Vacation with the P's or "Anyone seen my Belltone?"

Vacation with the P's or, "Does anyone know where I put my Belltone"?

Yes, I know I'm behind on a new blog or ten.  I have tons of blogs coming down the chute because I'm on vacation with my parents (gasp)!  How old am I?  Twelve?  We're visiting Washington state to see my sister and husband for (another gasp) 2 weeks.  And that was a plea-bargain, because they wanted me to go for three weeks.  It was difficult, but after perusing Jen's supply of prescription meds, it got it whittled down to . . .

Two weeks.

OK, so you can gather all the gaffes I can write about, the gist of it being, how much you love your parents but are horribly conflicted you are because they are so fucking annoying.

One of my favorites goes like this:

You are quickly trying to put on your mascara and brush your teeth at the same time because you know that sooner or later either parent is going to walk in the bathroom, announcing that they're going to have to take a "huge dumper" but "never mind, you don't have to finish what you're doing."  They'll be in just "a moment." 

Or this little scenario:

"Have you seen my coffee, Mom?"

"Copy?  Copy what?"

"My coffee!  Have you seen my coffee?!!!!"

"No, I don't have a cough dear."

(Repeat ad nauseum)

Pets, My Dog-son and Crackie

Ever notice how the saying, "Pets resemble their owners" is true?

Ben's driving me bat-shit crazy.  For the past TWO HOURS, he's been running from the bathroom window to the living room door over and over OVER AGAIN as if he's got O.C.D.

He's furious because Buddy, the dog next door, the "unbearably arrogant brute" Bennie's words, has escaped his yard again.  Bennie finds this personally offensive on many levels because he feels Buddy did this on purpose to personally affront him, throwing it up in his face.  Bennie finds this so unbearably rude, that he cannot, simply . . .

. . . let it go, until he goes back and forth across the living room, 75 times, ruminating over it and making this little huffing-under-his-breath noise, the way he does when he's personally insulted.

Of course this is HIGHLY aggravating for me to have to witness.

Then of course I cringe, seeing the direct comparison between Ben and Buddy, to me and Crackie. And how obsessed both Ben and I are when we have become convinced that someone is nefariously out to get us.

Well, I can't read Buddy's mind, but I know Crackie pretty well.

Here's the whole story summarized.  I needed my counter fixed. I needed someone unemployed with time on their hands, who's talented with a saw. Crackie, of course fit the bill, so I emailed him after basically not talking to him for almost a year. He thought he could fix my counter, too. Long story short, I felt "attracted" (again, sigh) to him while watching him work (over two weekends) .  Of course, he couldn't have gained weight or gotten ugly, no.  I could see the outline of a nicely rounded ass cammoflaged under the soft folds of his shorts, his long tanned legs, thickly muscled and I drooled after having held my Nun-like status for going on 5 years now. . .  Anyway, he saw me wearing my "drool bucket" and put the smack down, rather sharply across my hands before I could even cop as much as a generous assfeel. Like anyone getting a sharp crack of the ruler and the consequent rejection of an ass-booting, it hurt like hell, so I roared back, rather loudly. Then we had a stupid passive-aggressive email pissing contest, then I blocked him.

Isn't that dumb? Isn't my dog-son, Bennie, just a chip off the ol' block?

Sigh.  But there's more.  Like I said, a new man on the horizon.  But that's fodder for another post.

More Asskickings for Stupid People

OK, I've been remiss again.

But here's why.  Montana.  Yes, you'll be getting installments of "Camp Tales" very soon, just as soon as I look over my journal and assess the calamities.

This was 30 miles from where Frontier House was filmed.

But I digress.  Here's a summary of the past month's events: Crackie came back.  Yes, I even beckoned and opened the door for him.  Stupid.  More later.  Cactus wrote me and got hung out to dry.  In fact, after I tore him a new asshole, I even patched it up for him and put a band-aide on it, just to show him I had no hard feelings.  Then I tore Crackie a new one and blocked him.

Well, it's all part of this journey I'm on.  I NO LONGER DENY my feelings, good or bad.  And no longer spare them for some stupid man.  He's going to know how I feel, and that's how it goes.

But there's yet another man on the horizon.  He's old school.  I'm going slow and keeping an open mind.  I watched and grasped The Secret, and things are looking different.

I think for so long I was internally screaming, NO MORE ASSHOLES, that I was drawing them like moths to a porch light.

So I changed up my way of thinking.  And it worked.

More later.

How About an Ass Kicking from a Writer?

OK, I've been remiss about posting, instead, reading like there's no tomorrow.

And revising the novel.

But it's time for a new gripe. 

As a writer, there's one thing I must bitch about.  I HATE it when I tell someone that I'm a writer and have to endure the following stupid remarks.

How to piss off a writer:

1. "I'm a writer, too."  (when they are not)
Firstly, writing in a way is like breathing.  Yes, everyone breathes, unless you are dead, and unless you are illiterate, everyone writes, but the association stops there.  Everyone is NOT a writer.  To become a electrician, you must apprentice, take classes--it's a long process, and not everyone can do what you do.  A writer is much the same way.  A writer spends 10-20 hours a week, minimum, (outside his/her "day job") writing/researching on his/her said project/s.  If you do not do that, you are not a writer.

2. "Are you published?  Can I get your book on Amazon?"
ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH.  If I have to explain the very long, and sordid process of big east coast publishing houses one more time, they'll have to carry me off to the funny farm.  It takes years to get published, even at the first major step: literary journals and hell no, they are not available online at Amazon. Or worse still, the grocery store.

3. "Once you get published, you'll make lotsa money like Steven King or whoever it was who wrote those Harry Potter books."  Sigh.  Firstly, they are the exception, not the rule.  No one gets big advances anymore, not that they EVER did.  And you do not go into fiction-writing for money in the first place.  It's like pestering a fisherman about how big a fish he caught; he doesn't do it for that, and if you have to ask, you don't understand.

4. "Talk about stories.  I got a story you can write.  Let me tell ya."  And on and on and on they go blathering about some alarmingly dull anecdote.  DILLIGF?  Why would I or any other writer want to write YOUR story, something that inspires YOU?  This is ALWAYS SPOKEN BY A MAN.  In fact, this leads to my next pet peeve.

5.  "I'm gonna write a book some day about blah, blah, blah."  I might add that they will go on and on about this alleged idea that will never happen while a real writer is anxious to get home and check his/her mail to see what the dailies have brought in from agents and editors.

Please do NOT annoy a writer with the above senseless prattle.  Warning: a writer after a few cocktails has been known to behave like a cornered raccoon after hearing any of the above. 

Just sayin'.

WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"New" stupid ass Blogger will not allow you to make paragraphs.  Right on, asshole web designers.  Rock on!

Delusional People

Uh oh. It's been over a month and I've not posted. No excuse other than I ordered about a dozen books from Amazon and have been reading profusely and neglecting to post or play my guitar every day. So here goes. Delusionality.

One of my neighbors I've written about before is married and is about as romantically-delusional as I've ever seen. When she looks at her husband, she sees the most hillarious, brilliant, talented man in the world. But when I look at him, I see an arrogant, rude asshole. So it gets me to thinking, how does one get to be so delusional, especially in romantic engagements?

Can you be calculating and intelligent in other walks of life, but only romantically-challenged? Or if you're delusional in romance, maybe you're just an all-around idiot but don't know it yet P.S. THIS post is supposed to be paragraphed, but Blogger, in its stupidity has "updated" their fucking site, and I can't figure out how to make paragraphs hold, thanks Blogger. Don't fix what's not broken or anything.

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Pretentions and Other Rants

What's in my bookshelf here? Well, this is my Western-Pioneer American history collection and Native American. I have the same-sized bookshelf in my hallway with women's fiction, then one more smaller one with more women's fiction and plays. Before I moved here, I gave away three giant boxes of books, and last spring, two more giant boxes of books to W.A.V.I. I still have two more boxes of books in my basement. Books are like socks. You gotta suck up and throw out the old ones sometimes to make room for the new.

Alright, I guess we all can be a little pretentious sometime, but I gotta vent.

There's some pretentious things I cannot stand. Let me give you an example from the way-back-file, many years ago, T. and I used to work for a huge textbook company. Per capita, it had one of the highest amounts of under-employed and over-educated staffs of any place I've ever worked.

I don't remember how the story went, but one night, one of the pretentious "book-buyers" invited us over for an after-hours party. In his living room, he pointed to a puny bookcase and raved about his book collection. It had the stock-gag commerical favorites: Steven King, Mitchner, Tom Clancy. And the token few "I KNOW this is a classic because I had to read it in college" books. You know, Steinbeck, Hemingway, yawn, Melville. Gawd, I HATE seeing people stuff their bookshelves with those, especially when I know they never read them or HAD to read them for college.

I didn't dare look at T, nor did T. look at me, for fear of bombing out laughing over his pretentious alleged hold over the literary market.

LOOK FOLKS, IF YOU DON'T REALLY READ BOOKS, DON'T TRY TO POSTURE THAT YOU DO. A real bibliophile can tell.

So just this spring, I was invited to a get-together of youngsters (20 and early 30-somethings), and it happened again.

People who really don't read much other than a token book or two a year, throwing up a bookcase, with most of the books, ones they've never read annoys me.

I don't know why this annoys me, but it does.

It annoys me the same way that all the Resolutionists (people who swear up and down after New Year's, that they're going to start working out), fill up my gym, get in my way, then disappear after one ore two token months, never to be seen again.

OR, say people who swear up and down that they "Cannot DRINK ordinary tapwater," then, heh, heh, you play a little joke on them and find out they can't even tell the difference, but that's fodder for another post.

'Til then? Hey, if you don't read, just admit it. Put your comic books on display or magazines or collection of troll-dolls from the 70's and call it good. Just be who you are, and quit postering.

Real writers and bibliophiles always know the difference. ARK!