Breaking the Blog Rut

I've been feeling very boring lately, mostly due to the fact that I don't have much of a social circle outside of my husband and two kids (if that can really be a social circle). The fact of the matter is I don't leave my house very often (especially lately). Last week I left the house four times: once to Tae Kwondo, once to the bank, once to the store, and once to Boy's school. Not very exciting you must admit. So I broke out my trusty blog book and opened to a page at random. It said to share entries from my childhood diary. Well I don't have my childhood diary and if I did it would mostly be stuff like: "Meander's a dork." "I love River Phoenix!" And if I shared my high school/college/post-college-pre-marriage diary, your image of me would be blown. So I am presenting you with an excerpt from my "novella" that I had to write for my advance fiction writing class in college (circa 1999). Back then it was well received (or at least not as hated as most offerings) by my class. Looking at it now cracks me up. So here (in all it's grammatical erred glory) are the first couple paragraphs of:

Maggie: Space Goddess

Maggie felt sick. The world outside the window spun wildly as they made their approach. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the passenger seat. No matter how many trips through space she made, or how many times she landed, she hated re-entry, especially since the new corkscrew re-entry had been invented. Before that, re-entry was bumpy, but at least you weren't spinning like a top. The corkscrew entry supposedly made re-entry safer, and it really did. Space fatalities had gone down fifty percent since the new landing procedures had been instituted. Although she knew it was safer, she hated this type of landing.
(Hi, it's me! Here's a little commentary from 2008 me, you'll know that in the future because of the parenthetical italics. Are you getting that Maggie is re-entering the atmosphere? Good, I wasn't sure if I said "re-entry" enough. Back to the show!)
"Are you okay Maggie?"
"No Caleb, I'm going to puke." (Puke!?)
"Damn it Maggie, when are you going to learn to take a stabilizing pill?"
"When they don't make me break out in hives."
"Shit, I don't know why they let you travel in space. They should demote you to groundling status."
"Fuck you, I am as suited as you are. Besides they can't demote me, I'm the best ambassador earth has. No one else on the planet can speak as many languages as I can."
"You do know that you won't be such a hot commodity once McWilliams perfects his universal translator."
"If that pathetic excuse for a scientist can get his mind off his dick for more than ten minutes at a time, I'll start worrying. Now stop talking and land this bucket of bolts before I vomit on the control panel."
"Yes ma'am."
(Can we talk about how edgy I thought I was here, saying "Damn," "Shit," "Fuck" and "Dick" all on my first page. Yes! Take that, education!)
With a jerk the Shepherd 5 cleared the atmosphere, and Maggie opened her eyes to see her favorite part of the trip. She could see the ocean rushing up on them. Suddenly they were underwater, and she could see all sorts of fish. She amazed herself. As many beautiful species as she had seen in her life time, like the glowing mist creatures of Preambulus, or the tall stick like beings of Unbolo, nothing pleased her more than the sight of the sea creatures of her home planet. She felt like kissing the man who developed the ocean landing. Although she knew she never would since his latest innovation would put her out of a job once it was perfected. She saw the landing doors open ahead, saw the ship rush into the landing pad, and heard the doors shut behind them. She waited while the excess water was flushed out of the landing pad.
(end)
All-righty folks that's all your getting. I know it was such a pleasure. I can't tell you how difficult it was to not correct the grammar as I typed it up. Isn't it exciting? You just know McWilliams is going to be the sexy love/hate interest in the story, right? He already sounds so irascible with his inability to keep "his mind off his dick for more than ten minutes at a time!" I hope we see more of Unbolo, because Unbolo is so fun to say.
And this is just an example of why my creative writing minor never amounted to much.

Boy Was My Face Red!

I have a new blog assignment for my sisters that I am sure they will love. What was you most embarrassing moment ever? Now, be detailed.

I was fifteen in 1992. Nirvana was everything that was awesome, and my friends and I wore mostly layers of flannel. I dated a boy named Andy for a month or two, and he took me too his brother's wedding. I borrowed a one-piece, black, polka-dot dress skorts outfit from my preppy, older sister (she'd worn it to some dance).
Everything was going fine at the wedding, until I needed to pee. Being that my dress was actually shorts, I was going to have to pull them down to do that task. Being that it was all one piece with a zipper, (and no shoulders by the way, so no bra- ah to be 15) I had to take it off almost completely. So, I had put the task off for as long as physically possible.
Now, I am in a bathroom stall (probably doing a potty-dance) trying to unzip this damn dress. I can't remember if the zip was on the side or the back, I do know it was hard to get to.

The zipper gets stuck.

It won't go in either direction, and being my sisters outfit, it is more fitted than clothes I ever wear, so I can't just pull it off zipped.

But I HAVE TO PEE!!!!

Now here I am, my 15 year-old, shy self, at a wedding full of people I don't know. I really have to go with my policy (according to Meander) "It hurts to ask." There was NO WAY I was going to leave that stall and get someone to unzip me.

But I HAVE TO PEE!!!!!!!!!!

I do the only thing that I can think of. I yank that zipper for all it was worth (pulling it off the outfit) and finding sweet blissful relief. AHHHHHHHHHHH!

Only now I have a problem. I will not wet myself, but I have completely ruined the dress. If I leave the stall. the dress will gape open and everyone will see my panties, and more importantly, the fact that I am not wearing a bra!! I will NOT leave this stall! Never mind that I have already been in here longer than my task required. Never mind that my boyfriend is out there waiting, missing his brother's entire wedding reception.

I sat there for a little while, sans outfit, trying to put the metal part of zipper back on. It was a little like Peter Pan trying to stick his shadow on with soap. Until...

My boyfriend's 60+ year-old great-aunt comes in.
"Is there a girl named Liza in here?"
I respond and go into the whole thing about the skorts and the zipper, and how I am sitting there trying to fix it. She goes and gets Andy's tux jacket and I stand in the bathroom in nylons and a rented jacket while 25 ladies I DON'T KNOW try and fix my dress.

No luck.

Now Andy has a cousin that is leaving. We switch clothes, and I am allowed to stay the rest of the night in her clothes, while she goes home in my broken dress with a tux jacket over it.

Problem solved right?

Not quite so. You see her skirt and top combo fits me, but it fits me tighter than anything I've ever worn in my life. Not trashy-tight, but tighter than a self-conscious girl (who always wears baggy layers) would ever want her outfit to fit. 90210 tight.
So I hang out at my table, trying to keep a low profile. Staying away from all 25 ladies who saw me in nothing but a tux jacket, and absolutely everyone else at this 400 person wedding that knows I am wearing someone else's clothes, and knows why.

But that was not to be.

All of Andy's brothers and brothers-in-law, the groomsmen, and anyone else up for the job decide to get back at Andy for being a good boyfriend and staying with me. How is that?
They surround our table, cutting off all means of escape. They're even ON the table and belt out "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" (Top Gun wannabes) while everybody at the reception surrounds them and laughs and the photographer takes a billion pictures.

I about cried. It was way too much for a teenager to deal with. I broke up with the boy not very long after that.

And don't forget, I still had to go home and explain to my mom why I was in different clothes, and to Meander why I broke her dress. I still don't think she's over it.

And you thought it was going to be just another "I wet my pants" story didn't you.

Shocking!

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Originally uploaded by gardinergirl.

Meander thought I should give her (and Sirena) an assignment. So in true "me" fashion, I am asking for one of your favorite memories of being a kid. I personally have several that I want to talk about, but since I am assigning this to my sisters, I'll share one about my sisters.

When we were little, my sisters and I would don socks and slide all around the carpeted areas of the house as fast as we could to build up a really nice static charge. Then we would try and touch each other.
I think the most fun part of it was that you were (or at least I was) almost afraid to touch the other person because you'd get as much of a shock as the other person. Also, you couldn't run away because you'd lose your charge. Consequently you'd slide away as fast as you could without lifting your feet.
The place where you'd get caught the most was the doorway from the living room to the hall, something about the bottleneck or something.
Another part of that was sometimes we'd get too excited to wait to shock someone else, so we'd touch the metal brackets that held up the shelves on the bookcases and shock ourselves.
The best part about it was how hard we'd laugh.