Thus, the following:
1. I adore editing, which you already know about because I wrote about it last week and you of course slavishly soak up my words with the thirst of a dehydrated camel and commit everything I say to memory, for one never knows when one will need to recite chapter and verse of something you’ve read here at a cocktail party.
2. Despite this love of editing, my own work has suffered in the past because once I’m done writing something, I very often don’t care to read it again (this is especially true of things for work). HOWEVER, my ol buddy Kingfisher taught me to love editing my fiction, and what do you know, what I wrote turned out better and better with each pass of the editor’s wand.
3. I have not written fiction in a very long time.
4. Most of the fiction I write is terribly dark, there are frequent horrific deaths, and often there are spiders. It’s just what comes out when the inner me is allowed to run rampant across the page.
5. I liked running the Wordsmiths site, but after a while it got to be too much to do every month. Not only did the owners of the site have to come up with the prompts (which naturally required lengthy discussions about what is appropriate), but then we’d word count each, critique each submission, write one of our own, post the compilations, etc etc. So, it died, very much like the characters in my stories.
6. Today I’m totally channeling Blanche Devereaux's sartorial sense.
Note her swingin' outfit in the photo at right. Mine's almost like that except it not SCREAMING HOT PINK. It's not all-black either, and includes sequins (I KNOW!!) so I feel like I'm really making a fashion reach. Oh yes, I'm rocking the retiree style - woot!7. Given the choice between doing dishes and folding laundry, I’d take reading.
8. As a young band geek, I served as the drum major of our HS band as a junior and senior. Won an award for best drum major once. That was pretty sweet.
9. My lingerie drawer is a Rubbermaid bin that sits on the floor of our closet.
10. We have no dressers or other clothes-holding furniture in our entire house. It’s either in the closet or in the laundry someplace. Space is a major consideration for ANYTHING that comes into the Tiny House, so a bulky item like a dresser is a no-no.
11. We do, however, have a desk, a bookcase, 2 recliners, and a drum set in our bedroom. PRIORITIES, people.
12. Halfway done, and I’ll have you know my body is making gurgling noises that would put The Creature from the Black Lagoon to shame. Or Chthulu. It’s that impressive.
13. It takes me a LONG time to makes friends with people, but once I consider myself your friend you’re stuck with me for life. It’s hard to me to give up on friendships, even when years and miles separate me from folks I used to be close to.
14. Even though I cling to friendships like a barnacle on a blue whale’s back, I suck and keeping in contact. With time, I’ve realized that most people suck at keeping contact. This is why I love Facebook. Two minutes of status updating and you’ve alerted the world to whatever is going on.
15. There are days I’d like to give all our pets away. Then I see the Things loving all over them and recant that thought. Despite the mess they make and the constant upkeep they require, pets are good for kids.
16. When I was a kid we had rabbits. My mom is wicked allergic to animals, so nothing came inside, except for Smokey, a little gray kitten my folks adopted from a neighbor’s litter and who lasted one night in our house before mom became a histamine playground. Back to the neighbor’s house Smokey went, and lo did I sob and wail, concerned that ‘someone would take her who loved her as much as we did,’ and similar nonsense. I think that was the first time I felt my heart break.
17. If I could quit my job today and go into the remodeling biz with Biff, I would. Creating things, repairing things, building and improving things is tangible and real and very unlike what I do for a living. It would be nice sometimes to be able to point to a thing and say “I did that,” and I’m not talking about a stack of clean dishes or some neatly-folded sheets.
18. Someday I plan to write a book. Well, I suppose that I am already planning to write a book, so perhaps I’ve met that particular goal. The book is a fantasy, set in a world of metal-folk, and features time travel and a search for how to drown. And that’s all I have to say about that.
19. See? Even in my planned book I’m intending to kill people off. There’s no escaping my fascination with death. Or conjoined twins/human freaks/plastic surgery before and after pictures/stories of people who’ve lost massive amounts of weight. My interests are diverse and dark.
20. Looking at me, you probably wouldn’t guess I have some very odd fascinations. Not every phreak looks goth, y’all, and not all of us have given up on phreakyness once we hit 40 (or…ahem...48…). It’s kind of nice being a California-looking girl with a encyclopedic knowledge of what could go horribly wrong with people. This might explain all those deaths in my fiction.
21. I could easily become a wine snob.
22. When I retire, we’re going to buy a big ol RV (or transporter (I have high hopes for technology)) and just drive around. I’m GOING to see all 50 states as part of my bucket list, and idly moseying around back roads sounds like a great way to do it. Or I might just pack us up and move to Floyd VA and hang with the hippies while waiting for the transporter tech to be perfected.
23. I am more and more pleased that shoe stores are carrying more and more shoes for the ‘bigger foot.’ As a gal with size 11 hoofs, it’s good to know someone’s awakening to the fact that not only those who wear size 7 shoes should have an assortment of cute things to wear on their feet. Not that I shop for shoes that often, but then I do I like something to choose from besides ‘so sensible even your gramma won’t buy them’ or ‘crazy-ass whacked out stiletto.’
24. Along those same lines, I do wish Payless would bring back the wild Airwalk vans. Mine are wearing out, them being my go-to shoes for everything not work-related. How hard can it be to stock skull-and lightning-bolt bedecked size 11 sneakers? Sheesh!
25. Lastly, I’m learning that ‘I love you’ can be applied to more than just the people in my family, and that it can be a way of life and not just a phrase of intimate affection. This is….life-altering, and very very gratifying. Not always easy, but then what would life be if everything came easily? So, despite the fact that my first thoughts toward the texting-while-driving ninny in front of us on the highway this morning who was erratically swerving and changing speeds was ‘die in a fire after being chewed on by rabid dogs you ignoramus!’ I must now, because of the ‘love your neighbor’ thing, temper that thought with the hope that the ninny gets to where she’s going safely and that I hope there’s no crisis in her life that’s causing her to endanger the lives of countless others with her foolish insistence on paying attention to her daggone CELL PHONE WHILE DRIVING! See? That’s much better, wouldn’t you agree?
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Phwef. That took a long time. I’m supposed to tag people, but all the creative in my head leaked out coming up with those 25 outrageously interesting things about me, so tag your own dang self if you're hard-up for blog fodder or want to relive the good old days when memes ruled the interwebz.
Tiff out!
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