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 |  A continuation of my criminal blogging behavior. |
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IN THE WRITING.COM DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN Criminal Action No. 96-938-2 WRITING.COM Plaintiff, vs. Melissa is fashionably late!  Defendant. ************************************************************************ REPORTER'S TRANSCRIPT (Trial to Jury - Volume 222) ************************************************************************ Proceedings before the HONORABLE The StoryMaster  , Judge, Writing.Com District Court for the District of Michigan, commencing at 8:49 a.m., on the 5th day of April, 2007, in Chambers C-234, Writing.Com Courthouse.PROCEEDINGS (In open court at 8:49 a.m.) THE COURT: Please be seated. The jury has informed that they have arrived at their findings and recommendation. I caution all present to avoid any reaction to these findings and the recommendation, either audibly or visibly. And if anyone violates that, we'll have to remove them. Obviously, it will take some time to read these findings, as the recommendation is the last thing read; so please be careful and comply with this request. We'll return the jury. (Jury in at 8:53 a.m.) THE COURT: Members of the jury, have you arrived at your special findings and recommendation? JURORS: Yes. THE COURT: If the foreman will please hand that to Diane , who will hand it to me.Members of the jury, you will please listen to the reading of your Special Findings Form A. These findings apply to all 1184 counts. Under Section I, Obsessive Ranting: The defendant intentionally ranted without ceasing for multiple blog entries. Answer: Yes. Section II, Repeatedly Beating A Dead Horse The deaths or injuries resulting in death occured during the commission of an offense under 18 Writing.Com Code Section 844(d), flogging a horse until death. Answer: Yes. Section III, Unnecessary Use of Curse words The defendant used language to be found offensive during multiple occurences and showed no regard for taste or appropriate expression of emotion. Answer: Yes. Section IV, Boring Daily Recounts Death or injury resulting in death occured during the commission of an offense under 22 Writing.Com Code Section 413(c), recounting daily activity to a point of extreme boredom. Answer: Yes. Section V, Pointless Entries The defendant shared needless details of her life via multiple entries, often multiple times in a row. Answer: Yes. Section VI, Contradictory Statements The defendant often confused her readers through contradictory statements. Answer: Yes. Section VII, Recounting Toilet Actions The defendant needlessly reflected on bathroom activities. Answer: Yes. Section VIII, Overdramatization Of Insignificant Things The defendant made several mountains out of single molehills. Answer: Yes. Section IX, Overreacting To Meaningless Gestures The defendant showed a propensity to fly off the handle for actions deemed appropriate and helpful. Answer: Yes. Section X, Unnecessary Temper Tantrums Death or injury resulting in death occured during the commission of an offense under 18 Writing.Com Code Section 312(a), throwing a temper tantrum in a public forum. Answer: Yes. Section XI, Cruelty Towards Animals, Superiors, Peers, And Inferiors The defendant showed no regard for life in general. Answer: Yes. Section XII, Repeated Bad Grammar, Spelling, And Opinionations The defendant shows no respect for her college education. Answer: Yes. Section XIII, Mitigating Factors (1) Melissa is fashionably late! believed herself to be in the right each time she commited one of the 1184 counts. Number of jurors who so find: 0.(2) Melissa is fashionably late! received encouragement and support from others to commit each of the 1184 counts. Number of jurors who so find: 4.(3) Melissa is fashionably late! is a reliable person in work and in her personal affairs and relations with others. Number of jurors who so find: 7.(4) Melissa is fashionably late! is a patient and effective teacher when she is working in a supervisory role. Number of jurors who so find: 5.(5) Melissa is fashionably late! is a good and loyal friend. Number of jurors who so find: 12.(6) Melissa is fashionably late! is a good mother and wife. Number of jurors who so find: 10.Recommendation, XIV: The jury has considered whether the aggravating factors found to exist sufficiently outweigh any mitigating factor or factors found to exist, or in the absense of any mitigating factors, whether the aggravating factors are themselves sufficient to justify a sentence of life in prison. Based upon this consideration, the jury recommends by unanimous vote that the following sentence be imposed: The defendant, Melissa is fashionably late! , shall be sentenced to a period in prison not shorter than 18 years and not longer than life.The Special Findings appear to be signed by all jurors and dated April 5, 2007. XV. Certification: By signing below, each juror certifies that consideration of race, color, religious beliefs, national origin, or sex of the defendant or the victims was not involved in reaching his or her individual decision and that the individual juror would have made the same recommendation regarding a sentence for crimes in question no matter what the race, color, religious beliefs, national origin, or sex of the defendant or the victims. Apparently signed by all jurors and also dated April 5, 2007. Mr. Foreman, was these and are these the jury's special findings and recommendation: JURY FOREMAN: Yes, they are. THE COURT: And so say you all? JURORS: Yes. THE COURT: Section XVI. Sentencing Melissa is fashionably late! , the court finds you guilty on all 1184 counts of blog criminal activity. You are hereby sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole for a minimum of 18 years. Court is in recess. (Recess at 9:37 a.m.) ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only **
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| Holy moly my entry from last night is a hot mess! I moved two labs yesterday, with 30 computers each. Not by myself. But it was still a lot of work. Has it ever been done that someone has rewritten an entry into FtL? |
| So I'm trying something new and making a blog entry from a new toy I'm testing for work. We won't go into how ridiculously expensive it is and that it was bought only to determine if its feasible for classroom use. The main thing is that I never thought things could be easier than surfing on my laptop on my couch and now I can with an iPod touch. Its actually quite convenient and not all that hard although the keys are really small and its easy to touch the wrong one. All I know is that there is nothing to keep me off the Internet now! Muahaha! Seriously, though, I could find easy classroom use for this on the teacher end. You have the students someplace where you don't have a computer and you have wireless access - with this all they need is the wireless access and they can access the attendance from this. All I know is that you may find me using this on more than one occasion to test a theory and I may have to talk about it here. There will just be no stopping me in the land of computer gadgets. Woohoo! Seriously, though. I try really hard to not hold anything in but in the world of teachers it is really hard. Some of them can be real bullies. Not that all of them are, but it really only takes one to make it hard to not generalize. I don't know how it is in other countries, but a lot of teachers here are very territorial and selfish and it drives me crazy! It can really wear on ones nervesafter a while. I'm learning how to best deal with it though. It isn't so much censoring my thoughts as it is wording them in a way that holds tact and could never be taken as a possible attack on someone. So maybe it is a bit of self censorship but its easier to offer someone a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when they're hungry than to give them liver and onions. Unless of course they like liver and onions but then they're gross anyway. Either way, I like to be nice because itales life easier all around. Not that AL isn't nice because I think she's positively wonderful, but you know what I mean. I like to think twice about what i say to people because I'm neurotic and would get in lots of trouble otherwise even if I did live someplace like Sweden. So that's that and I could have had this all typed in1/3 the time on my laptop but its a new gadget and I can't not play with ALL the features. Hehehe |
| A couple of weeks ago, the hard drive on my laptop got full again. I moved a bunch of stuff over to my external hard drive and deleted it off my laptop. I unplugged everything and went to bed. The next day, after I'd worked and come home, I plugged everything back in so that I could run a backup of my external. I turned the drive on, only to be greeted with a strange sound that did not equal my hard drive turning on normally. I instantly felt sick. Sick to my stomach. The first half of Cameron's life is on that hard drive, unprinted. I've printed a lot of them, but not his first Halloween. Not his first trip to the zoo. Not a lot of those little moments that don't really matter until they're missing. I said a prayer in hopes that, when I took it to the repair shop, they would be able to salvage at least those pictures. All of the rest are on backup. I can get the rest. It's the first half of CJ's life that I'm most worried about. I got the call last night. The data is irretrevable unless I pay to send it to a clean room, then it's only 80% guaranteed because the actual drive took damage. The electrical system on the drive enclosure failed. This sent a zap up to the drive, which caused the arm to freeze in place. It wants to work, but all it does is beat against the top layer on the drive and scratch and pound my data into data heaven. Do you know how much it costs to send to a clean room? They charge you $600 just to look at the drive. Then, if they can recover the data, it's at least another $1,000. An average clean room retrieval costs $1,400. The most expensive I've heard was $2,100. Are the photos of my baby's life worth $2,100? Especially unguaranteed? Probably not. Most people would see me committed for spending that kind of money on a few pictures that I may or may not be able to retrieve. I would probably see myself committed, too. Instead, I'm paying $150 to see if they can retrieve the files from my laptop hard drive. They have forensic level retrieval and it hasn't been that long since I got rid of them, so I'm hoping that they're easy to get back. I should know something today, since $50 of the fee is for rush processing because, while I want these pictures back really, really badly, I don't want them to have my laptop for two weeks. How important can these pictures be that I've spent this much money on something that's not a sure thing and that luck has not been with me in retrieving them? It sounds silly to spend that much money on a few photos, but I'm sure plenty of people have things they spend money on that would seem silly to me. A list of examples? Like cigarettes. Even though I used to smoke. Like drugs. Like thousands of dollars to follow a band around and be a groupie. Like the same for NASCAR. The list can go on a while, so I'll stop now. My children are important to me and I don't want them to grow up and wish they had photos of their childhood. I know that it's only six months of photos and that he has a lot more to experience, but I don't even want a six month gap. Six months is too much. And it's only money. |
| Our power has been out since the second round of storms on Friday. The first round was nothing. We didn't even get any rain. It just got dark. Just before the second round officially hit, Jason and I were looking out the window and watched the tree in our front yard get blown horizontal before it snapped back and looked like it was going to throw itself on our roof. Instead, the power went buhbye. Then came the hail. Quarter-sized, which isn't huge, but could still leave dents on the vehicle still sitting in your driveway given the chance. Moments after that, the second tornado siren went off. Jason and I weren't going to play with that one. We filed the kids and the dog into the basement and sat it out for a good half hour before I had to pee really bad and climbed out of the dark basement to pee in the dark bathroom when we decided it was safe again to come up from our safe haven. They had said our power was going to be out until tomorrow afternoon, so we were out Friday, all day Saturday, and most of today. We had lost hope of ever getting our power back but decided on a whim to check back in at home. I'm glad we did because our air conditioner was running in our wide-open house and had been for at least fourty-five minutes. We drove back over to J's parent's house to pick up the boys when another wave of storms hit us like a monsoon. The wind was blowing the rain sideways and another tree fell around the corner from the in-law's house. We're almost certain that when we get home, our power will be out again, which means that we weren't being pessimistic by keeping the food in the fridge outdoors - just realistic, since we've already lost a freezer-full of food out of the freezer in our kitchen (mostly just vegetables and "quick" foods, all of our meat was in the freezer in the barn). I'm supposed to be working on my newsletter but we want to get home as soon as Cameron wakes up because another wave is supposed to hit in the next few hours and we want to be home before that one hits. These storms have screwed up my whole weekend. I haven't gotten much sleep, since I keep listening for the siren to go off in the middle of the night. Everytime I hear a little thunder rumble, I'm wide awake. Anyway, Cameron is awake now so I better pack up my stuff to go home. Hope that the power is on for me. lol |
| Motherhood is the greatest gift to give to any person, be it someone you know personally or a complete stranger. I can't say it wouldn't be hard to give up this little infant that you cared for and nurtured and felt kick and move inside you for weeks. It would probably be one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do, but a deal is a deal. Jason and I had talked about my being a surrogate for Joe & Richelle a couple of times before she finally got pregnant. They had been trying for years and every month she would call me, bawling, when she got her menses. It broke my heart that they had to go through the insanity of trying to conceive. That really is what it makes you - insane. You count and track and try so hard and have sex every night and take your temperature and use ovulation kits and it doesn't work. You go month by month praying, hoping, convincing yourself that you will have a baby 10 months from now and then when that red river comes you feel nothing but this desperation that makes you feel so empty. She did this for three years and change. And if she wasn't pregnant by a certain time, Jason and I were going to offer me to be a surrogate for them. It would have been a little weird turning a little baby over, but I would have been willing to do it for them because they deserve a child as much as anyone. And I don't really know if it would have been easier to turn a baby over to people I know, since I would be able to watch that baby grow up, than to turn a baby over to almost complete strangers. I don't know if I could deal with some woman named Courtney calling me on my lunch break every day to find out how her baby's doing. But I'm fairly good at making healthy decisions and I'm also one of those women who could talk about pregnancy all day so it wouldn't bother me. I don't know. Maybe I'm weird. I could probably surrogate for people as long as I know that I would get to see this being that I've mothered for ten months grow up and become a real person. I don't know if I could just turn something so special over to people I hardly know, even if it is legally, genetically their baby to hold. But then again, I am the woman who said I was done after one, and then at the end of my second pregnancy said I wouldn't do this again, and am now wishing that I had a bigger house and no endometriosis so I could have a third. I hate being pregnant. I love the baby part. It would be really hard for me to get pregnant knowing that I would hate being pregnant and then, when I finally get to the part I love, not get to experience it. And I also wouldn't be able to have someone else surrogate my baby. I'd rather not have a third than have some other woman carry him or her in her womb for ten months. It's the whole reason I can't be talked into adoption. Not that there's anything wrong with adoption. I'm weird. Period. |
| I'm so tired of other peoples' crap today. I'm tired and I don't want to deal with anyone. I want to shut myself in a room and not come out for a good twelve hours or more. But I can't do that and so I make myself go through the motions and pretend that I'm not walking around with a pissed-off cloud hanging over my head. I have so many other battles to fight and one of them should not be with family. I just cannot believe the gall some people can have when you've bent over backwards to help with everything you can help with. And then they call you selfish after you've done all of this stuff and offered everything you can to help them. But I have other things to worry about, rather than worry what someone who obviously doesn't appreciate everything I've done for them. I have the rest of my endometriosis treatment to figure out. I have second opinions to get because I refuse to believe that the only way to prevent what may be left from growing back is to dose my body with a ton of medication. I have a thumb that I can't use and a doctor's appointment in less than an hour to prepare for. In the meanwhile, I'm supposed to work, which is killing my hand. I'm supposed to smile and be happy and I really don't feel like it anymore. I just wish that my heart didn't hurt as much as it does and it didn't feel like I've been beaten to the ground like I have. I'm tired of fighting. I don't have the energy. I don't have the time. I don't have the interest. |
I just thought you all should know that.  |
| OK, so I can barely use my right hand now. And that sounds melodramatic and over the top, considering what I actually did, but let me explain it in a comedic way, anyhow, so you can really think that I'm just a wuss. So, we went to Wal*Mart this morning because we needed groceries, and despite how evil they are, they give me the best bang for my buck and they keep everything I need in stock except the Sam's Club formula and training pants. I could get the Wal*Mart formula and training pants, but I don't get the bulk discount like I do at Sam's. Anyway... on with the story. We pull into the parking lot and parked. Jason and I then had a three minute discussion about whether Cameron should ride in the stroller and Ethan in the cart, or if Cameron should ride in the cart and Ethan should walk. We ended up with the stroller/cart resolution (it changes weekly) and I thought Jason was going to get the stroller for me, but he didn't. I got flustered at that point, but that isn't the meat of the story. Keep with me people. You'll understand in a moment. Cameron was finally in the stroller and we were preparing to walk into the store. The only thing left to do was close the van door. Jason hadn't locked the doors yet. I pulled the slider shut with my left hand while my right hand rested on that bar between the front door and the slider door. My fingers were hanging a little off the bar, but that's usually OK because I'm smart enough to move my hand before the door closes. Except, today, I wasn't smart enough. And when the door closed on my fingers, my first thought was, FUCK! I just closed the door on my fingers. My second thought was, FUCK! Did he lock the door? Are my fingers going to be stuck in the door?!?! My third thought was, FUCK! I think the door severed my finger! The last thought, combined with the message from my brain that said, OW!, caused me to omit a terrible scream from where I stood. Then, somehow, I managed to pull myself together enough. OPEN THE DOOR, YOU STUPID FUCK! I prayed that Jason hadn't locked the door, thinking, oh, my God, if that door is locked I will have to stand here, fingers in door, until he unlocks it! I don't know if I can stay calm! All the while, I'm grabbing the handle and pulling on the door. Thankfully, it wasn't locked yet. The door slid open. Finally, Jason ran around the van with Ethan, wondering what the hell I'm screaming about. Because, while I felt calm on the inside for that moment in time, I was actually blubbering like a fool. He had no clue what happened and assumed I dropped Cameron or bumped his head or something like that. What he arrives to see is me, doubled over, van door wide open, clutching my hand like a child, crying my eyes out. Through logical deduction, because it wasn't through my intelligent explanation, he figured out I hurt my hand. After a few more seconds, he figured out that I must have shut it in the door because of the fact that the door was wide open. He then grabs my hand to inspect it. All five fingers were in tact. The middle finger was a little bloody. All in all, I was OK. It just hurt like hell. Jason starts hunting through the van for a bandaid, but none was to be found. In the meantime, I sit down because I was either going to a) pass out, b) throw up, or c) all of the above. The dudes on cart duty came over to see what all of the screaming was about and walked away when all they saw was my tiny flesh wound. I pull myself together and head into the store, hoping they have a first aid kit at customer service so that I don't have to bleed all over when I run to the pharmacy to get some damned bandaids. I was in luck because they had just restocked their first aid kit the other day. He slapped a bandaid on my middle finger and asked me if I was going to be OK. Through blubbers, I said I would, that now that I was bleeding openly, I would be able to calm down. The bandaid looked like blood was going to bust out of it at any moment, but as long as it wasn't dripping everywhere, I was fine. We managed to make it through the store in record time, although Jason is now pissed off because we didn't get everything we needed because I was in a hurry to get out of there. Now that the blood has stopped flowing, my thumb really, really hurts. I can't put any pressure on it, although I can bend it. My pointer finger feels OK, although it has some nice bruises on the knuckle. My middle finger has a huge gouge out of it, just under the fingernail and is still bleeding like a stuck pig. The rest of my fingers are fine. Now I get to spend the rest of the week perfecting the use of my left hand while my right hand takes a break. I'm not the only person in history to shut my hand in a car door, but damn I feel for all those other fools. |
| First of all, I really can't stand people who talk on direct connect on speaker phone. It's trashy to begin with and there's nothing more white trash than someone screaming across the two-way at someone else for whatever reason while broadcasting your conversation to the rest of the world over speakerphone. Second of all, nothing says white trash like f-bombs over two-way, especially when you don't know who could be listening on the other side. People who are offended by that kind of language could be within ear shot, and if my kids are among those in ear shot, you can believe with 100% certainty that I will say something. And lastly, talking to someone like they're your goddamned foot servant is unacceptable. I don't care how sick you are or how crappy you feel. People do not have a right to talk to other people like they're second-class citizens. I'm directing this at my sister. I don't care what she comes back with. Firstly, you don't talk to my mother like she's your goddamned slave. Second of all, you don't come back cussing at me when I tell you to stop whining like a baby when you know that I have kids and I don't want that kind of language in front of them. Finally, just because you don't feel good doesn't give you the right to treat people like shit. I don't care who you are or who you think you are. You are not that important that the rest of the world should stop and wait for you to feel better. You need to learn patience. You need to learn how to treat people. Maybe when you do that, you'll be grown up enough for me to respect you. Until then, you're at the bottom of my respect list. Almost as low as my father. |
| I'm not attracted to women. I think that makes me sexist, doesn't it? I'm not attracted to Mexicans. I know that makes me racist. I admit that I'm a little bit racist against Mexicans. I'm not attracted to most black men, but there are a few who I find attractive because they have a great personality and they are very good looking, too. I'm not attracted to most white men, either. Especially rednecks. I'm not attracted to guys who are shorter than me. I'm not attracted to guys who are incredibly overweight. I'm not attracted to most guys who have an excessive amount of body hair. (Yet, I'm married to a hairy ape-man. Figures, right?) All of that is not attractive to me. It means that I am prejudice against women, Mexicans, white men, black men, rednecks, short guys, fat guys, and hairy guys. And that's OK, because I can admit that I have racist tendencies towards Mexicans, although really only against Mexican men. I have very few men who I would find attractive. That's OK. That's why monogamy works so well for me. Just know that you're not attractive to me because I'm not attracted to you. That doesn't mean I think you're ugly. It just means that I wouldn't kiss you on the mouth and I don't think that's offensive. In fact, it's probably a relief to a good many of you.  |
| If I, for some reason, ever change profession, I will never. ever. be. a. special. ed. teacher. I had a hard enough time with five hours of mostly regular education kids. There were a few in second hour who were special ed, but I had parapros and stuff there to help me. It was METS testing today. I was a proctor and had to explain to five hours of students how to get to the test, and then try to help them figure out the answer to questions they couldn't figure out without actually giving them the answer. In seventh hour, the kids were tired and frustrated and I know that a couple of them just clicked whatever because they just wanted to get the test done. I wanted to recommend that they retake the test tomorrow but I was told that they'll do the same thing tomorrow if they take it again so it's pointless. Education is important. Why don't parents teach this to their children? What is so cool about the fact that Mom and/or Dad dropped out of high school and are working at McDonalds to support their slum apartment? What is so cool about not being able to afford anything nice because your minimum wage job can barely pay your electricity bill? I'm the first in my family to get a college degree. I'm the first in my family who has never used government assistance once she turned eighteen. I'm the first one because I hated waiting for food stamps to renew when I was a kid. I hated that I ate fairly well the first two weeks of the month and the second two weeks we had pork chops and potatoes every other day. I hated that my grandparents bought us school clothes because we didn't get them otherwise. I hated that I spent the allowance money my grandpa gave us every week on things that parents should be able to provide their kids normally - band uniform rentals, instrument repair, gas money for my Mom to pick me up and drop me off at practices. I work hard because I don't want my kids to know what welfare is and why the first of the month is the best time to need something. Why don't these kids want the same thing? I wanted all of that since I was old enough to understand. I wish they could understand, so they wouldn't just click aimlessly in order to get done. I wish they could understand that the choices they make now will affect their future. I wish they would understand and care because the caring is the missing ingredient to their success. |
| My external hard drive took a crap this weekend, along with years of image files that I can't get back because the backup software only takes an image of the hard drive but doesn't make it so you can access it in the event said hard drive dies. Not without another 250GB hard drive to write the image to. So now, in the hopes that I can get Halloween's pictures, the only ones I haven't had printed or don't have backed up, I'm going to spend who-knows-how-much money trying to have the stupid thing fixed. I'm going to pray that they can actually fix it. I'd rather just buy a new one, but I -need- the data off the old one, first. Sometimes, I utterly hate technology. With every fiber of my being. |
| I never do anything right. The world is spinning on its axis and other people get things right, and yet I can't. It wouldn't surprise me if fate was plotting against me because I hate math. Like God, above all else, thinks that math is the one thing that should be constant. Math should be loved. If you look at various verses in the Bible, it has a special code that we're supposed to be able to apply to our life or something. Who the hell cares HOW you do something, as long as the end result is satisfactory? What if I don't want to read the Bible to learn math or listen to preachers who think they understand the equation. If you look at it, the math is never right anyway. If it was right, there wouldn't be famine and petulance. There wouldn't be cancer and aids. There wouldn't be murderers and rapists. I think God's math was wrong. My math is right. But I'm still not better than God. If some kind of almighty, omnipotent, eternal thing existed, then why the FUCK would it create billions of screwed up pieces of shit "in it's image" unless it is seriously lacking somewhere? I think God is a puppeteer and we are all puppets. We build temples and worship someone how plays with us because it's fun. We're a hobby. A past time. Nothing more than a toy to cast aside when it gets bored. God doesn't love us. It just uses us for entertainment. I need my straight jacket and padded cell. |
| Of course you can't do that without me thinking of Tim Curry signing "Sweet Transvestite" a time or two. I still think about having done the Time Warp at the Writing.Com convention... which convention was that? I'm pretty sure it was the second one, although it could have been the last one. I worked in a movie theater in college, and I'm pretty sure that, although it was really Friday, we did midnight showings of the new Star Wars movies on Thursday night. There were quite a few shows like that and it was a pain in the ass because we would end up working until 4 am with all of the cleaning and stuff that had to be done following the customers. I hate going to the movies to this day because of working in the theater. It ruins it when you watch a film and point out the projectionist flaws when splicing film together. Or I look at how clean the popcorn popper is because I -know- they don't wash it every night like they're supposed to. If the stainless steel doesn't shine, then I'm not eating the popcorn that comes out of it because the oil isn't good forever. The only thing that has me excited right now is that my swimming pool will be ready to swim by midweek. Jason just put the shock in it and the filter is running. Hopefully we'll only have to shock it once. Then we can put the solar cover on it and wait for it to get warm. Barbecue at my house next weekend! Who's coming? |
| Life is one long soundtrack. Jason's song is Crash Into Me by Dave Matthews Band. My running song is Cake's Going the Distance. When I got married, it was to Love Song by Third Day. When I want to fuck, Number One Crush by Garbage plays in my head. I think of Good Ride Cowboy by Garth Brooks whenever Ethan comes to mind. Cameron's song in the soundtrack of life is Purple People Eater. Anytime I think of Jay's debut novel is out now!  I hear Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles in my head.But I can't say that there's one band or one song that makes me think of myself. Maybe it's because, even though I apparently talk about myself a lot, I really don't think much about myself. Not in the real world, where I don't have a blog to blather on. So I need to find a song. What song should I be? |
| Sometimes I read an entry and I have no clue how to follow it. I want to be interesting and not spend my entire blog entry talking about my kids. (Not every single entry, anyway.) Then I walk away and think about it for a moment, mull it over in my head until something comes to mind. Unfortunately, this round, I don't have a whole lot of time to do it since I waited until the very last day to -really- get started. Mulling, for me, has to be a 10-15 minute process, so I have to think quick and git-r-done. I try to pick a sentence out of the entry that stimulates my brain. Sometimes it comes up with something that has nothing to do with the entry. Others, it is insightful and maybe a little brilliant. (The later happens about once every hundred entries or so. Maybe even less. lol.) Once in a while, I feel like doing nothing more than making fun of the entry. But I don't try to do that because it's mean and it can get me disqualified because some of the things I think are more than just a snide remark or a sarcastic comment that everyone will take as an offhanded, funny remark. Not that my entries are any better. There is plenty of room for them to be made fun of and plenty of ways for people to make snide, offhanded remarks about me. That's OK though because I would do it to myself if I could, too. Mostly, though, I look at the title and see how it inspires me. And this is how I roll. |
| What do you have to talk about when life doesn't suck? I don't know. It's like what do you write about when you're not depressed or full of angst or mourning the loss of someone? What is there to write about when you're happy and life is boring and normal and you're not full of awful emotions that you just have to pour out of you before they consume you? The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind... No. The answer is the mundane; what you did at work, what you ate for dinner, recounting your steps to see if somewhere, something interesting occured. And usually, it's just as boring to your readers as it is to you as you're recounting it. Not that it's boring at the time it's happening. It's just one of those you had to be there to get it inside kind of jokes that you and your friends giggle about but, when trying to explain it to other people, find that nobody else is laughing. That's right. It's fun for you while it happened but nobody else finds it exciting because it lacks that special drama that angst and sadness attract. I love my life, but nobody else does. Not in that way, anyway. People are happy to see other people happy, but it's much more interesting when there's more to the story than just the mundane. |
| Boy, I need culture. I don't do art, either. I don't do anything, apparently. lol. All I've done for the past three months is work and Girls on the Run. I guess I can talk about Thursday. It was awesome. I cried three times on Thursday. The first time was at the beginning of the event, as they were moving all of the girls out onto Stadium Drive to start the run. There were some parents standing next to me as I waited for the girls to finish moving. They saw their daughter as she was leaving the stadium and she was so focused she didn't even notice them until she'd nearly passed and the mother reached out and grabbed her shoulder. "Mom! You did come!" She shouted joyously and hugged her mother briefly before heading out onto Stadium. My eyes welled up and I ran over to the sales booth to drop off my cash box. "Are you okay?" Anne asked me. "Yeah, just feeling a little verklempt at the moment." I did fairly well until the last few girls were finishing up. The fifth-to-last or so was a little girl with cerebral palsy in a walker. She and her Dad walked the 5K together. And she didn't even come in last! The triumph on her face was just overwhelming in my heart. And I burst into tears (again) while the crowd cheered her into the finish line. The very last girl to come in was the last of very emotional moments for me that night. She had this pained look on her face and was crying and she kept saying, "I can't make it! I don't want to do this anymore!" The highschool cheerleaders had been at the ramp coming into the stadium this whole time and were cheering the girls in. This particular girl, they all swarmed around and helped her get to the finish line, cheering her, supporting her, holding her hand. The crowd went wild. I'm getting teary-eyed just thinking about it right now. I always want to be involved in extraordinary things. Girls on the Run is an extraordinary program. It eats my life up for three or so months, but I will hold the memories and pride of being involved in this extraordinary event for the rest of my life. Can you imagine what many of us girls would be like today if we had a program that taught us self esteem and how to deal with peer pressure? I can only wish that I had something like this when I was a little girl. I can only wish that the program will still be around if and when I have a daughter old enough to participate. I won't ever forget Thursday and the lessons I learned from all of these girls as they crossed the finish line. Nor will I ever lose pride in the fact that I helped them get there. |
| Goodness, I look at the ideas at the bottom of the original entry, and it makes me want to rebel because that's who I am. I don't want to write about writing because I don't write. I've given up on being a writer because I don't have time right now. I don't want to write about Writing.Com because I haven't been here enough in the past couple of months and to write about being a member of Writing.Com feels a little trite, given that fact. To be honest, I read the lead entry and felt two things, "maybe I don't belong on this site anymore," and, "I would never buy a $25 notebook." The first was thought out of guilt, since I don't want to write about the fact that I've been a member here going on six years now. Nevermind that I've been a member longer than I've been married, that I went through both pregnancies with many wonderful people who read about my experiences for both, and that I've seen more friends come and go than I care to admit. The second because... I buy notebooks and I don't write in them. I just don't write these days. Hell, I don't even get to do much of the things that I used to love doing. Writing one of my newsletters feels sometimes like I'm pulling out one of my own teeth with a pair of rusty pliers. I don't know how people have young children and find time to think about anything other than diapers, bottles, and tonight's dinner. I'm lucky to get fifteen minutes for an alone shower. I'm lucky to take a shit without being interrupted by a curious three-year-old or a hungry ten-month-old. If I'm lucky to do those things, what does it make me to be able to catch up on this contest? My husband is a fucking saint. And I'm still not a writer. And I still sometimes doubt whether I should even be a member of this site anymore, but I know that if I left, I would come back within a month. Then I'd have to make a whole new portfolio and I'm not into all of that work. It's easier to just get over my ebb and find my way back. Never in moderation, remember. It's always one extreme or another with me. I even annoy myself with it. |
| It happens to me all of the time. I'll get into a conversation or think about something and forget a detail that might not really be important, but it feels important all the same. My memory isn't so good these days anyway. I usually have a mind like a steel trap, but it can be easily described as swiss cheese, with a little bit of limburger mixed in. Yeah. Stinky and holey. lol. There's often times when I'm drafting a report or a recommendation at work, and I can't think of the word that I want to use. It's a tip-of-the-tongue syndrome, except I'm typing so it's more tip-of-the-fingers thing. Eventually, I give up and use a thesaurus and find a word that's close but not really the word that I'm thinking of. It has the same meaning, but isn't as striking. Not that I really know it's less striking because I can't remember what word I originally intended, but whatever it was, it wasn't the word I used instead. lol. It's not old age. It's not mommy-brain. It's side effects of "the" treatment. That's what I refer to it as most days. They don't know what I'm going through, really, at work, except that I have medical reasons to leave once a month for about an hour and I get into arguments with the pharmacy during work hours the day before I leave. I only have two more treatments. Then I don't know what's next. I try not to think about it. I try to forget about it. I try to pretend it doesn't exist. I obviously don't do that well. |
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