So, I'm plowing through my New Year's Resolution.
The first book was tough because I was hoping it would help me creatively but mostly it's just a religious book.
I'm not Godless or anything but I wasn't really expecting all the praying and crap. (Are we allowed to follow the word "praying" with the word "crap"? At least I didn't say "shit"!)
The second book....well, it was unreadable.
I got about halfway through when I realized that for the last few weeks I had been thinking I'd rather have a torid affair with Michael Moore than to sit down and try to read this mind numbingly boring book!
The fact that the idea of his sweaty, meaty mitts roving my body was more pleasurable than reading that book made me realize that I am a free-thinking individual and have the right to not finish a book if I find it tiresome.
New Year's Resolution be damned! I'm moving on!
I can't take criticism.
I can take a joke.
I can take it easy.
I can take care of myself.
But I can't take criticism when it comes to writing.
I wrote some fiction crap, thought it was pretty good and decided to post it on writing.com to get some feedback.
I'm a wuss.
I got positive feedback on my writing but harsh criticism on my punctuation.
You would think I'd be pleased and relish the opportunity to fix whatever I'm doing wrong.
Nope.
I became extremely self-conscious and deleted everything.
I kept feeling like I was an illiterate loser because I couldn't punctuate properly.
Are there therapist for budding writers?
Oh well, since I'm punctuation deficient, maybe I can specialize in txt msg fiction.
he saw her from cross da room
she lookd g8
he sed yo wut up?
she sed jus chillin
he sed u gonna b @ 2nite?
she sed no
he said l8er
the end
I noticed that someone found my site when they googled "James Frey Refund".
This phrase probably led them to this post I wrote about the controversy surrounding James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces.
Since I wrote that, he's admitted publicly that he did make up a lot of what made his book so compelling.
I wasn't surprised that he made it up, just surprised that he had the balls to go on Oprah, face her wrath and admit the truth.
So, you know how I feel about his "lies"...I don't care.
But now, I'm assuming there are people who are demanding refunds for the book they bought.
How ridiculous.
If you didn't know anything about quantam physics and you bought a book by Joe Schmo, PhD called "Quantam Physics for Jack Asses" you'd read the book and go "Wow. I didn't know Quantam Physics was so interesting!" and go on with your life.
What you would probably never know is that Joe Schmo is full of shit.
Joe Schmo wouldn't know Quantam Physics if it slapped him on the ass and called him Mary.
You take the risk anytime you buy non-fiction. Just because they have a bunch of letters behind their name doesn't mean they know what the hell they are talking about.
But you'd never know that. You enjoyed the book and your life seemed a little more enriched by it.
That's what happened when you read James Frey's book. His writing is unusual and he made you FEEL. It wasn't like he wrote a book about flying to Saturn on his red wagon. He wrote about things that happen to real people everyday. It just didn't really happen to him.
Just because it was fiction disguised as a memoir doesn't mean his work wasn't just as good.
Don't ask for your money back, people. Just know that you read some pretty good literature.
For 33 years I’ve felt like I’ve been waiting for life to begin. Am I waiting to get married or for the right job?
I keep waiting for a cause and effect. “If (this) would happen, then I could do (this).”
When do I get to the place where I feel like life has started?
I was watching Sex in the city last night. Reruns, you know.
It was the episode where Big buys Carrie this gaudy Judith Leiber duck purse and she wonders if he really knows her at all. How could he possibly think she would like something like that?
I’ve always felt that way in relationships. Does any guy ever really know me? Is it me or is it just the way guys are?
A friend told me yesterday that he loved the fact that there is a hidden part of me that very few people know. He thought people would be quite shocked to know this side of me.
I wondered: Do we all have hidden sides? How much of a person do we ever truly know?
If you have a significant other, do you feel you know that person inside and out? Are you sure they don’t have a hidden side?
How would it make you feel to know someone else knows that other side?
There are very few of us who know ourselves completely.
Sometimes we think we are one way but really we are another. Who’s right? The person we think we are or the person we show to others?
I know I’m just asking one question after another but life is nothing but questions.
There aren’t many things we know for sure. Life is about lots of questions but very few answers.
Relationships just add to the queries. Does anyone ever figure this shit out?
How do we find happiness amongst all these question marks?
Have I told you about my pink tiara?
I wore it originally for Halloween but I enjoyed it so much I decided to wear it often. I thought, "How could you possibly have a bad day while wearing a pink tiara?".
Now, I wear it when I am having a bad day.
Today was a Pink Tiara Day.
It was all work-related stuff so I can't really talk about that with you. I learned from other bloggers that discussing the workplace can get you into a little trouble.
I can say that when I slapped my tiara on my head, several people gasped....they knew what it meant.
"That's right!" I screamed at them, "YOU drove me to this!" as I pointed to my head.
It worked. It wasn't long until I was feeling better and people left me the fuck alone.
How do YOU handle a bad day?
My best friend emailed me on January 2 to wish me a Happy New Year and asked what I did for New Year's Eve.
I sent her the true story of what happened that night.
She has since told me several times that I need to post this on my blog because it was so funny.
I think maybe it was funny to her because she knows us. She knows that we are adults (some older than others *cough*) and she knows how out of character this whole event was for us.
To you, the reader, we will probably seem like immature degenerates. I'm not sure you would be wrong.
But in the interest of truth, I will post my TRUE New Year's Eve almost exactly the way I wrote it to my best friend.
Only the names have changed to protect the identity of the true degenerates.
I'll also post the story of our confession.
Hey,
Happy New Year to you!
Well, I was going to wallow in my own self pity for New Year's Eve. I had even bought a frozen lasagna, ice cream, pancake mix and cheap champagne but Sister #2 called and invited me over.
Sister #3 and Brother-in-Law #3 showed up and we all played Texas Hold 'Em and we got kind of drunk.
Mom was having her own little party with her friends. She invited people over to her house to play cards for NYE.
I mentioned at Sister #2's that I wanted to drive by and look through the window and see how her party was going.
Sister #3 said "And we should wrap her house!!"
I laughed and said "No, because *I* would have to clean it up."
But later (as I drank more) that seemed like a HILARIOUS idea; us running around wrapping her house while she and her little old friends were sitting inside innocently playing cards.
So, Sister #3, BIL #3, Sister #2, BIL #2, Nephew #2 and I tried cramming ourselves into my car but realized drunkenly that we wouldn't all fit so we climbed into BIL #2's truck with one roll of Cottonelle toilet paper because Sister #2 said she only had "the good stuff" and wouldn't let us use more than one roll.
We parked across the street from Mom's house and we could see through that big picture window that they were all sitting at the dining room table so we got out and ran into her yard.
BIL #2 threw the first time and it sailed over the top of the oak tree and came down, leaving a stream of paper wafting in the wind.
Nephew #2 then tried his hand at it and did a pretty good job. Sister #3 then took a try and she threw like a girl.
Right then, the dogs saw us through the window and they started barking.
Mom got up and looked through the screen door. We all took off running and hid behind the truck but Mom didn't see us.
BIL #2 and Nephew #2 finished the roll and we drove off laughing our asses off.
Mostly laughing at how ridiculous and stupid we were.
BIL #3 said "Well! We showed THOSE old people!" I said "Yeah, next stop: Hearthstone!" (a local nursing home)
We got back to Sister #2's and hung out for a while. Sister #3 and BIL #3 decided to leave around 11pm.
After they left, Nephew #2 got the bright idea of wrapping THEIR house since they left early.
It sounded good to me.
This time BIL #2 wasn't into it so Sister #2, Nephew #2 and I went. I was thinking we'd go in MY car but Nephew #2 wanted to go in his (Rick's) truck.
Why we agreed to this, I'll never know. Rick put something on the exhaust of this truck a long time ago to make it loud.
Nephew #2 is also a TERRIBLE driver and really bad at taking directions.
I told him to drive past Sister #3 and BIL #3's house and park across the street but instead, he turned into the alley behind their house. He thought we would park there but I said it looked too suspicious and people would call the police.
I told him to back out of the alley, park right next to it and we'd run across their yard.
Instead, he eases all the way up and parks at the end of their driveway.
Meanwhile, this truck sounds like a helicopter coming in for a landing and I'm scared but not surprised when Sister #3 and BIL #3 come running out of their house.
We all screamed "There they are!" And we were cracking up.
I reached down, fumbling for the door handle thinking we'd get out and have a laugh but apparently Nephew #2 thought this was a bank robbery get-away because he FLOORED it and we took off. I guess he thought if he drove away fast enough Sister #3 and BIL #3 wouldn't know it was us.
Sister #2 and I were laughing so hard we couldn't tell him to stop.
He got to the stop sign and he was laughing so hard he couldn't drive.
Sister #2 and I were afraid a cop would stop us so we kept yelling at him to drive.
We got back to Sister #2's house and collapsed in the living room laughing so hard.
Then Sister #3 started calling.
She was laughing but yelling at us saying "I don't want toilet paper in my yard!!!"
The funniest part of the whole thing was that I went home right after that and Sister #2 and BIL #2 went to bed but Sister #3 and BIL #3 kept expecting us to come back so they were standing watch nearly the whole night. Every sound they heard, they thought was us.
They kept running to the doors and windows!
It was immature but oh so fun.
Happy New Year!
De
Part 2: The confession
We all swore ourselves to secrecy but it wasn't until I saw my mother peering out through the glass/screen door that I realized we might actually SCARE her. After all, she does live alone and she's 67 years old!
I knew that at some point we'd have to tell her the truth.
We were all meeting the next day for New Year's Day dinner at Sister #3's home. I assumed, correctly, that the confession would take place there.
However, my mother called me before the dinner and said, "You won't believe what happened last night! Someone wrapped my house!! Why would someone do that to an old woman?"
Oh God. What should I do?
I tried to laugh it off. "Maybe you've got an admirer! Maybe one of your church friends was mad because you didn't invite her to the party!"
I called Sister #2. "We're in SO much shit! Mom is wondering who in the world would do such a thing to an old woman! What is wrong with us?"
If I had been in front of her, she would have slapped me. "Snap out of it! You keep your mouth shut until we get to Sister #3's!"
When everyone but Sister #1 and her husband (the only other two people not in the know) were lounging around Sister #3's house, Mom brought up the story of her house being wrapped the night before.
BIL #2 and Sister #3 acted shocked! "Why would someone do that?!" they both asked incredulously.
Mom said, "I dug out Dad's old pistol and found his bullets today. I'm going to shoot the next person I see in my yard!"
Silence filled the room as each guilty person eyed the other.
Sister #2 grabbed my arm and whispered, "Oh my God! She wants to shoot us!"
When Sister #1 arrived, we knew it was time to let the cat out of the bag.
We cornered her in the kitchen and said "Hey did you know someone wrapped Mom's house last night?"
"Yeah, Mom called me this morning."
Sister #2 said in a shaky voice, "It was us!"
"What?!?"
"It was us! We had this crazy idea last night and we piled into the car and wrapped Mom's house!"
She blinked at us a few times.
"MOM!!! You want to know who wrapped your house??" She yelled as she was shoving us into the living room.
Suddenly it was every man for himself. We pointed at a different person and yelled, "It was HER idea!"
Mom was stunned and Sister #1 and BIL#1 were dying laughing.
Mom couldn't believe her adult children were prowling the streets at night, wrapping old peoples' houses.
"Now, how am I going to tell my friends that it was my own CHILDREN who threw toilet paper all over my yard?"
Just tell them we're shitty kids!
I found a goody in my mailbox on Saturday...
Lisa from Recreational Use sent me this from my Amazon wishlist. What a great way to start this year.
Lisa, you're a peach. Such a sweet girl. I don't deserve your kindness but I appreciate it more than you know.
When I was about 4 years old, I found out my dad had magical powers.
I knew that he was the biggest and strongest man in the world but I was shocked to find out he was magical!
We lived in this funny little brick house that had 3 doors. A front door, a back door and a side door.
The side door was higher than the rest of the house and it had several steps that led up to it.
The "porch" was a tall, gigantic hunk of concrete (it seemed gigantic to a 4 yr old) and I often sat there with my legs dangling over the side watching my dad work on his various trucks, boats, cars, etc.
One day, he sat with me and we played a game.
He collected a bunch of small pebbles and laid them on the porch between us. He would hand me one pebble at a time and have me throw it across the driveway.
Then we would both say "abracadabra!" while he twisted his fist this way and that. He would open his hand and sitting in his huge palm would be that same pebble I just threw.
I was amazed!
How did that pebble get into his hand? My daddy was magic!
Do you know I never questioned him about it for years? Not until a few months before he died, did I wonder how he did it. I was 31 yrs old. I didn't believe in magic anymore.
"Dad, do you remember that game we used to play where I'd throw the pebble and you would pretend to do magic and it would end up in your hand? How did you really do that?"
I wasn't expecting him to remember, his memory had been slipping lately but he laughed a little and said, "I would always look for two pebbles that looked similar and save them. I kept them in my pocket and would separate them when it was time to play the game."
It makes me cry now, to think of this big man, searching the ground for twin pebbles for his chubby little daughter's entertainment.
Ok, so it wasn't magic but he had me believing in it for nearly 30 years.
So, everyone's talking about this James Frey controversy.
If you've been living under a rock for the last week or so, I'll give you the recap:
James Frey, author of the bestselling memoir, A Million Little Pieces, is being accused of embellishing many of the details that made the book such a huge success.
From the above-linked article:
Frey has been under fire after the super sleuths at the Smoking Gun Website unearthed a wealth of information suggesting that accounts of his criminal activities and the amount of time he spent behind bars were exaggerated, if not entirely fabricated.
There are rumors that Random House is offering a refund (which they deny) and the media is tearing this guy apart.
I have something to say about this:
Who fucking cares?
Of course he embellished it. I'm surprised it's not all complete crap!
It's a memoir which is defined by Merriam-Webster as:
1 : an official note or report : MEMORANDUM
2 a : a narrative composed from personal experience b : AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- usually used in plural c : BIOGRAPHY
3 a : an account of something noteworthy
I'm sure James Frey did have a drug problem and did have to spend some time in rehab. Those details alone wouldn't sustain two books.
So, whether or not every single thing in his books are true, it's still a good read, it's still a good message and I'm sure it's no different than any other "memoir" we've read.
Real life is shit. Sometimes you've got to dress it up to make it presentable for the world.
I don't know why...just because
I read this book by Joan Didion over the Christmas Holiday.
This book chronicles the year after her husband's death and her daughter's serious illness.
It's not really a narrative, it's more like stream-of-consciousness writing to me.
Joan Didion writes most heart-breakingly about the intense grief she experienced after the death of her husband.
It was so painful for me to read because I am still in that first year of magical thinking. No, I didn't lose my spouse or partner but I did lose someone very important to me whom I loved dearly and I feel his loss to my very core.
Didion describes the inability to accept her husband's death and the unreasonable belief that he would be coming back.
She didn't get rid of all of his shoes because, of course, he would need shoes when he came back!
I had to put the book down so many times in tears because Ms. Didion's grief resounded so strongly with my own fresh grief.
However, she proved in this book that somehow, someway, even through intense pain...almost crippling pain....we can continue living.
When you're hurting that bad, you should be paralyzed or disabled. You think that one day you'll look in the mirror and be as disfigured as you feel.
But you go on. Maybe because you are forced to or maybe because that's just the way the universe works...
but you go on.
Ok, kids.
I took pen to paper and I scoured my bookshelves and stacks of books and listed everything I owned but haven't read (or finished reading).
Whew. It's going to be a busy year.
I listed everything in a slightly random order and I will read these books in that order.
You can see it here if you're interested.
What is most frightening about this is that the huge list is made up of books I haven't read. There are still hundreds of books on my shelves that I HAVE read!
I might need to rent the apartment next door to me simply to house my books.
Also, I am hoping to blog more in this new year. Not just "Hey everyone, I went to the store and bought tampons today" type posts but entries that MEAN something.
I know that's a lot to ask of myself but I'll at least TRY.
In my attempts to do this, I grabbed a notebook at home and started actually writing my entries with the intention of posting them the next morning.
Yeah, I can't seem to remember to take my notebook to work with me everyday.
One day soon, Dear Reader, I will remember that notebook and you'll read a flood of meaningful posts. One day.....one day.
today.
Someone said to me the following:
Youre like an ultra hip late 80s punk rock sex goddess.
Best. Compliment. Ever.
I read two books during my time off.
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
and
My Friend Leonard by James Frey
Lately, I've not been reading like I normally do. I will get a book, read a few pages, put it down and start another one. I do this over and over again until I'm so frustrated that it's easier to just watch TV.
Here is my problem: I have "Toooo Many Books"
I buy books, I get books from the library, I am given books and my ADD brain can't control itself and if it can't read ALL the books RIGHT NOW, it won't read any books at all.
The other day, I decided that my New Year's resolution will be to catalog all my unread books in random order and then read them in that order.
I need lists. I'm not a disciplined person so I MUST have lists.
If left to my own devices, I screw things up, but if I make lists and organize my brain, I am more apt to get things done.
So, there you have it kids: My New Year's resolution.
This isn't about losing weight or exercising....I think I can keep this one.
WOW!
It's been a while. I bet you were SICK of seeing that blinking Merry Christmas crap!
I hope you all had wonderful holidays.
I hope Santa brought you some good stuff but more importantly, I hope you all got to spend the time with loved ones whether it be family, friends or yourself.
I spent my holidays with family mostly. I have a large family and it's a requirement. We all live close to each other and we are required to spend our holidays together.
It's an odd thing, though. We all feel like we do this for our mother. We feel like if we didn't plan Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years dinners, it would hurt our mother.
We act as if we'd stop doing these things if Mom was no longer with us. Hmm...
Anyway....
I know some of you spent the holidays alone.
Some people prefer it and some do it because they have no choice.
There is no reason not to make it special even if you are alone.
I had every intention of spending New Year's Eve alone.
Back when I had "someone special" we had a romantic tradition on that particular night but now that I'm alone, I don't want to spend that evening pretending that it's ok that the one I use to spend the holiday with turned out to be Mr. Wrong and made me want to erase the last 3 yrs and start all over.
So, I purposely don't seek out New Year's Eve plans.
This year, I went to Central Market and bought a great frozen lasagna, ice cream, a bottle of Asti, Boursin cheese and crackers and pancake makings for the next morning.
I had movies, a plan to watch the symphony on PBS, etc...
I was good with my decision.
I don't know why but people are aghast if you spend New Year's Eve alone. You're either pitied or ridiculed. Some people fear it and will do ANYTHING so as not to be alone.
I welcomed it. I jokingly refered to it as "wallowing in self pity" for New Year's Eve but I really wanted to sit home alone, with my dogs.
That afternoon, my sister called and invited me over to play Texas Hold 'Em.
I knew that the holidays were especially rough on my sister and her husband after losing my nephew and I just couldn't turn them down.
Besides, I had JUST learned how to play Texas Hold 'Em and was anxious to play again.
So, although I didn't spend the evening alone, I could have and would have been ok.
I was off work for several days. It was AMAZING. I could SO get used to not working.
I was also offline for those days and I missed out on a LOT of blogging; reading and writing.
I'm trying to catch up on my favorite blogs but it's difficult.
There was some fun afoot at Snooze Button Dreams and it will take me two weeks to catch up on This Blog is Full of Crap. Laurence Simon updates that bad boy every 5 minutes!
Sheila has been beautifully prolific as usual.
These cats alone will keep me busy for a while.
So, yeah, I'm back and I hope this year brings -for me- better blogging, better writing and a smidge of happiness.