Jaded Jennifer

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a pervert. My favorite subject has always been sex. I enjoy talking about it with other people, and I’ve often been known to give WAY more details than some people want to hear. Part of that is because I don’t mind hearing details from other people so sometimes it doesn’t cross my mind that they might have an issue with it. Sometimes I really LOVE hearing the details of other people’s sex lives, to the point that I once considered being a sexologist. Yes, it’s a real profession. Go look it up.

I was never all talk either. I loved having sex, more than I loved almost anything. At some point in my relationship with Mark, though, I stopped wanting to have sex. It wasn’t that I lost interest in sex really, because I still loved talking about it and thinking about it. But it started to feel like such a hassle, like an obligation. I think this was when I really learned how easy it was to get myself off by masturbating and after that, my sex life was done for. After all, why go through the long hassle of foreplay and sex when I could get myself off in 2 minutes and then drift off to sleep in non-cuddling bliss?

Maybe that sounds weird. I mean, women are supposed to like romance and foreplay and long, slow sex and pillow talk and cuddling. But that just wasn’t me. Oh, sometimes it was, sure. But most of the time all of that felt like WORK when all I really wanted was the orgasm.

When me and Mark split up, I became insatiable. To the point that I realized recently any guy who has been with me laughs at the idea of me going for a week or more without sex. I admit, it kind of offended me. I started feeling like guys look at me like I’m a nympho or something, which I’m really not.

So maybe it’s my determination to not be what other people think I am. I know I have that stubborn, strong-willed streak that often refuses to conform to the ideas people have about me. All I know is that lately, I’ve become absolutely sexless. Not just that I don’t HAVE sex lately, although that much is true too. But I don’t even masturbate. And I don’t think about sex. Or talk about sex. Or drop sexual innuendos like they just sprout off of my tongue.

Maybe worse than not being sexual is the fact that I’m no longer even sensual. I hide my body in baggy pants and t-shirts. When I change my clothes, I do it as quickly as possible, and I don’t dare stand anywhere near a mirror where I might actually see myself. I no longer walk with the swagger of a woman who believes she’s beautiful and sexy (not that I ever TRULY believed it but a part of me could have been convinced). No, I walk with my hands in the pockets of my baggy hoodie, head down, shoulders hunched, not looking people in the eye.

I remember being this girl once upon a time. I didn’t like her. And you know what? I still don’t like her. I just wish I knew how to get rid of her for good, but she’s like good old Aunt Flo; she just keeps coming back. All it takes for me is a lack of guys (or guy, I suppose) showing me attention and flirting with me and letting me know that they find me sexy, and then BOOM! There’s shy, self-conscious Jennifer peeking her head around the corner.

Someday, maybe, I’ll find a way to get rid of her on my own and not have to rely on men. Because, really, we all know how unreliable they can be.

I have too much I want to blog about this morning. Sometimes, when I have so many things I want to talk about, they all get jumbled in my head and I can’t figure out how to yank those pieces out and put them back together. So here are a couple of things I managed to salvage out of the wreckage.

Life magazine did a wonderful piece on famous literary drunks and addicts that you should check out. That’s a link, by the way. Click on it. I promise it won’t bite.

It got me thinking….is it just normal for creative people to become addicted to things? I’ve always said that I have an addictive personality. Which, to me, means that I become addicted to things WAY too easily. It’s not just my cigarettes and Mountain Dew, really. I become addicted to foods all the time. Wren makes biscuits and gravy and suddenly I’m addicted, so that all I want to eat for the next two weeks is biscuits and gravy and so what if he’s sick of it after two days, I’M ADDICTED ASSHOLE SO GO MAKE ME MORE!!!! Phew, sorry. Lost it there for a moment. It’s not just foods either. I become addicted to everything. Like drawing, for example. I start drawing and I just can’t stop. I’ll draw constantly for weeks, and then suddenly I’m sick of it and I move onto another addiction.

Really, I sometimes feel like my life is just one addiction after another. What I eat, what I drink, what I do each day is all determined by what I happen to be addicted to at that moment. It’s really not fun. But maybe, just maybe, it’s normal, huh? Go check out that Life article and see how many of those photographs have somebody smoking in them.

Oh, and another thing I salvaged from my messy brain is this:

I completed one of my bucket list items last weekend, just like I said I was going to. I wanted to add some photos but for some reason WordPress hates me today and won’t let me add photos or properly edit any of my pages. So I guess that will have to wait. Seriously, the internet really is trying to ruin my life.

Aliens woke me up this morning. I’m not kidding. Or it could have been a ghost. I really wasn’t sure. I passed out down in the living room on the love seat last night around 10pm, which is WAY early for me. At 5:50 this morning, I was jarred from my peaceful slumber by a jingle and a woman’s voice. I was disoriented (from being downstairs and it being so dark, not to mention the music coming from Wren’s laptop when I always sleep to the television) but I KNEW the voice came from behind my head. I sat up quickly and kept looking around, trying to find this person who talked. There was nobody there. I contemplated the idea that we may have a ghost in our apartment, then I finally decided to get up and pee…ummmm….I mean, use the restroom, and as I was walking in there, I heard a very distinctive beep from the living room. I didn’t turn around and look because I was sure it was an alien spaceship about to beam me up and I figured it would be better if I emptied my bladder first.

I guess emptying the bladder also allowed my brain to start working because when I went and sat back down on the love seat, I realized that Wren’s phone was plugged in and sitting on the window right above my head. I reached for it and, sure enough, he had a new text message. So that explained the beeping. It was some stupid thing from MySpace, which I replied “STOP” to so that they’d quit sending it. I set the phone back on the windowsill and then JUMPED when that stupid voice said “new message” or some crap like that.

So now apparently cell phones are trying to ruin my life too. I should have gone back to bed when I had the chance.

There’s a reason I don’t walk around my house naked. It’s the same reason that I change my clothes as quickly as possible, with no mirrors in sight. I sure as hell don’t wanna see me naked. Hard to believe anybody else does, but then, I always knew Wren was slightly crazy. Why do you think I started dating him? It takes crazy to handle living with me and my brood.

But, you know, I put my foot down when it comes to bathing and sex. Those are things that just require nudity. Also, golf lessons and driving to the gun range, but we won’t go there.

Tonight I laid in my bed afterward, disgustedly analyzing my naked flesh. I really felt the need to complain about what I saw, but I get no satisfaction when I bitch at Wren. Even when I took his hand and pushed his finger repeatedly down on my stomach saying “squish! squish! squish!” he just laughed and told me I’m a goober. Rude, right? I believe only another woman could truly understand my anguish.

So I’m writing this letter to my body. Does that mean you shouldn’t read it since you’re not my body? Nah, go ahead. My body and I have no secrets.

Dear Body,

What the fuck is wrong with you?! Ahem…I mean, hi, how are you doing? I apologize for interrupting your lovely evening and I am truly sorry I had to stop stuffing cheddar and sour cream potato chips (your favorite) inside of you long enough to write this letter. But your recent conduct must be addressed.

I realize that we just celebrated our 34th birthday, but that’s really no reason for you to throw in the towel and give up. I certainly haven’t. I mean, come on. What’s with the run-away boobs? Boobs are supposed to be cute and perky, or haven’t you heard that? When I lay flat on my back, they shouldn’t try to run away into my armpits. Get some damn control over them before I call the boob-catcher to come in and wrestle them back into place. And nevermind Wren’s whole “boobs don’t sit upright like that without silicone.” What does HE know? He’s not the one laying here with nipples who surely must have had a fight because they’re trying to get as far away from each other as they can.

And yeah, he doesn’t understand the problems with the squishy tummy. Why is it that when HE gains belly fat, it’s all hard and firm so that when he lays flat it could almost appear to be a firm, toned stomach, but the fat around OUR middle is all soft and squishy like a big old girdle made of marshmallow? Really Body. You can do better than that, can’t you? You’re not made out of JELLO for God’s sake.

But I think the worst of it, really, is the stretch marks on the top of our thighs. Where the hell did you even GET those from? The stretch marks on our stomach I can understand. I mean, those 6 kids sleeping downstairs are clear evidence of those tummy stretch marks. But last time I checked babies were carried in the ABDOMEN, not in the THIGHS. I sure as hell don’t remember getting kicked in the femur when we were pregnant, do you? No, I’m pretty sure that was the bladder and kidneys, which are in our STOMACH, not our legs. Did the stretch marks migrate when I wasn’t looking? Do we have run-away stretch marks too? Did they just slide down and take up residence there? Am I going to wake up tomorrow with them on my kneecaps?

I’m sorry to be so abrupt about this, Body, but I’m a little bit fed up. How about we make a deal? I promise to continue to provide you with your Mountain Dew, Hostess cupcakes and Cheetos, if you promise to make some effort to pull yourself together. Just a little effort. Please?

Are my pleas falling on deaf ears? Are you currently laughing at my desperate attempts to bribe you into submission? Fine. How about a threat then?

Get yourself in shape soon or I’ll FORCE you to get in shape and trust me, neither one of us wants that.

No? How about blackmail then? Ummm…oh! If you don’t do as I ask, I’ll distribute photos of your flaws all over the internet and…oh wait. Nevermind. I don’t want that either.

Fine. Whatever. Hand me the freaking bag of chips.

Forever (unfortunately) yours,
Jennifer

Seriously, if I ever thought I was a bad mom before, that idea has gone right out the window over the last week or so.

It was about that time that these girls showed up in our backyard to play with my kids. The first two who showed up were 5 and 7 years old and they live about 2 blocks away. I absolutely cannot understand parents who let their children roam the neighborhood without having any idea where they’re at. Even with J.R., who is 16 years old, I always know where he is and if he goes somewhere different, he calls me and asks me if it’s ok first. I’d sure as hell never allow my kids to just wander around the neighborhood and go to stranger’s houses.

But these girls started playing over here in our backyard, and two other girls started coming over as well. I have no idea what their names are, don’t know anything about their parents and I’m not even positive which houses they live in. One day my kids came in wanting to know if they could go over to THEIR house and play in THEIR backyard and I gave them a resounding “Hell no!” Sorry, but for all I know their parents are cooking meth in the garage and having orgies in the living room. While that may sound like a fun Saturday night for some people, it’s certainly not an environment that I want my kids around.

I’ve been getting rather annoyed at them showing up at my backdoor promptly at 3:15pm, especially since my kids don’t usually get home until 3:45-4:00. And they don’t ever leave until I MAKE them leave, usually around 7pm. I have to wonder, don’t their parents make them dinner? Don’t they ever wonder where their children are?

Today I made them leave earlier than normal when I found my 3 youngest kids in the alley with them (where they’re NOT supposed to be) watching them try to fly a kite. Isn’t that an awesome idea? Send your kids out to an alley full of power lines to fly a kite.

But then about 15 minutes ago, one of them showed up at my backdoor again, wanting Mikaela to come out and play. Even worse, she was standing there talking to Mikaela and in her hand was a DEAD hamster. She stood there petting the dead hamster while she told Mikaela how their cat killed the hamster awhile ago and she had to bring it out of the backyard because it was freaking her sister out.

Because, you know, when a family pet dies, we all just toss it in the backyard, right?

I think I may have to start banning these kids from our yard.

1. My professor apparently likes Paris Hilton. I tried not to jump up and knock some sense into him when he shrugged and said “She’s blonde and cute. What can I say?” Does the man have eyes? Paris Hilton is so not cute. Puppies are cute. Babies are cute. The wrinkles next to George Clooney’s eyes when he smiles is cute. Paris Hilton is….none of those things.

2. I found out where the term “dead ringer” came from. When people died, they’d place a string inside of their coffin and attach it to a bell that was next to their headstone. This way, if they really weren’t dead and were instead..oh, I dunno, taking a power nap or something, and they happened to wake up buried 6 feet underground, hopefully they’d have the foresight to search for that string and ring the bell repeatedly until somebody happened to walk by and realize there was a live person inside. Neat idea I guess, although it makes me think two things. One: the idea that they buried enough live people to have a need for this is a bit unnerving. And two: I’d hate to be walking through those graveyards on a windy night. Also, this doesn’t really explain to me why we use the term the way we do. Next time I see a “dead ringer” for my sister, I’ll be sure to bury the lady in a coffin and see if she can indeed manage to ring the bell to let us know she’s alive.

3. When you’re writing on a white board, you really should make sure you’ve been working on your handwriting. Otherwise words like “rock” will end up looking like “cock” and have the whole class thinking you have a side-job teaching Pornography 101.

4. My professor had popcorn ceilings in his apartment when he was in college. Don’t ask me why I needed to know this. I still haven’t figured that out.

5. Spider poop (aka a spiderweb) on a projector lens is approximately 1 pixel. You don’t want to know how this came up. Trust me.

So that was our class for the evening. Oh, there was also some stuff about rocks and weatherization, but who listens to that stuff really?

Life feels like a giant roller coaster to me sometimes. As great as the highs are, the lows absolutely suck. I’d really just love to find that middle ground.

This week has been one of those weeks. Waiting on a check so I can have a birthday party for my daughter, whose birthday was LAST week. The check should have been here on Tuesday, so I planned the party for Thursday giving me one day to run all over town getting everything for the party. Instead, the check came today. And because my mailman is retarded, I didn’t get it until 4:30pm. So much for a Thursday party. There’s no way I’m running around in rush hour traffic to get everything.

But things were going pretty good this week. I finished writing my book and I’m really happy with it. I’m working on editing it now and want to get that done before the weekend so I can get some friends of mine to be my “test audience” and tell me what they think and if I should change anything. Then I’m off to the fun agent search again, but even that I don’t mind this time because I think I can write a better query for this book.

Found out that I’m getting my financial aid back so I get to start school next Monday. But we still hadn’t heard if Wren gets his back. I sat here making plans to pay for him to go if they didn’t give it back to him, knowing it would mean we’d be strapped for cash this quarter, but also knowing if I did that he’d get his back in summer.

But then we found out, he’s getting his back and gets to start on Monday too! Yay!!!

And then the furnace quit working.

No idea WHY it quit working. We tried changing the filter in it but no luck. I’m not about to call my mother and tell her that her furnace isn’t working because I’m sure she’ll blame us and it’s not like she’ll get anybody here to fix it. I figured, warm weather is right around the corner and by the time it gets cold again, we’ll be moved out and my mom will be back here.

But here it is, April 1st, and it’s SNOWING outside. It’s so cold in this house that we’re all bundled up in thick socks and hoodies, cuddling with the cat and dog under blankets.

Wren made a fire in the fireplace, but he used the last of the wood and since my check wasn’t here yet, we couldn’t really go buy more. So we turned on the oven, opened the door and set up a fan in the kitchen. lol Really, can you GET more ghetto than that?

Even with the furnace not working, I’ve still been in a great mood. Everything was starting to go our way.

Except for the mailman who hates us and seems to be holding all of our GOOD mail as long as possible, but that’s for a different blog.

This afternoon I finally got my letter from the school saying how much I’ll be getting in financial aid. And for some reason, they’re not giving me ANY student loans. WTF? The amount of money I’m getting will barely pay for my classes and books, it sure as hell won’t pay the other bills so I can actually GO to school instead of having to work. Oh, I know a lot of people go to school and work at the same time. I bet they also don’t have 6 kids who go to 3 different schools clear across town so that they have to drive over and pick them all up at 3 different times each day. That, or they have REALLY good childcare.

Could you imagine the cost of childcare for 6 kids? I’d have to get a second job just to be able to pay it.

As anybody knows, though, when you’re on a really big high, you crash really hard. So this letter crashed both me and Wren, who realizes they probably won’t be giving him loans either because apparently we’re both in default and didn’t know it. Since when did they STOP sending out letters to tell you when a payment is due? I’ve never received a thing from them.

Or so I thought. I found some emails in my spam box from them, called their number and they’re doing some forebearance thing to get me out of default and then I have to print off this application for deferment and send it to them along with some papers and my first born or something. And THEN I have to contact the school and hope it’s not too late to get my loans back.

I swear, I had less problems getting into school than I’m having getting BACK into school. You’d think it would be easier since it hasn’t even been a year since I was there.

I’m trying to remain optimistic. Even though my fingers are so cold it’s actually becoming painful to type this, and my bed is covered in papers that I dug out of the filing cabinet to figure everything out, and my book is sitting here open in Word NOT getting edited, and Wren told me he doesn’t WANT to make anything for dinner tonight (I’m mourning the homecooked meal, let me tell ya), and there are rather large snowflakes falling outside my bedroom window, I’m trying to remain optimistic.

Plus side: My book, Unrequited, is finished! Yay!!! I’ll just focus on that thought for awhile.

I’m having one of those “I really want to put all of my kids up for adoption” kind of days.

And I’m trying really hard to remember why I wanted so many kids when I was younger. I always said I wanted 10 kids. Then I found out how babies are born and decided I would just adopt. I mean, come on, childbirth HURTS. Of course, I was only 9 years old and didn’t know anything about lovely epidurals.

When I got older (older meaning 16 years old) me and my future ex-husband decided two kids would be good. We wanted a boy and then a girl, and we thought 2 years apart would be perfect.

J.R. was born on 11/11/92. On his second birthday, his sister Katie was born.

Then came Dustin 13 months after Katie while I was on birth control pills.

Then 2 and a half years later came Hunter while I was on Depo-Provera.

Then 11 months later came Mikaela….well, because we were drunk and stupid which translates to not being careful.

Then Mark had a vasectomy, the only birth control that worked for me.

That didn’t help me once me and Mark split up. So I started taking the pill and ended up with Wren. 2 months later I got pregnant with Boogie.

And a year later, Wren got a vasectomy for Father’s Day. I even took him to the same doctor I took Mark to. I think that doctor likes me.

So now here I am, 6 kids later, and I can’t quite remember what I thought was so great about having kids. I told Wren I want to put them all up for adoption. He said we could keep the two oldest ones. Then he changed it and said we’d just keep Katie. She’s such a huge help around here and never causes any problems, even at 14 years old when she should be a huge pain in the ass. I guess the other kids are trying to make up for her.

J.R. isn’t a HUGE pain but he’s just so dramatic and pessimistic and he drives us insane sometimes with his bitching. Plus, he’s 16 and wants everything immediately. Patience is lost on 16 year olds. And 5 year olds.

For the last 2 months, Boogie has been waking up 6-8 times a night crying. It started gradually when she had that ear infection that wouldn’t go away. She’d wake up saying her ear hurt, so we’d put drops in it, give her Tylenol and she’d go back to sleep. But it’s gotten worse and now she has NO idea why she’s waking up. In the middle of the night, I’ll find her curled up in a ball on the floor in the hallway, or the kitchen, crying. When we ask her what woke her up she yells “I don’t know!” Then we ask her why she’s crying and she yells “I don’t know!”

I try to be sympathetic, I really do. I pick her up, sit with her for awhile and then send her back down to bed. But after the 3rd or 4th time of this, it starts to get frustrating. I probably wouldn’t mind as much if she actually came into our bedroom instead of laying on the floor somewhere crying loud enough to wake the whole house. I also probably wouldn’t mind as much if she could tell me WHY she’s crying.

Needless to say I was really tired today after only getting 4 hours of sleep last night. So Wren went to pick up the kids from school and I took a nap. He told Boogie to sit in the living room and watch TV until he got back because I’d be sleeping. She says “But who will keep me from getting into stuff?”

Ok, so it’s funny, but not so much when you consider that I woke this morning to find her on the couch surrounded by chocolate chips cookies and an open bottle of pink fingernail polish on the coffee table. Oh, and did I mention the coffee table is now painted pink? Yeah, it’s pretty.

So I fell asleep and at some point she managed to find some dum-dums. I only know this because I half woke up when she climbed on my bed to set one next to me. She likes to share. I noticed she had 2 in her hand and fell back to sleep. I got woke up less than an hour later by her crying and running back and forth from the living room to the back door, looking for Wren and the kids.

Her tooth was hurting her. So I got some Oragel and put it on there, and gave up on sleep. About half an hour later, after the kids got home and she played with Hunter in the yard for awhile, she started crying and saying her tooth hurt again. So Wren put some Oragel on it. She spent the next HOUR laying on the couch crying nonstop. She wasn’t crying loud or anything but it was really putting me in a bad mood.

When her crying started getting more dramatic, it became obvious that it wasn’t about her tooth. She was tired, from not getting enough sleep lately, and playing it up. Wren told her to go down to her room and cry. She kept screaming “I can’t walk!” and wouldn’t get up off the floor. Oh, didn’t you know? Teeth are connected to legs.

Finally, Wren carried her down to her room and put her on her bed with a sock full of ice. She spent the NEXT hour screaming at the top of her lungs. I went down there at one point and said “Do I need to take you to the hospital?” She yelled at me to stop talking to her and said she was about to stop screaming when I came down there. lol Funny how quick a threat to the hospital will get a kid to stop being a drama queen.

On top of all of this, Dustin, Hunter and Mikaela were supposed to be getting dishes done so Wren could make spaghetti for dinner. They got them done very quickly and he went in to make it after bringing Boogie downstairs. He went looking for a pot and found 4 or 5 DIRTY dishes hidden in the back of one of the cupboards.

This has been happening a lot. We keep finding dirty dishes in the cupboards because one, two or all three of them don’t feel like washing them so they shove them in a drawer or cupboard with food caked on them, thinking we’ll never know it was them who did it. They’re right, of course, which is the part that really sucks.

If God was going to make being a parent so difficult, why didn’t he at least build us equipped with lie detectors so we’d ALWAYS know which kid to punish?

Wren grilled them for awhile and got nowhere. I decided from now on we’re going to have to stand over their shoulders while they do dishes and inspect each of them before they put them away. Yay!! More work for me and Wren to do!!!

Also, it seems our dishes have mysteriously been disappearing. I’ve bought new spoons and forks twice in the last year, and my sis-in-law bought us some new ones just a few months ago. But tonight there were 5 forks in the drawer. Definitely not enough to feed 9 people spaghetti. We’re pretty sure they’ve been throwing them in the garbage to avoid washing them, but, of course, they won’t admit to that either. Wren sent them on a fork hunt (not as fun as an Easter egg hunt, let me tell ya) and they eventually found enough for us to eat dinner.

Despite my frustration, Boogie DID eventually stop screaming too. She even stood up on her own two legs and walked up the stairs. Oh, she got on her knees and pulled herself around up here on the hardwood floors for awhile, saying she still couldn’t walk, but she made a miraculous recovery when Hunter took something from her and ran.

Soon Mark will be here to pick Dustin, Hunter and Mikaela up. Things will quiet down around here, and I may even be able to relax. But tomorrow, Mark will be bringing Mikaela home since she’s having a hard time staying at his house lately. And with her, he’ll be bringing his girlfriend’s daughter Jasman to stay the night.

Which means we’ll start all of this over again soon. I think I’ll go check into the cost of sound-proofing my bedroom.

About 8 years ago, my house got hit by a car.Yes, you heard me. My house got hit by a car. It wasn’t just your normal vehicular assault either. It was a hit and run. Some drunk slid on a patch of ice, slammed into the back of our house, then took off before we could recover from the shock and realize what had happened. If it had happened a half hour later, my boys would have been covered in glass. As it was, their bunk bed was broken and it took quite a bit to repair the damage.

Honestly, it turned out to be a not so bad thing. Our insurance company cut us a check for the estimated repairs and, since we had built the house ourselves, we fixed it ourselves and got the supplies at wholesale. I think we came out about $1000 ahead.

Plus, we get the privilege of telling people that our house got hit by a car, which is pretty fun to say.

I wonder sometimes about the idiot who hit it. Does he (I assume it was a man, and I’d rather not explain why) walk around telling people “I hit a house with my car once. I thought it would be a fair fight. Turns out, the house was much tougher than it looked.”

On another note, I’ve decided it’s time for me to resort to throwing fits. My four year old does it. Why can’t I?

So next time Wren won’t go in and make me mashed potatoes with cheese, or tells me that I HAVE to wake up because I’m sleeping all day, I’m just going to throw myself down on the floor, kick my feet, and start screaming and crying. I really think it will work. I think he’ll be so shocked and confused, that he’ll give me what I want. Hell, with how loud I can scream, he’ll probably promise to erect a statue in my honor out on the front lawn just to stop the madness.

Yep. It’s the Terrible Thirty-Threes for me.

Oh, and no, I won’t be doing videos of me throwing fits. I’d hate to tarnish my image.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a famous author. I’d start writing a book, get a couple of chapters written, and then never go back and finish it. One of my life goals was to actually finish writing a book. Another life goal of mine was to get a book published.In 2007, these goals hit me hard. On April 8, 2007 my brother, at the age of 35, died of a heart attack. He was a great painter, especially when you consider he had very little formal training. He never did anything with it, though. He painted and painted but never sold anything until shortly before he died when he started making 3D wood sculptures and selling them to people. I felt like he didn’t take any real chances to achieve his goals.Then, on November 13, 2007 my dad died of lung cancer. My dad…..where do I even begin to talk about him? We had a terrible relationship when I was growing up. We butted heads all the time. He was an alcoholic and took a lot out on me. But in so many ways, I was more like him than any of the other kids. My dad was a writer. He wrote poetry more than anything else, but he always wanted to be a published author. This may be where I got my own goal from but since I can’t remember when my desire to write started, I couldn’t really say. As an adult, our relationship totally changed and he became by biggest supporter and fan. I loved showing him things I had done because I could always see how proud he was of me.When my dad died, he wasn’t a well-known author like he wanted to be. In fact, other than posting on some ezines and in a few literary magazines that nobody had really ever heard of, he wasn’t published at all. I found a folder full of his writing in his file cabinet. It was line after line of beautiful, melodic prose that, rather than making me feel good, actually caused me to feel desperate. My dad wasn’t just a good writer, he was a great writer. Yet he went nowhere with his writing because he didn’t take chances. Or if he did take them, I certainly never knew about them.

Last April, 1 year after my brother died and 5 months after my dad died, I decided I needed to push myself to achieve my goals. I have so many story ideas inside of me that it’s almost painful. I sat at my computer and, in 11 days, I wrote a 107,000 word book. I thought that I’d feel this great sense of accomplishment when I finished it, but instead I almost felt depressed. It was sad to me not being able to run to my dad and show him what I had done. I think the let-down was magnified by the fact that it was all so anti-climactic. I was happy with the book. Sure, there were some areas where I thought it could use work. What piece of writing can’t use work? But overall, I was happy with it.

Sometimes, achieving a life-long goal isn’t as exciting as you expect it to be.

And maybe part of it was the fact that there was a whole other step to this goal that seemed insurmountable. The publishing part.

I spent the spring putting off writing a query. Once I had finally exhausted all of my excuses, I wrote the letter. It wasn’t good. Really, it sucked. But it was finished. So I sent it off to 10 agents. I knew my summary paragraph wasn’t good enough for them to ask to see more. I knew what their responses would be. But I sent it off anyway, just so I would feel like I was taking chances. But I stopped after those 10 because I knew if I really wanted to get anywhere, I needed to change that summary.

And now, here it is March. I haven’t rewritten the summary or attempted to contact any other agents. There’s always something that keeps me from doing it. Right now, it’s a new book. At the end of last summer I had an idea for a new book and started writing it. I got halfway through the first chapter, and did a basic outline, but then never went back to it. I’m finally forcing myself to write this one because I think it will be better than my first one, especially now that I have a better idea of what it takes to fill a 107,000 word book.

There’s something I realized last night. I used to constantly hear authors say that when they’re writing a book, they become obsessed with the characters. They can’t talk about anything else or think about anything else and even have dreams about them. The characters become like real people to them. I never completely understood this until I wrote that book last year. But last night I realized that, for me at least, they had it all backwards.

It’s not a matter of “once I start writing a book, I become obsessed with the characters.” For me, I can’t begin to write the book until I become obsessed with the characters. Once I’ve talked about them, and outlined them enough to make them real, I have no choice but to get their story down on paper….or laptop. Whatever.

So right now I’m lost in a world of my own creation. It’s an interesting world. Unfortunately, it’s almost like being God and knowing exactly what’s going to happen to all of the people in your world. Luckily, also like being God, you can’t completely control the characters in your book. Not if you’ve done a good job making them become real. You’ll be typing and they’ll say something or do something that surprises you. Something you didn’t see coming.

Or, you know, maybe it’s just me.

*Disclaimer: Since I really am the Queen of Procrastination, I should tell you that everything you read above was really just my way of putting off writing chapter 2. What? Did you think there was actually a point to all of this rambling?

My hair is really thick. Sometimes I like that it’s so thick. I mean, everybody wants thick hair, right? The problem is, my hair is also very, very fine so it doesn’t actually LOOK anywhere near as thick as it is. The only time anybody realizes how thick my hair is, is if they’re cutting it or dying it for me. And they always act so shocked about it.

Having thick hair sucks in so many ways. For instance, it takes hours and hours for my hair to completely dry. Why don’t I use a blow dryer? Well, that would be awesome if it didn’t create frizzy, fly-away, staticky hair on top of my head. Having thick hair also means that in the summer, my head sweats like it’s being interrogated by the FBI. And for me, sweaty scalp=itchy scalp. Which creates knotty, frizzy, fly-away hair on top of my head. Sure, it’s nice to be able to go outside without a hat on when it’s 20 below, but you know, I actually enjoy crocheting hats and they only take me about 2 hours to make so I have a lot of them. I’d settle for hair that’s a little bit thinner, and cute hats in the winter.

What fine hair means is that it tangles easily. I could seriously brush my hair for an hour, get every single last tangle out, have it looking all smooth and shiny. But 5 minutes later I guarantee it will be in knots again and look like I haven’t brushed it all day. It likes to wait until I’ve walked away from every brush in existence. Once there are no brushes in sight, the chief yells “OK troops! Deploy!” and they all embrace as if they’re saying their last goodbye.

I used to always say my hair was so straight you could hear it cry when I’d wrap it around a curling iron. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed there’s some body to my hair. It’s not enough to call it curly, or to use any of those “curl-enhancer” products to create cute little waves. It’s just enough to make it turn frizzy on me when I brush it out.

Keeping the balance of oily vs. dry is so tricky with my hair. The only time I think my hair looks good is the day I wash it, but if I wash it every day it gets very dry and brittle. Even washing it every other day eventually makes it dry. So, for me, it’s every 3 days because by day 3 it will start looking oily.

One good thing I will say about my hair is that it usually grows pretty quickly. That’s nice when I’m trying to grow it out, like I am right now. But about a year ago I decided to cut some of my bangs short and I get really tired of having to trim them every 3 weeks to keep them out of my eyes. Of course, the minute I decide to grow them out they’ll start growing as slowly as they possibly can.

I’ve been dying my hair since I was 12 years old. I think it’s decided to rebel. I really can’t stand my natural color, which used to be a mousey boring brown but is now sprinkled with greyish-white strands. I wonder sometimes if I stopped dying it and let it grow out naturally, if the mousey brown color might get some natural highlights in it, but now that the grey keeps sprouting up, I sure don’t plan to ever find out.

Does it sound like I’m bitching and complaining? Well good, because I am. I often think about shaving my head but I worry that under all of this unmanageable, fine, thick, frizzy, mousey-brown hair, my head may be misshapen. It wouldn’t surprise me. Lord knows I’ve taken enough bumps to the head.

Ah well. Make due with what we have, right? Guess I’ll go wash this “blonde” dye out even though it doesn’t appear to have worked in the slightest. Maybe I can still get the pink to look good.