"Oh, loneliness and cheeseburgers are a dangerous mix!"

I get discouraged sometimes.  Which is why there isn't going to be a February post.  Well, not a real one.  This is technically a post, I know, so shut yer trap!  It's not a proper post, I'm mostly just complaining.  Totally different than all my other posts.  Totally.  Different.

OK, here goes:
I'm almost done with college.  Like 18 credits away, that's how almost done I am.  That's including this current semester of 12 credits.  And I'm floundering.  And I totally know why, but I can't seem to stop my brain from feeling super anxious and scared and just dive in and get it done.  When I graduate, there isn't going to be any excuse for me to not start living my life properly.  My 'real' life is going to be there, all shiny and expectant like a new baby, and I just know that I'm going to drop that squirmy thing.

I'll have to find a job, start paying back my student loans, be an 'adult' and do all that normal shit that those of us in our 30's are supposed to do.  Both my kids will be in school full time this fall, I will be done (or very nearly done, depending on summer class availability) and things that have been on my self-imposed back burner will start boiling over, demanding attention.

I got my associates degree in 2010 and looked for a job in the corresponding area of the market.  For a year.  I didn't even get an interview.  So, I went back to school to get my bachelors degree.  What if the same exact thing happens again?  What if everything I've been waiting to do (I don't even really know what I've been waiting for, some kind of magical self-actualization, complete with an army of trained monkeys that I can command to do my bidding.  Or something), everything about myself that I haven't been working on or thinking about or trying to improve because of having kids/going to school/watching my dad die/dealing with anxiety and depression/experiencing the inevitable stresses that come with being alive are broken or have evaporated or are simply boring and disappointing?

 Anxious people like me typically don't handle the unexpected future very well.  We worry and fret and wring our hands while our hearts constrict in our chests and we fight until we've worked up a sweat to stay on the edge of that cliff,  because once we've slipped, once we fall down that deep, dark, cavernous pit, we are lost.  It can take a long time to climb back up, mostly because we have been beaten so soundly by the terrible monster that lives down there.  I call him Panistrosity (which isn't a great name, I know, but it's hard to be creative when you feel like gouging out your eyeballs just so you can stop seeing the terrible thing trying to tear you apart).  It's completely exhausting and traumatizing to have your brain misfire and cause your body to panic like you are about to die when you're not.  It happens over and over and over again to some people, and it is unpleasant.  I haven't had an encounter with my ooze-dripping monster in a long time, but a few days ago I fell down there close enough to see that puffy, orc-like face, and I'm still feeling shaky and uncomfortable and sad.

Um, this is all figurative, by the way, in case anyone that's reading is tripping on acid or mushrooms or something and thinks there's a real cliff somewhere with an actual monster below.  Just saying. Drugs are bad, Mmmkay?


So I'm preoccupied, is the point I'm trying to make, I guess.  I'm doing the best I can, so please don't judge me too harshly for missing my self-appointed deadlines that don't really matter because I don't think anyone not related to me by blood or marriage reads anyway.  That was very sad sackish of me to say, and I take it back.  I don't take it back enough to simply delete that sentence, but I do take it back to the point that I felt the need to say something about it.  Jesus, what the hell am I talking about?

BOOK REPORT ONE: #88- The Call of the Wild, By Jack London

Remember like, six months ago when I said that I was going to start reading the 100 best books on the best book list?  After starting and restarting and being confused and looking up a few chapter synopses on Wikipedia and then kind of understanding and then just crawling through each sentence and looking up a LOT of words, I stopped reading James Joyce's Ulysses and tried a different book on the list; The Call of the Wild, by Jack London.  Don’t worry, I haven’t given up on Ulysses, it’s very original and interesting, it’s just taking forever and hurts my brain sometimes.

I chose this book because it was a free download on my eReader.  A bunch of these books are free, which is an added bonus to a poor person that is too lazy to go to the library, but I had apparently purchased it before and it was already on my kindle app, so there you go.

Some factoids about this book:

-It was originally published as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post, and then published as a novella in 1903.

- It’s based on Jack London’s actual time up north during the actual Alaskan/Yukon gold rush.

- It’s fucking awesome.

Quick Summary:

Told from a big, burly dog’s point of view, it tells the tale of how Buck ends up in the frozen tundra working as a sled dog.  He has some good owners and some stupid ones, and travels all over the place in the meantime.  Throughout the book he feels he’s slowly becoming un-domesticated and tapping into the ancient instincts of his ancestors (i.e., the call of the wild).

My Opinion:

AMAZING. 

I loved it so very much. It’s encouraged me to tackle other books on the list.  It’s told very simply and straight forwardly, with little literary pomp and circumstance.  You know what I mean, right? Some books are written by people who write fancy, formal and complicated words and phrases for the sole purpose of being fancy, formal and complicated so other members of the literati will think they’re fancy, formal, and yes, complicated.  In other words*: superfluous. 

*Do you still say 'in other words' if you're only referring to a single word? 'In another word' just doesn't sound right.  Damn, I bet those literati that I was just talking about would know... 

That being said, pushing the boundaries of contemporary fiction is completely necessary and important, because without it, everything would stay the same and be super boring.  Remember in my super long and tedious favorite movie list how I said there’s a difference between the ‘best’ movies and my personal ‘favorite’ movies?  It’s like that, but, you know, with books. 

The Call of the Wild seems to be firmly entrenched in both of these worlds, as it’s on the top 100 book list AND it's a great read.  As previously stated, it was written so simply and perfectly that it completely sucked me in.  It seemed like every word written had the exact meaning and purpose that he intended it to have.  It was so clear and concise; you could feel the coldness, the emptiness, the danger of the terrain.  It was exciting and fast-paced. There was great peril and huge obstacles to overcome, impossible odds, love and violence, warmth and death, and the pure ecstasy of absolute freedom from everything but your deepest, most primal self.  And it was about a dog!  I love dogs so very much.  If it wasn’t for the limited funds and strict city ordinances, I’d probably have four or five of them.  Or ten. 

I read this book in two hours.  I couldn’t stop, I had to know how it was going to end.  My only complaint, if there is one, would be that since it was written more than 100 years ago, our ideas have... changed on dog training.  There’s dog-on-dog and dog-on-whip/club violence.  So that part was a little terrible to read, but it added another layer of harsh reality to the story, which ultimately made it more compelling because we felt sympathy for this dog that was abused (and totally kicked ass too).  

Side Note: Should outdated societal norms be accepted in literature (and other media) as simply a part of our unenlightened past, or do we censor and remove the now-offensive parts (or get rid of them in entirely)? I'm not a huge fan of censorship as a general practice, AND there's the whole, 'people who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it,' deal.  But, people could also get their ideas and beliefs from said history.  Does it perpetuate stereotypes or cause us to reflect on how far we've come? Deep thoughts, man. My neurons and synapses certainly can't create the appropriate chemical reaction that would generate an answer (is that how brains even work? I don't know anything!).

That’s it.  My first brainy book report.  On a scale of zero to ten brains, zero being the worst and ten being the best (duh!) I give this book nine brains.  I would’ve given ten if it was longer.  

DOGS! WOO!

9 out of 10 brains!

"I've Never Been Good with Words...

...Which is why I'm in such a delicate conundrum."

Did ya ever have writers block?  Did ya ever stare at blank screen and watch the cursor mock you with every one of its devilish, condescending blinks?  You-are-a-terrible-writer-that-won’t-amount-to-anything-ever! Also-I-fucked-your-mom-last-night.

I can’t believe you said that, cursor!  Dorothy Mantooth is a saint! And, more to the point, so is my mom!

Bitch-ass cursors aside, wanting to write and not having anything to write about totally sucks.  I’ve been trying to come up with various blog posts for about three weeks now, but they haven’t gone anywhere interesting.  So, what’s a blogger to do when the deadline is a week past? Panic and run around the house with my arms flailing wildly?  It involves me knocking something over or smashing into various pointy objects, eventually ending up with a trip to the emergency room.  That’s not very productive, so no, I'd better not. 

I think my main issue is stemming from my feeble attempts at fiction writing.  I’ve got a story that I think is pretty flushed out, maybe 75% but when actually starting to write the prose, I get stuck almost immediately.  I guess my problem is merging my... whatever this thing that I do is style with a professional descriptive narrative.  I know I need to keep at it, keep writing until I figure it out, but as a person that usually writes too much, writing slowly and searching for the right words and phrases and struggling for something to sound the way I want to it is, well, it’s annoying as fuck! 

I’m really bad at following through with things until the end.  I kind of run out of steam about 3/4 of the way there and just sort of stop.  There’s some sort of task tank inside my chest that’s mis-marked and runs dry before the job is done.  Maybe I just don’t manage it well enough and use up too much energy at the beginning thinking about it and getting psyched and convincing myself it’s worth getting off the couch for.  Whatever the reason is, I’m really trying to stop half-assing my way through life.  It’s not easy.  You know what IS easy?  Nothing.  That’s REALLY easy.  Sitting around in a messy house with bored kids and fat dogs.  I don’t want to waste my life though, and that’s exactly what I've been doing.

I have gotten a little better.  School's back in session and there was a day last week when I really didn’t want to go, but I did anyway, and it felt good, like I’d accomplished something.  Hell, the fact that I’m in school at all is a step in the right direction, isn’t it?  I’d like to think so, because college is not easy.  Well, the stuff that I’m doing is easy, but getting all the work done on time is difficult.  I did get all B’s last semester, so that’s something. 

I need to take little steps when all I want to do is long jump Olympic style.  I need to be patient and gentle and calm with myself, and cradle my fragile, broken inner-self like I would a singed kitten pulled from a fire, when all I want to do is whip that racehorse until it runs so fast we’re only a blur past the finish line (I do not condone whipping racehorses, or any animals for that matter, it was just a metaphor, duh!).

My point is, I’m inpatient for my life to start, but I keep re-breaking my brain-bones by trying to use them before they’ve healed, making my recovery twice as long and three times as painful.

Wow, I’ve made myself feel better.  Oh, sweet blog, is there nothing you can’t do? 

‘Yeah, a whole bunch of shit actually.  First and foremost is achieving sentience.  Damn.’

Sorry, blog. Didn’t mean to bring you down.  

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Program...

I was working on a post about when I was kid, and about how the kid version of me perceived things much differently than the grown-up me, but it makes me sad and I don't want to post it right now.

I have a seven year old daughter and several other seven and six year-old kids were murdered a few days ago, and it's really made me sick, and angry and sad.  I don't understand the motives behind school shootings, especially when it involves adults going into schools that they are not affiliated with.

I was senior in a high school in Colorado in 1999, and I remember when those kids at Columbine killed all those other kids.  I remember how panicked my Australian and Illinoisan relatives were when they kept trying to call to see if I was a student at Columbine and couldn't get through for hours because that's what everyone else's relatives were doing and it overloaded the phone system.  I didn't go there, my school was a few miles away and in a different district.

My sixth-hour period was open and my friend Sean and I decided to skip our seventh (and last) hour and just go home.  We had heard some kind of rumor that a kid shot another kid at a school nearby, but no one knew the extent of it.  Soon after we left, they locked down our school.

Sean and I went to my house, sat on the couch with my mom and watched the coverage for hours.  No one knew if the murderers were still in there killing people, or had barricaded themselves in and were waiting for the cops to come in so they could mow them down too.  Was anyone still alive?  How many people had died?  Were there bombs?  It was chaotic and terrible.

Everyone was shaken and crushed.  We were all scared and confused and didn't know how things were supposed to be now.  The future was now filled with scary uncertainty instead of 'this is the way the world works' security.  We stumbled blindly, trying to find out where this dark new path would go, fearful that it couldn't possibly be anywhere safe and kind.

But you know what the worst part was?  The worst part was that it happened again.  And again.  And again.   And our hearts and minds were broken over and over, and our dark path kept splintering and veering off onto bumpier and more twisted trails.

Some people are calling for less guns, or no guns.  Some say there should be more guns.  More mental health awareness and funding.  More this, less of that.  All I know is that I didn't think the nation's collective heart could break this heavily quite like this again, and nothing will be the same from now on, no matter what we do.

Sorry, guys, but I'm pretty sad right now.  I'll post something with some degree of my usual normalcy when I can think of an acceptable topic.

Happy Holidays.

Latey Lateness

Since I'm a terrible procrastinator, I've put off writing a big paper that's due tonight for a class I'm taking.  Also, this is the last week of the regular semester (finals are next week) so there are projects and worksheets and various other things I have to do before I begin studying (or putting off studying) for finals.

Said procrastination is also the reason why I haven't started writing December's blog, and now it's December and I'm too busy with stupid papers and stuff to write one at the last minute.

So this is just a little note explaining why my post is going to be, most likely, substantially late.  I'll try to squeeze one in as soon as I can, but I'm not sure when that's going to be.

I'm also going to try to start writing blogs ahead of time, like starting February's post this month, and then having the month of January to edit it and stuff.  It sounds a little ambitious for a lazy, lazy person such as myself, but I feel like I should to something to be more reliable.  It makes me feel all guilty, and I'm going to do something completely unlike me and try to stop doing the thing that causes the feeling I don't like.  What?!  That's crazy!  I know, right?

Maybe one day it won't be such a struggle to get all the stuff done that I want to do.  Maybe I'll see a quadracorn too.   

"When I was a boy, just about every summer we'd take a vacation.

...And you know, in 18 years, we never had fun."

A 'fun' thing I did this summer was to go camping with my family.  I have a 4-year old son and 7-year old daughter in case I've never mentioned it (I don't want to go do something crazy like actually check (!)).  So we went to the local state park and camped about 10 miles from our house.  Since we live in south Denver, it's not too far from mountains and open spaces and stuff, but this park is  pretty much 3500+ acres of wilderness surrounded by suburbs.  It's still nature, dammit!

I like camping, in theory. As long as there's a bathroom and not a bucket to pee in, and we can have and are able to make a fire, it's fun for a few nights. I love the brighter stars and chirps and rustles and the mechanical quietness. I love relaxing outside when the morning is bright and the wind is still cool and we all smell smoky from last nights fire. There's no TV or Internet attempting to lure me into submission and no messy house to not clean up.

We went in June so it wouldn't be quite so hot and we packed crap into the borrowed pickup truck for what seemed like days: tent, sleeping bag, cast iron pans, pokey things to cook marshmallows with, canvas fold up chairs with mesh danglers attached to holes in the arm rests to put your frosty and refreshing beverage in, water, food, utensils, snacks, sun screen, rain jackets, hoodies, shorts, jeans, swimsuits, extra socks, insect repellent, bug bite cream, bandages, neosporin (or its generic equivalent), sinus medicine, headache medicine, sunglasses, toenail clippers, that pink tummy stuff that is all chalky, thick, looks and tastes like My Little Pony vomit, firewood, cooler with ice, and some other stuff.  Did I mention we only went for 3 days?

'Fun' #1: There was a crazy heat-wave this summer and the 3 days we were out camping in the sun were the three hottest days in June.  EVER.  104 degrees.  But at least for the rest of the summer I was like, "It's only 98 degrees today?  That's not so bad.  Remember when it was 104 AND WE WERE CAMPING?"

'Fun' #2: My daughter is a typical 7 year old and is, for some reason I don't understand, in love with horses.  So the two of us went on a guided horse ride for an hour.  And as if slowly meandering down an un-shaded dirt trail in 100+ degree heat on a gigantic, furry animal in jeans and a helmet wasn't enough fun, we did it in a group.  There was another mother-daughter combo in our midst, and they were annoying for several reasons:
1. They were late and we had to wait for them.
2. The horses kept trying to snack on the grass and it's not good for them (for some reason that I can't remember), so if they start a-grazin' you're supposed to yank up the reins to remind them they're not supposed to.  Now, if a 1000 lb quadruped really wanted to eat that fucking grass, my Caesar Milan-style jerk-and-pull wouldn't even phase it.  But horses are like, trained and stuff, and they know the rules, so you give 'em a tug and they're all, "Aw, man, this sweaty thing sitting on me knows the rules.  Can't get away with it.  I'll just keep biding my time until the horspocalypse and then I'll eat so much goddamn grass they'll be picking up my green, marshmallow-shaped turds until the end of time!  Bwah ha ha h- I mean neigh-h-h-h!"

These ladies, especially the squealy teen-aged one, didn't have the girl-balls to 'be mean to a horse' so they only half-heartedly tried to get their horses to stop eating the grass, which made the horses think they could control the situation, and soon they were veering off course into the brush to partake in the bouquet of the new summer's grasses. And by 'new summer's grasses' I mean, 'crispy, dried up weeds that probably cut those damn horse gums all up to hell and are also most definitely a fire hazard' So we'd have to stop while the increasingly irritated cow-girl-guide went and got them back on track.
3. DON'T CHECK YOUR FUCKING MESSAGES ON YOUR FUCKING PHONE WHEN YOU'RE ON A FUCKING HORSE ENJOYING THE MAGNIFICENCE OF NATURE!!
4. It was hot and I was cranky and they were strangers.

'Fun' #3: We also went to the 'beach.'  The park has a huge reservoir in it and they rent out boats and jet skis and stuff, and have a marina where people bring their own boats.  That they bought.  In a land-locked state almost exactly in the middle of the country.  That they haul to a man-made lake so they can float around for a weekend and play that game where you see how many beers you can drink before you run into another boat piloted by other stupid people in boats that they hauled to the park so they can float around for no good reason and play that game where they see how many beers they can drink before running into another boat.

Just to clarify, I'm not talking about sweet little paddle boats, canoes, kayaks, or even small sailboats or those little fishing boats with the motor somehow attached to the back with that little handle on it so you can steer; those are hobby boats. Those boats can be strapped to the side of the house or tossed in a shed or even deflated if you have a really shit one.  What I'm saying is they don't take up a lot of time, energy or space.   No, I'm talking about gratuitous speedboats and mini-yachts (or regular-sized yachts, I'm not sure exactly how big a yacht is supposed to be).  The boats that I think are ridiculous are the ones that need their own trailer and giant-wheeled truck to tow it around.  The boats that need insurance and winter storage places and are named less-than-classy ladynames (ever heard of a boat named The Maya Angelou?  No, no you haven't).  Those boats have no earthly business in Colorado and are just another notch in the 'Americans-are-so-stupid-they'll-buy-anything' category.  The reservoir is FULL of those fucking things.

It's shaped like a check mark, this reservoir, and the boats and drunk folk being pulled 30-miles-per-hour on an inner tube are up at one end (its ok though because they wear life jackets! Just kidding, that would make them look dumb) and there's this little beach on the other end with a roped off area of water that you can wade into and freeze your ass off and scrape you feet all up on the rocks because it's a fucking lake and not a swimming pool.  We went there and brought our foldy chairs (see list of camping gear above) and towels and sunscreen and water bottles and the kids forced us into the water with their manipulative statements like, 'we can't swim!' and 'I want to play with you because I'm still too young to know better!' and 'I love you, Mommy'. Pffff.

We would go in for the three seconds the kids could stand it then we got out and dried off.  Then we did it again.  And again.  And again until they started fighting and we went back to the tent. Have I mentioned yet that it was the hottest day ever?  Oh, and also, I got a sunburn even though I wore SPF 70.

'Fun' #4: The best part was that since it was so hot and dry, after the first night they increased the fire ban so we couldn't have a fire. No campfire while camping. Dinner and the next mornings breakfast needed fire, or at least some kind of high temperatured, concentrated heat source to be edible. We considered running the engine of the car until it was hot enough to fry up some eggs, but we had already wasted so much gas from sitting in the cab and blasting the air conditioning for short bursts that we decided not to. At least we were surrounded by city and could skip out to Red Robin.  Which we did and it was the best Whiskey River Chicken Burger I've ever had.  We went to bed early in the pitch blackness, woke up with the bright sun, packed up our numerous possessions and grumpily sweated all the way home.

That was the major event of my summer.  We cooked marshmallows and hot dogs over an open flame (the first night), and watched the bats come out.  We looked at constellations and played on the playground.  We laughed, we cried and no one lost any limbs or was otherwise seriously maimed.  I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Update 12/9/12- Fun #3

Two Things

1. I'm going to commit to one post a month.  If I want any sort of following, I'm going to need to be more consistent.  And awesome.  Awesomely consistent or consistently awesome you ask?  Why, BOTH, of course!  Also, why do you always interrupt me when I'm writing?  Lame. So I'll post at the beginning of every month, hopefully the 1st.


2. Look what I did for Halloween!

Now, I know what you're thinking, and the answer is no. I did not spend hours and hours and hours obsessively carving this pumpkin and trying to smooth out all the jagged bits with a flat toothpick until 3am last night.  I totally didn't do that.

To recap:
-Real post coming in a day or two, then once a month after that, most likely until the end of time
-I am an amazing pumpkin carving-type artist!  Skills like these will come in handy, like, once a year.  Bonus.