What follows is photographic evidence that I had a good time at the CornBelters game last week, even if they did lose.
Pictures: CornBelters Game 6/7/13
Writing–I’ll Get It Right Eventually
I first got the idea for “The Backroom” about six years ago (has it been that long?). When I started writing the story, though, it ended up being something different. After a couple of rounds of revisions I re-titled it “Customer Service” and ended up self-publishing it in Rejected.
But the original idea, one that never really made it down on paper, stayed with me. For my latest self-published anthology project (should it come to be), I decided to give it another go.
I wrote the first draft and typed it up. It was closer to my original idea than “Customer Service” ever was, but it still wasn’t there yet.
And so, I’m re-writing it. This time, I’m going to nail it. I swear. Really. It’s going to happen.
That happens sometimes. The transition from idea to written word doesn’t always go the way I think it will. Sometimes it works out in my favor and I end up with something better than my original idea. And sometimes it works out like “The Backroom”. “Customer Service” isn’t better than my original plan, just different. It doesn’t satisfy the thought bubble surrounding this story that’s floating around in my head.
This newest version of “The Backroom” idea is going to be the closest I’ve come to getting what’s in my head down on paper. It’s not exactly the way I want to do it, but it will satisfy the idea itch that I’ve been carrying around for years. It will likely be re-written again, if not heavily revised.
But that’s the goal, isn’t it?
Eventually, I’m going to get this story right.
My First CornBelters Game of 2013
Things are a little different this season. Yeah, there was again a significant roster turnover in the off-season (I recognize a couple of names, though!) and we’ve got a new manager again, but this team came out of the gate winning. Winning so much that they’ve got one of the best records in the Frontier League and were in first place in the division by the time I went to this game. That’s pretty spiffy for a team that couldn’t buy a win last year.
Of course, they didn’t win at the game I went to. In fact, the first two innings, they looked a lot like the team I watched last season. Three errors and nine runs in the first two innings; six of those runs scored on two outs. I thought I was looking at another blowout (I watched them challenge the need for a mercy rule last year in one of their games). But, they managed to shore it up and didn’t allow another run for the next seven innings. In fact, they played pretty good ball after that.
Except for the scoring part. Three runs was all they could manage despite some pretty nice offensive numbers from several of their players.
Ah, well. It was a good time anyway. I took my three nieces to the game. For three girls that aren’t really that much into baseball, they love the Corn Crib. And it’s not even the distractions like the video board, face painting, kid zone, Corny, and/or food that get them going (especially since the only running around they’re allowed to do once the game starts is to go to the bathroom). It’s just the whole ballpark experience. They really enjoy themselves. Particularly when they’re able to make up dances to the walk-up music. Romulo Ruiz and David Medina are now their two favorite players because of this.
The after-game fireworks set to classic rock is a big winner, too.
The one drawback was a guy sitting near us who felt that it was his duty to yell encouragement to every ‘Belter that came up the plate. For every pitch.
Folks, I cannot stress enough that you should not be this guy. This is not little league and you are not their parent (even if it was little league and you were their parent it would still be annoying, but at least understandable and you’d only be doing it for your kid, not every player). It’s cool to applaud and whoop when the guy comes up to bat, but he doesn’t need your extra loud words for every pitch. And if at any time your unnecessarily loud voice is used to say, “Kill the umpire!” or call the umpire a ref when you’re heckling him, then you need to find a well to throw yourself down. Because you’re not cool. You’re an asshole.
Rule of thumb: When an eight year old wants to fight you, you’re being obnoxious.
But never mind the jerks.
Let’s go Corn!
I Don’t Owe You An Explanation for Being Fat
I’m fat. This is apparent. Laws knows that I’m not trying to hide it and I don’t think I could if I wanted to as that sort of cover-up would no doubt make me look larger.
But I don’t have to explain my fatness to you. I don’t have to defend it. I don’t have to justify it. I don’t have to apologize for it. It is what it is and if you have a problem with my appearance, then YOU HAVE THE PROBLEM.
I don’t have to assure you that I’m doing healthy things with my life despite my weight. I don’t have to apologize for leaving the house not weighing 120 pounds. I don’t have to argue that I have just as much right to exist as you do because my pants size is bigger than yours.
Let me say it again.
YOU HAVE THE PROBLEM.
My fat is my own. I’m the one that deals with it on a daily basis. I dress it. I touch it. I move it. I wash it. And you know what? I don’t have nearly as big of a problem with it as you do.
Because you think I should be ashamed. You think I should be apologetic. You think I should change.
Don’t tell me I should lose weight for my health because we both know you don’t really think that. You don’t give one shit about my health. You want to me to lose weight so I’ll fit into the socially acceptable appearance box. You want me to lose weight so you’ll be more comfortable in my presence, sitting next to me, talking to me, walking past me, walking around me.
Me losing weight in this context has nothing to do with me and everything to do with YOU.
So when I don’t lose weight, when I insist on existing in my fat state, it offends YOU. Because you’ve made MY weight about YOU.
YOU HAVE THE PROBLEM.
I don’t.
So please understand when I exist against your wishes, without apology or justification.
Because this is your hang-up, scooter, not mine.
The Boat
‘Round these parts, folks go to the boat for a good time. For those of you not familiar with the Cornfield and its vernacular, “going to the boat” means going to the riverboat casino in Peoria.
This past Saturday was my roommate Carrie’s birthday. Since it was a milestone birthday (I won’t say what stone that mile marks), she wanted to do something big. Our original plan was to go to Chicago, but since she hurt her knee and wouldn’t be able to do that much walking, she decided that going to the boat would be a good alternative.
We stayed at the hotel. Our room was fabulous with a lovely view of the parking lot and the river beyond. I’m not joking. For a parking lot view, it was still really nice. I could write lyrical poems about the bathroom. The shower was divine. You can’t say that about most hotel showers.
We hit up the buffet that night for dinner. It was a seafood special, perfect for Carrie’s birthday as she is a big lover of seafood. It was a pretty nice spread and the food was pretty good. I’ve never had seafood lasagna before and wasn’t sure I’d like it, but it was some tasty, tasty stuff.
I was probably the youngest person at the buffet and frankly, I didn’t mind it. It made for a quiet meal. The guy sitting next to us was getting his prime rib on. Meanwhile, another lady went back to her table with a plate of mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts. Carrie looked horrified. “Is she being punished?”
Considering the dessert spread, maybe she thought she needed to earn that German chocolate cake. Laws knows that if salad didn’t count as a vegetable then I wouldn’t have eaten one all weekend.
The casino was loud and bright and crowded, but we managed to find our way to the lowest floor (deck?) and the slots. The dress code was quite loose as we saw some people dressed to the nines and other folks that didn’t seem to own any shirts with sleeves. A few people were in their pajamas.
The first night I won about forty dollars and Carrie won about fifty. The second night, we wore more on the losing end, but we still managed to come out ahead.
I spent my winnings on Steak n Shake.
We both had a lot of fun, but we both realized that we’re not casino people. We found the prime rib guy working two slots at once and he had at least 200 bucks in one of them. Another guy was sliding into Carrie’s seat as soon as she got out of it because he thought her machine was hot. We might have spent an hour or an hour and a half at most in the casino each night. It was fun while we were winning, not as fun when we were losing, and there were a whole lot of people that resembled zombies in there.
Definitely a fun once-in-a-while weekend thing, but we couldn’t make a job of it.
Writing–June Projects
I actually have things and stuff to do this month!
First of all, I’m going to publish both Gone Missing and Night of the Nothing Man on Amazon. I kind of hoped that Smashwords would be enough, but it’s not. They need a little more exposure. I want people to read my poor, little novellas, dammit.
Speaking of self-publishing, I’ve got the first draft of four short stories done for my possible new anthology, so I’m going to start revising them. I still need one more story to finish out the collection to fit with the idea I have, but I’m not going to push that. It’s a late year thing, if it happens, so I’ve got plenty of time to come up with a final story.
After leaving it along for about a month, I’m going to start polishing The World (Saving) Series. One of my writing goals for the year was to have this thing achieve a state of doneness and if I can get it to happen in the next couple of months, that’d be swell. What happens after that is a completely different goal.
And I’ve always got my sooper sekrit projects to keep me busy and make me feel like I’ve got so many pressing things to accomplish if my ego needs a boost and I need to fill some time.
June won’t be dull.
Sew, For My Next Trick…
I turned a pair of jeans into a skirt.
I got the idea from an episode of Emergency! because the 70’s call to me like that. One of the actresses was wearing a jean skirt like that and I thought, “Hey! What a great idea!”
And then I didn’t do anything about it for a while because I wasn’t sure I was capable of turning a pair of jeans into a skirt with my self-taught hand-sewing skills. When I get ideas for projects, be they sewing or writing, I have to meditate on them a while to see if I can get them to work out. Boosted by my work on turning t-shirts into bags (I’ve got five of them now), I thought with a little research it might be possible.
I did some Googling on the subject of turning a pair of jeans into a skirt, looking to the wisdom of those that had walked this path before me and got the general idea of what I needed to do to make this work.
Then I talked myself into committing to this project.
It’s not like turning the t-shirts I was never going to wear again into bags; I only have so many pairs of jeans and really can’t afford to waste a pair, even if I hate them. Society demands that I keep my ass covered. So I had to be sure that I could make this work.
I’m happy I talked myself into it.
I used a pair of my fat-girl jeans (they’ve got a bit of spandex in them) that lost their shape after wearing them a few times. The legs were too big and rather unflattering. But, that excess material proved to be perfect for the skirt transformation. I used one kerchief for the front panel, cutting it and sewing it together so it would fit just right. I thought that would be the hardest part, but it turned out to be pretty easy.
In most of the skirts I’ve seen, there’s also a back panel, usually smaller, but since the legs of these jeans were so big, I didn’t need to put one in. Just sewed it up the back and added some slits to the side to show a little leg.
It took me several hours over four days to get the whole thing done.
It’s another ego boost to my sewing skills. And another lesson that I am quite capable of getting shit done if I put some time, effort, and patience into the pot.
Writing–Rereading the Written
I’ve got several manuscripts that I’ve written that have been hanging out, waiting for me to get back to them. Some of them are just first drafts; others have had one or two rounds of heavy-lifting revision done to them. All of them were put to the side so I could focus on something else.
Since I didn’t have much going this month, I decided to read them all to see what I had and get reacquainted with them.
It was interesting to see where I was as a writer a few years ago. I can pretty much tell what was going on in my life just by reading the manuscript. It’s fascinating. Nobody else would be able to pick anything up, but I guess because I wrote it and lived it, I know exactly where I was.
Looking at the pieces in a more professional, critical light, I’m happy to say that all of them are workable to an extent. I could make them all into something that you wouldn’t gouge your eyes out while reading. Which is reassuring in a sense. There will always be work waiting for me because I’ve got four manuscripts in various states just waiting to be finished.
And it won’t be a waste to work on them since there’s something worth working on there.
I admit to liking some more than others. Spirited in Spite and A Tale of Two Lady Killers have gone through a couple of heavy-lifting revisions and their stories are pretty good. Fun, quick little things that won’t require too much more lifting to finish.
The untitled Ivy novel should probably be revised down to a novella because I padded that thing pretty hard. The other POVs can go (though I might save Leo’s and rewrite it as a short story). Sticking to solely Ivy and shortening it up will do the story wonders. I might also end up changing the location. We’ll see.
American Vampires, I don’t care for. It’s only a first draft, a NaNoWriMo draft at that, so it needs A LOT of work. And I know what I was trying to do with the original attempt at a story, but I missed the mark. Of all the pieces, I like this one least and it will take the most work. Somehow, though, I think it might be worth the effort. Eventually. I’m in no rush to get back to it.
When I’m done with The World (Saving) Series, it looks like I’m all set for the next revision project. I’ve got plenty to choose from.
In Dreams
I have weird dreams.
Everyone does, I know, but mine are made of the stuff that people fear. One person’s nightmare is my typical night. I rarely have what I would call bad dreams because my unconscious mind has set the bar that high. It might only happen a couple of times a year that I have a dream that disturbs me enough to prevent me from falling back to sleep.
For example, in the past two weeks, I’ve dreamed of being shot, stabbed (while being Joseph Gordon Levitt no less), and set on fire. In other dreams over the years, I’ve been in plunging elevators, fallen from ridiculous heights, and been crushed. I’ve been chased, stalked, bitten, drowned, and strangled. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve died in my dreams. You know that saying that if you die in your dreams, then you die in waking life? Not true. I’m living proof of that, so to speak.
My most frequent nemesis is Michael Myers. That guy has stalked my dreams since I was seven years old, since long before I watched even one Halloween film. Funny, isn’t it? It’s my favorite movie even though the Shape terrifies me in my sleep. I guess that’s the trade off. I love his work and he kills me in my dreams. I remember the time he stabbed me with a pitchfork. That was novel.
I’m not sure why brain works this way. It might have something to do with my love of horror films and horror fiction, the steady diet of horrific things that I’ve consumed since I was young. It makes some sense. Someone who enjoys the terrible while I awake would be entertained by it when asleep.
But not all of my dreams are bad. Some of them are just plain weird. Most people can make that claim. I don’t know why Vin Scully was blind and hanging out with Keith Moreland and Aretha Franklin in a Wal-Mart softlines section while I dressed mannequins, but that’s what happened. That’s what my brain conjured up to pass the sleeping hours.
Because weird and/or bad are the norm, certain medications tend to dial that up to eleven. I avoid taking Tylenol PM unless I absolutely have to because the dreams that have resulted from its consumption are too bizarre to even put into words. The sleep I get is hardly restful because I can’t wake myself up enough to reset my brain so I can get out of the dream hell I’m in. Darvocet has the same affect on me.
I admit to turning some of my dreams into short stories. Check out “Reality Unknown”. The three stories that are told are based on three dreams I had all in the same night. I’d wake up after each one. When I woke up for good in the morning, I wrote them down because I knew there was fodder for some bizarre story there. As much as I tried, I don’t think I did them justice. I just don’t have the skill to capture the true horror and WTFness of what went on in my brain that night.
Now I don’t want you to think that my dreams are all terrible, twisted things. Some of them are fun; some are downright hilarious. Of course, I’ve been known to have a sick sense of humor.
Let’s just say that they work for me and for the most part, I enjoy them.
Sweet dreams.
MayDays
When I was in junior high, 7th or 8th grade, a new tradition began in my little town in the middle of the cornfield and it was called MayDays. Now you have to understand how exciting this was to the kids my age because back then we didn’t have much in the way to do around town. Our movie theater had collapsed, our drive-in movie theater had blown away, and our underage clubs didn’t have much staying power.
MayDays was going to be set up on the Square and on the streets and parking lots just north of it. There would be a carnival with rides and games and food. There would be vendors and bands and contest and sports competitions and a MayDays Queen pageant and such. The junior high at the time was north of the square and I remember walking past all of that stuff being set up on my way to school. Tantalizing and exciting. Living four blocks away from the fun guaranteed that I was up there every day if possible.
The rides were my main thing when I was a kid. They had the usual sort of stuff: ferris wheel, The Octopus, bumper cars, The Pharaoh, merry-go-round, giant slide, haunted house, The Scrambler, and the rides that challenged your ability to keep down your funnel cake like The Zipper, The Gravitron, and The Stormtrooper. The idea that I could just walk uptown to make myself dizzy was fabulous.
The big thing back in the day, aside from the rides, was playing this one carnival game in order to win beta fish. The fish usually died after a couple of days as carnival fish tend to have rough lives, but my sister won a beta that we had for over four years. His name was Herman and he liked to be pet. He was kind of a weirdo.
Over the years, MayDays has kinda died out. There’s still bands and the pageant, still a carnival and food, still some competitions and fundraisers, and this year there’s pro wrestling, but it’s shrunk over the years. Not as many rides or games or vendors. The crowd has gotten smaller from when I was in school and it was almost impossible to walk around.
I still go up for my lemon shake-up and to have a look around, but I don’t linger long and I usually only go up one day. I don’t ride the rides anymore and stick around for any of the entertainment.
I can’t help but notice when I’m up there, though, that the kids are still having a great time, running from ride to ride, sticky with funnel cake and drunk on lemon shake-ups, trying to win those elusive grand prizes and getting stuck with a half-dead fish.
At least the core audience is still loyal.
