Not so bad, just cold!

Today is not so bad as yesterday. It is freezing and I did hurt myself at the gym this morning, but I did go! I also got my February schedule and I get to be at the mall and office less and I don't have to miss any of my dance class with D! YAY!!! Now I just have to pray that paying the phone bill won't overdraft my account since I have a huge stack of debit receipts and no idea how much money is actually in my account!

More Complaints

I swear I don't complain all the time but lately I've been quite down and it seems that the old adage about when it rains it pours is true.

• Last week in the midst of my mourning for my Aunt, my D lost his job and this has really bothered him quite a bit, not just because he lost his job but because of the way his cowardly boss did it. The jerk brought up a bunch of random stuff from the past, all of which D could answer for, but he tried to make is sound as if it was D's fault and that he deserved to be laid off. In actuality, what their company did is directly reliant upon construction and manufacturing and they've been rapidly loosing clients for the past year and what it truly comes down to is a lack of work and a lack of money. This has been pretty demoralizing to my poor D and I and I am struggling to rely on my faith the God will bring us through. Meanwhile, my hopes for our future seem pushed further and further into financial oblivion.
• I learned today that there is a little bit of restructuring going on in our marketing department and my new supervisor is the director of marketing who lives two states away! My current supervisor is making a lateral move and becoming the internal marketing director. Apparently all of this could mean a possible opportunity for upward movement for me but I have to ask myself, do I really want that? Sure, I suppose it would mean a change in pay but it would also mean quite a shift in responsibility and I still feel like a kid half the time!
• It is way too cold and I'm sick of winter and snow and ice and wind chill and being cold because running the heater is expensive, also static electricity and sweaters and dry skin and dripping, stopped up, sneezing no-good noses and chapped lips and hands and tired eyes.
• I bought Mary Kay eye primer so that I could use those nifty cream eye shadows without it gathering in my crease and giving me a line and it doesn't work. I let it and the eye shadow dry well and yet I have nice little blue lines across my eyelids. Nice :(
• They moved and set up the wrong desks from the annex to the office. They took the shelf like desk tops that don't have drawers for storing stuff and I doubt there will be room for the two desks they have so far left behind that do have the drawers.
• Because A is my new boss and will be doing my schedule and there are several weekend events in February, I might not get my Friday evenings off for the dance class that I paid 80 dollars for and worked hard to convince D to take with me. Stupid boss in far away state. Who moves two states away and still gets to keep their job and gets skyped in for meetings all the time and flown in at the company's expense once a month? WHO!!!!???? In this economy? It ridiculous! Our front desk staff has been drastically cut in the last two months to save money and they still fly her in?! GRRR!!!
  

Death

The following are quotes, sad but somehow funny ones from Austen's Persuasion and Dicken's Great Expectations respectively.

"Lady Elliot had been an excellent woman, sensible and amiable; whose judgement and conduct, if they might be pardoned the youthful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot, had never required indulgence afterwards. - She had humoured, or softened, or concealed his failings, and promoted his real respectability for seventeen years; and though not the very happiest being in the world herself, had found enough in her duties, her friends, and her children, to attach her to life, and make it no matter of indifference to her when she was called on to quit them. - Three girls, the two eldest sixteen and fourteen, was an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath, an awful charge rather, to confide to the authority and guidance of a conceited, silly father."

"Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt conquered a confirmed habit of living into which she had fallen, and Biddy became a part of our establishment."

I wish that I knew how to express death in such a way.

Things to be happy about

• I just bought a new dress and several cute blazers all for only 31 dollars because I bought them at Goodwill. I know it is shallow but it makes me feel good to wear something new and know that I look good in it and I look good in my new dress, D said so too! The dress is a purple sheath and I found the perfect purple and green blazer to go with it and I'm going to wear it to the service on Saturday because purple was Aunt Paula's favorite color. If I can find her awesome purple nail polish amongst her belongings dad picked up from the nursing home then I will wear that too in her honor.
• Yesterday, since I couldn't work because I could not function without crying, I came home and typed up about half of the stuff I've written this month on my lunch breaks so Chapter 20 is nearing an end maybe and the other stuff that gets sandwiched into existing chapters is there as well which brings me to my happy note. The book is now longer than the first Harry Potter book:) now I know that it isn't the length of the book that matters it's how good the content is, but it really makes me feel like I've accomplished something when I see that 77,678 at the bottom of my screen and then to know that I'm still writing, the story isn't finished!
• D and I are going to the eye doctor so I will get new contacts and stop wearing these awful-fall off my nose like a little old lady-glasses!
• I have followers!
• I have nine kept appointments towards my goal of twelve by the end of the month and I have two that may have come in today but I'm not working today so I can't check to see if they have. If I get twelve I by my review I will get a raise and I will reward myself by buying my sword!!!
• I bought a replica of a Scottish Claymore dagger two days ago, it is awesome!
  

A Lament

My Aunt Paula passed away this morning and I feel robbed, not just because she died of cancer of the lungs and brain but because I feel I was denied, through other people's choices, the chance of knowing my Aunt better, and of knowing her youngest son, my cousin Blaine better before he died as well. My Grandpa R was married before to a woman he knew with in months that he should not have married but he stuck it out, that was the way he was raised. They had three children, a daughter and then a few years later, boy/girl twins who were born in different counties, one in the car on the way to the hospital and the other born at the hospital. Their mother ran around behind my Grandpa's back and had affairs, the children sneaked their mother's cigarettes and lied to cover up for her. When Grandpa found out, they got divorced but the children stayed with their mother and became wilder. They were young teenagers when my Grandpa married my Grandmother and after a while there came a son and then when Grandma prayed that God would give her another little boy so her little Johnie would have a playmate, it seemed God rewarded her faith by blessing her with both a little boy and a little girl which she had always wanted. That little girl was my mother.
As his second family grew, my Grandpa watched as his first became wilder, each child making bad choices and rebelling in ways he could not stop, and by then they were adults, having children of their own, some even without his knowledge. This is why I have half-cousins that are actually older than my mother. Grandpa was angry and afraid, until his first children mended their ways he wanted them to have little to do with his second chance at raising a family. And so it was that my mother hardly knew her oldest brother before he was shot to death in California. His twin has made much better choices, she married a good man after making some mistakes with bad ones, but she has a host of children who have all found God and are working hard to raise their families in the light. Their families all live south quite a ways so I see them every year or so when some of them come back to visit.
My Aunt Paula, she lived life as she saw fit, with no regrets about who she made angry along the way. She never grew up and realized that life was about more than what made her happy. In the last few years, especially after reuniting with her son Blaine who discovered he had a brain tumor about ten years ago, Paula began to accept our invitation to come out to our family reunions and so I got to see her perhaps at least once or twice a year for the last five years. The worst year was 2007 because we saw her so often because Blaine, who had come out of several surgeries before and lived and had seemed like he was in remission, relapsed and died in November of 07. This bright and shining light, this strong and courageous cousin I didn't get to know for most of my life, went out of it just as quickly as he came in. Now, his mother joins him in eternity, and I must wait for my own sojourn into heaven to get to know them better.
Rest in the Peace of Heaven which you could not find here on Earth, Paula and Blaine.
My Aunt Paula,

Gyms

I joined a gym last night. Its the gym right down the street from my annex so its very convenient to go work out there in the morning before work. I'd thought about joining for the last couple of months as I've gone to so many different gyms and seen the hundreds of gym goers working off fat and building muscles and I missed the free gym we had a college that Natty and I tried to go to every once in a while. It always made me feel as if I'd accomplished something and it gave me an excuse to read something fun like a magazine or juvenile fiction. So this morning I got up early and went and now I'm sore. I walked and ran on the treadmill for fifteen minutes then I did the stair master for ten and then I wandered through the weight machines and did several but the one for the abdominal muscles I could not figure out. I tried, and I had it on the lowest weight but I could not do it and I was really quite embarrassed. Oh well, maybe next time.

My Book

Yesterday, I wrote the end of my novel. That sounds like an announcement warranting lots of shouting and cries of jubilation, however, I still have a hole from where Chapter 19 is currently written to and the beginning of "the end" and there is still all of that character relationship development that I'm adding throughout the entire book so that my 254 page, 74,000+ word manuscript still has some massive growing to do. This monster that has so involved my life and imagination for the last 8 years is going to continue to feed off of me and what is most frightening is the discovery that it has, in this process, while not even in full maturity, given birth to, of all things a sequel! So that even once this manuscript is in the hands of an editor being cut and tortured and sent back to me for rewrites, I will also be working on it's monstrous little offspring! ARGHH! It seems I am compelled to live the rest of my life caught between two worlds, this one, and Syarador.

This is a quote that I've thought about recently as the
neighborhoods in my home town have largely, it seems, stopped
using trashcans in favor of just throwing bags out on the curb
on trash day.  It's from Monsieur Ibrahim, a movie we watched
in French club in college and it's always stuck with me.


Rich people live here.
Look at the rubbish bins.

             
What about them?

             
To find out if a country...

             
...is rich or poor, look at the bins.

             
If there are bins and no rubbish,
it's rich.

            
If there's rubbish by the bins,
it's neither rich nor poor...

           
...it's touristy.

            
And if there's rubbish but no bins,
then it's poor.

             
So this place is rich?

             
You bet, this is Switzerland!

             
Is this place poor?

             
Yes, this is Albania.

             
And here?

             
Smell that? The scent of happiness.

             
This is Greece.

             
People don't move.
They take the time to watch us pass.

Ok, this suit is called

St. John

Bengal Tiger Knit Jacket and Knit Skirt

"What's wrong with that?" you might ask. Well, let us see. Hmm. Maybe the fact that Bengal Tigers have stripes? Leopards have spots. This by the way is from Saks. Originally each piece of the suit cost more than one thousand dollars, they are out of the skirt now, but the jacket is on sale for just over six hundred. I'm amazed. You'd think that fashion designers would know the difference between spots and stripes, but maybe they took more home ec. than biology. Still, I thought Tony the Tiger made it pretty obvious to most toddlers which cats have spots and which stripes. Oh well, at least they didn't say it was giraffe.

Poet critics beware.

This is the product of boredom, a bad at work dinner, and perhaps too much cold medicine,

Popcorn

Insubstantial puffs of crunchy air,
Sugary, sweet, not good to eat,
but I don't care.

Filling, bloating, sticks in teeth,
makes me weep.

Tricks my stomach,
fools my eyes,
thickens my thighs.

Tires my jaws as
crunch, stick, crunch, stick, suck.

Stomach full,
hunger unabated.

Oh well, I never claimed to be a poet, but it made me laugh so I thought I'd share :)

• I've just learned that I our annex has been deemed to be no longer cost effective so sometime this month everything here, including my desk and computer will be moved to the clinic office building. This makes more sense of course as there is quite a bit of wasted over here, but it means that there will be considerably more opportunity for somebody above me to discover that there really isn't really enough paper or administrative type things for my co-worker and I to do during the many hours the powers above us have assign for us to spend at our annex. In fact, now that we won't be responsible for cleaning and taking care of the annex, we will have even less to do, not that taking out the trash and cleaning the bathroom were thrilling and time consuming tasks, but at least it was something to do to make you feel as though you had earned your paycheck. (I don't generally take out the trash or clean toilets at home if I can help it.) This change may be good in that the powers above may let us in on what we are actually to be doing, or bad because they might just pull back our hours, or it could be bad because I will still be just as bored but not be able to use this blog as an outlet for fear of having a doctor, or other power from above peeking over my shoulder at any moment. The doctors don't really bother me too much, at least most of them, because they all sit in their offices and play fantasy football and facebook etc., but a few of them are a little bit more serious about their jobs and the fact that I am an hourly employee and they are salary may be some significant factor in how our online activities are viewed by the powers above. Personally, I just want another job, however, the job market in Kansas City for someone of my particular skill set is not promising and to be realistic, the job market in general is not good right now.

• I have a great many ideas that I've been trying to keep notes on for further advancing the character and relationship development in my novel. The more I read the novel in its current form, and talk to my mother (thus far, the only person to have read the prologue and 18 complete chapters) the more I realise what I've left out and how I can fix it. Also, this blogging community is becoming very useful. It is something of a distraction, but it also helps me to clear my head and the blogs of others are often very informative. I'm reading lots of Brooklyn Arden and branching out to read some of the blogs she follows as well as the blogs of people who comment on her posts. Although I haven't acquired any following, I wasn't really expecting to and I suppose it takes a while, I am excited by what I am learning from those I follow. However, it would be considerably easier to "follow" a blog if everyone had visible "Follow this Blog" buttons. Just a thought.
• I registered my D and I for our intro to Ballroom Dance class and I am extremely excited!
  

Books that need to be read!

Ok, I read Nervous Conditions for a Colonial Lit class in college my senior year and I loved it, it was beautifully written and heart wrenching in so many ways. Its the sad but sometimes funny story of a young girl who is struggling to understand herself and her society in rapidly changing colonial Rhodesia in the late 1960's and 1970's. I've now discovered that a sequel exists titled, The Book of Not and I must get my hands on it.

At somepoint in high school, the Young Wizards series by Diane Duane caught my attention and has kept me subconciously keeping one ear to the ground waiting for each forthcoming book and finally I hear today of A Wizard of Mars to come out this year and I am thrilled!

I would also like to finish a few books that I began last year and still have not finished. For instance I am so close to the end of Gulliver's Travels that it is pathetic that I haven't just finished it already! It is such an hillarious work of social and political satire that kept me in stitches for so much of it and I am sad that I put it down and got distracted by other matters. I read the Count of Monte Christo prior to Gulliver's Travels and thoroughly enjoyed it, it was so much better than the movie and I am actually disappointed by how much Hollywood felt the need to change the plot. The endings are so different, the movie should probably not even be touted as based on the book.

I also would like to finish A Curse as Dark as Gold, an excellent book, and one which I had the pleasure of buying directly from the author, Elizabeth C. Bunce and had it signed by her when she and her editor, Cheryl Klein of Arthur A. Levine Books, came to my local library fundraisor. I have no excuse for not finishing this book beyond I had to get a job and I've been trying to write my own.

I should also try to finish reading The Lord of the Rings, it is simply rediculous that I have never finished them considering I have reread the Harry Potters at least twice each and more for the older ones and I've read The Chronicles of Narnia at least seven times through, I reread The Last Battle over Christmas. I suppose my problem is that I am a chronic rereader. I've read Beauty, Spindle's End, Jane Eyre, Tiger Burning Bright, Ella Enchanted and P&P and several others, over and over again whenever I am bored, depressed or needing some uplifting inspiration. I should probably turn to my Bible just as often but I do not, which I think seemed to be the theme of the lessons at Church today.

Sick Day

• This morning, when I awoke at my boyfriend's house instead of my own at the late hour of 9:30 when I was supposed to be on my way to work at 9:00. I work about a forty-five minute drive from home. I was feverish part of the night, I've been feverish off an on for the past few days and my nasal passages have seriously got to go. Medications do nothing and I feel like my head is huge. So, I called my boss, left a voice message and here I sit, taking a sick day, one I don't get paid for and can't afford. I guess I will make up for it by working extra hard on my novel, I have many pages written but not typed so I'm going to get on that. The best thing about today is that I get to spend it all with my wonderful guy. I'm going to try really hard not to be a gushy writer who writes about her boyfriend all the time, but he truly is a great guy. When I woke up on New Year's Day with this super cold virus, he rushed right out and bought me several types of cold medicine and several boxes of Kleenex. He takes such wonderfully good care of me. Now, I'm going to hurry up and get some typing done.
• Ok, I changed my mind. I just saw the preview for the movie Ink Heart and I have to say I am excited! I didn't know they were making a movie of it! It was one of those weird books that took me a while to finish and I loved it and sort of disliked it at the same time because it gave me weird feeling inside and I didn't know why. I read the sequel and loved it and it didn't give me the weird feeling inside. I don't know why, but that's the way it was. I hope the movie is good and they do justice to the book. Since taking a class on book to film adaptation I understand why they do make a great many of the changes, but I still feel there are many books that have been ruined in film, such as Ella Enchanted, and Eragon. These were good books diserved to be treated better. Although, I must say, Eragon was, in my opinion a little, shall we say, immature. It was really good for the first book by an eighteen year old, but the movie was poorly done and did not realize the book's vision at all and was so badly received by the public that the following books won't even be adapted to film which is quite a shame as the next two books were considerably better than the first. Ok, now, I will go type.
  

The Irritating Necessity of Gainful Employment

• My job is boring, "yes, of course, so is mine" you say, and I understand. I am a Direct Marketing Associate. I thought Marketing would be a good fit for me, hoping that I would be able to put some of my acting and creative skills to good use and in some ways I have done. However, perhaps I am too efficient at the "office" portion of my job because I am forever sitting here at my desk wondering why I've been scheduled to be here for another hour. Some days in fact, I have absolutely nothing to be accomplished. Is this a defect of mine? Is there some task I have overlooked? So I make up things to do, I color-code my schedule with highlighters. Yellow for all the irritating times I must sit, mostly alone, in this silly little office. Eventually I get tired of attempting to come up with some semi-workish thing to do, and do other things, such as this blog. Now comes the irritating pang of guilt, the nervous look over my shoulder at every passing shadow or banging door, worried that my boss has come to deliver something and has finally caught me not doing something work related! I am such a meek, insecure person inside, despite the strong persona I try to show the world, that my stomach ties itself in knots, and my body quivers with the turn of the key in the door, and my heart continues to pound even after the intruder to my solitude is proved to be, not my boss, but my fellow employee who feels as I do. What to do?

• I spend my lunch hours scribbling furiously away at my novel, but with each passing day I discover the end is further from sight! My characters keep taking my plot and twisting it, their relationships become more complex and chapters I thought safely finished rear their heads and demand a rewrite! I've forgotten to describe this adequately, this relationship needs to be dramatized more and my characters are not very obediant. I want them to speak and their words will not come, I can not hear their voices! I have to finish this story, all hope rests on it and it's sequel. I think back to my past frustrations, waiting for the next in a series and I wonder in awe that it came as quickly as it did. My hope is that my first book, once finished will provide me with enough income that I can quit working full time and just focus on my writing. How much faster could I write, if I could give it even half of the time I'm working at this awful job?

• Ok, another complaint. I work for a chiropractic clinic, and the DC that I see showed me in my x-rays that I have an entire extra vertabrae in my lower back. An L6 to be exact, which was actually supposed to fuse to the other bones in my sacrum and be S1. This is apparently an inheritted trait as my paternal aunt also shares this phenomenon, although hers is not as fully segmented as mine. Mine actually has it's own disc and moves and everything causing my lower back to curve slightly more than the average person. This causes pain when I drive for long periods of time, or have to stand or walk a great deal, especially in heels; things that I have to do for this job. My chiropractor's solution, besides getting adjusted regularly, is to stop wearing heels. I don't think so. I waited my entire childhood for the privelege of wearing high heels, and then I spent a good deal of time learning to properly walk in them, which is something of an art by the way. I also happen to have a closet full of them, all with corresponding Dr. Scholl's inserts either permanently asfixed or interchangable amongst them. The high heel is a staple in any even semi-fashion concious woman's closet and I like to think I am slightly more than semi. Really, if I have to be a mutant with an extra anything, couldn't it have been something a little cooler, like the mutant X gene? I could do some cool accessorizing with a weather power, even wings would be an improvement, I'd be a natural for a Victoria's Secret model.
  

The Product of Bordom

Why do people start these things? Is it because we all inherently have the desire to be heard, or recognized as intelligent beings? Or are we all simply bored at our jobs as I am? Whatever the reason, whether anyone is "listening", I lift my voice up among the throng and say, "hello".

Today began with the discovery that my nose and accompanying sinus cavities have decided to mutiny against the rest of my sundry parts and create mass discomfort. A court martial was summarily called for, and the culprit, having plead guilty of attempted sabotage, was consequently subjected to copious amounts of cold and flu medication. The effects of which only furthered the attempted sabotage by fuzzying the brain. Alas, my poor brain.