I can't believe I have to wait until March 2013 to watch G.I. Joe.
Just so they can transform it into 3D.
I hate 3D. I refuse to watch 3D movies.

G.I.Joe was the one movie that I really really anticipated since the first teaser trailer last year. I was actually a bit sad in the pit of my stomach when my husband told me of the changed release date.
 

"His fiery lips brushed against her delicate flesh. Each hot breath bathed her skin in liquid fire. She could barely focus on getting her earrings fastened; her heart raced, and heat soared through her."

I just found that on Facebook. Is it just me, or is this type of writing so common now that it's rather become annoying? I know it doesn't do anything for me. Fiery lips and liquid fire ... I haven't read Twilight or 50 Shades of Gray, but I feel this is what those books are like.

I hope he doesn't have fiery breath too, or I'd ask him to go brush teeth. Morning breath is not sexy.




 

So, I did it.

I gave away "The Weekly Quickie Contest"  and "Anniversary Reviews" 

Both the contest and the review forum are in capable hands. In a paradoxical way, it was both harder to give each up then I thought, yet also easier than I thought. I guess where there are emotions, it's never all cut and dry.

I also left "365 Stories!"  I thought the rule of daily writing would be good for me. It was great for January. I've never been as prolific in writing during one months since the time before I joined Writing.Com. I realized, however, that the format of daily writing doesn't fit in with my creativity. There is a series of books I've messed around with for years that I finally want to give some real attention, and at times I might not do more than read the chapters to put them on my mind and see how to make them better.

Too late for the WdC run annual "Dear Me" contest, but I've had a bit of a reckoning when it comes to my writing and my way of going about it. Writing is a solitary activity. I need my mind free of other things. Having to perform other tasks on a daily basis stops that flow. Since I work six days a week and have three kids to raise every single day of the week, my mind is already kept busy for many hours in a day. I had to pull the plug on other things that were using up space in my mind.

Now that I am free of daily and weekly responsibilities here on Writing.Com (responsibilities I asked for or created myself, not something anybody put on me), I feel my mind relaxing. I've not yet gone into those books of mine, but as I spring clean my portfolio, leave groups I'm not active in, and reassess my reason for being a member of Writing.Com, I realize I have thousands of opportunities on this site that I haven't tapped into. Now, I think, I have reached the point of no more nonsense.

I want to write things that are meaningful to me.
I want to read stories that entertain me.
I want to review as a means to relax.

I'm finally able to use the site in the way I think it will be good for me and those who I'll end up working with.


 

Just found out that Sticktalker , known to many as Lyle lost his battle with cancer. Yesterday, I also found out that it was cancer that took my friend Kaethe Be. What a terrible foe we all have. Makes you wonder why people have wars against each other. Don't we have more important tasks to accomplish?
 

I wonder what stage of grief one is in when they send a deceased person an email asking if they are really dead.
I sent my friend Kaethe Be an email last night.
This morning, I found a demon in my inbox. A mailer-daemon that told me the mail could not be delivered because the recipient had too many emails on the server. Wow, that is a lot of emails waiting for him. This makes me think he must have been ill for a long time. He died on December 16th, but nobody, not even popular Kaethe Be gets enough emails in a few days to clog up a server.
I do wonder how many of the emails are like mine.

On the whole, I feel better. I am still sad that he is dead. That sadness will never go away. But I can't do anything. I can't even go to his funeral. I'm in California, he died in Berlin. His family is from the North Sea shores. Maybe they want him to get buried there. I hope to travel to Berlin next year. Maybe I can visit his grave. If there is one. I hope so.


 

I learned about the stages of grief in nursing school. I don't think I've ever really experienced them until now. As of today, I still find myself thinking it's not true. How can somebody die at 52? I may be able to find out from the same friend who told me he died. Maybe finding out the cause of death will help me really get it. As of now, Kaethe Be lives in my mind just as he is in these videos. They were made a year before I met him knowingly.

Today, I found these two videos.





From 1988


 

Tonight, I found out that a friend of mine died four days ago. He was not a close friend. As a matter of fact, I hadn't seen him in person for probably 15 years. But the time of my life in which I was close to him was intense and has shaped who I am now.

Kaethe Be was generous. Fun. Friendly. Honest. Mean. Careless. Gentle. German. Loving. Indifferent.

I had a chance to have an email exchange with him a few months back. His message was short and cryptic. I didn't know what to make out of it. I figured I'd get in touch at a later time. A later time will never come. It's over. He's dead and I don't even know of what.

He was somewhere between 48 to 52 years old when he died.

I met him when I was 18. For a while, he tried to be my boyfriend, but I didn't know what to make out of a man that much older than me. We had loads of fun as platonic friends in the early Techno times in Berlin in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

He lived around the corner from my home and shopped at the small grocery store I worked at. It's where he discovered me. One day, he came in and bought one bottle each of every single beer we carried. We had many beer varieties. It was in Germany after all. The same night, I went to a dance party. He was the night's entertainment. At some point, the music turned off and he came on stage. He had used the different beer bottles to create his decoration. When he was finished, he gave the beers away to patrons. He offered me one. I declined. I never liked beer. It was the first time he spoke to me. During the day, when he bought the beers, I wasn't the one to ring him up.

He lived in an apartment with no plaster on the walls. The bare bricks were exposed. I'm not talking about the smooth exposed bricks that some condos have exposed on purpose. He had simply taken a hammer and removed the plaster. The house was old, built before World War II, the bricks never meant to be seen. He told me he liked it like that because it was different. He always wanted to be different.

ID: 1834914   (Rated: E) He was a friend  He was a friend by Giselle thanks WdC

This past Monday, my husband and I started homeschooling our youngest son. He's in second grade, so the academics won't be too hard. We're using an approved curriculum with teacher support. In California, this counts as public education. This means, we get all the supplies and the teacher support for free. We have to spend the time teaching him though. Teacher support means we can ask if we need help and tips on how to teach him.
Why did we do that?
Many things.
The first thing is that he's not learning enough at school. The main reason is that he is too easily distracted. I know, some people say there is a diagnosis for that and pills too. Yes. I know. If a competitive athlete took those drugs, they would get kicked out of their league, but our seven year old son should be put on it.
So, no pills. Thank you. If he needs some in high school and college, he'll be able to cope with and counter the side-effects better.
The second thing is the way the budget cuts have hurt school districts all over the country.
It used to be a 20 to 1 student-teacher ratio for grades Kindergarten through Third Grade. Now, it's more like 35 to 1. In Kindergarten. With a curriculum that asks five year olds to master what we had to master at seven a few years ago. All that pressure works okay for girls. It works okay for some boys. It works okay for parents able and willing to spend hundreds of dollars on after-school tutoring.
It does not work for my son.

My week is about to get even more crammed. Where I felt that working and raising three boys was taking a toll on me, now it's going to be crazy. It's okay. For now, husband says it's only for second grade. I'm thinking second and third grade. We'll see how our son does, really. Where he stands in his academic development and how much work he can get done independently will decide at which point he'll go back to regular school. Now that he's out of school, I don't want to be caught in a pendulum move where it's in - out - in - out.

Tomorrow or Friday, we'll get the materials for him. We're basically getting a whole classroom for one kid. We've got our own computer, but if we needed one, we'd get that too. We'll be getting text books, work books, books for us parents that teach us how to teach him every subject.

The good part: the curriculum we're using has not fallen victim to the cuts in regular schools. He will have a full blown art appreciation class. And that doesn't mean simply cutting out paper dolls. We're going to be discussing Picasso and Monet. He's also going to learn music. Not an instrument, but everything else that involves music. Rhythm. Notes. Composition. Great composers etc. It's exciting and I wish all public schools were still teaching all of that. When I went to school, all of the curriculum my son is about to get was standard.

How's all of this going to influence my writing and my life on WdC?

I am glad to say that I was able to cross the finish line for NaNo on Thanksgiving day. I wrote a bit more the next day, but that was done. Now, I don't know when I'll have time to edit and get into it. I want to publish next year. I've been saying it for a while. If I don't get myself going into that direction soon, it will stay one of those woulda shoulda things.

I'm contemplating passing on the torch for "The Weekly Quickie Contest"  and for "Anniversary Reviews"  too. I took on the Weekly Quickie a bit over a year ago. It's a fun contest, but I haven't really had the love for it lately and with the new private life challenge, I wonder if I'll be happy continuing with it. As for Anniversary Reviews ... I started that in May 2009, a few days after my first WdC Anniversary. Before I started the forum, I sent out some reviews on members' anniversaries and got some good responses. People are delighted to get them, most of the time. Anniversary Reviews is a bit harder to let go since it's my "baby." The forum is actually going pretty well with over 100 reviews each month. That means there are 100 items or more that get reviewed each month because of this forum. I definitely would hate to see the forum stop to exist. I think it's one of those smaller, yet cherished forums on WdC. It's open to the whole community. Nobody has to join a group or do anything beyond make a review and post it in the forum. I rarely get to review through the forum and I wonder sometimes if it's hypocritical to have such a forum but not make it my job to make the most reviews for it. At this point, I have to mention Sum1 Since he came to the site as a newbie, he's been a main pillar of the forum. Every single month since he's been around, he's sent out more than the 15 reviews required to get that month's merit badge. Well more than that, usually twice or more that. Each one of his reviews is a great comment to those who get them. His reviews are thorough and thought out. Yes, so giving up on all that is not easy.

I know for a fact that no matter what happens in my private life, I'll keep logging on to WdC daily and being an active participant in the community. I just don't know about running contests or activities at this time.

Giselle d'Octobre

"Anniversary Reviews" "The Weekly Quickie Contest" 
** #1828678 Not An Image **

That would be super annoying for NaNo.
How did I almost break my hand?

I punched hard. I've got the bruises to show.

Giselle d'Octobre

"Anniversary Reviews" "The Weekly Quickie Contest" 
** #1822938 Not An Image **

http://www.writersdigest.com/nanowrimo

Giselle d'Octobre

"Anniversary Reviews" "The Weekly Quickie Contest" 
** #1822938 Not An Image **