The picture on the left is an old picture of my hat collection. The picture is only a year and a half old, but very out of date because I’ve added two or three (or four) more hats since it was taken.
It’s also not a picture of ALL of my hats because none of my stocking caps are represented and I have three or four (or five) of those.
I love hats. I don’t know why. I don’t know when it started. But I collect hats like most women go after shoes. I prefer ballcaps, but I like fedoras, cowboy hats, cabby hats, stocking hats, stupid hats, any hats. I’ve even got a sombrero.
I look good in hats, too. Nothing humble about that brag, either. It’s a fact.
The thing is I don’t wear hats very often. I wear ballcaps to ballgames, but other than that, it doesn’t happen very often. Coco Chanel said that before you leave the house you should take off one accessory. That accessory for me is usually a hat.
That doesn’t stop me from buying them, though.
I want to be prepared in the event that a hat is needed.
I’m not a steady reader. I read in bursts. One month I might read four, five, six books. The next month the only thing I’ll read are online articles and my writing magazines. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s just the way I roll.
I’m in one of those reading funks right now.
I have books. In fact, I just got a bunch from my mother because she’s cleaning out her bookcases (Mom does not reread anything, so after a while, she starts giving books away to make room for new ones). But nothing sounds good. It’s like going to the refrigerator and repeatedly opening the door and looking inside. You’re hungry, you know you’re hungry, but you don’t know what you want.
That’s exactly how I’m feeling right now, but with books.
Last night I had some extra time and I thought I should read something. I started looking around. I looked at the books I brought home from Mom’s. I looked through Papa’s books on my Kindle. I started rereading a book just for the sake of reading, but I wasn’t into it.
I want to read, but I don’t know what I want to read.
It’s frustrating. Reading isn’t only part of my job, but I also read because I enjoy it. And when I feel like this my enjoyment is kicked right in the sensitive parts. It’s not fair.
But like that nagging hunger feeling, I’ll eventually placate myself by reading something. It might not necessarily be what I’m craving, but since I don’t KNOW what I’m craving, it’ll be good enough.
At the very least it will help ease this malaise and give my brain a bit of a shake. By the time I’m done, there’s a good chance I’ll have an idea of what I want to read next.
When the Cubs and Nationals “brawled” last week many fans immediately got on their high horses to give their opinions on the whole thing. And that’s fine. I, on the other hand, tried to get down as close as I could to the action so I could see what was going on.
Baseball fights fascinate me. Most of the time it looks like a typical “guy fight” (some pushing, some shoving, a few crappy punches maybe, and a whole lot of yow-yowin’). The cause doesn’t interest me as much as who does what during the confrontation. Who’s first out of the dugout? Who leads the charge from the bullpen? Who’s playing peacekeeper? Who’s looking for a piece of the action.
I must have watched this tiff forty times (and paused 140 times) to get an idea of what was going on. And since this bruhaha had two bench clearings and three separate altercations, there was a lot to see.
Round One:
-The Cubs in the dugout really weren’t paying much attention to Jamie Quirk yelling at Bo Porter.
-When Bo Porter stopped at the top of the dugout stairs, the first guys to Dale Sveum’s side were Tony Campana, Luis Valbuena, Wellington Castillo, and Jeff Samardzija.
-James Russell led the charge from the bullpen.
-Darwin Barney and Starlin Castro strolled over to the confrontation. Alfonso Soriano and Brett Jackson hustled.
-Jeff Beliveau peeking over the bullpen fence at the fuss cracks me up every time I see it.
Round Two:
-Joe Mather, Campana, Travis Wood, Dave Sappelt, Samardzija, and Anthony Recker were first out of the dugout after Lendy Castillo went inside on Bryce Harper.
-Russell again led the charge from the bullpen. Carlos Marmol and Manny Corpas were laughing and nudging each other as they ran in. Franklin Font runs pretty damn fast while wearing shin guards.
-Even Lester Strode ran in! (PS. I love Lester.)
Round Three:
-Corpas was part of the reason round three started. Anthony Rizzo tried to play peacemaker.
-Russell, Samardzija, Recker, and Blake Parker were right on the front line.
-Barney kind of got sucked into the crowd at one point, but they spit him out unharmed. Same thing happened to Rizzo.
-Some guys moved to the back of the crowd, some guys couldn’t get close enough. Chris Volstad, Campana, and Wood were three looking to get in on it. Travis Wood looked like this wasn’t his first rodeo. (I’m sure he and his mullet have seen many bar brawls.) (That was a joke.)
-Bryan LaHair was one of the peacekeepers.
-A Nats player had a hold of the front of Samardzija’s jersey and was swinging from it like a monkey when everyone was doing their share of shoving and I’m not sure Shark noticed.
-Some how Kurt Suzuki managed to keep a towel around his neck the whole time despite being in the thick of things at one point. (I wasn’t going to keep this strictly Cubs, but that really impressed me.)
-Dale Sveum and Dave McKay looked pretty calm throughout the whole thing. Pat Listach must have rowdy kids. He looked like a dad breaking things up. James Rowson was right in the thick of things, pulling guys apart and separating them.
-Many of the guys had a look of “WTF?” on their faces. Those guys were more to the back of the most pit. Several players (David DeJesus was one) didn’t seem to get too excited.
I was kind of impressed with the way the Cubs came together. Everyone answered the fight bell (okay, the second time Soriano jogged in, but he really needs to preserve his wheels) and while tempers flared, there were enough cooler heads to keep things from getting too out of hand. Everybody seemed to feel the need to protect his teammates. Nobody was left to hang. I appreciate that.
Yes, I realize this is unpopular opinion. But then, isn’t every opinion I have about baseball/the Cubs unpopular?
I’m having trouble making my ends meet this month. It’s not a good feeling. It’s not something I’m proud of. But it is a fact of my current existence.
There are two very good reasons why I’m having trouble this month. One, this bill period saw 3 1/2 extra bills (car sticker renewal, website renewal, a domain fee for a domain I thought I’d completely deleted but apparently I didn’t and of course that sort of thing isn’t refunded, and a little extra added onto my cell bill because I had to change plans mid-billing cycle). Two, I’ve only started one of my three new day jobs.
Had I not had one or two of the extra bills, I would have been fine. Had I started one or both of my other day jobs, I would have been fine. The combination of the two has me scrambling. If I had a couch, I’d be raiding the cushions for change.
It doesn’t help that sales have been slow the past couple of months. Books sales, jewelry sales, eBay sales, nobody is spending their money on the stuff I’m hocking. That money would have been both welcome and necessary.
Here’s the thing…I know I’ll land on my feet. The bills will get paid. They always do. I’ll find a way. I’m clever and resourceful and I know I’ll find the money I’m missing. Maybe I’ll borrow it. Maybe someone will come through in the clutch and buy something. Maybe I’ll luck out and get a quick odd job. Whatever happens, the bills will get paid.
When I was 22, this was a challenge. I didn’t like it back then, but back then I was 22. I was young. Now I’m 32. I shouldn’t be running into these problems at 32. I shouldn’t be scrounging to pay bills or borrowing money. I should be in a much better place financially and I’m not.
There are a lot of reasons why I’m not and I take responsibility for all of them that are mine. Not holding a regular 9-5 job like other grown-ups is one. My life would be so much easier if I could just be normal and work a 40 hour a week job and get that steady paycheck. But the older I get, the worse I get about submitting to that life. A flexible part-time gig is more my speed. As soon as I get all three of my jobs going, my bills will be paid and I won’t be working more than twenty hours a week.
Being very optimistic about selling myself is another reason I’m broke. I have this stupid idea in my head that people want what I sell. That friends and family know people that want what I sell and will pass my info to those people. The reality is that those people are probably out there, but they aren’t getting word about me. And if they are, they don’t have the money to indulge themselves with my goods. My inherent awkwardness about promoting myself doesn’t help this cause.
I could go on, but I won’t. Nobody needs to see my list of money failures.
And that’s what this is. The culmination of many failures. We’ve already discussed how much of my self-esteem is tied to my bank account. Being called an ugly fat cow can’t even come close to doing the damage to my ego that borrowing money can.
Particularly now. I’m too old for this. I shouldn’t be here. Yet here I am.
With no one to blame but myself.
I’ll get through this month. I’ll get rolling on all of my jobs. I’ll sell a few more things. My bills will return to normal.
And slowly but surely I’ll find some self-worth once again.
My last game was actually July 21st, but I didn’t realize it was going to be my last game of the season. I also didn’t realize until this week that I never posted the pictures I took from that game. How could I deprive you of that?
First pitch: Normal CornBelters vs. London RippersThe Rippers uniforms look a lot like track suits.Swing as they might……the Belters just couldn’t score.Game worn jersey auction for the Special Olympics. The jerseys came straight off the guys’ backs.
The season wasn’t the greatest and I would have rather my last game of the season not be a blowout loss, but it I’m still going to miss sad to the see the season end.
Having spent the better part of my summer working on two novels in some form, I’m feeling a little lost. For three months I knew exactly what I was going to be working on every day. Now that they’re done (for now), there’s a little rudderless panic that happens at first. I had mine and now it’s time to work.
It’s time to swing things back to the short story.
I’ve got seven stories that are ready for submission. I’ve got two that need to be revised. I’ve got two ideas that are begging to be written. And “Gone Missing” needs one more polish after one of my lovely beta readers caught a few mistakes. Okay, it’s more of a novella, but still. I can count it for this.
So between writing, revising, polishing, and submitting there’s plenty to keep me busy this month. And since I’ve acquired a few day jobs that I’ll be starting this month, it’ll be easier to work the short story projects into the new and changing schedule.
Of course, that’s a mental thing. It just feels easier because short stories come pre-broken down into bite sized chunks that I can work on. Novels feel like a huge chunk of meat that you have to swallow whole and I have trouble breaking them down and working them into a day job schedule without feeling like a slacker.
I’m straying from the point. The point is I have a lot of short story work to do this month and some decisions to make one which stories I want to submit and which ones I want to use at freebies.
Because I think we could use a few more freebies on the blog. Don’t you?
Speaking of if you check out the Outskirts tab up at the top, you’ll find that I’ve moved everything from the old site over so you don’t have to leave home to read about the Skirts!
I’m afraid I didn’t go to many CornBelters games this year. Aside from the Home Run Derby and the All-Star game, I only went to two. One was a suspended due to rain in the 3rd inning. The other was a blowout loss, but at least I got all nine innings in.
There were two reasons I didn’t go much this season. One was, of course, money. Not that the tickets cost much; those prices are quite nice. But the cost of gas and the cost of concessions add up and all told, it was money I couldn’t afford to spend even if I wanted to.
And the second reason is I didn’t really want to. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Corn Crib and I love the Belters, but this team was in such flux it was hard to get into a groove. It seemed like every other week a player was traded. I realize that the manager was trying to put together a winning team (that didn’t work out since they went 29-67), but as a fan, it was rough.
Part of the fun of last season was rooting for the players individually as well as the team. We knew the names and the numbers. The 2011 team was blown up pretty early and I was up to the challenge of learning the new guys and finding new favorites. But then the new guys didn’t hang around very long either. There was no time to get to know many of them because if you blinked, they were gone. Once Alvaro Ramirez got traded after the All-Star game, I gave up. There was no point. I didn’t know the team and wasn’t going to be given time to get to know the team.
I like going to ballgames, but for me, I like it when I can relate to the team I’m rooting beyond the numbers on the jersey. It was a lot of fun cheering for Mike Mobbs and Ramirez and Bobby Pritchett last year. I knew their names, knew their numbers, knew their walk-up music. It was like rooting for friends.
This season I was rooting for a bunch of strangers that I wasn’t allowed to get to know. It wasn’t as much fun. As such, I wasn’t as het up and driven to go to games. I feel bad about that.
I hope next year the players are able to hang around longer so the fans have someone to root for. Winning draws fans, but so does a little consistency.
In the course of the past week I saw two good articles about fat people and health.
The first pertains to a doctor denying to take a woman on as a patient because she’s fat.
The second is about the “thin paradox”: how thin people get diseases that only fat people are supposed to get.
Now, in regards to the first article, I’ve never been told by a doctor that they can’t treat me because I’m fat. But I know that it happens and I’m not surprised by it. The disdain for fat people is palpable beyond the mall and fast food joints. I’m taking up too much space with my rolls and it disgusts people no matter where I go. I’m not surprised that it disgusts doctors, too. After all, they are people. Worse, they’re people with years of medical training that has educated them to believe that fat, any and all fat, is bad.
Which leads me to the second article. If you’re fat and you do find a doctor willing to see you, then the automatic cure for whatever it is that ails you is to lose weight. High cholesterol? Lose weight. High blood pressure? Lose weight. Painful menstrual cramps? Lose weight. Sinus trouble? Lose weight.
If you’re thin and you have these problems…I guess you get actual treatment? Because if you’re thin then you must be really sick. If you’re fat…well…you’re just fat and that’s the cause of all your trouble.
So, let’s review…
If you’re fat, you don’t necessarily deserve a doctor’s care because if you’re fat then you clearly don’t care about your health and would just be wasting the doctor’s time. But if you want a doctor to see you then you should lose weight first, then you’ll be worth the appointment. If you can find a doctor with reinforced tables and whale scales and Paul Bunyon blood pressure cuffs and whatever else it is that doctors think they need to treat fat people, then whatever your complaint is can be cured if you lose weight.
Gee, fat people. I guess we can save a whole lot of money and cut out the middle man if we just lose weight.
Reasonable, right? Sure.
I know of someone who is a size zero, doesn’t exercise, and makes mention of eating once or twice a day and that consumption might be a candy bar or a cupcake or a diet Coke and some pretzels. Meanwhile, I’m a size 20/22, exercise five days a week (most weeks), and make a conscious effort to make my meals somewhat healthy in both content and portion size and number. However, based on the two articles I linked to a doctor would be more likely to see her and more likely to treat her better because she’s thin.
Doctor’s perpetuating the myth that thin=healthy is a huge disservice to the masses (pun intended). Fat people are being led to believe that weight loss will cure everything and thin people are being led to believe that they can’t possibly be unhealthy. It’s criminal bullshit, really.
With all of that said, I’ve never had any of this happen to me. I’ve never had a doctor refuse me because I was fat. The only doctor I’ve had that discussed weight loss with me was the plastic surgeon that did my breast reduction surgery. He asked if I tried to lose weight to reduce my breast size. I wasn’t insulted by it. He wanted to make sure I’d explored other options before surgery. (FYI: I did try to lose weight to reduce my breast size. I lost twenty pounds. None of it came off of my chest. When I gained it back, it went to the boobs.)
Granted, I don’t have a lot of doctor experiences in my adult life. Not because my fat keeps me from going, though. For me it’s usually lack of insurance/short on money/I don’t go unless something is hanging off by a thread because I’m pretty sure it’ll be fine in a day or two even if it is the plague that keeps me from going to the doctor.
But that’s another story.
The point is I’ve never personally been doomed to ill-health by a doctor that refused to treat me because I’m fat or by a doctor that thinks weight-loss will cure whatever ails me, and I don’t think anyone else should be either.
Fat doesn’t make people unhealthy. Doctors that don’t take fat people seriously do.
A few months ago (I think June, but I’m too lazy to go back and look for sure), I blogged about starting a new novel and writing it in a completely different way than I was used to. I was going to outline a few chapters, write those chapters, revise those chapters, and then move, sort of leapfrogging my way through the book.
I’ve admired the writes that can do that sort of thing. It looked like a much more efficient way to write a book. They don’t have to wait until their finished with the first draft to go back and fix glaring story problems or character issues. They revise as they go along to catch those things. Then when they do finish the first draft, they’ve got a whole lot less fixing to do. In other words, their first drafts put them a lot closer to a final draft.
That’s great for them. I still admire and envy them. But that’s not for me.
I used this technique with the Ivy novel (it still doesn’t have a title). While I did like not getting too far ahead in the outline so I could make adjustments and I liked the ability to go back and fix big story problems or combine chapters before I got too far ahead of myself, overall, I found the whole process rather tedious. By the time I started outlining the next few chapters I was relieved because I was sick of the chapters I’d been working on. That sickness has followed me all the way through the draft.
As of this post, I’ve still got two chapters to write and four chapters to revise (though, I don’t think I’ll be doing much of anything major to those chapters) and I’ll be done with the draft. Yes, I’ll be a lot closer to a final draft when I’m finished and that’s great, but I don’t think I want to write a novel this way again. At least not for a long time.
I do think I’ve picked up a couple of useful tricks from doing writing this way, though.
Not getting too far ahead in my outline is a great help. I think I need to start doing two outlines. The BIG outline of the general story arcs I want to tell. And the DETAIL outline of what goes in each chapter. The BIG outline will keep me from forgetting things. The DETAIL outline is what I need to stay on task (this is invaluable to me during NaNo when I must hit my word count for the day; I know exactly what I’m going to right about so I don’t have to waste time wondering). If I only outline a few chapters at a time, then I can make the adjustments I need to it without derailing the whole thing.
The second thing is that it’s okay to go back and change big, glaring story problems while writing the first draft. Okay, yes, this isn’t exactly time efficient during NaNo, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. And it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done just because I am writing a first draft and I prefer to write it all the way through without revising. Sometimes it’s a benefit to break that self-imposed rule. In the end, it helps me out more than it hurts me.
So, while I think I will always be one of those writers that has to get it all down on paper in one go, I do think this experience has made me a little smarter about how I can go about that more efficiently.
It’s back-to-school time again and that seems to provoke adults, even ones without children, to remember their school days.
I remember high school. Somewhat. Sort of. It’s been a while. I can remember a few things about freshman year, a few more about sophomore year. Junior year has it’s blurry moments. Senior year has a few more clear memories. For me it wasn’t the hell hole some make it out to be. It also wasn’t the glorious, best-time-of-my-life experience either. I walked the line, I suppose. I had some good times, I had some crap times. I wasn’t bullied. I wasn’t popular. I had my friends and my insecurities just like everyone else.
It wasn’t my best period in life, but if it was, that’d be a real downer. Who the hell wants their life to peak at 16?
I didn’t go to my ten year class reunion. Not because I couldn’t, but because I didn’t want to. I still live in the same town I went to school all my life in. Many of the people in my class still live in town. Working at Wal-Mart I saw a lot of them. To me it didn’t feel like ten years was long enough to get together and pretend life was a strawberry picking festival back then. Especially, since some of the people I’d be seeing at the reunion acted like they didn’t know me when they saw me around town (and maybe they didn’t recognize me, maybe I’m that easily forgotten; but I know that’s not the case for all of them).
And there’s some people that even after all this time, I just do not like and I’m not going to like. Period. Not even for an evening of good times.
Sorry. No amount of booze makes me want to play nicey-nice with you.
Now, this isn’t to say that everyone I went to school with was a jerk. Some of them were. Some of them still are. Time doesn’t change everyone and the ones that time does change don’t necessarily change for the better. Through the magic of Facebook, I’ve found that several people that I got along with and hung out with in high school have become people I don’t care for very much. (It should be noted that this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad people. It also means that I’m not excluded in that whole change thing. Personalities that once worked together mature, grow, change and end up no longer meshing. That kind of thing happens. What I’m saying is that this sort of judgment is subjectivity at its finest.)
However, there were some people I went to school with that hold a special place in my timeline. They were truly lovely people that made an impression during a turbulent time in my existence and I’m happy to have known them. I’m friends with some of them on Facebook and I’ll be honest when I say that they still give me warm fuzzies when they pop up on my timeline.
Oddly enough, those are the people I haven’t seen in person very much since graduation.
Apparently, there are plans to attempt a 15 year reunion next year. I’m not sure if I’d go if it happens.
On one hand, I don’t feel like 15 years has been long enough either, though I got out of retail and don’t see a lot of my old classmates around town as much as I used to. Now I see them on Facebook and that’s kind of good enough for me.
On the other hand, there’s this theory that when you get people together in a class reunion situation, the old cliques and social hierarchies come back, like an instinct, and I’m half curious to see in person if that would happen. I suspect that it would, despite the time passed and the changes everyone has gone through.
There’s something that hasn’t changed since high school.
I’m still the weird girl that thinks about things from a totally different angle.
The picture on the left is an old picture of my hat collection. The picture is only a year and a half old, but very out of date because I’ve added two or three (or four) more hats since it was taken.
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