Aug 25

Um, Yeah, that Thing

The awesome women at Rock the Slut Vote link Thursday’s blog, and it got some attention.  I’m hoping because it resonated with people and not just because I sounded a little foam-y at the mouth angry. Oddly enough, I’ve gotten two conservative bloggers followers on Twitter. I don’t even know what that is about.

So now is the awkward blog that logic tells me I should work really hard to make awesome. I ponder for two days about what to right to hook in any new readers and prove to them that I am super cool and worth reading. I think about writing more about whatever it was that brought me traffic. Then I realize I am not good at trying to be cool. I would end up writing some pretentious spew.

Weinie dog jumping into a pool

These are my efforts to write something meaningful and awesome as a follow up

Tina told me one time my gift is my ability to pour my soul into my blogs and people relate and feel less alone. I think Tina is brilliant or she wouldn’t by my bff, so I listen to her. Here is my problem: my soul is not fascinating at all today.

I’ve been thinking about how much I love the Curiosity Rover, and I want a shirt that says “Screw Team Edward and Jacob, I’m Team Bobak.” We lived in Louisiana before I turned nine. I remember standing outside of our house in Louisiana and looking up at the sky and realizing there was nothing between me and space other than air. It was a profound moment for little weird me, and it started my love affair with space. Go, Curiosity, go!

Nutella and banana sandwiches are delicious.

The Viking and I play Minecraft together, and I love it. I make these obnoxiously large sculpture things in game, and I am working on a new one. I have been wandering around trying to solve an issue I am having with it. I’m the strangest girlfriend ever. Sometimes I feel bad for the guy, but I remember he knew what he was getting. I *might* have ran around and dyed all of the sheeps in the world either yellow or red. It was fun. I’m not ashamed. I’m considering breeding a red sheep and a yellow sheep and seeing if we get an orange sheep. Like Tina says, You aren’t hardcore unless you rock hardcore. Bitches.

I’m picking back up the fantasy novel I’m writing. I’m taking my time with it, so I am okay with picking it up and putting it back down while I work on the novella.

And the final thing imprinted on my soul:

I stayed up until 6am baking and playing Minecraft. I need a nap.

Share

Aug 23

The It of It

Here is the it of it:

I believe almost every woman in America has either been sexually misused or is close to a woman who has.

I, myself, know more women who have been raped, molested, or sexually abused, than women who have not.

We are full of rage.

This isn’t even about abortion anymore. This is about the basic disregard for a life changing trauma that happens to far too many women. It is not something to be waived off or made small.

Years later I still think about that girl many times a week. No one can hold a sobbing, bleeding, 15 year old girl and not understand how heinous rape is.

Yes, women heal and move on. They choose to live and try to thrive. Every woman who has been raped or sexually abused I know carries deep emotional scars. Some have buried them so deep, they are like lava waiting to consume anyone who taps too deep. Some have done a better job building around those scars, but all of them have scars. Just because a woman wasn’t outwardly destroyed, it doesn’t mean they weren’t changed forever.

“Forcible rape” is bullshit. What? Now we have levels of rape? Is it some how less of a rape if a woman was a little drunk, or if she knew the man, or even if she was married to him? Did their ‘no’ mean less?

These women aren’t asking for a goddamn medal, they are asking for sympathy and justice. They don’t want special privileges. They want to be treated with the respect they deserve. If you can’t understand these very simple concepts, then maybe you should keep your mouths shut, and you certainly shouldn’t be trying to write legislation on something you clearly don’t understand.

We are full of rage.

If you can’t respect our abilities to love and nurture through the bullshit and the abuse, maybe you should at least fear our rage.

Share

Aug 21

*Sputter* *Sputter*

Sunday, I think I actually started foaming at the mouth because of the Akin craziness. Seriously, I’m pretty sure my saliva glands started to overproduce, and I could feel the convulsions coming on. I went on the Twitter and spazzed out. I always spazz out on Twitter because it feels the most like I am talking to myself. I esploded on my site’s Facebook page. I was full of rage.  Monday, I woke with some perspective.

I’m not going to go into some huge diatribe about why what Akin said was so awful. You either get it immediately, or not. Nothing I say will change that. He said something factually incorrect and demeaned the trauma of thousands of women. I don’t feel so bad about that I got foaming at the mouth mad.

Baby owl sad about not getting picked for Hogwarts

Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as what this owl is going through.

Yesterday, I saw 90% of the internet is pissed off. I think most people get why what he said was bad. Good, maybe there will be some action. Now, how does this relate to me?

Today, I logged on and started reading news and some comments on some dirty liberal posts on my Facebook page, and I noticed comments like “Obama wants to force women to take birth control, but I guess those liberal whiners don’t care about that.”

There were several like that.

I poised my fingers to type a scathing response about how patently untrue their statements were. I was going to tell them all about it. Then I remembered the sweet sweet baby internet goat.

I’ve decided to hide all news and political posts on my Facebook and not click news links.

I’m going to take deep breaths.

I got mad for a reason. It was helpful. It isn’t any longer. I saw people saying things about him “needing to get raped.” Not cool, Bro, not cool. I understand the anger and outrage, but statements like that aren’t okay. Be mad. Write scathing blogs about he is dangerous or ignorant or blowing holes in everything he said, but adding hatefulness to hatefulness won’t help anything.

In the words of Effie Trinket: Manners!

I’m going to keep my eye on him. I’m not going to forget about it. I’m just not going to let it make me convulse anymore.  I have too many other things to do like change the world and look up otter videos for the awesome women who talk to me on the site’s Facebook page.

 

If you really want to do something for rape and sexual violence victims the RAINN site is a good place to start.

 

Share

Aug 18

Yeah, You Guys Should Make Fun of Me

So, I wasn’t at the Super Wal-Mart at 12:01 am last night/this morning to buy The Hunger Games. It was 1:30ish am before I actually went to the store. I was talking to the Viking, and I chose him over the movie. I chose him over The Hunger Games.

I’ve only watched it twice.. The first time I even got to watch it with the subtitles on. I love subtitles, and I would watch everything with them on if I could. Unfortunately, I don’t have control over those things until about 2 am. It explains why I rarely watch TV except for then.

Here is the deal about subtitles: my hearing is a little squishy, but mostly they keep me from getting bored and wandering off. I have the attention span of a gnat, and I find it impossible to watch anything more than a 30 minute show without closed captioning. Having something to read helps me focus.

If I’m reading, on the other hand, I can focus for hours. Honestly, if I am somewhere comfortable, I could read without stopping except for those necessary body functions for hours, maybe even days with sleep. I get engrossed in the world the book is creating in my head, and I never want to leave it. It is why I read my favorite books over and over and over.

Borg RSVP

Oh the nerd humor. OOOOOH the humor

Yeah. I am the biggest Suzanne Collins fan girl ever. Take that you Twittards!

Earlier this week I was convinced I was the biggest bad ass in the world because I wrote like a crazy woman. I was going to be DONE by today. Yeah. Two days ago I puttered out. I’ve been kind of emo about it. I am at the most pivotal part of the story, and I think I’ve just frozen not wanting to do it badly.  I need to accept that I might write it badly, but I can always rewrite it. One day I might actually finish finish something. This writing shit takes forever. The good news is I have a strange situation injury-thingy that means I pretty much have to be sitting.  I take it as the universe telling me to shut up and write.

Also, I *might* have spent a little extra money to get the movie pack with the mockingjay pendant. I should be embarrassed, but I’m just not.

Share

Aug 17

Sense of Self

We live in a society of self-loathing. There is a lot of profit in people hating themselves.

There is something intrinsically wrong with nurturing a society who turns in on itself and focuses on what we hate and obsesses on how to fix it.

We are told our bodies, our faces, our teeth, our goals, our careers, our families are wrong. We are told with the right procedures, the right goals, behaviors, and desires we will be a success.

We are told only success brings happiness. Never does anyone say  happiness is success. The ever groping climb for more won’t bring happiness. It will just bring more of the same ever groping climb, because we are set up to never have enough.

COOLD stethoscope

Not relevant to anything but it makes me happy

Happiness should be our goal. Happiness should be considered success.

Here are my goals in life: make the world better, and continue to build my family.

The meaning of life is not things. Things are a means to an end. Cars don’t give you value as a person. They might bring you enjoyment and joy, but they don’t mean you have more worth. The meaning of life is finding people to love and to care for that will love you and care for you. For some people, that means a spouse and children. For other people like me, that means building a strange pack of people, some related and some not.

Yes, I want to be a successful writer. I don’t mean becoming fabulously wealthy, though it wouldn’t be a bad thing.  I mean, I write things that make people laugh, feel, think, get mad. I want my writing to mean something to people. It would be glorious to make a living off of writing, but I can’t use that as a gauge of my success. I want to bring meaning to someone. I want to show people things about themselves and the world. I want to show the world we are all a lot more a like than we know.

But, even if I never achieve those goals, if my writing never affects anyone, and I never sell anything, it doesn’t mean I don’t have worth.

Self-worth is a tricky tricky bitch. We are the ones who control our worth. People can try to build us up, and people will try to tear us down. Ultimately, we are the ones who decide if we let them.

This is a hard hard lesson. It is easy to say but a struggle to live. I finally had to learn people tear down and hate things they loath in themselves or things they don’t understand. Sometimes it is so hard to say “that is your shit, not my shit, and I’m not going to let it affect me.” Sometimes we have to claw through the crap around us and fight to keep our worth.

We are born with worth and worthy of love.

We are BORN with worth and worthy of love.

We are born deeply flawed. Life breaks bits of us. This does not mean we are not worthy. This does not make us unlovable or undeserving of respect. It means we are human. It prepares us to have empathy and love for those around us who are broken and flawed. Without our flaws and our broken bits, wholly loving another human being would be nearly impossible. No one can love everyone. No one can understand and have empathy for everyone. We must try. We won’t always succeed but it is the trying that is imperative.

I believe in self improvement. I struggle to  be better. I forget sometimes that I am worthy as I am.

Share

Aug 16

The Writing Process

I had decided that I wasn’t going to write about writing with this spurt of writing induced mania. Yeah, like that was going to happen.

Borg Corgi

When will I ever learn to stop fighting myself?

There are many writers out there that can write things they aren’t interested because it would sell. I forget all of the time that I am not one of those writers. I come up with ideas for ‘quick’ writes that would be sellable. I convince myself I can write them, even if I hate it, because it is the logical thing to do. Every single time I try to do the ‘logical’ thing with my writing, I fail miserably. By Sunday I will have completed the second draft of my novella. It will have taken only a week because I loved what I was writing.

I have tremendous guilt that I haven’t finished the rewrite on my first book. I felt like it was another case of me starting something and not finishing. I feel like I never finish anything I start. I’m starting to realize that’s just not true. I would finish my first book if I felt any passion for it. I know, I know, real grown ass women have to finish things they have no passion for all of the time. I realize at a “real job” I couldn’t tell my boss I didn’t write a report because I wasn’t “feeling it.”

It is so true. I also happen to know that people who work jobs they aren’t passionate about skate by quite a bit. They do their jobs and write their reports, but they don’t pour themselves into their jobs. I can’t skate by when I write. You guys have read my crap blogs  (like Tuesday’s entry) when I forced myself to produce something. It takes me twice as long for a quarter of the quality. So, my ‘quick writes’ to produce money end up being a waste of time that would be better spent on something I actually care about.

None of that is new. I’ve went through it before. I always seem to forget. Damn it.

I have also learned that my writing process, or pre-writing ritual, has changed. I thought I should share.

Sit at my computer, realize I forgot my coffee or tea, get back up

Sit back down, turn on Spotify, check both of my e-mails

Look at the news, start to get pissed off at the news, decide I shouldn’t read the news

Check Facebook

Check my e-mails

Play a game of mahjong

Look at the scene I am rewriting

Play another game of mahjong

Decide to take a nap

Lay in bed thinking about the scene I am about to start and realize I’m not going to nap and get up

Look at the scene again

Play another game of mahjong

Start writing

This happens everyday before I start working on my novella for the first time that day. If the ritual is broken at any stage, I am forced to start over. I can take breaks without having to repeat all of it, but any breaks over two hours require at least partial repetition of the ritual.

I could try to fight it but I’m learning it is pretty pointless.

I have some mahjong to play now.

 

 

 

Share

Aug 14

A Blog Primarily About Things I’m Not Going to Blog About

Here is my problem for today’s blog: everything heavy on my mind is shit that I really don’t think would make blogs I would want to write.

lots of baby corgis

Let me offer you this delightful picture in a way of amends for my ‘not blog’ blog.

I’ve been in an almost non stop writing frenzy until yesterday. I love it. I makes me feel energized and awesome. And tired, it makes me feel very tired. I’ve done a lot of sleeping today, I think it is because my body is recovering from not sleeping in anything but short spurts for almost four days. It’s wonderful, but not a good blog.

I am missing both the Viking and Tina. Heavy on my heart, not an interesting blog.

I’m pissed that people don’t see that all birth control efforts and the very real war on women is partially do to male insecurity. I’m pissed because I read something about a police officer told women not to dress like sluts if they don’t want to get raped. If I were a man, this would OUTRAGE me. It is saying that men have so little self control that their logic centers shut down when they see some skin and becoming rutting beast. I could really rant ab out all of that, but honestly, there are many women saying the same things but saying it far better than me.

Men should understand that this all degrades them as much as it degrades us. What makes me very happy is that I know a lot of really amazing men who do.

Also, I think I need to unsubscribe from some of the political stuff on my Facebook page.  I think I have a remarkable ability to fill my rage bar on my own. I want to change the world for the better, but I don’t think my anger is what I should use.

Passionate defense of one’s beliefs is important, and is great to read if you share those beliefs, but it won’t change the minds and hearts of others. We need to read people’s outrage and thoughts and ideas to keep our own passions high sometimes, but when we yell and scream, we put others on the defense. If we want true change we need create a more open atmosphere. We need the shouting to raise awareness, and we need the teaching to do the helping.

Ugh, done with that sermon. That is why I didn’t want to start writing about politics. You guys know this and have heard it before.

In the words of the great George Carlin: Be most excellent to one another.

Share

Aug 12

The Scones

This isn’t a real blog entry. I just have an awesome scone recipe that was stuck on my fridge at peril of being lost at any second. I decided to put it here including my little changes. It came from some magazine. I don’t know which one. I do know there is a doctor in OKC with a page missing from one of their magazines. Mom brought it home to me has a subtle hint.

lovely scone illustration

This is an artist representation of the scones in question since no pictures where taken

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup Crisco

1 cup butterscotch chips

1/2 cup toasted chopped pecans

1 tbs(ish) vanilla

2/3 cup heavy whipping cream

1 egg

First mix the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. I am the last person on earth that still sifts their flour. I’m not entirely sure why, but I do it anyway.

Add the Crisco and kind mash it around until there isn’t any big unblended gobs of Crisco left.

Stir in the butterscotch chips and pecans. I decided that 1 cup was a good starting place for the butterscotch goodness and added a bit more.

The original recipe didn’t call for vanilla but I added some anyway. I have yet to find a baking recipe that vanilla hurt.

Add the heavy whipping cream and the egg (slightly beaten).

Mix it all together again. Basically, you are aiming to get all of the dry ingredients not dry. The dough is a strange crumbly consistency. It reminded me of wet sand with stuff in it.

Divide the dough in half turn  and put it on a floured surface. Make each half into a circle and cut the dough into wedges. The recipe said 6 even triangles. Mine ended up as some bizarre lumps in shapes reminiscent of triangles. Roughly. Then I rubbed some more cream on them and sprinkled some evil white sugar on top.

The recipe says bake at 375 for 14 t 16 minutes until the scones are lightly browned. The knob that you use to set the temperature on my oven is broken, but I know where 325 is, so I bake everything at 325. I don’t really know for how long. I just baked them until they where browned and didn’t look doughy

 

Share

Aug 11

Every Woman Deserves a Tiara

Or man, if he wants one.

There is a great scene in my favorite show Big Bang Theory where one of the male characters has been a total douche to his girlfriend and buys her a tiara to make it up. Go look up Amy Farrah Fowler tiara on Youtube. Normally, I would just embed it, but I am going to pretend that I am important enough to have to worry about copyright issues.  Just. Go. Do. It.

Did you do it? Good.

Beautiful tiara

This would be my tiara (some really neat pictures of old tiaras can be found here)

Here is what I think: every single person who wants a tiara should have one. We all deserve to have moments where we feel like the most special person in the room. Some days we have a hard time feeling like we matter at all. If having a tiara would help us get through those days, then I say we should rock our tiaras at work, in the Wal-Mart, or anywhere. Clean your kitchen and do your laundry in your tiara.

We find so many reasons to be outraged, sad, scared, worried, and overwhelmed. It is time we start channeling our happy. too. I find myself standing on a vortex of daily outrage of what is wrong with our world, and it would be so easy to get sucked in. We need to change what is wrong in the world. The fight is important. We also need to remember what is good in the world, and why we fight. We need at least one ridiculously silly thing that makes us purely happy.  We all need our tiara to remind us of our lighter sides.

Sure, people might stare, but you are the one in the tiara,  and therefore, you are the one who rocks.

Share

Aug 09

On a Wildly Less Profound Note

I learned last night that I am far too lazy and probably old to get drunk on anything but wine. I was going to cut lose and get drunk last night and have a good ole time with Tina and the ladies. I had a drink and a half and just didn’t have it in me to keep drinking. I got buzzed but it melted off and took too much effort to maintain. Today, I am exceptionally tired and my allergies are going batshit. I feel old. It is a good thing I never was cool or last night would have been a gigantic blow to my ego. As it is, mostly I just feel old and sleepy.

evil goddamn cow

I tell people I hate cows because they are evil twatmonsters, and people always argue about how sweet and dumb or about all of the placid cows they knew once. Frack that. This is the true nature of cows.

Last night, I also realized people really don’t know what it is that I do. I don’t even understand what it is I do until I start talking about it. Yes, I’m a writer, but there is more to what I do than just writing. I love my creative writing, and I need to work on it more, but that is only a part of what I do.

I believe my greatest contribution is this blog. I work hard for this blog, mostly in way people never see. I only write three days a week, but I spend a lot of time every day working directly or indirectly on the blog. I am an internet creature. The internet constantly changes. If you want to have any success as an internet creature you have to work to understand it. You have to see what others do, keep up with trends, attempt to keep up with sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and others. There is a new one called Twikle. I have no idea what it is or how I keep getting hits from it, so now I need to learn it.

I fail at Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+, but I am finally starting to win at Facebook. I think I could start winning at Pinterest with just a little work.

My old, highly uncool ass needs some more allergy medicine so I can be ready for my Minecraft date tonight. Somehow, saying I have a Minecraft date should make me feel older and less cool, but mostly it makes me feel happier. I am such a dweeb.

Share