Month: February 2011

Bad Words: Damaged, Weird

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Damaged…Weird…

Aren’t we all?

I think those two words are the softest of the bad words because they do apply to everybody and they’re not necessarily bad. Everyone is weird in their own way. Everyone is damaged in their own way and the damage is almost never their fault. Weird implies unique. Damaged implies a victim of circumstance.

I come by my weird honestly. I was born with it. I’ve been weird for as long as I can remember. Everyone told me I was weird. It escaped no one’s attention. But it was a harmless weird. I ate cat food. It was that kind of weird.

I’m still that kind of weird. I quit eating a cat food a long time ago, of course. I matured and so did my weird. I’ve acquired strange number fixations. Odd hobbies. Random obsessions. Bizarre superstitions. Some might regard my love of pickle wraps up there with eating cat food, but pickle wraps are a family thing, so they don’t count.

My weird is harmless and I admit that part of my weird is a kind of coping skill. It’s how I deal with life. The other part of my weird is just how I interpret life. My view is skewed and has been since the beginning. Not a bad thing, just a thing.

Of course, it’s a subjective thing. In this society, it’s ideal to be unique while being the same. Whatever weird a person possesses, it should be a socially acceptible form of weird. Then it’s a quirk. And sometimes that quirk can become a trend. And a trend can be profitted from.

But if your weird is just weird, harmless or not, expect the side-eye. Expect the comments, muttered or spoken or shouted across a crowded place. My weird has earned me my share of disdain. It’s just another way people can complain about not understanding me. It’s another way to single me out, isolate me, make me feel defective.

When I let them.

I’m comfortable with most of my weird. It’s their hang-up, not mine. Weird is one of the few bad words that I’m not rushing to change.

From weird we get a little more serious.

I’m damaged. Like I said before, we all can say that we are. I like to say that every parent ruins their children in their own way and I don’t say it just to be witty; I really do think it’s true. Parents don’t mean to mess up their kids (for the most part). But raising a human being is hard. You have to do more than just keep them alive; you’ve got to teach them the rules of life and mold them into a somewhat functioning person. It’s not easy, mistakes are made. Some temporary, some last. It’s the nature of the game and the game is a rough one.

My parents did their fair share of damage to me, but the damage that I’m thinking of when I think of damage as a bad word is the damage I’ve done to myself.

To make a long story short, I went crazy when I was 21. Nothing too serious, just some major depression. Had I been honest about how serious the depression really was, I imagine things might have gone a little differently. But since I kept that bit to myself, I got the tools to fix the depression (I’m more cognitive-behavioral than Freudian) from my therapist and called the game after three sessions. I didn’t want to sit and talk about my mother. I needed to change my routine, change my mind, and vent in a healthy way. That’s all I needed to know. I declared myself, well, not cured, but on my way.

I duct taped my sanity basically. I made some happy changes to my mind. I started journaling regularly to help keep my emotions from bottling up and strangling me. I started exercising regularly to get those endorphins flowing.  I renewed my creativity.

However, I know the damage has been done and despite my attempts not all of it has been fixed. I’ve managed to fill a few of the holes. For the most part, though, what I’ve done is just a temporary patch job and sometimes the tape comes loose. Sometimes you can see the cracks in the paint if you tilt your head in the right light. And believe me when I tell you that lots of people do.

The damage they more easily forgive, though. Once they realize it’s damage.

The damage isn’t so bad and the weird isn’t too weird.

Those two words aren’t too bad for bad words.

It all starts to go downhill from here.

Rerun Junkie– Hawaii 5-0

~ Kiki Writes ~ 4 Comments

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I decided to watch the old Hawaii 5-0 because nothing else was on and ended up liking it. It has the two things I like best in a show: 70’s and cops.

Is the theme song playing in your head yet?

But it’s more than just a 70’s cop show. It’s blue cheese on a cracker, straight up.

You had Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord), the serious business man in charge with hair that doesn’t move no matter how windy it is. Dan “Danno” Williams (James MacArthur), his right hand man that had a fondess for monochromatic duds. Chin Ho (Kam Fong) was the token Asian good guy (since most of them were bad guys) who wore the same ugly tie throughout most of his run on the series no matter what suit he wore. And then there was the *insert token Hawaiian here* in the form of first Kono (Zulu), then Ben (Al Harrington), and finally Duke (Herman Wedemeyer). Of these three Duke was my favorite as he was actually on the longest, first in uniform and then in plainclothes. I have been known to give a prolonged “DUUUUUUKE” squeal at my TV when I see him onscreen.

I had trouble warming up to Ben as he’d guest starred on the show a couple of times before as a bad guy. Never could quite trust him.

Women? They had a few, but none you saw too often. Female officers were still a rarity in that world. However, they did at least have one that reoccurred for a few episodes. Baby steps.

The bad guys are the best. There’s actually some that are somewhat sympathetic or make an attempt at being sympathetic. And there are some that are just so over the top that they strain credibility. Wo Fat, the longest running villian on the show, is on the over the top side. He’s more like a Bond villian. His mustache is quite fetching, though.

Another stand out villian was Gavin McLeod as a dope-pusher named Big Chicken. He was pretty disturbing with the homoerotic undertones going on with his character, particularly in the prison episode in which most of the action too place in the shower. Maybe it was because they started off that episode with Big Chicken hosing off. I don’t know. I just know that I can never look at Captain Stubing the same way again.

Honorable mentions go to Ricardo Montalban as a Japenese guy (the make-up was questionable and the accent was all Ricardo) and the murding hillbilly family on vacation.

With villians like that you’ve got to have some over the top storylines. I think McGarrett was shot or blown up at least once a season. A couple of his girlfriends were killed, but since you didn’t really see much of his personal life, the deaths kind of lacked any impact.

There were snipers with hooked hands, derranged Vietnam vets killing his buddies’ wives, a guy who thought a comic book was real and killed people to protect the main character, lots of terrorists (most of them Latino), big government plots, a couple of convicts that use witness protection as an excuse to get married, marijuana that turns into heroin at some point during the episode, and much, much more!

The list of guest stars is pretty impressive, especially since most of them are bad guys. Along with Ricardo Montalban (on twice!) and Gavin McLeod: Richard Hatch, Meg Foster, Patty Duke, Harold Gould, Bruce Boxlitner, Donald Pleasance, Cindy Williams, Loretta Swit, Burt Convey, Robert Reed, and those are just the ones I can remember off of the top of my head.

But truly, the best part of this show was the fashion. Ugly shirts were required. The bad guys wore them. The good guys wore them. The good guys wore them when they were undercover so they could blend in with the bad guys.

And then there was McGarrett’s off-duty wear:

Steve McGarrett: Slave to Fashion

And that’s one of his tamer outfits, too.

It was by these powers combined that my day job-lacking afternoons were filled joy and entertainment.

I can’t lie. When two o’clock rolls around now, as I sit in my cube, I think of Hawaii.

Book ’em, Danno.

Where I Watch It

Writing–Deadlines: Breaking Them

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I don’t like to break deadlines, but I will. In some cases, it’s extenuating circumstances. I’m sick or I have to take my roommate to the emergency room or I suddenly find myself in high demand because if people didn’t respect my writing career as my only job, they sure as hell don’t respect it as my second one.

And then sometimes, it’s just me.

It doesn’t happen much with the first drafts. With first drafts I can just throw crap on the page knowing that I can fix it during revisions.

It happens during revisions more than I’d like. Part of that is because I’d like it to never happen. The other part of that is because sometimes I just don’t like a story. It’s hard to motivate myself if there’s no love. I’m more likely to give up on it all together than try to push myself through it. I don’t intend to write stories that I hate, but sometimes it’s during the revision process that I realize that the original idea wasn’t so great and I’m not sure I want to even bother with it. The deadline comes and I’m not too heartbroken about missing it. It’s a good excuse to put the story away until one day, maybe, I can find my heart for it again.

Sometimes I’m just sick of a story. I’ve seen it so much, put it through so many revisions, that the idea of opening it up one more time makes me want to slam my head in a door. “At 3:36” is one of those stories for me. I’ve revised it and revised it to the point that if I put it on my to do list (it’s up for review in March) that I cringe and put it off until the last because I don’t want to deal with it. I’ve broken a deadline or two for that story.

And then there are stories that I’m just plain stuck on. I have no idea what needs to be done to it to improve it, or I do know what needs to be done, but I just don’t know how to do it. Those are the stories that I sit and stare at and go to bed with and watch helplessly as the deadline creeps up, then looms, then passes me by, grinning as it goes.

Those are the worst. Those are the ones that make me question myself as a writer, question my talent and my dedication.

And then I make my next deadline by three days and I’m really pleased with the result and it totally erases the bitter taste in my mouth.

Thankfully, I make more deadlines than I miss so this sort of internal, self-inflicted drama is minimal. Best to save it for the stories.

Don’t Cry, I’m Fat.

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’m fat. There’s no other way to say it and I’m not really big on sugar coating things, so there you go. I’m fat.

I’ve got rolls that would make a bakery jealous. I’ve got curves in all the right places and a lot of the wrong ones. Baby’s got back and some front. My arm flab is envied by flying squirrels everywhere. I. Am. Fat.

I’m not just fat in body; I’m fat in personality, too.

What I mean by that is even if I lost enough weight for society to deem me worthy (and that’s really never going to happen since I have these things called hips and shoulders and damned if BMI doesn’t account for that sort of thing), I would still have a big personality. I take up space. Give me room and get out of my way. Sometimes I think I need a bigger body just to contain this personality. Try to cram all of this into a skinny girl and it’s either going to overflow or bloat the body.

But back to being fat.

There’s some negative assumptions about my fat self that I’d like to correct. First of all, I don’t eat all the time. In fact, I actually have some troubles eating. Friends tease me about the fact that I can’t eat a lot at one time. One of my buddies pointed out once that his ten year old nephew ate more than I did. And it’s true. It’s like the ultimate joke on the fat girl: I’m fat, but can’t eat a lot. Go figure.

I don’t just eat junk. To be honest, lunches are probably the place that I slack the most on healthy eating, but dinner is a different story. I cook my own meals. I try to make them as fresh as possible. I look for ways to incorporate fruits and vegetables into my meals. I make that effort. I don’t eat a lot of fast food. Being broke helps, but even now that I have money, I’m still treating it as an occasional treat and not a go to staple. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth (I go through phases) and I don’t keep much in the way of salty snacks in my house because that’s the sort of thing I’m prone to binge on. I try to keep up the quality of the food I eat.

I don’t sit around all the time. I exercise. I try for five days a week, at least twenty mintues a day. My routine is currently in the process of being adjusted as I get used to working full time again. So far I’m just doing yoga and pilates, but I plan to work my previous workouts back into the mix: cardio kickboxing, belly dance, Latin dance, Brazillian dance, hip hop, and sculpting. Yeah, I like to dance and kick ass. Nothing wrong with that.

I’m not a slob. I may be fat, but I like the way I look for the most part. I like to dress this body that I have right now. I’ve been broke for too long and haven’t had the opportunity to invest in some new clothes, but believe me, that’s on my current to do list. I like to look good. I have style and I like to express it. It’s a struggle to find good looking clothes for my size because people are under this mistaken impression that fat people need to wear muumuus and while I’m not putting down muumuus, they’re just not for me.

Also, I’m bathe on a regular basis. Maybe I get a little sweatier during my workouts or maybe during hot days, but I can assure you, I don’t smell. I use this stuff called deodorant. Skinny people don’t have a corner on that market.

I know it offends a lot of people, but I’m okay being fat. They think that by saying that I’m giving up or choosing to be unhealthy. I’m not. I’m always looking to improve my health and if I do have a problem, my weight is probably going to be low on the cause list. Not getting regular check-ups, putting off going to the doctor, smoking for 16 years, they’ll be more likely to cause me problems than my weight.

And giving up? Please. I’m not giving up anything. Not my food and not my looks. Just because I don’t fit the norm and nobody’s going to be rushing to put me on the cover of a magazine doesn’t mean I’ve given up. It means I’m rocking what I’ve got and doing it a little harder than you’re comfortable with, that’s all.

I don’t know what I weigh right now. The scale is broken (that joke just writes itself, really). I know at one point I lost forty pounds and I can say with some certainty that due to a variety of setbacks that I gained most, if not all of it back. And I think that maybe lately, I’ve lost a little of it. I’m not sure. I’ll know for sure when my pants start fitting better. That’s how I gauge my weight. How my clothes fit.

Of course, when my clothes start fitting a little big my first thought is always that they’re stretching out, not that I’m getting smaller.

I guess that’s because my body might shrink, but my personality still fills out my britches.

Writing–Deadlines: Making Them

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I like deadlines. Deadlines keep me motivated and they keep me honest. I don’t like missing them. Self-imposed or someone else’s, they do me good.

I don’t like missing deadlines. Even if they’re important to no one else but me, I don’t like to miss them. I don’t like to make that adjustment on my day planner. If I write it down, it’s set in stone.

I’m also a dedicated procrastinator. I’m excellent at putting off, which conflicts with my need to meet deadlines.

I’ve gotten better at managing my time and making myself get started. With my self-imposed deadlines, I’ve recognized that I’m better off giving myself a little more time than I think I’ll need. If I set a specific goal in mind for a given day, that helps, too. It’s like a mini-deadline. I need to have this done before I go to sleep. A few of those and the overall deadline is met without much effort.

There are times when this doesn’t work out, of course. For whatever reason, the motivation isn’t there. It’s too much effort to open the file, let alone read the words on the screen. I can’t think of how to phrase what I want to say or change what needs to be changed. The “I don’t feel like it” refrain echoes through my brain.

Which means that when the deadline is looming, the fire gets lit under my butt. The focus might not always be there, but the dedication is and I do whatever it takes to get the job done. Sometimes this means struggling late into the night. Other times, it means I find an hour’s worth of focus, get the job done, and feel like a complete moron for not just doing it sooner so I could have had the whole thing accomplished and off of my plate sooner.

I try to seize the real productive moments whenever I have them. There are sometimes when I’m just in a demolishing mood and I try to get as much done as possible. For example, this past weekend I was hitting all cylinders and as such, I knocked out six blog posts in two days. It was nice to be done with them all with hours to spare before bedtime.

Of course, this came after I spent all week struggling to make revisions on “Phobias Are How Rumors Get Started”, having major trouble getting started, only to find that what I really needed to do took me about half an hour.

But I met my deadline.

“Phobias Are How Rumors Get Started” is now posted. It’ll be up for the next six weeks. Enjoy.

I’m a Guy Magnet* *Conditions May Apply

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’m single and have been for years. I’ve never been married. I’ve really only had a couple of relationships that could have been considered serious. But it’s not for lack of attraction.

I attract men. All women are capable of such a thing. It’s just the type of men that I attract that causes me trouble.

Pardon my bluntness, but I’m a fat girl. Maybe not big enough to qualify for Richard Simmons to show up to my house, but I’m still fat. As I like to say, I’ve got curves in all the right places and several of the wrong ones, too.

A certain contigent of men see my rolls and interpret my weight as a sign of desperation. They think I’ll settle for anyone, put up with anything for a little attention and the privilege of saying that I have a man. These are the men that usually have no jobs and more often than not, no teeth either. I don’t know if the two actually go together, but in my experience they have. They hit on me like I should be grateful that a man is paying any mind to me.

These men are quickly shut down and sent grumbling. I actually had one guy offer to take me to McDonald’s for our “date” and then get indignant because I shot him down.

Sorry. I’m worth more than Mickey D’s.

I also have this odd ability to attract older, married men. I don’t know what it is about me that catches their eyes, but it’s a little creepy and I’m not at all in that market.

Then there’s the “only single girl in the room” situation. Maybe some guys don’t mind that I’ve got enough rolls to qualify for a bakery. Maybe they think that I do have a pretty face. Maybe they like my sense of humor and my brains. But, they only have anything to do with me when I’m the only single girl in the room. The minute another girl comes in, someone thinner or prettier or more socially acceptable, someone the guys won’t give him too much shit for kissing, the sweet nothings they whispered in my ear are just that…nothing.

It’s quite possible that these two types of men have conditioned me to not pay any attention to men flirting with me. I’m not very good at reading people. I can’t tell when a guy is hitting on me.

That’s not entirely true. I can’t tell when a potentionally good guy is hitting on me.

It’s enough to drive my friends mad. The good guys are more subtle, I suppose, which is why I have a hard time seeing it. But my friends can see it clearly and it kills them that I don’t. Not only do I not see it, but if my friends are kind enough to point it out to me, I deny it. These aren’t the ususal guys and usual situations. They can’t possibly be hitting on me.

And sometimes the good guys aren’t so subtle. I once had a guy that I had a mad crush on point blank ask me to make out with him. I didn’t because I thought he was joking. I thought it was because I was the only girl in the room. This same guy also picked me over a prettier girl to dance with outside of a restaurant. He looked at me and told me he was going to dance with me outside and he did and I totally missed that he might have actually meant something by that. We did dance outside. It was sweet and I was awkward and it was the closest I ever got to anything with him.

I still kick myself in the ass over missing out on that opportunity. I had my chance and I missed it because I was so deep in denial, so conditioned to think that there was no way a good guy would bother with me. He wasn’t perfect, but he could have been perfect for me. I’ll never know for sure now.

To put this into a common fishing metaphor, I can reel them in even if the bait I’ve got on the hook isn’t the best and not what most fish are looking for. I can still snag a few. Unfortunately, I’m a catch and release girl. I’m not convinced that any of them are keepers and I end up thinking about the ones that got away, the ones I let go.

Someone should have taught me to be a better fisherman.

Happy Vincent Price Day!

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

Happy Valentine’s Day!

It’s a day filled with hearts and flowers and pink and bitter single people. The one time I had a boyfriend during Valentine’s Day, he thought it was stupid to give me anything and so he didn’t. After being told for years about how great the holiday is when you have a signficant other, I have to say that I wasn’t too impressed.

I fully admit to being one of the bitter single people for a while until I decided to give the finger to making myself miserable and make this holiday my own.

For everyone else, it’s Valentine’s Day. For me, it’s Vincent Price Day.

I wear my Vincent Price shirt (yes, I have one; made it myself), get comfy in bed with some treats, and watch House on Haunted Hill. It’s one of my favorite Vincent Price flicks.

This holiday was a work in progress for several years. I’m not much of a romantic comedies girl. I like horror films. Back in high school, we had a sleep over for the girls who weren’t going to the Sweethearts Dance at school and we watched horror movies to counter the squishy love theme going on at the high school. That ritual kind of stuck. I liked to watch horror films on Valentine’s Day.

A few years ago my horror film of choice to celebrate Valentine’s Day was House on Haunted Hill. It was that viewing that made me realize that Vincent Price was my perfect valentine.

Suave, sophisticated, classy, cruel, and murderous. What more could a girl like me ask for?

Happy Vincent Price Day! I hope yours is a scream.

Writing–Sick Days

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I came home early from work last week due to a blizzard making work in the transportation business slower than Wile E. Coyote stuck in puddle of glue. It was a good thing, too, because it was that day that a cold crushed me like a boulder from a cliff.

For the next two days, I might have gone to my day job, but writing did not get done. I could function and didn’t feel anywhere near as bad as I did the first day, but I still felt pretty yucky. And when it came to writing, I just didn’t have the strength.

Considering I have enough trouble getting any writing done on a good day because I’m such an ace procrastinator, getting sick put a major cramp in my style. The dribble of productivity I’ve experienced since getting employed dried up to a desert and then the tumble weeds of guilt started to blow in.

I’ve got a lot to do this month. I can see it written out on my Whiteboard of To Do. There’s some serious work in there. And I took three days off for illness. There’s some conflict there. On the one hand, I was well enough to go to one job, so I should have been able to go to the other, so to speak. On the other hand, it was the going to the first job that wore me out for the second job. It’s important to rest when you’re sick and with a 6:15am wake-up call, my head was hitting the pillow really early.

It doesn’t matter. I feel like a slacker. If I take a day off from writing that’s not scheduled (oh yes, I schedule my days off), then it causes me guilt and pain. Even if the excuse is a good one, like I’m so sick I can’t think, I still feel guilty. And the unscheduled break throws me off my game.

Now I’m faced with playing catch up and considering I started the month unsure of what to work on first (aside from The World (Saving) Series revisions), I’m even more lost and therefore, feel like I’m even farther behind.

I’m in desperate need of a game plan.

And some cough drops.

Personal Beliefs

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

It’s possible that I take the “personal” part of personal beliefs a little too seriously. As in they’re my beliefs and they’re none of your business.

Seriously. This blog post isn’t about what I believe but why I keep my beliefs to myself.

I was raised by two atheists. Please note that sentence. I was raised BY two atheists; I wasn’t raised TO BE atheist. I was raised to believe whatever I wanted to believe.

As a kid, I decided to explore the possibility of God and religion. Over the years I went to a few different churches. It might be hard to believe, but at one point I was a very good Bible quizzer. I can still quote bits of Luke.

My parents were cool with it. They never told me I couldn’t go to church, never told me I was wrong, never told me I was stupid. They respected my choice and let me find my own way. They never once pushed their beliefs on me.

My parents set a pretty good example for me in that respect. The word “God” wasn’t an assault on what they believed; it was just another word. They didn’t care that it was in the Pledge of Allegiance or written on money. It had nothing to do with what they believed at the time and as far as they were concerned, in those contexts, it wasn’t infringing on their beliefs and trying to make them change their mind.

It was quite liberating to be brought up in a household like that. I was never made to feel threatened or forced to get defensive about what I believed and I learned to return in kind.

I also learned to keep it to myself.

Without being expressly told, I learned that personal beliefs were just that. Personal. They’re mine, all mine. No one can give them to me, no one can take them away, and I can’t force them on anyone else. I have to admit that due to my years of spiritual exploration my beliefs are pretty customized. It wouldn’t be easy to preach my gospel.

And I wouldn’t want to. Oh, I will discuss it when asked about it provided that I feel the conversation is safe for expression. When I talk about my beliefs, it’s not an invitation for conversion. I’m not trying to convert you, don’t bother trying to convert me. Don’t worry about saving my soul or convincing me with science. I’m good where I’m at, thanks, and I wouldn’t be so disrespectful to you.

It really boggles me when people express their personal beliefs like they are the statement of utter right. What ego must go into that. What disrespect for anyone who doesn’t think the same. What blindness to think that your beliefs won’t be criticized when you put them on display like that.

There’s another thing. It’s hard to insult me about what I believe when you don’t know what I believe. Oh, I’ve had my feathers ruffled before by people saying things, but the insults weren’t direct because there was no way the offending person could know any differently. I could have, of course, pointed it out, but there’s no satisfaction in the correction when the person just says, “Oh, I wasn’t talking about YOU”.

Instead, I comfort myself in the thought that the person running their mouth is really telling more about themselves than the group they’re insulting. And, yes, I’ve been equally offended by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, and everyone else.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m human. I think some things that some people believe are absolutely ridiculous and can’t even begin to understand it. But I try to keep as much of that to myself as I can. If I don’t like people offending me, then I need to work hard to be the bigger person and not offend them. It’s hard and I fail, but I keep trying.

Why?

It’s one of my personal beliefs.

And, yeah, for the most part, I keep it to myself.

Writing–February Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

New month, new schedule. It’s going to be a hectic one.

Revisions on The World (Saving) Series will be ongoing. I’ll be rewriting “The Guinea Pig” in anticipation of a deadline. I’ll also be revising “Another Deadly Weapon” and “Play Chicken” for deadlines and “Phobias Are How Rumors Get Started” for the blog (only a couple of more weeks to enjoy “An Old Fashioned Vacation”!). And finally, I’ll review “Summer Rot” for possible submission.

I have no idea how I’m going to do all of that with a day job and blogging and all of the other bits and bobs in my life, but I’m going to try. I’ve got to make good on my committment not to slack.

Stories By the Numbers

Sent Out: 3
Ready: 3
Accepted/Rejected: 0