Writing about future writing, in which I am overly-wordy and write long, complicated sentences. As per my idiom.

It's Tuesday. If I don’t have a random or chosen topic or meme I want to explore, I’ll do a book review.  I haven’t done proper book reviews in a loooong time. Not since high school.

I graduated high school in June 1989. No public internet back then (it wasn’t long after though, August 6, 1991). Not everyone had cable, we lived far enough out in the country the cable companies didn’t want to come out there. Satellite dishes (August 27, 1989) were for well-to-do folks and those suckers were serious eyesores and screamed, "I can afford thousands of dollars to watch HBO, please come steal the many expensive things in my house!"

Hey. More stuff happened in 1989 than just Taylor Swift being born. I promise that link does not go to any page about Taylor Swift.

1989 - The year the Berlin Wall came down. I watched it on television.
It still makes me cry. The happy crying you do when you are moved beyond words. Well, I do it, anyway.
"BrandenburgerTorDezember1989" by SSGT F. Lee Corkran - DoD photo, USA.
Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Ah, a trip down memory lane. Meh. I did not enjoy high-school or being a teen-ager. Not much at all did I enjoy it. There were some good bits--in my personal life, I mean, but they tend to be over-shadowed by the painful bits and thinking of one leads immediately to the other, so I try not to do that. But I'm sure you want to know lots of stuff about me, given that I'm interesting and I know it, so there's a bit of stuff about me. Ask me some questions if you want to know more. I won't promise to answer them, but you can try asking. I might make up a more if I don't care to give you the true answer, if it's more painful or more private than I'd like to relate, I'll make something interesting up. Because that's how I roll. But I'll tell you I made up, cross-my-heart promise.

So where's the book review? Yeah, I spent so much time making the template in Word (to use for later reviews) and writing this intro, I know don't have time to actually type up the review. If I don't have any massage clients on Friday maybe I will type it up then and save it for next Tuesday. Or not be pedantic about Tuesday being book review day and just post it. La, la, la, whatever.(Thank you, Hot Chelle Rae. I'm not your target audience but that song is so. much. fun.)

Magical, magical books. What? Your books don't make sparkles and smoke?
All mine do. Get better books.
Can't find the creator of this image to credit it. 

I borrowed the template from Lesley Ann McDaniel on Goodread.com. Properly credited, of course. I might tweak it for my needs, but I'll try to remember to use some sort of altered format to show my changes.

Now, I have to get ready for weekly lunch and driving practice with my son, Dexter. (Psst...that's not his real name.) And...find pictures first. And...ruthlessly edit until I'm satisfied with this entry. Shut up.

My Blue London blue jeans don't make me blue. 'Cause I'm not a smurf. I've never seen a smurf at the mall. That made sense in my head.

Today I slid into a pair of blue jeans I haven't worn in eleven years. 

Pictured above; NOT ME.

Intellectual Property of  Iguanamouth.
This person's art is so cool. So, so cool.
Iguanamouth, if  you see this
and want me to take it down I will.

I don't have a hoard of skinny clothes from eleven years ago. I swear.

I just kept this one pair of jeans because I really liked them. They're Victoria's Secret Blue London boyfriend style jeans. In 2004 you could still easily find 100% cotton jeans. In fact, if you wanted spandex in your jeans you had to look for it.

I love these jeans. They have a button fly. They are stone-washed but they are also good, thick cotton denim, not the light-weight stuff you find nowadays. This is a well-made piece of clothing. And they look pretty good on me, I think. I had another pair in dark denim. I don't know why I didn't keep those too, but I wish I had. I never figured 100% cotton would be so hard to find again. And not just because Vicki apparently doesn't sell jeans anymore. Bitch.

A more important part of the story is that I am also hoping to put on some muscle, I want to be stronger for my martial arts classes. Muscle is denser than fat. A pound of muscle does not weigh more than a pound of fat. A pound is a pound is a pound. The density of muscle versus fat means the number on the scale may move down, or may move down very slowly, or may even increase and I will still be healthier than I was before, because that lean muscle has more benefits than just taking up less space than fat.

Five pounds of fat in a side-by-side comparison to five pounds of muscle.

Quoting the article One Pound of Fat Versus One Pound of Muscle: Clearing Up the Misconceptions by Jennifer Regan:

Having more muscle mass in your body will:

• Create a leaner physique
• Reduce your risk of injury
• Increase strength, stability, power and endurance
• Improve balance and mobility
• Improve confidence
• Increase energy and vitality
• Enhance athletic performance
• Create metabolic reserve in times of traumas such as (car accidents and burns)
• Increase your metabolic efficiency
• Improve insulin sensitivity and improve blood glucose control

Ms. Regan is a NASM Certified Personal Trainer, her article is well-referenced and written mostly in plain-speak. I'm going to print it out for myself to study it in more depth.
Along with all the benefits mentioned above, lean muscle mass means I can easily slip right into those old jeans, button up that button-fly, sit and move with grace and ease, and I don't have a muffin top. So even on a day when I feel run down I know I am healthier than I was last year, or even last month.

That is the hurdle I have gotten over today. No, that's not a fitting analogy. A person leaps over a hurdle to clear it. There was no leaping involved in this (unless you count skip kicks and spinning round house and heel kicks). There was slow trudging and occasionally the falling down and the getting back up. I have reached the down side of a hill...or maybe reached the edge of the plateau.

Not even the spinning backward roundhouse kick will get you over a hurdle.
Also, we haven't learned this yet.
Property of Welsh Karate Jutsu Kai

Whatever, I'm digressing. I do that.

Those jeans that slide on so easily now, they are a symbol. A symbol of how far I've come and how far I can still go. When I reach the end of this path those jeans won't fit again; they'll be too big, But I'll keep them anyway because they will still mean something to me. 

When I reach the end of the path I'm on now my journey will not end. I will head off over the fields and into the woods where there is no path, finding new facets of myself along the way.

And I'll have to make friends with Levi Strauss, because they seem to have exactly what I need. If I'm lucky I can dig some up at a thrift store, otherwise...I'll have to...

GO. SHOPPING. Maybe even at the mall. The horror! No, I'm serious, that will be a hurdle for me. There will nothin' to do but leap.

Photo property of Levi Strauss. Thanks for keepin' it real, Levi. You're a peach.

Less-than-remarkable...

Write about a less-than-remarkable aspect of your life. - The Pocket Muse: Ideas & Inspirations for Writing, Monica Wood

Heh, heh...less-than-remarkable, hm?

Yeah, I'm sick of writing that with the hyphens now. Well, a large portion of my life is unremarkable. I'd say most people's lives are mostly unremarkable.

Unremarkable from  the outside view.

Life can be interesting if you make it so. My brain is permanently set on "make it interesting" and I tend to say absurd things occasionally. I'm sort of a fun person. I can't help it; it's only because regular life is boring and my mind needs more and will make more if it can't find more just lying around.

Hm, I'm not really following the prompt, am I? I'm bad at following the rules when I think they're irrelevant. Of course, if I think the rule is relevant and someone else doesn't and they don't follow it (like talking about politics in the break room...I FUCKING HATE THAT) I get really annoyed. Or even kinda mad. And pedantic.

Self-editing is good. Helps you from getting off track. I just self-edited three different sentences here that were off track and would lead to ranting. There's a time and place for ranting, this ain't it.  I have to go to work in a bit.

I found this on a Google search for "unremarkable". I couldn't find the owner.
I think it's pretty freakin' awesome myself. Mysterious. Is that a lake or an ocean, do you think?

So, I guess I can't write about being unremarkable if I don't feel unremarkable because I do not allow "unremarkable" to be the status quo.

I used Latin! I AM SUPER PROUD OF MYSELF!!!!

(See what I mean?)

Noise, sound, or something else...

Write about a noise—or a silence—that won’t go away. – The Pocket Muse: Ideas and Inspirations for Writing, Monica Wood

How about the sound of the laptop fan? Or the sound of the fan in the bedroom, my husband can’t sleep without the fan on in the bedroom in the summer. The bedroom fan sound usually fades into the background because we leave it on all the time, even when we’re not here. Most of the time I don’t notice that one. But there are still times, especially when I’m having trouble falling asleep, when that fan is so loud. I hate the sound of those fans. The laptop fan is particularly annoying because I can feel the vibration under my hands too, but you can’t use the laptop without the fan. Unless you want a dead laptop.

I don’t know why that low mechanical hum bothers me so much, but it does. Maybe it’s scientifical, maybe it bothers my eardrums or equilibrium or something because it’s a certain frequency. The fan frequency. The most evil frequency known to man. Earplugs help some, but sometimes it feels like I can still hear it. It's like I can feel it. Maybe it's just because I know it's there, on the other side of the earplugs. Waiting for me.

Agnes Moorehead can't get away from the noise of "The Invaders".
The Twilight Zone, property of  CBS Television Distribution

The buzzing of flies is very annoying too. Like that one over there! How come the stupid fly just HAS to be in the same room with me, on the window three feet away? What’s up with that, fly? There’s a whole rest of the house to do your mysterious fly business, such as walking up the same section of window frame a hundred times.

But back to the fans and the frequencies. That is a good research topic. That would be an excellent thing to include in a book, inducing fear or just plain driving someone up the wall or whatever with megahertz or  whatever it is they use to describe the sound. Probably it would be a good idea to learn how sound works. I like this idea!

Hey, science has my back. Thank you, science!

I don't live in Blood Gulch.

I've been trying and trying and trying to get the list of study guide and research topics that I wrote in Word to paste over to this format and it always ends up NOT RIGHT AT ALL. Plus I really don't have time to look for so many pictures and a plain list is bor-ing.

I do have other things I have to do today.

Write about someone who is pretending to be someone or something he is not. - The Pocket Muse: Ideas & Inspirations for Writing, Monica Wood

Pretending to be someone or something he OR SHE is not.

Yeah, Imma get pissy with it.

Huh.  A complex topic. Not cooperative with my desire to write something shorter. Really, doesn't almost everyone do this to some degree, pretend at something.

And what does it mean, pretending? Deliberately trying to fool people for personal gain, as in faking credentials? Or faking more interest in a person than you really feel because you want them to have sex with you? A scam artist? What is pretending versus adapting and not telling anyone, forcing yourself to adapt to a situation or situations when being your real self (and thus dealing with people's reactions to this real self) would be more detrimental to your physical and/or mental well being than just chameleoning? (I made a new word. Shut up.) Faking opinions? Faking religion? Faking happiness? Faking interest in completely inane conversation?

Church doesn't pretend.
Pvt. Leonard Church, Red Vs. Blue
Image property of Bungie.
Dialogue property of  Rooster Teeth.

I know I do some of these things. As an extreme introvert, an extremely sarcastic person, and a person with a mood disorder there are many situations that are uncomfortable for me. Or seem just plain ridiculous. Or inane. Or pointless. Or mentally draining.

But how many times have I heard that it seems I don't like people? That I'm stuck up.

Okay, I don't want to think about this anymore. That's my five minutes.

Write about going back to school after summer vacation

School is back in for my step-daughter. She's going to be fourteen in October.

I'm an introvert. She's an extrovert. I don't like television much at all. She seems to be able to watch the same 20 Teen Titans cartoons for the rest of eternity.

I want my Quiet Mondays back.

Sometimes it was on a Tuesday.

Quiet Mondays is my day for me. My recharge day. I putter around. I do things slowly and quietly and because I feel like it and for no other reason. Except the dishes. I do the dishes even if I don't want (and I never want to), because I like having them sit there even less. If it's nice out I do the laundry and hang it on the clothes line, because hanging laundry is Zen for me somehow. I play video games. Video games are very cathartic for me. I'm not a super serious, gotta-play-them-all-gamer. I like what I like and I play that and that's it. I have an XBox 360. I like Fable II and III, the Mass Effect series, and I've got Portal, the Halo series, the Assassins Creed series, and some Dragon game waiting. Anyway, sometimes I'll game for a large portion of the day, but sometimes I'll read or sew or sleep. Or cook and watch silly videos. Whatever I want. I'ts MY day. My recharge day. From 7:45 am to 3:20 pm, seven hours all to myself, just for me.

This summer my step-daughter only went to her grandparent's house for two weeks. So all the rest of the summer, no recharge day for me.

"Well, you had two weeks to yourself!"

Funny how that doesn't work the same way as having that one day each week.

School started again last week. And even though last school year was a really (really, really) bad year for all three of us (me, husband, and step-daughter)...

I am so happy. So, so happy. So happy. To have my Quiet Mondays back.

So that's my five minutes (and more!) of writing practice for today. Yay, I'm proud of myself! And because I couldn't find any decent driving pictures, here is Sam and Dean. Because Sam and Dean. I don't remember why the lads got matching tattoos, but I'm sure it was very important. They look pretty serious there.

Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles as Sam and Dean Winchester
image property of Warner Bros. Television