glad that nobody smashed my camera.

What's In A Name?

The assignment this week at Photo Challenge Blog was to fill the frame. I miss having a good photo challenge ever since Stuff Portrait Friday went belly up, so I decided to participate in their little scheme. Here's how I filled the frame:

A West Coast Lady visiting a flower in my sister's garden, and a cardboard car that the kids got at this crappy diner in Cabazon. These were both taken with my old Lumix camera since I didn't have the Canon on me. But it still takes a nice picture.

So anyway, some bum found a really nice baseball glove in the park and gave it to David, and this of course inspired him to go to Wal Mart to buy a glove for Ty and a ball so they could play catch like every father and son should. This turned out to be fail because Ty doesn't really get why they're throwing the ball back and fourth.

He asked me today if his stomach has eyeballs and also if cops sleep. He's on a completely different wave length and doesn't seem like a "catch" sort of kid. More like a popsicle stick bridge kid. That's their next endeavor.

Anyway, while we were at Wal Mart, just look at what I found.

This is quite obviously the most genius marketing scheme on the...market...I guess. Yes, naming things after cool people. Im not a fan of Wal Mart clothes but these were five bucks and they had my name on them, spelled correctly even. Do you realize how rare that is? I never had personalized pencils or those cool name license plates for my bike because fuck the name Jessie I guess, but things are changing. They're naming shorts after me. And I'll be swig jiggered, they're comfortable too.

So I went to UrbanDictionary.com and typed in my name, and this is apparantly what my name means on the streets.

Jessie: 1. A wonderful person who brings sunshine into people's lives. Being a Jessie is a beautiful thing and a rare quality.

2. a person with great authority in the buisness of prostitution.

"The head whore in the whore house is a Jessie."

3. Something made of stardust ready to shine but sometimes burns to brightly and bursts into flames and becomes dust once again, ready to repeat the process.

4. A horrible person who enjoys both dumping guys and sticking poles up their asses.

5. Scolding yet affectionate term for a big, gushy gay man. Probably donning a floral shirt and walking a well-groomed laborador. One of those types.

You think that's great, you should read the definition of David!

1. A formidable foe to normal people. intelligent, strong forceful. a weird hybrid of a bully and a nerd. As well as the first dictator of the America and king of the new peaceful world. Also known as Timebomb and various other variations including at least TB.

2. A person who is hecka cool or awesome. Everyone else is nothing compared to a David.

"Person 1: You are really really cool, just like a David.
Person 2: Thanks! That really cheers me up."

3. One who is a BAD ASS MOTHA FUCKA. This person is often very good looking and usually quite daring. This person also enjoys a nice glass of scotch, and most closely compared to the badass McLovin.

"You are such a David for banging my mom and sister!"
"Only David could have raped Goliath."

4. A Person with really great hair, that you just want to take a nap in it.

5. David is a person who rocks everyones sox.

Yu wanna meet this kid ! LIKE FOR REAL.
David IS HELLA TIGHT.
"david yur so hella tight i want yu in ma pants !
:orgasm:"

So what's in your name according to the Urban Dictionary?

Be In My Army

These are Mustang Sally's shoes. When I was having that fashion crisis, I could have just gone to her for advice, but I came to you. YOU. I wanted YOUR opinion, and I got it.

I learned a lot about shoes this week. Apparently thong shoes are never ever considered professional and I am some kind of retard for not attempting heels. I could give you excuses all day as to why I shouldn't, like the fact that I am already tall and my legs are already sexilicious, and I cant see my feet anyway because my boobs block them, but instead I'll just say that's not my style and trump all of that other shit.

The point is that I found a couple of outfits that I look decent in, and that's all I wanted to begin with. And now I can start my off-line campaign.

I sent a letter to the library in Beaumont and also the one in Idyllwild. Then I plan to contact Yucaipa and the A.K Smiley in Redlands. But I probably wont do that until I hear back from the first two. Oh and I've been invited to the library in a 55+ community here, I need to get over there and donate some copies and suggest a signing.

And I'll do it all wearing my new fancy digs. Thanks guys, you know, for not letting me look like a plaid nightmare.

Right now the book is in the process of being put into the Library of Congress's database so that the book can be easily found and ordered by libraries around the world. So eventually I will request that you all go to your local libraries and request copies of my book to be ordered. I'm working my way up.

Now, I know I've been really bossy and needy this week but you haven't seemed to mind yet looking at my comment numbers, but there's something that I really want you to do for me today. Don't worry, it's free. Stacey added my book to this site called Good Reads, which is essentially like the Myspace for book nerds. You can list all of the books you've read, make a list of books you need to read, leave reviews, comment on other people's reviews, join little book clubs, and even display a cute little widget for your blog (I have one in my side bar already. Cute, no?) It's a really well organized website with lots of handy little tools, and authors like me have special profiles where they can post sample chapters or current work (bonus shit) so I know you wont regret doing the following favor for me.

1. Go to Goodreads.com and sign up (or log in if you're already a member.)
2. Add me as a friend (yes I am friend whoring but it is for the greater good.)
3. If you have read The Fight for Golden Dawn then add it to your Read list, rate it (five stars?) and leave a review. OR...
4. If you have NOT read it, add it to your To Be Read pile. Even if it takes you a year to get around to reading it, add it to your To Be Read.
5. Leave a comment on my profile there and I will add your name to the hat for a once-a-month free book giveaway that I will do from now until November on the last day of every month. (and yes, it will be signed.)
6. ?????
7. Profit!

I expect to see you all there, even you obscure and rare commenters like Anne, Sunski, Steel Magnolia, and Gage. David's mom, you do it too. I'm sick of you lurking but never saying anything in the comments. DO THIS. That's right, I'm naming names, people. Get over there, and spend your Saturday adding books to your lists and playing around with the site. I want to know what you guys are reading so I can maybe read it too.

If I see a lot of activity today, I mean 20+ friend adds, I will make the Golden Dawn E-Book available for free download for Monday and only on Monday. You miss it then you lose, and you'll have to pay for it again come Tuesday. But ONLY if I get a lot of friends today. Okay?

And you're welcome for me giving you a new place to waste time on the internets. You can thank me by doing what I said.

Eh? Eeeeeeh?

So based on your opinions/suggestions/outcries I made some decisions about those outfits. The poll was tied (and someone actually voted on the lulzy "you're an idiot made of fail" one! I lol'd) but I got the right idea.

1. Black dress works. There was some controversy over the shoes (fuck if there is ever controversy over shoes again at this blog) but ultimately it's like, I'm not going for total business here, and since I cant walk in heels the shoes are cute enough to be fashionable.
   
2. Green dress went back to the pits of hell from which it came...or, Target gave me my money back on it. Honestly I don't know why I bought that one. I guess because it is green and I am attracted to green, but you know I'm not really a green person. I wish I was but I am not, and I am also not plaid. One of those "looked better in the store" things.
   
3. I'm an entrepreneur, (wow I spelled that right the first time) and I need to be myself. Whatever I go with, it needs to be more me.
   

I almost gave up on Target after a while. Next door is a Dress Barn but people I do NOT want to shop in a barn. It's bad enough as it is that I have to grab my size from the back part of the rack already, I don't need the store calling me a cow. Honestly, who names these places?

"Honey, here's a gift certificate to the Dress Barn," says the thoughtful husband.

"Is that some kind of fat joke?" the wife screams, then cries into the couch.

Anyway, I almost gave up on Target because I was overwhelmed, and I ended up getting more black things because I guess once you go black you never go back, right? But I wanted to go with a color, a color that is more me, and not green or plaid or green plaid. So I went with red.

Red is my power color because red is the color of bravado. I listened to you guys about the skirt and my legs and all that but I didn't really know what I was doing so I did the best I could. And these are the shoes and necklace...

I know this is probably boring to my two male readers so bare with me and...I don't know, I'll post porn or something. At some point.

Did I do it right this time?

Dress Up The Dolly Time

Fashion sense, I have none. So I need to borrow yours for a minute, and you have to swear to tell me the truth. I went shopping (on David's dollar not Steppy's) for "Hi I'm Jessie Terwilliger and I am a local author. I would like to show you my book" clothes. Seriously, dont make me look like an ass at these libraries, please help me because I cannot help myself.

It's like, whenever I think I have found a really cute outfit, it turns out to be not so much. For example, you might remember the $10 dress that I bought when Wal Mart's automotive department held me hostage for four hours. The one that I only get compliments on from women who have no eyebrows. You know exactly the women that I mean. They look like this Myspace girl...

Right. So this is the dress that I am referring to, which got another compliment today from a sexy mami like Sad Girl up there.

You have to excuse the shitty hair, it is currently 90 degrees and raining outside so the humidity has forced me into a ponytail. But see, David thinks it's a cute dress, calls it my dolly dress. Not bad for $10. But then again, maybe I look completely stupid.

But what I really need your opinion on is my whole semi-professional look. Again, minus the hair and such, let's just focus on the dress its self.

It's simple, black, and okay, right? Aren't I a sexy mami? I bought a necklace for it but I don't think it works with this dress.

Or does it? See, I don't know. Oh and ignore that thin chain up there, that's my journey necklace, I just hid the pendant behind my neck for the picture. But Im thinking that it might be the better choice for the dress.

And the thing is, I bought a second dress exactly like it only it looks like this...

One for meet and greet one for signings? But please tell me if I am doing it wrong, if this is bad then I have to know while I can still return them. By the way, they were $20 each at Target so it isn't like a huge deal but I would still like to know.

These are the shoes by the way...

Not heels because I cant walk in those, but they're angled a bit. They match both dresses.

So that's my under $75 business wardrobe. Are I doin it rite? I'm putting up another poll in the sidebar and I also need your explanations and advice and what not below.

But only if you have eyebrows, because seriously...god damn.

He Made Me Emo

Steppy apologized. He said sorry, and said we could meet next week if I really want to give the money back. He offered to just let me keep the money for whatever I wanted and that he would invest another $1,000 or more later on like we discussed, and I told him that it wouldn't be appropriate.

I want to believe. I want to believe that he really is just trying to help and that perhaps this is my big break.

Liz P. said on the last post,

maybe u don't want to succeed because u may have to widen your comfort zone,meet people,smile...maybe even be hugged.

Liz I do want to succeed, I just don't want to go about it the wrong way. I don't want dirty money, or money that could possibly be dirtied if something happens along the way. Perhaps that's not Steppy's intention for it to be dirty, but I have integrity and I want my books to have that as well. Even if like Rodney Dangerfield "I don't get no respect." I'd rather be one of those authors you've never heard of than to have gotten to the top on ill intentions, even if those intentions aren't my own.

I got all emo about it. About Steppy. Here's this person being nice to me and I cant just take it at face value. I suspect the worst in people, and I end up not having any friends at the end of the day.

Yeah, shut up emo Jessie. /wrists.

I broke out my art journal, which I only doodle and draw in when my brain is too clouded to write. Ty left out his watercolor paints so I commandeered those for a while and made some really shitty art. Though I actually ended up framing this sunset desert picture, not because I think it's good but because I like the colors and my living room theme is "California Deserts." That there's a Joshua tree and a palm tree in the picture, so yeah that's California I guess.

I got all emo because I'm pretty sure he left a comment here yesterday saying his intentions were good and throughout the day today he texted me with ideas for book two in the series which I am currently struggling with/have abandoned for the time being. It's almost as if he genuinely truly madly deeply wants to help me. And I feel like an ass.

Regardless, I wont back down from what I told him about the money. I still want to give it back until January when I'm a little bit more ready to use it and handle it.

And perhaps he told me to keep the cash that he gave me because the first time we spoke at Starbucks I said, "I'm an author, but I'm not well known yet, which is why my husband is your pizza boy." Then he said he liked my car because it's "ticket me red," and I like a fucking dumbass ran my mouth and went "Yeah we got that because crackheads stole the Civic."

I am too cool for school, people. Smooth.

I printed out what I had of Chelsea's Demon and gave it to David. This is book three in the series and it's half finished, and all three books will be written so that you don't necessarily have to have read the other books in the series to understand and enjoy the book. He cheered me up when he said that he liked it and said that it was really holding his interest. (For the record, he's only ever disliked one of my books and I have since abandoned that one, possibly to try again in a later year.)

So now that I'm not so emo I've decided to show you my usual setup for working on my novels.

From left:

• Diet Dr Pepper- because fuck yeah, that's why.
• Smelly good candle- it smells like sage, and sort of like soap. Is nice. Makes me think and keeps me alert.
• Blue gel ink pen- and it is blue because I will only write in blue ink. Some weird OCD thing that I picked up from my sister who also refuses to use black ink. David prefers black ink only because he likes me to yell and scream about black ink pens in this house. He thinks it's funny. Fucker.
• Old fashioned blog (or paper journal)- This is where I keep my notes for my storylines. Full of spoilers. If you're ever at my house and you intend to steal one item, this should be it. I would be ruined, and you will have won the game.
• Toshibitch Notebook- my cheaply made writing machine that is no longer under warranty. Runs the totally awesome Windows Vista (gag) and is on its second hard drive after mysteriously blanking out the first one. Had it for a year now.
• Microsoft Word document "Chelsea's Demon" on the screen- currently at 31, 812 words! I'm about 20,000 words short of a novel (though my stuff usually runs to about 60-70K words.)

And yeah, it's on my coffee table. I did have my desk set up to work at for quite some time, but I got really tired of it.

Question for laptop users- do you actually work at a desk or do you laze about the couch and go outside with it? (And I mean for long usages, actual working or hours upon hours of World of Warcraft.)

Money, It's A Gas

Go on, take the money and run.

Money can't buy me love.

If you wanna go and take a ride wit me wit three women in the fo' with the gold D's, oh why do I live this way? (Hey, must be the money!)

Great. Now I'm mixing classic rock with gangsta rap.

First, I appreciate the hell out of your opinions, the support really means a lot to me. Even though your opinions are split down the middle, the fact that you're saying anything at all is helpful. It gives me new things to think on.

What will the $1,000 do to help my book marketing? It would get...

• Roughly 100 books
• Or, 90 books and my ISBN
• Or, 50 books, my ISBN, promotional bookmarks, and Google Text Ads
• Or, 30 books, my ISBN, promotional bookmarks, Google Text Ads, and a paid editor who will get the book edited fast and edited right
• Or, it will just get me in trouble.

Some of you are saying that an investment is an investment, and that Steppy is probably a stand up kind of guy. Others are saying that there was definitely something to the whole scene with the over priced dinner and the particularly large sum that he gave.

See David and Steppy are a lot alike. I think it's a cop thing, I don't know, but these people, I'm sure you've met someone like this, they just like to help. Not to the point of being a bleeding heart, but then again maybe it is to that point because of the dangerous jobs they choose.

It's cliche but they're here to serve and protect. It's a personality trait that unfortunately not all cops have, but the ones who do are exactly like Steppy and David.

However, Steppy is still a guy. And I don't mean to sound like a feminazi but at the end of the day he spent his teenage years fapping to scrambled porn and studies conducted by the Kinsey Institute show that 54% of men think about poon tiggity tang tong several times a day.

But then again, women tend to over think things. Including compliments, especially compliments. A guy says "You look pretty today," and she wonders if you really mean it, or if you really do mean it does that mean that you weren't pretty yesterday, and is that girl prettier? "You look like you've lost weight" turns into "you think I'm fat."

"I like your book and I want to invest in you" becomes "oh my god what if he's trying to have sex with me?"

Then again, over thinking could be just another word for "women's intuition."

I've decided on a compromise, and I think (and hope) that you'll all agree with me on this one.

I am going to give the money back. I am going to thank him profusely, but also express my concern about it being so much money and that it is possible that he may never see a return on it, not because I'll give up writing but because I could flop. Face it, I'm a writer but I'm better known for my photography because a picture is worth a thousand words without actually having to take the time to read them. And in this area people aren't readers, they're TV watchers and ATV riders. There are no book clubs in this town that I can find! We don't have a book store because there isn't really a need for one! David talked to his friend the coffee shop owner about carrying some copies of my books, and the guy turned him down because he doesn't think that books would go over well in a coffee shop. Since when don't books go over well in coffee shops? Barnes and Noble seem to make coffee shops work inside of books! Why not the other way around? Because this is BEAUMONT FREAKING CALIFORNIA.

But speaking globally, you know, I've got a blog, I update it daily, but my numbers are still lower than what they should be if I'm going to ever make enough to earn back the man's money, particularly since the ratio of daily blog hits to book sales is very very screwed. And besides selling in shops, which I'm starting to think twice about because of gas prices, the internet is my biggest market and I just cant seem to get out there enough!

I plan to tell Steppy to come back to me in January, a month before the book is going to be released. At that point we draw up some kind of contract, maybe open a bank account used strictly for that purpose so that he can see how the money is spent. It was suggested to me in an email that he put the money in an interest bearing CD until then. That seems right, or more right than a wad of cash handshake in a parking lot.

See that's what really bothers me, was that it was cash. Had he written a check it might have seemed more professional. Or just "I am going to invest in you, how much do you need and how would you like to set this up?" And remember that he first attempted to give it to me in the elevator (and by give it to me I don't mean give it to me.) I mean I don't know the first thing about investing but I think that it just might be "don't give chicks cash in elevators or parking lots."

With your combined opinions and advice, I think that this is the best way to go. That way if it does turn out that he was just horny, he will lose interest, or at least have time to rethink it (or rub one out and quit it.) And if he's sincere, then I might have just been granted the one thing that my book campaign is missing: money.

The Investor And The Moral Dilemma

He goes to shake my hand and I can feel a wad of money in his palm. I said "No, damnit, I already told you no!" and he just walked off. The wad of bills fell on the ground. I couldn't leave it.

Naturally there's a story behind this, but at least you understand that this is a real moral dilemma and not just a minor freak out.

Officer Steppy finished reading Bombshell (which you can now read the first five chapters of at Jessie-Terwilliger.com) so he called me and asked me to dinner. He's a cop so I figure IHOP or Denny's, only he asks me to meet him at the casino. What he didn't tell me was that he made reservations at Cielo, the incredibly posh and expensive steak and seafood restaurant on the 27th floor of the hotel.

Even wearing my "steppin' out" clothes, I was way under dressed.

So he tells me that the book was amazing, the story made him want to both laugh and cry and made him feel intense anger all at once. I think he used the word remarkable about something, said I had talent. Charisma.

I asked him if I should change this one part, one that I'm sort of back and fourth on leaving in because I'm not sure how well understood it will be by the average reader, and he says "No, don't change that. I don't care if other people don't understand it, I understand it and it's the best part of the whole damn book."

I told him that it's the first of a series, and that I've already written the first halves of books 2 and 3. He said he was so blown away by Bombshell that he isn't sure how I will ever follow it. I said I'm trying.

Then I look at the menu, because he told me to pick an appetizer. First thing I see is this seafood platter with scallops and shrimp and lobster and crab legs, and it's like $50. For an appetizer.

And I guess this shows how much out of my element that I was, because I go, "Who seriously pays $50 for an appetizer?"

He tells me that he does, if that's what I want anyway.

Of course I don't want him to spend that kind of money! I mean Christ, if that's how much the appetizers are, I fear the price of the actual meals! The cheapest appetizer they have is 15.95 and it's calamari, and as much as I don't want the guy spending a shitload of money on me, I cant stomach calamari. "Money is no object," he tells me. And then I figure that if he brought me here of all places, he was planning to spend money. I don't want to take advantage, but then again he chose to take me there because of how good my book was. Perhaps I should stop complaining about the price of tea in China (or more likely the price of lobster tail in Cielo) like an old person and just reap the reward.

So I said, "let's get the kobe beef." It was only like $20, and hey, I've never tried kobe beef, and I probably wont ever again. Yeah I realize that when David is a cop those things will become more affordable but we aren't the kind of people to spend money on shit like that. However, Steppy apparently is, and I already decided not to argue anymore about prices.

Kobe beef by the way is about as good as I expected it to be. For a $20 appetizer it lived up to its price.

Now, there's this scene in Bombshell where Marina (main character) is talking about how a guy can take a girl to dinner for under $5. The trick is to order a salad and say "I'm watching my weight." This will force the girl to order a salad as well because she wont want to look like a cow in front of the guy. So I suppose the exact opposite of that trick would be for him to order a $90 entree of lobster tails. It's like the unspoken "order anything, even this." I didn't get the $90 lobster, I don't like lobster that much, so I went with a bone in ribeye and Yorkshire pudding for like $40 or something, but it still felt weird because usually David, the kids, and I can all four eat for $40 at your general family restaurant.

The food by the way was really good, but it's nothing I would go back for unless I was celebrating something like winning the lottery or making it to the best seller list or something improbable like that. Unless you're buying, because yeah, I'd totally love to go to dinner with you. I don't know how much the bill was, all I know was that he glanced at it briefly then paid without flinching. Basic math tells me that it was probably $200 or more. Also I felt bad that I didn't like the wine. I'm sure it was expensive stuff.

He tells me he wants to walk me to my car, which is standard procedure as far as things like that go from what I remember. I was parked in the big parking structure, and I think he was in the lot by the main entrance. While we were in the elevator (because the restaurant is on the 27th floor) he tells me that he's decided to make an investment in me. "Investment in a young and up and coming author from Beaumont, California," which is directly quoted from my other dot com.

By the way, I asked if he reads my blog and he said he's hardly ever on the computer, so no.

He says, "Take this," and he tries to give me some cash. I go, "There are cameras in here and we are in a hotel. What do you think this will look like?" He retreats. "Furthermore," I say, "I don't want your money. Thank you for dinner, but seriously, never again. Starbucks and that's it, no more lobster tails and kobe beef, and no giving me cash for no reason."

He tells me that the cash is an investment, he wants me to use it to buy several extra copies of my book to distribute to the papers and other places that I can market to. I tell him that I've got that stuff covered...which technically I don't because the money for the last order I was supposed to place ended up being spent to fix the car...but I don't want, scratch that, I don't feel right taking his money. Anyone else offers to "invest" in me and I would probably be all over it. But I really feel like there is more to it than just an investment. I insist that I don't want his money.

It's nice that he thought my book was kobe beef-worthy but I'm not for sale either.

We get to the parking structure and I say, "there's my car." But he walks me all the way to it. You never know what creep is waiting by your car to mug you. He goes to shake my hand and I can feel a wad of money in his palm. I said "No, damnit, I already told you no!" and he just walked off. The wad of bills fell on the ground. I couldn't leave it. I know he took off like that on purpose so I couldn't give it back. Someone was coming so I picked it up and got in my car. It was folded up, but I knew that the outside bill was a hundred. I unfolded it and found nine more inside. $1,000 total.

This is my dilemma. Do I keep the money and invest it like he said, accepting the gift and severing any strings that may be attached by simply saying "I'll pay you back when I'm famous?"

Or am I being played like a whore here? Every guy is after something, particularly guys who wave money around and give it to you in parking lots. (And by giving it to you I don't mean like giving it to you.)

I can use the money, oh very much so. I can get my ISBN for Bombshell, even pay for professional editing, order copies for distribution...but what will it cost me? Of course I have the right to say no, and I would never do that anyway, and it could be that this was an honest gesture and an actual investment. Or it could be that the strings attached to this money are the kind I don't want to pull (or be pulled by.)

David's opinion is the same as mine, which is stuck on "I don't know." He knows that guys who dish out the cash like that are usually expecting sex in return, but he also knows that Steppy is a very decent fellow and that may not be what he's after. David also wants to see me succeed, and he hates that we aren't able to spend a lot of money on getting my name out there (such as by distributing copies to reviewers and buying Google text ads and the like.)

I'm putting a poll in the sidebar asking for your opinions. Please tell me what you think I should do, because I cant seem to figure this out. I will tell you that my heart is telling me that this isn't right and I should give it back, but that's just my opinion I could be wrong. Explain your reasoning down below.

Now What Will You Do?

So how do you plan to get to work/the store/porno shop/school?

I'll start, and you can play along in the comments. David wants a soda, but "the fucking god damned floor is lava!" He stands on the couch, then steps onto the coffee table onto the other couch. Now he's on my rolly chair, but there are shoes in his way. I think he plans to paddle across but he doesnt have a paddle. "Shit!"

He has removed a cushion from the couch, make that two cushions, and is laying them across the floor in order to get to the kitchen. Now he is standing on the dining chairs, OH SHIT! CEILING FAN!

He is opening the fridge, but he is high on a chair and the sodas are on the bottom. He has retrieved the soda, but wait! "Now I gotta shit real bad."

Things could get ugly.

"The toilet's not lava, right? That would suck."

As for me, I just plan to empty a couple of wastebaskets onto the floor then use them as lava shoes.

So internet, your floor is now lava. What are you going to do?

Christopher Cross Live in Beaumont CA

So this is the Christopher Cross concert I went to. I was born in 83 so I had no idea who this was, but then again I also listen to a lot of classic rock so I recognised his songs right away. He puts on a really good performance! My video here features snips of his better known songs, including an acoustic performance of Think Of Laura that I shot from literally five feet away. You'll love it, I did.

PS this guy's video shows the fanboy in the grey shirt really getting into it.

Beaumont's Fireworks Show Was Actually Full Of Much Win

We broke tradition this year and went to the Beaumont fireworks show instead of the one at University of Redlands. Might I say that I am quite impressed. And there was a free Christopher Cross concert, if you know who that is. Ladies and gentlemen, my very first celebrity snap shot ever, Christopher Cross...



I stood like five feet from him as he sang to me and I took both pictures and video. Video is coming tomorrow or soon after tomorrow. Yes I realize that taking pictures of him at a free concert is like saying you took a picture of a Siberian Tiger but it was at a zoo, but screw that because this guy was actually full of win and talent. I had never heard his name before tonight, but I recognized his songs, and also I got to just stand RIGHT THERE, I mean RIGHT THERE. Awesome.

More on Christopher Cross tomorrow, let's just get to the fireworks. Now this was my first year with my Cannon and let me say that I have a billion more reasons to love this camera. I take fireworks shots every year and these are simply the best. I took these on "fireworks mode" which is a slow shutter mode. Enjoy.


Upside down water lily


This one is my favorite of the evening.


Shooting red twinklies!


Red, white, and blue


Rainbow orchid

Pink and gold


Except for the tree that is in the way, this picture is very cool


Magic wand (complete with pixie dust)


Lotus


Light saber explosion!


Jellyfish!


Just cool


I love how it makes them look like feathers


Flowers in a vase


Fireworks mode and Cannon color for the win


Wade by the way was frightened to the point of shaking and sweating and hiding his face in David's liver. Poor guy cant enjoy anything.

More photos at my Flickr

The Good Word From The Good Doctor

Concerned about the fire? Read the post below this one for updates.

Ty and Wade had doctor's appointments today. Ty needs a check up for Kindergarten and Wade...well Wade hasn't seen the doctor since he was about five months old.

Look, I don't really understand what the problem was, but we lost our Medi-Cal because we no longer qualified. Which is funny, because when have we not qualified for anything? I don't really know the reason but we lost it. Then we got some Blue Cross for like a month until David quit Staters, this was years ago of course. When we tried to get back on Medi-Cal when David broke his collar bone, they said "You have Blue Cross."

We're like "We don't have Blue Cross"

and they're like "You do too"

and we're all like "No man"

and they're like "Prove it"

and we're like "Fine" so we call Blue Cross only you cant talk to Blue Cross unless you're a member so we were screwed until we talked to yet another worker who figured it all out.

Long story short, the kids are covered, David and I are not. Apparently we're on this weird cusp thing, where we don't make enough money to where we can afford the better health care programs, but we make too much to get the hand out, so what it comes down to is we still have to talk to Blue Cross, or not Blue Cross but the Union he used to work for and prove that he's not working with them anymore, and then we will get something called "Shared Cost Medi-Cal."

Right, I don't know either. Don't ask me, I'm just a girl. Tee hee.

Back to the boy's doctor's appointments (sorry I went off on a thing there, but I had to clear up why Wade hadn't been in so long.) We get there, it's the same crappy old office we used to go to back in the day with the four hour waiting and third generation medical equipment. And there's no toys in the waiting room! What kind of pediatric medical office doesn't at least have those bead and wire roller coaster thingy toys? This place had nothing. And we had to wait for like 45 minutes, and there was this woman who was eating yogurt. Actually, she was scraping the sides of the cup with her spoon and sticking her tongue out all over the place while she worked to get whatever scraps of the yogurt there once was in the cup. It smelled like berry yogurt and I was getting ready to heave, which is odd, but that's another thing entirely. My boys kept busy by looking through medical magazines (Mama why is she squirting that medicine in her nose?) and inventing new ways to sit in chairs.

So here's the official update on the boys, health wise.

Ty is going to be five on the 22nd of August and he weighs 41 pounds. He is 3'9 1/2" tall, which is pretty freaking tall for a not even five year old. He's got good reflexes, and most importantly he has good vision. See, I was worried about his vision because my left eye is all fucked, and it's hereditary. Last time I saw a doctor my left eye was like 20/250, and it cant be corrected with lenses. David on the other hand has 20/20 so I'm hoping that's what the doctor meant by "he sees good." At least he doesn't see bad. I know this much, I was trying to do the chart along with him, and he was reading the tiny letters when I couldn't ever see the damn E.

Also Ty's balls are fine. Just wanted to share that, because hey, good balls is good balls, amiright? And Ty had three shots today, a Hep something, a pneumonia shot, and a chicken pox shot too. Did you know that they vaccinate for that now? I didn't, fuck. I always thought it was one of those things that you want your kid to get just to get it out of the way or something. Like pox parties, where your mom would force you to go play at the infected kid's house.

According to Dr Luke, "He no want to get that. He be sick for two week and he get scar all over his body. Nobody want that."

And so, chicken pox are a thing of the past. Awesome.

Ty is good and healthy but we have to go back Monday for a TB and an anemia test.

Now on to Wade. Wade will be three on August 3rd, and he is 37 pounds (just barely a few pounds less than Ty.) He is 3'3" and he giggles when the doctor touches him and does the stethoscope thing.

Dr Luke, who thought his name was pronounced Wad, like a wad of paper or a wad of gum, asked if his hair was a natural color. It is. He said that Wade is a good boy and will get treat.

I'm not making fun, I am just writing in his accent. I do that a lot as a writer, it makes dialogue scenes better.

"He is pale. We check his blood for anemia."

"He's white is all," I say, "it's the red head skin. His dad is like this too."

Not convinced, Dr Luke ordered blood tests for anemia.

Then they caught Wade up on all of the shots that he's missed, which was a total of 12. But he was a brave little toaster, he didn't fight, he just sobbed and said "you hurt me." He has the sweetest little baby voice ever, the nurses were charmed. Then he asked for candy and they gave it to him and he was fine.

Where as Ty screamed and pitched a fit like a little bitch. Sorry to put it that way, but there really is no other way to say it.

Oh and Wade's balls are fine too. Yay!

Ridge Fire *Updated 7/5 at 10:09 AM

Okay, goodie goodie, it's that time again and Southern California is on fire. For those concerned, because I hear the crazy television people are camping out in the Beaumont and all, I will keep this post updated as necessary as the fire burns just so you know what is going on. Unless something major happens, this post will be the official Ridge Fire post. When I update it, I will also update the title with the standard *Updated at: TIME* so those of you who are following along can do so easily.

First of all, the fire is in Yucaipa, not Beaumont. It started a mile North of Hwy 38 and Bryant Street, and this is a good 15 or so miles from where I live as the crow flies.

As of 4:51 on July 3, the Ridge Fire has burned 250 acres. We've got planes and our inmate fire crew program on it (which is a bunch of prisoners that they train to be fire fighters, very cool program.) This is according to the San Bernardino Sun, as the Press Enterprise is not reporting on it as of yet. We have one fire fighter with heat exhaustion but things are going along. I can smell smoke but not see it well. No pictures as of yet.

Also there was a small brush fire in Hesperia earlier but it has been contained. Hesperia is over on the other side of the very big Bear Mountain, so that's nowhere near my house.

7/5 @ 10:09 AM:

According to the San Bernardino Sun, the fire still remains a threat.

Copypasta as follows:

By Joe Nelson

Staff Writer

YUCAIPA - The Ridge Fire was still reported at 15 percent containment today, but a fleet of six air tankers and three helicopters that assisted in Thursday's suppression efforts helped firefighters hold the blaze at 250 acres, officials said.

The air tankers blanketed the blaze with 60,721 gallons of retardant, said John Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.

"We were able to get some good work done," Miller said of Thursday's efforts.

About 400 firefighters continue battling the blaze today, and are still hoping to have it fully contained by 8 p.m.

"The only thing that can change that is if we had a sudden change in the weather and we get some strong winds," Miller said.

If that happens, it could pose a problem. The fire is burning in thick chaparral, scrub and cheat grasses near the Yucaipa Ridge, about two miles northeast of Yucaipa.

"If we hit some high winds, there's still a strong possibility the fires could get outside the fire line," said Miller. "And with only 15 percent containment, we still consider the fire a threat to the community."

The fire is burning in steep and rocky area, presenting some challenges to firefighters. Firefighters from the U.S. forest Service, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the San Bernardino Fire Department, the San Bernardio County Fire Department and the Redlands Fire Department are all assisting in quelling the fire, Miller said.

Two helicopters, 11 engines, two dozers and four water tenders are assisting in today's firefighting efforts, Miller said.

Firefighters are expected to be on the fire line through Sunday.

"It's a lot of slow-going work," Miller said.

Though the cause of the fire is still under investigation, investigators have been able to determine that it was caused by a human. It was not, however, arson- or fireworks-related, Miller said.

The blaze ignited about 1:34 p.m. Thursday. It threatened three ranch homes near Yucaipa Ridge Road and Quartz Street, but firefighters descended on the area and quickly eliminated that threat, Miller said.

"That's where we focused our efforts when we first got on scene - protecting those homes," Miller said.

The fire is burning about two miles from Yucaipa Regional Park, where throngs of funseekers poured in today in celebration of the Fourth of July. But they need not worry about the fire or smoke, Miller said.

"They could probably see isolated spot fires within the perimeter (of the park)," Miller said, adding that no roads have been closed and no evacuations have been ordered.

Burt Angeli, superintendent of Yucaipa Regional Park, said the park was just about at full capacity as of 12:30 p.m. today. The U.S. Forest Service has a fire camp stationed at the park for the fire, and deputies were on site.

"We're just monitoring for any fireworks," Angeli said, adding that park patrons seemed pretty comfortable with conditions.

"I think pretty much everybody in Southern California knows about the awareness of the fire danger in the local mountains and are concerned about it. People are pretty conscientious," Angeli said.

Firefighters and forest protection officers, as well as sheriff's deputies, will be conducting aggressive patrols throughout the San Bernardino Valley and San Bernardino Mountains throughout the afternoon and evening in search of people illegally igniting or possessing fireworks. Violators face fines and confiscation of their fireworks.

Today's forecast calls for sunny skies with a high of 91 degrees in the San Bernardino area, with west winds between five and 10 mph and humidity hanging around 23 percent. It will remain clear through the night, with a low around 67 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.

Temperatures are expected to cool overnight, and Saturday's forecast calls for sunny skies with a high near 89 degrees.

/copypasta.

Still Less Of A Social Butterfly But A Good Friend And Neighbor

These here are the two romance novels that my neighbor Mustang Sally wrote. Mustang Sally, you know, the one who bought me a plant and is sharing her private internets with me. She knocked on my door last night and said "I never even caught your name," and then she signed the two books for me and handed them over.

Only they're written entirely in Romanian so I have no idea what they are about. David and I flipped through them. We picked out words like "Kevin" and "Kathy." The one with the flames is called "Hell in Paradise." I thought it was fire but she said it more closely translated to hell.

That is awesome!

I cant read them but what cool things to have regardless, right? She signed one of them in English and the other in Romanian, I love it.

She did it for a reason though. She needed to talk about some personal stuff, and I was glad I was there to listen, and glad that she saw me as someone to come to. I like to think that I'm a good person to talk to, bounce ideas off of, and get advice from. I'm pretty open minded and it isn't typical of me to judge. Well, it is in some situations, like when you're harming your body with substances or doing something completely selfish that hurts another person like fucking six mail men, but you know, for the most part I'm happy to listen.

And people, she officially called me her friend. Do you know when the last time was that I made a friend as an adult that I didn't previously know from school or childhood or met on the internet?

I haven't. I thought I did, like back when I was working, but if those people were my friends then why didn't they call me after I left?

She's actually a pretty neat person, she speaks four languages and is learning Arabic because she wants to be in the FBI, and she's shared some of her English writing with me, which is a little broken (for example her short story called "Conflict of Intrice) but intriguing none the less.

And get this, she knits. She writes and she knits, and she came to me when she needed to talk. She's lived here almost two years and all I ever knew about her was that she revved the engine of her Mustang in parking lots when people didn't pull out of the spot she wanted fast enough. Turns out this woman could be perfectly suitable for hanging out with and I'm glad I met her.

I have a pretty hard time meeting people, which is why I generally tend to fall back on people I've already met. Obviously I don't get out very much, this town is dull and full of stupid and defensive people, so when I happen to run into someone I know, I think "Hey, I know you," and they think "Hey, let's pick up where we left off!"

Only you cant pick up where you left off. Case in point, my friend Officer Steppy. We went on one date like eight years ago and avoided eye contact after that pretty much till graduation. I want to be friends with him as adults, but I think, I think he wants to be, you know, "adult friends." Not particularly what I am looking for, so can we please just like hang out and talk about how cool it is that you're a cop and that I'm a writer and wow isn't it crazy to have kids and whatever the hell else adults talk about?

And then of course there's Chawny the ex-stripper who I based Bombshell's Marina character after, she's not talking to anyone at the moment because of some heavy personal stuff, including some horrible infection that she is fighting before it kills her. Something about biting into a pickle and losing a tooth and the dentist's face turning white when he saw the x-rays.

What it comes down to is this. We don't have a land line phone because nobody ever calls us. Nobody ever calls us because we don't have any friends, and typically the scraps of family members that we communicate with don't call just to talk. Now do I want a social life? Do I want to be a social butterfly?

On the internet, yes. In real life? Not really.

But I'll take what I can get. Romanian romance novelist neighbor for the win.

The Magnificent Margarito

I've got a great story from David's ride along with CHP last night. I normally don't share too much about those, but there's nothing saying that I cant. So let me tell you a little bit about Margarito.

David and his officer were camped out at this stop sign writing tickets for rollers (California stop.) They wrote seven tickets there for that infraction, which made the stop sign, in cop language "a sweet little cherry picking spot."

Then came Margarito. Margarito not only rolled the stop, but when he made the turn he took it really wide and almost side swiped the cop car, so the officer flipped a bitch and lit him up.

The guy clearly smells like he had been drinking. When asked how much he had to drink that night, he said in Spanish that he only had one beer and some carne asada at like 4:00. Well this is 9:00. Someone's lying, and I think it might be Margarito.

So they did the first test, which I forget what it is called but watch any episode of Cops and you'll know what I'm talking about. You take a pen or something and wave it slowly back and fourth in front of their face and see if their eyes can follow it. See, you and me, or...me anyway, I don't know how drunk you are, but if they did that to me, my eyes would roll smoothly back and fourth because I'm not drunk. If I were drunk, you would see a "jump," or the eye wouldn't roll smoothly but sort of glitch. It's hard to explain, it's like watching You Tube on a 28.8 modem as opposed to cable. But Margarito basically passed it with only a tiny little jump.

So next they did the leg test, where they have you put one leg out and stand like that for over 9000 hours. Margarito put his leg down twice, which I hear is not really that bad. Then they had him touch each finger to his thumb and count 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1, at least 100 times. He did it well, even though the counting was all in Spanish, but honestly he was in pretty good shape. Then came the breathalyzer.

California's limit is .08. Margarito blew a .28!

Holy hot dicks from hell! Do it again Margarito...

.29!

Okay, tow the car, it's jail time. And Margarito was pretty cool as far as drunks go, he was cooperative and easy going, a little sloshed but he got his shit done. So David and the officer got him in the car and headed off to "Camp Snoopy," which is what the cops affectionately call the jail in Banning because apparently it's a pretty laid back place to serve your time. The cop says that in all the years he's worked out here, he's only seen two escapes. One guy just scaled the razor wire wall and booked it, but they found him like 10 minutes later because it's hard to hide from THE LAW when you're wearing bright orange. The other guy? He strapped himself to the bottom of a bus and made it out to Indio. Indio is like 40 miles from Banning. Man, I do have to give the guy some credit, riding on the bottom of a bus for 40 miles on the I-10 in the 100+ degree heat, I salute you prison break guy, I salute you.

So the cop gets in the car and says to Margarito, "So Margarito, how many beers did you really have tonight?"

"A six pack," he answers.

Yeah, that was also a lie, because when they got to the jail the guy blew a .30. Now most people start getting alcohol poisoning at about a .15, and by most people I mean lightweights and people who never really drink. Maybe someone who drinks a little heavier and more often could make it to a .19 or a .20, but Margarito, man, that guy was pretty fucking drunk when you get right down to it, and he was able to hold his liquor pretty well.

Nobody would have known the wiser if he hadn't of gotten behind the wheel.

While they were waiting for all the paperwork to be done, there was this really fat drunk chick there who was less drunk than Margarito technically but more belligerent. Her boobs were falling out of her ill fitting clothes, and David's cop asked her what the tattoo was on her ankle.

"Oh that? THAT'S A PIECE OF SHIT!" she yells. Actually it was a rose, not a piece of shit.

And Margarito, he was cool. He was a little slow to react, but he was cool otherwise.

Okay, so here's what I'm wondering. A few things I wonder about, actually. For one thing, I don't drink. I don't like the taste of alcohol, and I really don't like the feeling of not being in control of myself. I don't think I've had a drink since turning 21, that is to say that I didn't drink at all on my 21st birthday because I was pregnant, and any alcohol I drank was when I was a kid, sad but true, but also I can count the number of times that I've had a drink on one hand. Some people say that it gets better as you get older, I don't know. I just don't care for it.

So the first thing I wonder is, do you people who drink just stomach your way past the taste? Or does the taste actually improve at some point? Do you fake it till you make it? I don't know, I just don't get how these 14 year olds throw their parties with their shoplifted SoCo and enjoy it.

And the hangover...how can you possibly do it even though you know you'll get a hangover? I mean, I've gone through labor and pregnancy twice and we are **thinking** of having another baby despite how much I loathe being pregnant and how gawdawful back labor is, but it doesn't keep me from sex, so I don't know, maybe it's along the same lines.

The other thing I wonder is how do you consume that much liquid? I mean of anything! I drink maybe three, maaaaybe four diet Dr Peppers a day, but they last me. I have them sitting on the table while I work or clean and I usually finish them off at meals or heavily spiced or salted snacking times. If you told me to drink a six pack of Dr Pepper, I couldn't do it. Back before milk tried to kill me with its allergy inducing enzymes, I once tried "the milk challenge," which is of course drinking an entire gallon of milk in one sitting. After about half a gallon it just starts coming back out of you through any hole it chooses. You cannot just be drinking that amount of liquid, it is impossible!

So it turns out that Margarito's car had a cooler in it with half a bottle of whiskey in it, and there were nine empty tall beer cans. How in the name of physical science did that guy consume that much liquid? If our bodies are 65% water, Margarito's must be closer to 110% Coors.

Oh well, a drunk off the road is a drunk off the road.