Eyes Tightly Shut

I have decided to start writing with my eyes shut.  It seems it is the easiest, and sometimes only, way I can get the words out of my head and onto the screen.  It all started this past November, when for the first time ever, I attempted NaNoWriMo. I made the decision the morning the challenge started, which happened to also be two days before working a week-long trade show in Vegas.

Needless to say I failed. Terribly. I barely got a paragraph out that Sunday before deciding that I would work on my novel mentally while in Vegas (my first ever trip to Vegas, btw) and would type out all my wonderful words after I returned.  Every night that week, while my co-workers were out partying it up in Vegas, I headed back to my room. Not to work on my writing though; after standing in a booth talking to strangers all day, instead of thinking about my characters or subplots, all I could think about was throwing away my dress shoes and sleeping forever. Neither option possible since I had to get up and do it all over again the next morning. And then I got home, and my kids and husband missed me and wanted my attention! And then I had to work late, to make up for the real work I missed while at the trade show! And then it was Thanksgiving! And then it was December! And then, and then! With all these fairly legit excuses I was doomed before I started and never really made a dent on the novel.

Usually I start over-analyzing everything and editing and worrying and I end up with a blank screen in the end, but that one paragraph I eked out on the second of November? I wrote that fully embracing the whole "write now, edit later" thing everyone seems to love about NaNo: I just sat down and started typing out my story. After a couple false starts, where I deleted and changed those first few sentences, I finally just closed my eyes and started typing. And it wasn't half bad, and I was actually proud of those words. Even though I haven't written much since November <insert excuse here, here and here>, for what I have written-a story start, several blog drafts, half a poem-I've found that closing my eyes and just typing silences the condescending voices in my head, at least long enough to get the words out, then I really do have to edit. 

It's a start, right?

Goodbye Crafty 2013.

Hello 2014.

I just deleted four drafts from blogger. Two random updates that were outdated in the wording, a post about anonymity and a list that I've now lost interest in.  I figure I can combine anything from those in this one post and move on from 2013.  

I "committed" to posting more and participating in more challenges last year and failed, completely.  I probably won't be better this year but I know better than to publicly commit again.  A lot of my valid excuses for not writing revolved around crafting.

Crafty things I did last year:

-Worked on my crazy quilt entries for the first half of the year, didn't complete the challenge but it was nice to actually spend some time working on my quilt blocks.

-Spent over a month making 50 invitations for a friend's bridal shower. This was way more stressful than it should have been. I didn't want to disappoint the bride, I wanted to impress her friends and family and I put a ton of unnecessary pressure on myself to make everything perfect. But they turned out awesome so I guess it was worth it! 

-Designed subway art canvases for a wedding gift and for my sister. They ended up being 24x30"; I didn't take a picture of Gina's after I finished, I was so excited that I took it straight over to her house and then she promised to take pictures of it on the wall but she keeps forgetting too.  Designing these took way longer than I expected-only worked on them in the evenings after work so it took me almost two weeks.  Once the printed canvas arrived from Spoonflower I just wrapped it around an artist canvas and stapled it in place. 

 

-Made a dozen "Thank You" cards as an additional wedding gift for my friend.

-Made random cards and stamped jewelry gifts for friends throughout the year.

-Made a dozen "Hello" cards for a random stranger in an online holiday gift exchange. 

-Made and mailed out two dozen Christmas cards. I waited until the weekend before Christmas so this was a touch stressful.

-Made another dozen Christmas cards for Gina to mail out. I'm pretty sure she let the kids play with them instead. Oh well.

Non-crafty things that kept me from writing last year:

-Played crappy Facebook/phone games.

-Read a few books, not as many as I wanted to. Seems I always challenge myself to 36 on Goodreads then I only get in 18.

My last two updates:

Gina is almost finished with her clinical trial. She can't really discuss it with anyone so I can't really go into details but everyone is optimistic. She is in the beginning stages of being in remission and is doing maintenance chemo and the doctors are monitoring her remaining spots in her lungs. I still have some posts on her and cancer and everything but like always, those will be written "later".

My littles are getting too big, too fast. We baked cookies together for the first time. It was so much fun that I'm thinking of making it a monthly ritual and not just a Christmas one.

My vague goals for the year:

Craft more.

Write more.

Play more.

Read more.

Love more.

Hope everyone is having a great New Year!

Redscale: An Experiment in Film Photography

I rarely shoot with my 35mm SLR anymore because the cost of developing is crazy*. Every couple of years, though, I can't resist the urge to take a roll or two of shots before going back to digital.  This past summer was one of those times, but I was pretty busy and never got the chance to pull out my camera, so instead I haunted Lomography, a website dedicated to film photography and daydreamed about my own dusty camera.  Last week we ended up taking a trip to the coast, and just a day or two before leaving I found a tutorial for making your own "redscale' film on their website, and decided I'd try it out.

Here's the Point Cabrillo Lighthouse taken with my digital camera:

And here's the same shot with my 35mm using the redscale technique:

Pretty cool, right? Unfortunately, things weren't as easy for me as they were for the guy who wrote the tutorial.  First, I'm not overly competent or patient with pliers. Second, my camera didn't seem to care for my loading the film in upside-down. Neither of which were major deterrents. The third little glitch, though, almost ruined my whole experiment: the film I used ended up tearing out of the canister after my last shot, so I couldn't wind the film back up. I had to take the whole camera into Costco and have them remove the film in their darkroom bag! Luckily, they had no problem doing so and I ended up with a full roll of pictures including a few interesting images.

I'll post a few more redscale pictures along with a few of the digital pictures later on. I have ~1000 digital images to sort through from our trip, plus another roll of 35mm that I used normally, so it might be a week or two before I post them.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

*I almost forgot! The drugstores around here charge $13-$15 for developing, a set of prints & a disc; I just found out that Costco charges $8 for the same three services! If you don't get the discs it's only $3.99, or $5.99 if you want duplicates! I won't be able to blame my lack of 35mm photographs on the cost of developing anymore...

Just A Random Update

My sister, Gina, is doing well. She hasn't had her surgery yet; they rescheduled because she had a sinus infection and a day later she found out it would've been moved anyway-all non-emergency surgeries are being rescheduled because of the antibiotic resistant strain of Staph that our area has apparently been hit with. She isn't doing any radiation or chemo right now, they've decided to put her on immune suppressants and just keep an eye on the spot in her lung and throat. Now that she's not struggling with the side effects of those two treatments she's feeling better, although the immune suppressants create their own set of issues for her and some days are worse than others.

It's harder to write about her than I expected. It's too difficult to write about how I feel about her illness, but I thought recording my memories would be easy, that in doing so I would be able to cope better. There are some truly funny times that I would love to talk about, some rough times, some happy times. Some moments that are just memorable for no real reason at all. But when I set out to write about things like that it feels like I'm giving up in some way, like I'm focusing on the past because I'm worried there isn't a future. Which I know isn't true, and it's a little silly to think like that, but I over-analyze everything and can't help but feel that way when I try to write these things down. I hope to get over this soon, since most of these memories are fun to talk about regardless of why I initially thought to record them.

Now that she's feeling better most days, Gina has signed up for a 3-day, 60-mile walk to support Susan G and breast cancer research (we've found almost no lung cancer awareness programs outside of stop-smoking support). She has started walking again, she was able to do 5k's as late as last fall but the last few months she hasn't really been able to run much, so having to restart with just walking is a little disappointing for her. I always say I want to walk/run with her, we used to do a 2 mile jog 3-4 times a week when we were younger-then I got a serious boyfriend and wasn't nearly as interested in jogging at 9pm anymore! Anyway, last week I finally decided to quit making excuses and I walked her home. It's ~4 miles and took us an hour and 15 minutes. It was rough-if I had remembered that it was all uphill, I probably wouldn't have quit making excuses to get out of it! The quality, one-on-one time with her was great though, plus I was finally able to get a picture of the tree I moon over every time I drive by.

We're supposed to go again tomorrow. Wish me luck :)

Unpacking still sucks...

I hate unpacking. I have moved so many times in my lifetime that you'd think I'd get used to and start to enjoy it, but not really. It's still on the same level as housework or maybe it's even as low on the list of fun as a dental visit is. 

The two main reasons I hate unpacking:

First, I have to look at every.single.little.piece of hoarded treasure I see--books, craft supplies of all mediums, photos, notes and other personal ephemera-some of which is legitimate memorabilia while some of it is probably trash.  This habit of mine makes it very time consuming to try and get through even one box, making it much easier to just hunt for that one picture or piece of fabric I know I saw in that one box rather than attempt to unpack until I absolutely have to.

Second, I rarely actually help to pack up the rest of our stuff, since I have to handle all of my stuff myself, so I never know where anything is-like the paperwork I actually need, or the camera or battery charger (of course they won't be packed together which means I will find them a week or two apart and both are worthless without the other).  But since unpacking it means I won't have to dig through unmarked boxes I won't be able to put it off forever.

Anyway, I believe I mentioned back in September that we had moved into an apartment a couple months after we returned from Florida and recouped a bit. We thought that would be our last move before buying a house-which is ~2 long years away still. But our two toddlers weren't too happy in the second-story two bedroom we originally chose. But you know what sucks more than unpacking? Constantly having to put your kids in time out for being kids. And so we spent a couple weeks looking for a house with a yard within 15 minutes of my sister's house, and moved in two weeks ago.  

And with this being our last move for a couple years, hopefully anyway, I don't have a legitimate reason to not unpack everything. Although before I can actually focus on that, I am going to attempt this weekend's Trifextra Challenge and I need to upload the crappy cell picture of my February block for The Crazy Quilt Journal Project-2013, hopefully the first box I actually make it through has the camera and the charger in it, then I can put off the rest of the boxes for a little while.

Another Instance of Run-On Love

I can't manage to write, on time, 5 lines of verse for Limerick-Off Monday, 17 syllables for Sensational Haiku Wednesday, 33 words for Trifecta, 1 minute's worth of writing for One-Minute Writer, anything at all for Poets & Writers, or any of the other 38 challenge/prompt sites bookmarked in my browser*.

But...

I can write a 46 word, run-on sentence describing my surprise at enjoying the nail salon trip on Christmas Eve...

Well, I would "commit" to writing as a New Year's resolution, but I think I've already "committed" close to a dozen times in recent months, and we all see how well that has worked out for me!




*I just happen to have these five open at the moment.

Another End of the World Poem

There has been a ton of hype this week regarding the end of the world. There are dedicated websites detailing why today was the day-the Mayan calendar, planetary alignments, misc. religious prophecies, etc.  I didn't buy into any of it, but I had considered posting REM & Europe music videos.  I also thought about getting up at 3 am and mocking all the doomsdayers on Facebook, but sleep was far more important last night.

Of course, the world hasn't ended yet and it's December 21st everywhere by now. I'm sure the folks at Poets.org knew this would be the case since they posted a poem today, a rather fitting one, I might add. Today's Poem-A-Day is Robert Frost's Fire and Ice. 

Some say the world will end in fire, 
Some say in ice. 
From what I've tasted of desire 
I hold with those who favor fire. 
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate 
To know that for destruction ice 
Is also great 
And would suffice.

(I like this widget so much I think I may add the daily one to my main page.)

Life is Fine

While digging through one of several still-unpacked boxes looking for a picture, I came across this poem by Langston Hughes. My first year of college, 1200 miles from home, I had taped this to my dorm room wall, but haven't really thought about it in the last ten years or so.

I never found the picture I was looking for tonight, but I'm glad I stumbled across this poem. I thought I'd share the poem here, not for inspiration or anything really, but just because I like it and don't want to wait another decade before finding/remembering it.

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

     But it was     Cold in that water!     It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.

     But it was     High up there!     It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

     Life is fine!     Fine as wine!     Life is fine!

***

Good night :)

Fake Funeral

I originally posted this on Blogher back in April, when I thought I might be active enough to have two blogs. It didn't take more than a post or two to realize that one is enough.  I posted this the same day I posted the funeral poem here, since it reminded me of the memory:

"In 2000-01-ish, my younger-by-a-year sister got it in her head to throw herself a funeral.  At 18 years old she wanted to take part in the festivities while she was still young and alive enough to enjoy them, plus it gave us something to do on a boring Saturday.

First, we went dress shopping-she wanted to be laid to rest in somethin' fancy! We drove around to several department stores, checking out the leftover prom clearance. I think we went to three stores before finding something that was both pretty and affordable. We also had to buy a black and purple velvet top hat-I can't really remember the justification behind the hat now, but it was necessary for the ceremony to be perfect. 

Then we had to get a copy of "Painted Black" --the theme song of choice for our impromptu funeral--and of course we needed flowers! My grandma was not very pleased when we cut a few choice stems from her garden, she didn't quite get the whole "fake funeral" thing.

After my sister was dressed in her gown and hat, she stretched out on the couch while the Rolling Stones played in the background and we stood around staring at her clutching her bouquet of peach roses.  My mom took pictures to commemorate the funeral, and I think between the escaping giggles (we all HAD to be straight faced, this was a serious funeral and we wouldn't laugh if it were the real thing would we??) my mom may have had a bit of moisture in her eyes.

Even if it is a bit on the morbid side, it still cracks us up to talk about it. I would say it is one of my favorite memories--although I say that about most of the good ones!"

I'm not sure right now if this memory is still a favorite. In fact, because of the "what-ifs" I almost wish I could forget it completely.  But at the same time I want to remember things like this, because of the what-ifs. 

I am likely going to post random tidbits related to my sister, mainly for my own memory-keeping but also so everyone else can get to know her a bit.

Random Forgetfulness

For some reason, the "tab" key takes you directly from the title box to the "publish" button now. The older version of Blogger went from the title box to compose section. Which makes sense, why would someone type just the title then hit publish?! Besides me, tonight, since I hit tab then the right combo of keystrokes to equal enter, thus publishing an empty post.

Anyway. 

Today I made cookies. I want to enter a contest so I am tweaking a chocolate & coconut recipe.  I accidentally forgot a cup of flour. Which should've meant two dozen cookies were headed straight to the trash can, right? Nope. I decided to bake them, just in case I didn't really forget the flour, and they came out with a brownie-like texture and my husband loves them. I have another, correct, batch chilling in the fridge, but I am definitely going to add my screw-up to my recipe box.

I know that the mind works in mysterious ways. Well, at least mine does. But I am always surprised when something strange happens to me. I was finishing up an hour and a half round of grocery shopping at Walmart, when out of nowhere I thought it would be hilarious if I forgot my debit card and had to go home. I laughed out loud, luckily the aisle was empty, then all of a sudden realized I didn't have my card! I used it earlier and put it in the center console instead of my pocket, so at least it was in the car and not at home. But I am sure I wouldn't have remembered until I was checking out, if it hadn't of been for that random thought. Sure, most people would remember stuff like that, or would check to be sure they had whatever they needed, but I am not most people. I let my husband keep my driver's license in his wallet because I have lost it 4 times in the last two years. So remembering or checking for my ATM card before starting a grocery trip just isn't part of my M.O.

In another example of my poor memory this weekend, I found out the hard way that I forgot to update my Facebook account with my new phone number.  I don't rely on the mobile updates to keep me updated as much as I did this past summer, so updating the phone number wasn't something I thought of right away, then I completely forgot about changing it.  Apparently someone has activated a phone with it though...I logged on yesterday afternoon to see that "I" replied to a bunch of posts saying things like "I don't know you" & "My name is Sean, quit texting me!"  At first, I thought I was hacked, obviously I'm not Sean, and I do know my sister and my friends.  After a minute or two or re-reading all the texts I realized what happened, and called the kid to apologize then updated my Facebook account. Then I had to explain to half a dozen people what happened.

(I have another kinda funny story about Facebook but rather than bore you, it can be summed up with the following bit of advice:  "Don't Facebook stalk from your cell phone if it is prone to freezing, as you are likely to start tapping in frustration and sending out a bunch of random friend requests to people you don't know". I'll leave it at that for tonight.)

Have a great week!

What's in a name?

Once a week I get a meme in my email that I never fill out. I know, I know, I'm never going to get kissed, someone's going to die, and I'll be poor forever... One of the first questions is always a variation of "what is your nickname".  Some of my friends have really awesome or funny or fitting nicknames. Mine are: Maria, Bagel and Raquel.  My middle name is Marie but my dad has always called me "Maria", so much so that I call myself Maria weekly.  "Bagel" is my sister's favorite name for me-it kind of rhymes with Rachael. And "Raquel" is just Spanish for "Rachael". Which apparently isn't common knowledge since I had to explain to the new kid why my co-worker calls me Raquel. Oh well.

Over the years, I have collected at least a dozen email accounts. My very first account, circa 1998-9, is a weird-ish spelling of twilight eyes: my favorite time of day + my best physical feature (well besides my big ol' booty, but twilight ass isn't something I could write my grandma with).  I loved that handle so much that I have used variations of it in several of my other email accounts. 

It would probably still be my favorite user id, except for the whole Twilight saga thing.  I didn't hate the books or the movies, but I certainly hate the snickers I get after giving out my email address when I call various customer service depts.  Obviously, I am such a "twihard" I had to put my love for the series in my email account; there is no way I created my account before the books/movies came out.  Unfortunately Yahoo doesn't have a "member since ##" like pretty much every other email hosting service. So I have zero proof. And no choice but to suffer through the lame jokes.

Anyone else out there have an email that they can't get rid of but aren't always proud of?

Another name I have gotten a couple questions on is my blog name. "Angle 949" is pretty random. No, really, it is. I picked it from a list of captchas I liked enough to think they would be usable one day. (In case you're interested, three have been used-this one plus two others have shown up in WIPs (the plural of WIP seems odd to me-it seems like it should ve WsIP!!)).  And since my interests are all over the place, I figured hundreds of angles would cover it!  So far, I haven't really covered many of my interests other than writing. And I've done quite a bit of whining. But eventually I'll post other stuff, and then the name will fit a little better.

Hope you're all having a great weekend!

Altered Text Poetry

Several years ago, I came across Tom Phillips' A Humument, and instantly fell in love. The way he transformed a random book into a completely different piece of art is incredible. And inspiring.  I have bought several books with the intent of emulating Phillips, but an entire novel seems daunting, so I have started creating altered text ATCs*-much more manageable.  I don't make them very often, part of me almost feels like I am cheating somehow, but I really enjoy the process when I do sit down to make them.

Here are two of my favorites:

 Out of the smoke

She returned to herself

but she was altered

morning and night

by the relentless question:

How?

Shadows kidnap her,

his one pale eye

memorizing the brief moment

The raven recognized it.

Motionless.

As stand-alone poems they need some work, but as miniature artsy pieces, I think they are pretty good. Sometimes, when I am having trouble focusing on what I want to write I will work on this type of thing. Like I mentioned above, I kind of feel like I am cheating when I create these; I'd love to get some other opinions on the matter, if anyone would care to chime in-even to agree that it is cheating.

*ATC=Artist Trading Card, a 2.5 x3.5 piece of art. I first found out about these when I used to participate in swaps on Swap-Bot. That's another item on my "get-back-into-eventually list"' it's a very long list!

Hello, Stranger

I have written several dozen different posts this past summer. All of them in my head since my only Internet access prior to this weekend was at work. I can't promise that this will be an altogether coherent post since I have just so much to say and I want to say it all and keep some of it to myself and tell you all everything all at once!! Yes, I am a tad bit excited to be back at my blog!

For now I'm going to just do bullet points and later on I will write out additional posts on things I need or want to discuss further. I apologize for the run-ons and poor sentence structure, bullets just seem to call for poor grammar sometimes ;)

• June 8 we abandoned the majority of our belongings in Florida, rented a car and spent three days driving back to Nevada. It was so much better than I expected, and regardless of the circumstances it was actually kind of fun and I want to take more road trips.



• Immediately returned to work that Monday. Not nearly as good as I had it in FL, but it is familiar at least.



• Bought a car, since we left ours to be sold, eventually, in FL. One week later the car was vandalized and we spent a month waiting for the insurance company to pay to fix it. That is probably the only positive to this summer being unusually dry in Northern Nevada-my daughter would not have appreciated the rain pouring through her missing window if it had rained at all.



• Signed up for a new cell phone service and received awesome new phones-with Internet access and potential bloggy access. One week later my phone was stolen (well first it was left on my car, then a stranger picked it up and proceeded to use the Internet and make long distance calls, which were free, luckily. Yay for signing up for "unnecessary" phone insurance! That is until I found out you have to have the phone for more than one month to make a claim, and making a claim prior to that one month means you void the possibility of making a claim on the same phone after the month has passed.



• Summer was otherwise uneventful, quite boring in fact. We stayed with my brother-in-law, his wife, and their five children. They did not have wifi, and the only computer was in their master bedroom, so I rarely ever used it.



• September 1 we signed a lease for an awesome apartment in an awesome neighborhood. It's right at the edge of my comfort level as far as affordability goes, but its cheaper than some we looked at and it is in the part of town we wanted to live in.

Now that I have that all out of the way I can go back to writing randomness here and there and writing here and there and not feeling like I need to catch myself up completely beforehand. I missed it more than I expected to.

Just checking in

Over the past four days I have written and deleted three posts, not counting the additional ones I have drafted in my head. Lately, I have been lacking confidence in my opinions and ideas, even over trivial matters. For example, I started to write a book review, which I normally have no problem with, but I broke my own rule and read other reviews first. Now I don't know if my feelings about the book are valid. Maybe I was just emotional when I read it, maybe I have a poor taste in literature...These and other doubts make me hesitant to commit my review to the Internet. I also wanted to share my opinions on a couple of things that have popped up in the news. And my opinions on other things. But what if no one agrees with my opinions? Half the time, I don't even agree with my opinions!

I was also going to talk about why I deleted my last blog in its entirety, without saving copies of any of the posts. But it's a lengthy explanation just to say "I am a coward". I am going to try my best to not delete this blog, even if I abandon it for days at a time.

I survived...Barely.

That shouldn't be in past tense, but I'm wiped out so the day is pretty much over for me--it's six and I'm officially old now so it's okay to call it a day, right? Anyway, today is the big day. 30. It sounds so weird. Up 'til yesterday I could still call myself a kid and now I probably can't.

I wish I could say I was spending my non-blogging time the last couple days doing something productive but aside from some blog reading, browsing Facebook and finishing the book I was reading, I haven't done crap! I have a valid excuse (still just an excuse though). For the last three days I have ended up with a high fever, chills and a headache. Then once the Tylenol kicks in I feel like I am dying from the heat. I am sure I have some form of the nasty throat virus my husband just got over, but I have had no pain or issues at all with my throat. Very weird. Very annoying.

Since I feel crappy we stayed around home all day today. My cousin and his family brought over pizza and cake, after hanging out and bs'ing a while they had to leave, and my daughter went into hysterics! It was hysterically funny and awful and sad all at the same time..She ran up to their son, who is 7 I believe, and clutched his waist, shrieking and crying. And we let it go on for at least two minutes. Because we are all mean adults. She probably needed a nap, but she also loves her little cousin; I'm not sure he's always as thrilled to have a three year old trailing him when we're all together though.

I also received some exciting news as far as my writing goes, but I heard it third party so I'll wait until it is confirmed to commit it to the internet!

Tomorrow we are attempting the beach again, I will be wearing at least a t-shirt and maybe full pants. Since obviously putting sunblock on often enough isn't a strong point of mine. Plus I'm still suffering from last weekend's sunburn. And after that I am picking up a case of books to distribute for World Book Night, I'm very excited about that.

I'm Not (very) Sorry. *Edited

I should be more apologetic for missing my post yesterday, but I'm finding it hard to muster much remorse this morning. I wish I had some awesome reason, but I really only have a few lame excuses...My husband's caught a nasty virus in his throat, my sunburn is killing me, the kids' sunburns are killing them which means they're bugging me, the dishes needed washing. Although all those excuses kept me from writing something worthwhile, they didn't stop me from playing mindless games on Facebook. While surfing the net last night in the hopes of finding inspiration for a creative blog post though, I came up with a character I want to explore. So in some small way my Sunday night failure wasn't that much of a loss.

One of the sites I like to play on is the Internet Anagram Server. I enjoy finding anagrams by hand, but this website is way better at them than I am! So when I am bored or searching for creativity (or working on the previously mentioned Mother Goose exercises) I browse through the search results to see what they come up with. Last night I plugged in my name-probably for the hundredth time since I discovered the site a few years ago-to see if anything new stuck out at me. Two words caught my attention--"Calla" and "whore". I'm no stranger to either word, but for some reason I kept coming back to them.

Now I have a new character and a bit of a story started in my WIP folder. Maybe now that she's on paper I won't return to her for months, or years, but I was so enthralled with her last night I even dreamt of her.

I'll be back later today with something of interest, I hope. The new Limerick-Off is up & the new Trifecta will be up soon, so I may work on those this afternoon.

**Edited to add: I have figured out why the name "Calla" continued to catch my eye--She is one of the main supporting characters in a book I started then set aside over a week ago!!! Here I was thinking that my Calla chose her name because of the calla lily, with Lily being too "pure" for Calla to keep a straight face when being introduced. Now I know for sure she will be set aside in my WIP folder for months or longer, so I can shake any connection in my head to Calla Moses in Jenny Wingfield's The Homecoming of Samuel Lake!**

A Short Set of Cause and Effect Examples

Cause: I chose to be frugal with the SPF.
Effect: I may now be buying market shares of Aloe Vera.

Cause: I am nearly burnt to a crisp.
Effect: My brain is too fried to write anything intelligent today.

Cause: I signed up for the April NaBloPoMo.
Effect: I am forcing you to read several lines of junk to lessen my guilt.

Hope you all had as fun a Saturday as we did...Hopefully you all wore sunscreen though (snow can cause sunburns too!).

Finally Friday!

It's been a long week, I am glad it is the weekend. My cousin invited us to go for a ride on his boat tomorrow--I'm excited but a little nervous because of the kids...My husband joked we could get the kid leashes we always make fun of other parents for. My brother-in-law is coming to visit, possibly to stay. He arrives Monday or Tuesday, I need to find out since I am his ride home from the airport, it will be nice to have another familiar face around here for awhile.

These pictures are from our trip to the beach last week, I try to be the only one to control the camera otherwise we end up with at least five pictures of my cleavage as I bend down to play with the kids!








Have a great weekend!

Storms Brewing

Sorry in advance for the potential rambling...And the run-ons, if you have read my profile then you have already been warned.

When I was younger, my sisters and I would lay out on the grass and watch the storm clouds-dark, swirly, angry-and count the seconds between lightning strikes and thunder claps to guess how far away the lightning was.

I still love a good storm, especially if there are strong winds involved. Everyone says storms bring change with them. But I feel like the recent change in my life is bringing the storms.

My husband and I thought that this move would be the best thing for our family, but we're almost two months into our new life and he is overstressed, I am overstressed, he is lonely, I am homesick. I keep warning everyone how much my husband doesn't like that he is stressed here. If we end up moving back the blame will fall on him, regardless of whether it is rightfully placed. The guilt of this fact, added to the stress and loneliness, weighs on me constantly. While I am at work I completely enjoy myself-I love working with my cousin (my boss)-and I am grateful for the opportunity we were given with the transfer. Outside of work though, I am not always so happy. I know there is always an adjustment period, I just hope it only lasts a short while longer.

There are so many things up in the air--every decision brings its own storm with it...To stay, something has to change for my husband and our stress situation--that alone is a storm to battle. To leave, a dozen storms will result! Just thinking about the fallout makes me anxious and depressed.

So instead of laying out and enjoying this storm, I'm trying to lock myself someplace safe where I don't have to think about it. It's not working well for me so far.

Sidetracked...

I thought I was going to to write about whether to blog anonymously or not, and how I am a little bit of a coward. But a quarter of the way into the post I realized it was about bullying. So I won't be posting about anonymity or bullying tonight--the latter definitely needs more time to write itself.

I don't have a back up plan for an alternate post tonight. Since I started this blog and jumped right into a poetry themed NaBloPoMo at the same time, my posts this month have been and will likely remain heavy on the poetry side. But poetry, and even writing in general, is not my main focus for this blog, and I plan on sprinkling a couple more random posts here and there in the next few weeks. Along with my post on bullying, I am hitting a milestone birthday this month and will likely post at least once about this. This post is kind of included in the whole "random" topic thing, since it is not about poetry or writing, or anything other than why I don't have a poetry-inspired post tonight.

(I can't decide how I want to or if I should close my posts.)