A Look Into My Writing Process...

Sometimes when I'm at work and I have an hour left in my shift and not a lot of product left to put out, I often find myself wondering if I can stretch out the placement for the entire 60 minutes.

That's just an example of how much I don't care about my job.

I never do actually take as long as possible of course, cause if I were bad at my job then I wouldn't be able to judge everyone else for being lazy and inefficient. Which is a favorite past time of mine.

I've been thinking of wearing skirts to work. And if you know what my job is you know how stupid it would be for me to wear a skirt. Climbing ladders and shit all the time. But I do love wearing skirts and dresses. And outside of work, I don't really go anywhere. So I'm basically just sitting around my house, brain-warping on my laptop or watching Netflix, looking spiffy as heck. And nobody gets to see it.

I had this idea for a play today. It's about a guy who goes into an exotic pet store, it's a well-known front for drug dealing and the like, but the guy doesn't know that. So he goes in and he's looking for some exotic bird, and the name of the bird (I don't have that yet) is the codeword for wanting to buy drugs. And when said drugs are brought to the guy that's the exact time the cops bust the store, naturally. Hijinks ensue in the second act, but I haven't fleshed that out yet.

There's an exotic drug store on the corner of our street that we're pretty sure is a front for some kind of drug trafficking. I honestly don't know where I get my ideas from.

Words, Words, Words

I've been thinking lately about writing. Well really, I think about writing most of the time but I think about it in terms of 'making money from it and being able to pay bills.' I used to think in terms of 'this would be a good story, I should write this down.' It frustrates me that I think I have to consider it from one perspective or the other. Why can't I think about it from both simultaneously? 'This would be a good story, maybe there's a profit in there somewhere.'

This one blog I read, Volcanic Ensemble, the woman who writes it had a post a few months ago that I really connected with. She was celebrating x-number of years writing her blog and she said when she originally started the blog the tag (or possibly the name of the blog itself, unfortunately I don't recall exactly) was 'I promised myself I would today so here goes.' Or something similar. Let's consider that a paraphrase. I used to do that. Not tell myself I would write today, but I would literally write everyday. I had a book bag full of notebooks and pens and I would take it with me wherever I went. Instead of a purse with essential things in it, I carried a book bag with what I considered essential things. Sometimes, I would wake up at night and write something down, a poem or lyrics or a title, and go back to sleep. Something would come to me and I would write it down and go back to it later. That was such a good system. Now when I think of something I spend hours agonizing over it, trying to force the idea into existence. I thought of this great title for a sci-fi/fantasy novel over a year ago, and I came up with a name for a main character. Since then I've struggled through six variations of half of the first chapter. I haven't even finished one chapter.
This one's better: I've been working on a story since I was 13. I have never written an ending for it. The characters have changed drastically, the storyline has changed even more drastically, I've altered the

Celebratory Drinks!

I have officially been married for one month!!!!

(Yes, it needed four exclamation marks.)
Good, now that the awesomest news I have to tell is out of the way, here are some other not so awesome (or even interesting) things that I've been up to... since my last post. Sunday.

Started re-watching Mad Men on Netflix. I miss that show so much. I have to wait until 2012 for the new season? AMC, we need to talk.

Bought beer for the reception Saturday. I also picked up these margarita mixes that you just freeze and then ta-da, ya got a tasty drink. I'm saving those for Saturday as well, but they don't come out till evening time. I really hope a lot of the people leave at 5:30 like the invite said. That sounds terrible. I don't care though, I was just hoping for a relaxed evening with close friends and family and instead we got the typical 'let's just celebrate with the neighbors too!' from my parents. It is a big deal for our parents but come on, both sides have already had a kid get married. It's not a new thing.

I hate Bath and Body Works. I can't stop buying their products. And then, they keep giving me coupons for sweet discounts. Free shipping on an order of $25 or more? Of course I would love to spend my hard earned meager wage on your lotions and potions. What's this? Free item with purchase of any Signature Collection item? I do love free items with purchase. Bath and Body, you know me so well.
I had to give my mum some of my lotions because between that place and this other store I shop at (hausofgloi.com) I have amassed a pretty little collection of lotions that I'm fairly certain will last me three winters. That sounds like a time frame from the 14th century. In Egypt.
I plan on buying more. Ya know, cause I gave some away.

I'm making mac 'n cheese for dinner, in celebration of our being married for one month. For real.

It's De-Lightful

So after all that bitching I did about how the yard would look all redneck-y and such, my brother and his wife came over to my parents the night before the wedding to hang out for a bit and Scotty saw the backyard and I guess felt that it wasn't good enough for his little sister to get married in as it was. So early Saturday morning, (I like to imagine they were sitting in the parking lot waiting for the manager to open the doors, like those crazy Black Friday shoppers... which they are) they went out to Hobby Lobby and rented some stuff to pretty up the place and they even borrowed chairs from his in-laws. Oh, and they bought us two big flower bouquets and vases that are sitting on top of my piano now. I'm sad that I didn't get to see until after the ceremony though cause I only had a short time to really appreciate it. I wasn't allowed out of the house until the walk "down the aisle." (There wasn't really an aisle.) Everyone else saw it though so that's good. But what I did see was beautiful. My sappy big brother...

I ended up going with my back-up dress. The intended dress was ready in time, but when I put it on it just didn't feel right. I pictured something so much different in my head and I really thought I had conveyed that properly but I guess not and now I just have a kinda fancy dress for if we ever go anywhere where I need a fancy dress. My brother's wife summed up perfectly how I felt when I was wearing the original dress when she said she almost wanted to cry seeing my face when I looked in the mirror. I was just disappointed. But the back-up, while probably not beautiful, made me feel how I imagine a bride is supposed to feel when she puts on her dream dress. It didn't look anything like what I imagined my wedding dress would look like, but then again I didn't start imaging a dress until we started planning a wedding. Which I think is backwards.

I only wish that we had chosen some music to be played while people were waiting, or at least while dad and I walked from the back door to the very back of the yard. Everything I had wanted though made me cry when I pictured it and I knew I would already be crying enough once I was up there with him, I didn't want to exacerbate that. So instead there was an awkward silence, well it was awkward for everyone else, dad and I just made jokes about how awkward it was and how I was going to cry like a little girl... so I wouldn't start crying. Jeremy's mum made a comment about the lack of music while I was making my way up, and then he told me about it later and for some reason I got all fired up about it. I know there should have been something but maybe you can wait until after the wedding to make your snide remarks. I'm the only one allowed to be snarky about my wedding during my wedding. Occasionally Jeremy can be, but only occasionally.

I wrote our vows that morning. Literally, that morning. Courtney and I were texting until about one in the morning trying to work some things out. We had a general idea but all of the vows seemed cliche, hollow, or contrite. So I ended up paraphrasing F. Scott Fitzgerald and Shakespeare, and taking a bit here and there from some of the vows she found online. We didn't read our own, or recite after her. Instead she introduced them as being written by us and then she read them. I liked it better that way, cause it felt more unified. Also, neither of us would have gotten through them. We're big babies.

I asked my dad to read a poem by Yeats, which he (my dad) made it through just fine, but I did not. I was fine as long as I kept looking at our hands. The moment I looked at Jeremy though I thought, 'thank god Courtney's reading the vows.' We also did a sand-ceremony-thing. Which is where we each have a container of colored sand and we pour the two colors together into one container. We went with light and dark blue cause it our favorite color and the jars are now sitting on top of the piano, between the two vases of lovely blue flowers from Scotty and Ashley.

I should've known it would be a perfect day, (except for my being sick and coughing until I vomited in the Olive Garden restroom and everyone thinking I was pregnant) despite everything that wasn't working out how I wanted it to. Our family does well in the clutch.

I'll tell you what I'm not excited about that though: mum invited Drunkle (our consistently drunk uncle) to the reception while I was on honeymoon. Yeah. That's happening.