Muhahahahaha!

Well, I'm back. It's been a long and fruitless hiatus, and I'm looking forward to writing more and reading more. Actually, I've been reading an awful lot since I last posted on this blog. One of the authors that I've been reading was suggested to me by my dear friends Ali and Jenny. Christopher Moore. I love you my darling, darling man. As you know, I'm a fan of sarcasm, and Moore has it in spades.

I've read most of his books. (Right now, I'm working on Bloodsucking Fiends and I have yet to read Fool and The Stupidist Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror.) I think that Moore speaks not only to my angry-people are stupid-life is a giant joke side, but to my whimsical-magic is out there side. And he does it so well. Thank you, Ali and Jenny.

I've also become a fan of Phillipa Gregory's series about the women involved with the Tudor reign. Full of sex and violence and little known facts about the royal line, these stories are fictions that are completely believable.

Tracy Chevalier is another author I've picked up. I like that she takes artwork and creates a story based on it. A couple of her books don't follow this line, but they're still a pretty good read.

Throughout the year, I've also expanded my reading in the fantasy genre. I fell in love with Anne Bishop and Brent Weeks. Neither is extremely prolific. Though Bishop writes more than Weeks. (In fact, Weeks has only 3 books out.) But I've decided that they are both now on my list of authors I check for every time I go into Barnes and Noble.

I've also found some guilty pleasure reading in Jim Butcher's Dresden files. I know, I know. Not a very literary writer, but I've developed a taste for his Maltese Falcon meets "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" style. Just pure fun, schlock reading.

Well, that's my little re-introduction. I hope to keep our meetings here more frequent, because I know how you are all dying to know how my life is going.

And Now For Something Completely Different (I hope I don't get sued for ripping off Monty Python!)

So, I finally decided to jump into the dating pool. However, since I'm so busy, I have a difficult timing getting out in the world to meet new guys. And because the guys I already know are not available, just friends, afraid to ask me out, or just plain losers, I've decided to jump on the Internet dating train.

Now which Internet dating site have I joined, you ask. Well, I've decided to try eharmony.com. I figured I'd try it for a month and see what happened. If I get good results, maybe I'll stick around for another month. Anyhow, I've already started meeting my matches. They've been chosen for me based on my "personality profile." (The one that took me almost an hour to fill out, and I'm still not sure if I got all the answers right.)

As some of you know, I have issues with height and age. I like men who are at least two inches taller than I am, and I have a problem dating men who are more than five years older or younger than I am. Well, the folks at eharmony seem to feel that I should expand my age limit upwards (if anything should change, I think it should be in the downward range, don't you? Just call me Cougar Carpenter!), so they keep sending me the profiles of 49 year old men. That's okay. I take a look at them, then I delete them.

Eharmony also keeps sending me matches below the 5'8" range! Okay, now I allow 5'10", but I really prefer tall men. The taller the better! They make me feel smaller, more delicate, like a tender flower on the cusp of bloom (ugh! I think I just threw up a little in my mouth!). Moving on. I like a man that I can wear two or three inch platform heals around and still look up at him. At minimum, I have to look him in the eye! (Is this too much to ask for? Tell me. It's really important!) I usually don't even look at these profiles. As soon as I see the height, I chuck 'em. I know it's superficial, but hey! I'm the one who's gonna have to set my beer on his head if I start dating him. You just keep your hairy nose out of it.

Not all the guys I'm being matched up with are horrible, though. There are actually some very cute, sweet, and smart men. I've started sending those form questions out to these ones. (It kind of makes me feel like I'm sending notes in elementary school, though. You know "do you like me--check yes or no" or "Sally Frankman says Joey Milkie said Frances Donovan said Mark Miller thinks you're cute? Do you think he's cute?") After they respond to these questions, I get to send them my likes and dislikes, then they get to send me back theirs. Next we get to ask each other a second round of questions, and then we do something else. I think somewhere around the fifteenth round, we actually get to start writing each other letters. Yippee! It all seems rather complicated, don't you think?

I remember it being a lot easier when I was younger. I'd go to the bar, see a guy I thought was cute, wiggle a little as I walked over to him, and ask him if he wanted to f***! See, nothing to it. But then again, I am 38 years old, and I've never been married, so maybe that wasn't such a good approach.

Well, anyhoo, I think I'll go check my email and see if any of the twenty or so guys I sent pick up lines, I mean, first questions to have replied to me. I'll keep you all posted, and if you're very good boys and girls, I'll try not to bore you to death in the posts.

Ta!

To My Darling Girl

I ran into Jenny tonight, and I told her that I hadn't felt ready to blog. But when I got home I realized that if I didn't blog now, I might never do it. Some of you may already know, but for those of you who don't, my niece Elizabeth passed away September 7th. I miss her.

Most of you never got to meet my darling girl, though you probably heard about her frequently. I often spoke about her health issues, my experiences while helping to raise her, and the incredible things she used to say. I can't imagine not having her around anymore, but I know that's exactly what's going to happen. I'm still going to be here, and she's not.

On the day of her memorial I went to my mother's house, and she showed me a picture that captured Lizzy perfectly: her intelligence and her sense of humor. From the time Lizzy stopped wearing diapers, it was clear she would always have a problem finding pants that fit. You see, she had a large tummy (caused by her illness forcing her organs to squash towards her stomach) and a very small butt. Every pair of pants she owned slid down and showed the crack of her butt. The family took to calling her "plumber butt." The picture my mother showed me was taken at her house. Lizzy had called to Mom from the kitchen saying, "Grandma! Come here. I've got something to show you." My mother went to the kitchen to find my girl on her hands and knees with her head in the cabinet under the sink. She had pulled her pants half way down her butt, revealing a crack almost as large as Dan Akroyd's. This was my Lizzy, my darling girl. She took life's cruelties and turned them into laughter.

It hasn't quite been a month, but I've already started to heal. This is what she would have wanted. I've found happiness in the classes I teach at the university, and I know Elizabeth would have been excited for me. She loved school and her teachers, and I know she was happy that I chose to become a teacher.

Lizzy's ashes are going to be spread around the memorial tree planted at the elementary school she attended. It's highly illegal for us to do so, but we want her to rest somewhere that made her happy, and she was never happier than when she was in school. In this she was very much like her aunt.

To Pilfer a Life to Create Art

Okay, so I recently posted a blog about a phone call I got. About twenty minutes after I posted it, I started having doubts about having put it out there for all the world to see, especially the person who called me. I came more than a little close to removing the post, but then I stopped and thought, what if I always edited what I wrote with the thought of knowing that someone who might recognize him or herself in the text would read it? Needless to say, I left the post up, as any halfway decent writer should do to prove his or her literary courage.

Once I made the decision to leave the post, my thoughts turned to the creation of fictional characters. As every writer knows, it is important for us to rape our personal lives for inspiration. Anyone who comes in contact with a writer is fair game for inclusion in some form or another into one of the writer's future projects. (Okay, let's face it. You don't have to come in contact with the writer. If we even hear about something you've done that is mildly interesting, you could come face to face with yourself in print.) So, if I found myself considering editing a post because of fear of recognition, what does this mean about how I write fictional characters.

I started thinking about some of the characters I wrote in the past. I know for a fact that I have edited some of them because they too closely resembled the person they were based on, but I didn't edit all of them. I have one character, whom I adore, sho is the spitting image of my brother when he was about ten years old. I love everything about this little boy, and I'm not afraid to let my brother read the story he is in. However, I have another story about my grandfather that I would never let my grandmother read, not because my grandfather is portrayed as a horrible person, but rather because she would get upset that she isn't mentioned in the story. Now I don't name my grandfather (anyone who knew him would recognize him, though), but I do use the name of a woman who used to hang out with my grandparents. This is what would actually upset my grandmother. Though the other woman is very, and I mean very, peripheral, she is the one who is in the story, not Grandma.

Now, I would love to base a character on my grandmother. She's an enormously intelligent, interesting, and complicated woman. The trouble is that I would most definitely want to include the unflattering aspects of her personality. In fact, I think these would be the focus of my characterization of her. It would hurt my grandmother greatly to have her portrayed as less then the perfect front she displays to the world. Her pride is great, and I have no desire to wound it. Now, does this make me a coward? Should I go ahead and write the story now, or should I save it until she passes away. (One final piece of information, Grandma is 84, and she doesn't show signs of giving up anytime soon. And let's face it, I'm not getting any younger, and there's a strong possibility that she'll out live me--she's that stubborn!)

So, Now What?

I was ordered by a friend to put down my computer games and write something. So, after I got off work today I ate dinner while I played 1701 A.D. Then I quit playing and decided to write a new blog. Of course, then I was faced with the question of what to write about.

The subject of writing is out of the question, since I'm sure no one wants to hear anything more about my thesis, and I haven't written anything else in a long time. I thought about writing about my niece, who is now at home and doing very well. But all I have to write concerning that is that I get to babysit for her every Wednesday--I've come to love Wednesdays. Work is a hopeless writing subject. Just a bunch of old people who need to order the medications and want someone to talk to when they're lonely, which is a lot.

With the idea pool dwindling for this blog, I started thinking about certain people who decide to, out of the blue, to contact you for seemingly mundane reasons, say to find out when the reunion is going to be, and then make slightly suggestive remarks. I started thinking, "Hey, does this person know the remark he, or she if that's your slant, know his remarks are suggestive? Is he doing this on purpose? Is he really being cavalier about the remarks, or did he make these remarks with careful deliberation, hoping the hint will be taken? Is he trying to let me know (I mean not me, but whoever is getting these remarks spoken to them) that he misses. . .um. . .this particular someone?" AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!

So then I decided that I really didn't have anything to say in my blog.