Perforation Problems

(Day Sixty) "How's your blog post going? Is it awesome?" I've heard this question over and over again from Michael over the course of this 60 Day Challenge. As I got closer to this, the last post of the challenge, the question turned into, "What are you going to write for your last one? It has to be something special, right?" I hate these questions. I've told him so. I hate them almost as much as I hate being asked if I'm excited about something. These questions ooze with expectations. Is your blog post going to be awesome? No, it's not. It's going to be the most boring post ever. I'm going to write about how Clyde smells . Are you going to write about something special? No. There's nothing special. I'm going to write about every day shit, like how Clyde smells, and it's going to be boring. Are you excited about _____? No. Stop expecting me to be excited. Life is boring. Of course life isn't boring. All my ...

(Day Fifty-Nine) When we were in middle school, my best friend used to get what she called "orange fever." It seemed to be brought on by cheez-its, cheese puffs, and carrots. Orange foods. She'd go into some kind of hyper, drunken state where everything was funny and everything was the most exciting thing that could possibly happen. I have a picture of her in my mind: framed by the refrigerator door, a bag of baby carrots in her hand and a gleeful grin on her face, she's frozen as her 11-year old self, bobbed hair, oversized features and all. I remember laughing hysterically at whatever she was saying. Life was hilarious. We probably went outside after and ate cookie dough while jumping on the trampoline, because that's how we spent our time. My best friends have always loved food like I do. Do you remember that hyper feeling that was only possible as a child? It must have been some mix of sugar and hormones and your brain being unable to contain your emotio...

(Day Fifty-Eight) My poor dog is starving. I commiserate with him because I, too, often feel like I'm starving. And yet I believe him when he says he's more hungry than I am, because I sneak chocolate all the time. He has no access to food to sneak. Seriously, though, he's pretty hungry. This diet is rough on him. He just leapt up on the couch so he could stare at the closed goldfish carton on the table. Today I left work early to go meet with a contractor about our attic, then I had about 10 minutes to eat some Chikfila before my photography class. As I was sitting there, I realized it's been awhile since I've gone somewhere and eaten by myself. I kinda really like it. Is that weird? There's something calming about sitting down by yourself with all that noise and conversation around you and yet knowing you don't have to say one word to anyone. I don't want to do it every day, but every once in awhile is great. And then in my class we learned som...

(Day Fifty-Seven) Michael is pretty good at helping me come up with blog post topics. I'd say I end up taking his suggestions 8/10 times, even when it's something kinda silly like writing about a conversation we had about  shortbread cookies . Today when I started whining about not having a topic, he suggested I write about the sermon from Easter Sunday service this morning. Neither of us are big on going to church or organized religion or anything like that, and on the twice-yearly occasions where I do find myself in church,  I usually end up daydreaming through most the service. But this morning I found myself actually listening, and what's more, appreciating and agreeing with what Larry was saying. I've always liked my mom's church for its liberal bent. When I went through Confirmation, for example, I was required to attend other religious services in other faiths to explore what others believed, and one of my assignments was to write an essay on what I be...

(Day Fifty-Six) So I REALLY almost forgot my post tonight. I've been sitting here like a goomba gluing yarn to a wooden letter and watching TV, thinking I can go to bed in a minute. I have to get up in 6 hours so I can go to church for Easter Sunday. So I'm not going to write a lot. That means it's list time, guys. I'm going to take a cue from a couple people at work who are doing a 100 Days of Happiness challenge. For 100 days, they have to take a picture of something that makes them happy. I won't list 100, but I can list 10. Sunny Saturdays with the windows open and a warm breeze Doggy cuddles Multi-colored roses That relieved feeling when you blow your nose and get all the snot out M&Ms and Goldfish Going to bed when you're really sleepy Foot rubs Packages coming in the mail Knowing what you're going to wear tomorrow so you don't have to figure it out int he morning Vacuumed floors and clean kitchen counters

(Day Fifty-Five) I almost forgot to write my blog post because I was too preoccupied cleaning. It's been a busy evening -- I stopped by the store after work to pick up some last minute things for my future sister-in-law's bachelorette party tomorrow, came home and planted the strawberry plants that distracted me while doing said shopping, made mac n' cheese for dinner, and then spent the rest of the night cleaning and organizing and just generally making myself feel okay about the fact that people will be in my house tomorrow. Now my eyes are tired. With the bachelorette party tomorrow and Easter on Sunday, this weekend's pretty full, but at some point I need to find time to do my photography class homework assignment and work on some Olive & Clyde stuff. There's never enough time. BUT there's chocolate in my future. Cadbury eggs, maybe. Here's something I've been thinking about this week: I've realized that at some point over the last fi...

(Day Fifty-Four) Today's a day I'd like to just escape from reality for awhile -- maybe lose myself in a book or binge watch a couple seasons of a new TV show. But it's already past 10pm, so I know I'll probably spend the next little while writing this blog post and then go play Plants vs. Zombies in bed. Evenings pass too quickly. Today at work somebody said, about a potential candidate for a job opening, "He's too creative to be good at business." This upset me quite a bit. I get very touchy about people not respecting creativity -- writers are notoriously undervalued, low-paid, and overlooked, until, of course, somebody needs something written for them and realizes they can't do it themselves. (And what's the absolute worst is when a writer is asked to write something so someone else can put their name on it.) Writing is hard. In many ways it's much, much harder to write an article or a story than it is to put together a spreadsheet, but...

(Day Fifty-Three) Can I tell you how much I love editing and revising? It's by far my favorite part of the writing process. Writing the first draft is so hard -- you have to basically create something from nothing. It's almost painful, that process of putting words together into something that even marginally resembles what's in your head. But editing. Ahhhhhh. Editing is putting words in their place. It's taking what already exists and organizing it into the best form of itself. It's following rules and guidelines and your gut at the same time to shape a gelatinous mass into a well-ordered platoon. You'd think I'd be a very neat and organized person in real life, but no, everything around me is cluttered and messy. I just like my words organized. I had two friends send me something to look over today, and I'm not gonna lie, it excites me. I feel very satisfied when editing, especially when editing other people's work. It's harder to edit...

(Day Fifty-Two) I have nothing to say today. Seriously, nothing. I've been sitting here staring into space for 30-40 minutes. Whenever I have to write and I can't think of anything to say, I start by saying, "I have nothing to say." And then things start to come out. Are they worthwhile? No. But regardless. I went shopping with a friend today. We went to the mall -- I hate malls. I hate the teenagers that drift around, playing their puberty games with each other and loitering around at store entrances. I hate the old ladies who walk 3 miles per hour and take up the entire walkway. I hate the people who accost you as you're walking by and try to get you to take a survey, and the crowded department stores with the perfume smell you can taste in the air. I hate the yellow, dingy lighting in Payless and the junky center stalls filled with cell phone cases and airbrushed caricatures. I even hate the American Cookie Stand, which sounds like blasphemy -- and believe ...

(Day Fifty-One) This is going to be a burst of random thoughts. I don't feel like writing at all. Michael suggested I get Siri to write a blog post for me, but when you say "Siri, write a blog post," she just does a web search. Totally unhelpful. I went to my first Fundamentals of Photography class today -- it was fun. I have a homework assignment on iso setting and different light exposures. What with this class the next four weeks and then my Ruby workshop on the 2nd-3rd, I'm feeling suitably educational. Someone shared this article on FB today: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative . I like #2: "Don't wait until you know who you are to get started." "You have to start doing the work you want to be doing by copying your heroes; then, go beyond imitation to emulation and finally, you will end up with your own version of the thing you want to be doing." This is good advice. It's daunting to think of starting from scratc...

(Day Fifty) I'm sitting in the backyard swing, Clyde beside me, typing away and listening to the spring breeze through the trees. It's beautiful out. Even though it's almost 11am now, the air and the light still have that early morning quality that sometimes makes me wish I were a morning person. The day just feels so fresh and brand new in the morning. I probably should take advantage of this time to pull up the onion grass already invading the day lilies, or to trim back the bushes colliding with each other under the guest bedroom window, but I just want to sit here and pretend like I have nothing to do. So I'm going to. In fact, in a second I'm going to go find a new book to read so I can just lay here and space out. Nice weather is seriously the best. This year will be our third summer in our house. Our third summer watching the progression of summer flowers, from the daffodils and allium in April to the roses and day lilies in July. Our third year of lawn...

(Day Forty-Nine) I don't know what to write about tonight. I don't want to write about my day. It was a good day, but I just don't feel like writing another post about how I spent my time. I looked through my recent pictures and didn't find anything that spurred any thoughts, either, though I do like these... Clyde and the Swan: On the prowl: Spring Moon:  I feel a little melancholy and sentimental in the way that only summer evenings make me -- and though it's not really summer, yet, today was just as good. Sunshine, shorts, outside, ice cream. It's a good kind of melancholy, if you can imagine such a thing. I feel happy and content with myself and my life, in love with my husband and our little world we've built and the kind of partners we are. The melancholy comes from knowing summer evenings don't last forever, I think. And that's especially true this week because even though it was 75 today, it's supposed to be a high ...

(Day Forty-Eight) Last night I saw this on the floor and thought it was a mouse. I freaked out a little. But it's not a mouse. It's a leaf. I did not pick it up. Because that would be, like, silly? So today when I got home, I saw it and freaked out again. Michael was walking by at the time. Me: "I keep thinking that's a mouse." Michael: "Me too. But I keep not picking it up." I just went over to take a picture of it and again did not pick it up. 

(Day Forty-Seven) I heard a story on the radio yesterday about how people open conversations in different parts of the country. In New York and LA it's the standard, "What do you do?," which is really, "What's your job?," which is really, "What's your socio-economic standing in society?" In Colorado it's the same question, but instead of answering, "I'm a lawyer," you answer, "I mountain climb and ski." And in New Orleans, the question is, "How's your mama?" Lol. This brings up an interesting question -- when we define our identities by what we do for a living, how much of our real identity are we leaving out? Are our occupations really what define who we are? If you don't have a traditional 9-5, who are you? My job takes up a big chunk of my time. That's partly because it's a demanding job and partly because I have let it take up a big chunk of my time. I think many of us define who ...

(Day Forty-Six) I'm going to pretend I'm an NPR reviewer for a sec to do this intro: Now it's time for our brand new series, "Good Book Breakdown," where we look at books that stand out among the masses as crowd pleasers, classics, and must-reads. On Monday we covered the loved children's story  The Secret Garden ; today we'll talk about a children's book that has crossed over to fans of all ages: the  Harry Potter series.  People love Harry Potter , but why? There are hundreds of books about magic, about wizards. The shelves of our home library are full of fantasy books with supernatural elements, strong heroes, and epic good-vs-evil battles -- so why does Harry Potter get the attention? What made those books take off? To some extent it's a question of luck, circumstances, and the zeitgeist -- I've read books that are better written than HP and similar in nature and enjoyment but which get no attention at all. But there is a particul...

(Day Forty-Five) Me: "I wish we had cookies at home. Also I wish you could make only 10 cookies at a time. I guess you could cut the ingredients." Michael: "That's why you buy those blocks of cookies and break some off." Me: "Those aren't as good as homemade ones. Anyway we don't have those, EITHER. We have NOTHING." Michael: "We have Trefoils." Me: "Those aren't the same as chocolate chip cookies. Whenever I say 'cookies' I really mean 'chocolate chip cookies.'" Michael: "You could put the Trefoils in the microwave with chocolate chips on top." Me: "No." Michael: "No?" Me: "That's not the same at all." Michael: "What if you dip a Trefoil in chocolate?" Me: "Listen. Shortbread and chocolate don't go together." Michael: "I think you're not giving it a chance." Me: "I've GIVEN it a chance. I...

(Day Forty-Four) During my morning commute today, I was thinking about what kind of book I'd like to write, with thoughts of my most recent disappointment over Allegiant in my head. There's no reason I couldn't write a series at least as good as the Divergent books, if I really put my mind to it. It would be hard and take a lot of painstaking hours (yes, even a bad book can be a lot of work), but I could do it. That led me to think about the books I read as a kid and as an adult that I really just loved -- the ones I couldn't put down, and which stayed with me days after I finished them. Those books aren't always the bestsellers or great literature, but they pull you in and make you care. Good writers are good readers -- I'm sure you've heard that -- so I'd like to start a new blog series on here where I look at what makes the books I love great, both from a reader's perspective and as a writer. The English Major in me will want to break out t...

(Day Forty-Three) Sunday nights are the worst. Where did the weekend go? Let's focus on the positive. When we left for the lake on Friday, our backyard was flooded and everything was gray and dull. But when we got home this evening, it was like Spring had snuck in and infected everything... in the best way possible. The grass is bright green, the daffodils are coming up, and and the air smells like growing. I've got plans this week to clean up the yard and start controlling the weeds that are already sticking their heads up. I'm strangely excited about it, though that excitement will probably only last the first 5 minutes, given my existing feelings about weeding. The lake was great. A couple days with my grandparents and away from the normal flow of things was exactly what I needed. I wish I could have stayed longer. But when we got home, we went to see Captain America 2, which was very satisfying. The Marvel movies are actually pretty well-written, most of the tim...

(Day Forty-Two) I'm sitting in the front room at the lake, playing Plants vs. Zombies and listening to my grandpa talk nonstop at the Kentucky vs. Wisconsin game on the television. "I like Wisconsin," he says, stretching his feet out on the footrest of his recliner. "They have great cheese and beer."  "Tom," my grandma says from her seat by the fire. She sounds almost offended. "You like them for reasons other than that. Why are you saying that?"  "All right, I do."  I learn over the next hour that Wisconsin doesn't have the talented players Kentucky does, but they play as a team. Kentucky just buys their players, Grandpa says.  I've been listening to my grandpa all day. We drove into Webster to see Brett, the manager at Ace Hardware, who had info for Grandpa about a boat lift for his fishing boat. In the car on the way there I heard a story about Uncle Jerry wrecking his car on the way to prom over thirty years ...

(Day Forty-One) I took this picture before I left for work this morning. It's Mud Lake, formerly known as our backyard. If you look closely you can see the current of Mud Creek, the origin of this deluge, past the trees. Having a flooded backyard doesn't bother me or even alarm me anymore -- it's just another weird quirk of our little, in-the-city-but-feels-like-the-country house, and in a strange way I love it. I probably won't love it if the water ever actually reaches our house, but for now, it's something to smile and shake my head about. After a busy day at work, which was mostly spent sending emails every which way and running around from meeting to meeting*, Michael and Clyde and I left for Haircut Friday in Marion. I'm sorry. I took a selfie in the mirror as I was letting my hair dry. I don't feel okay about it. But I liked that I could see Clyde's mopey face and my dad's feet in the other room. If you haven't read my pa...

(Day Forty) Day Forty! Forty posts! Forty nights of writing. Maybe two posts I actually like. Hey, that's better than no days of writing and no posts I like, which is what it would have been otherwise. We're heading to the lake this weekend, and I'm really excited to get away and get my head into summer -- because that's what the lake means. Summer and sunshine and family and not worrying about things. It doesn't matter that it's April and barely even spring, let alone summer. Summer is a state of mind. I'm hoping I'll feel like writing a bit this weekend, since I'll be in a different place and it'll be relatively quiet, but I know these lake weekends go fast. I also tend to need a few days in a place before I get to the writing point -- when we went to Hawaii, I didn't feel like writing until the second week. Then again, maybe the fact that I've been writing regularly means the writing point is closer to the surface and more access...

(Day Thirty-Nine) Prompt from 642 Things to Write About : Five things you wish you'd asked your grandfather or grandmother.  It's a little sad to write about this topic, but not for the reasons you'd think. My grandparents are still here, all four of them. What's sad is that instead of taking advantage of the fact that they are still around and actually asking them these questions, I'm going to write about them here. So it's not sad like want-to-cry sad, it's sad / pathetic, like I'm wasting an opportunity and identifying a regret I still have time to fix, but I probably won't. 1) What was it like to fall in love, get married, and have a baby so young? You were only 18. Were your parents mad? Did they try to split you up? Did you really know getting married was the right thing to do? Did you ever regret it? 2) Do you ever wish you'd had a different life?  Married someone else, not had kids, had a different career, left Marion, Indiana? ...

(Day Thirty-Eight) I'm trying to get my blog post done early tonight so I can tune out and not think about anything, but I'm having a hard time coming up with anything worth writing about. When this sixty day challenge is over, I'd like to start a new challenge, one focused more on writing something of substance and length. Maybe that just means the challenge becomes writing a certain number of words a day, but it doesn't have to be on the blog? That's going to mean my blogging goes way down, but it would give me more freedom to write things and not have to worry about putting them on the internet. I'd like to figure out a project, whether it's a book or a short story or even just a series of pieces on a certain theme or topic. I've been tossing around a couple ideas, none of which I will write down here, because don't you know you're supposed to be ultra-secret with your intellectual property? ;) But two of them are nonfiction, one is sc...