August

August was tournament month! I competed in my first grappling tourney. Lost both matches, got squashed, and got choked out. Also got some great experience and some tacky trophies, so I’d say it was a fair trade.

Also. Also! My parents came to visit! They dropped off my sister, W, at a college a few hours away, then stayed in KC for a few days. We went to the World War I museum, the jazz museum, and the toy museum, for starters. Dad and I rode up the memorial tower and looked out at the KC skyline, then wandered inside the WWI museum for several hours. We could easily have spent all day there.

The toy museum was amazing—tons and tons of intricately detailed toys ranging from the Victorian era to my parents’ childhood to a few more modern things. We got to hear a lecture by one of the artists on how he carved tiny buildings, people, figureheads, and sailing ships. We left in awe of his patience and skill.

The jazz museum was small but fun. We examined a small exhibit outside, then went in to watch a short film and look at/listen to the exhibit. I could’ve sat at each listening station for an hour. The afternoon brought back pleasant memories of that period during my teenage years when I devoured books on jazz history.

We came out saying, “Well, that wasn’t bad for a free museum!” And then we noticed the ticket counter, waaay off to the side. Dad went over and paid after the fact. “Oops,” he said.

We also went to Loose Park, church, the Awakening service at IHOP-KC, and a bunch of restaurants, ending with chocolate bags at McCormick & Schmick’s.

I always love spending time with my parents and this was just an awesome mini-vacation. Later that month I went to visit W for another mini-vacation. Experienced dorm life complete with nasty ghetto bathrooms, terrible cafeteria food, and weird roommates. But at least I got to see my sister.

When not grappling or playing tourist, I helped the Gumby Ninja take care of the puppies. She moved their box downstairs and so I had some cute roommates for a while, although they were kinda smelly. But when you’re that young you roll around in your own poop and don’t know any better, I guess?

Well hey

Hi there. It’s me. I wrote a new post for you. I hope you will like it. It has pictures and words and things. It is so awesome I had to break it up into four separate posts so you wouldn’t get awesomed out.

Catching Up

When last I wrote—really wrote—it was the middle of June. Temperatures were reasonable, and I’d just moved into a new place (or rather, back into an old one) and started my new job. Now temperatures are taking a turn for the irrational, I am thinking of moving, and I’m plugging away at the job. Let us find out what happened between then and now….

(Here is the part where I admit I couldn’t actually remember most of the summer and had to consult my Twitter archives. [Twit-archives? Twarchives? Something cutesy that begins with "Tw" and indicates my past usage of an ephemeral social networking website?])

July

July was pretty okay. I worked, went to jiujitsu (helped with a women’s self-defense seminar), got to meet Meghan, and desperately wished I could go to Comic-Con.

I did not get to go to Comic-Con, but got to go home instead! Went dorm shopping with W, watched our favorite TV shows with W & K, went to dorky city festival with my dad, went grocery shopping with my mom (grocery shopping is like our thing, idk, it’s great). Got to celebrate my birthday with my family.

Celebrated with my KC peeps too. Well, celebrated with my girls, anyway; I neglected to inform my TV night peeps, and they ribbed me about it for a few weeks. Aaaaanyway.

Now I am going to tell a story about something that happened during July. It should probably be about my birthday, because birthdays are awesome!

I woke up to a gorgeous and hot day (which incidentally describes me, but I’m pretty modest so I won’t go on and on about it). On this, the day of my birthday, what do you think I felt?

I won’t tell you the correct answer, but if you know me at all or have read this blog for a while, you can probably guess.

Went ahead with birthday plans anyway. We got dressed up and went to see a movie at the Plaza theater. Afterward we went to Blanc just around the corner and had malts, shakes, and sweet potato fries. I remember sitting back in my chair, just enjoying the summer night, the food, and being with some of my favorite people. And then I thought, This is going to be the last fun I’ll have for about a week.

Which ended up being true. Although the Leverage marathon I had while I was sick was nice.

Later, when I was not sick any more, my roommate’s dog had puppies—five adorable little balls of fuzz who required a lot of looking after…

Silence

Well hey there, Internet. I’ve been rather silent here lately. Nothing much interesting going on in my life. In my friends’ lives, however…

Just dropping by today to post this link to an interview with editor and writer Gordon Lish. Yes, that Gordon Lish. Here’s an excerpt on revising:

GL: With a word one can hold back the world. You know? A common comma, for pity’s sake. To shift, where in the mouth the sound is uttered can make all the difference, one likes to think. Probably irrationally … The fiddling, the ferocity of its possession of one, is just what writing is. The telling and the told aren’t separable, of course …

And I love this exchange about writing the beginning of a story, because I have such trouble with that at times:

GL: The opening is to get the thing opened, to overcome the inertia of silence, indifference. Whatever means convince you you have achieved this effect ordain what follows.

BCE: The silence that precedes the reader beginning to read?

GL: The silence that precedes the writer beginning to write.

Hermiting and employment

Hey all, the Michigan trip was great. We even got to go to the beach:

Playing in the sand

Sand between our toes

We got back this Sunday. I took the Monday before my job started to do laundry and run errands—and more importantly, to enjoy being alone. I’ve had hardly a moment to myself these last three weeks and have been sharing a bedroom with one or more of my friends as we’ve been taking care of Crystal. For an introvert, that’s tough. How introverts who have kids or share a room can survive is a wonder to me.

I started my job on Tuesday. Not much copyediting to be done, I’m afraid, and it’s not full-time. But at least I’ll have some money coming in and I can listen to music while I work. My officemate is nice and doesn’t talk much, spending most of her time plugged into her own iPod. So that’s perfect—I don’t like it when my coworkers try to talk to me all the time. I just want to be left alone to do my work.

Transitioning to getting up early in the mornings wasn’t too bad—I got on Michigan time during vacation and didn’t stay up too late—but it still feels weird to go to bed before midnight. I get done with work around 2:00 or 2:30 and have the rest of the day free, which is nice; I have time to work on my freelance project, run errands, hang with friends, and go to jiujitsu.

And hermit, of course.

Michigan and whiplash

Epic 15-hour car trip was epic! Crystal did pretty well, considering the whole recently-removed-cantaloupe thing. We had to stop several times to let the dog out, because what long car trip is complete without a dog as a mascot? This one was a Pomeranian who’d been shaved by his previous owners to look like a lion. They’d named him Awesome Possum. (They didn’t really know what to do with him, which is why Holden took him off their hands.) He did very well on the trip and enjoyed looking out the windows.

We dropped Bethy off somewhere in Illinois and made it to Michigan several hours later. Holden’s house is in a small town about half an hour from Cadillac. It’s gorgeous and quiet out here. (Well, mostly quiet; the neighbor down the hill blasts his radio all day.) Here’s the view from our bedroom window (I didn’t take my camera, so the poor quality is due to my phone cam):

We’ve been taking it easy for the last few days as Crystal recovers. Mostly we’ve been sleeping, watching TV, letting Holden’s mom feed us, and petting the dogs. Jake, formerly known as Awesome Possum, is fitting in well with the other two dogs (a Golden/Lab mix who carries two tennis balls around in his mouth at all times and a springer spaniel/Sharpei mix who excels at cuddling).

The house doesn’t have internet, which is why I haven’t been online and am Twittering only by text message. It’s been nice to unplug. Right now we’re at a small coffee shop to check email and such. We’ll be back in Kansas City by the 13th. Oh, and—the company that wasn’t able to hire me until August? Called me today. I start on the 14th. Whiplash much? I remain cautiously optimistic about the whole thing. Mostly I am just planning to enjoy vacation and see how things pan out once we get back.

If it’s not one thing…

…it’s another. (And I don’t mean IHOP-KC’s Onething conference.) Let me start at the beginning.

The interview I mentioned in my last blog post went well. The company made me a job offer and said I could start at the beginning of June; all I had to do was call and finalize some details. So I had half of May free. It was just as well, since I was moving at the end of May. I packed a bit but was waiting for the last week or so to finish.

Monday the 24th was a packing day … or it was going to be, until I got a call. Crystal, one of my best friends, was in the ER in a lot of pain. I rushed over and spent all afternoon and evening there. They did a few scans and sent her home. She was still in major pain; the meds she’d been given weren’t doing much.

The next day we were all back at the ER. She screamed herself hoarse in the lobby for two hours straight. “Make someone come,” she would plead when she could get a breath. But all we could do was stand around and wait for them to see her. It was heartwrenching to hear her wailing like that and know we couldn’t do anything. After the ER people finally took her, they sent her home again, but recommended she see another doctor at the hospital ASAP and set up an appointment for surgery.

On Wednesday we went to the surgeon, who took one look at her and decided to operate right away. She had this massive, cantaloupe-sized growth full of fluid and blood vessels. The growth had twisted one of her fallopian tubes, which was the cause of the pain. (Not an ectopic pregnancy—just a growth.) The thing had to be taken out by C-section. When the surgeon lifted the mass out, she said, “It’s a boy!” Considering certain of the growth’s characteristics, its location, and the surgeon’s proclamation, I’m forced to resort to a tabloid-style headline and say—

My friend had an alien baby!!

Anyway, Crystal’s recovering, and is rather miffed that she didn’t get an actual baby after all the pain, but we are placating her with movies and ice cream. She got to go home on Thursday. Holden and I have temporarily moved into her house to help Bethy, her roommate, take care of her. Thank goodness she has a spare room; we’ve got air mattresses and all our stuff in here. Good thing we all have each other—this has been rough.

The whole week I was trying to coordinate moving out of my apartment to Gumby Ninja’s house with all of the medical stuff, plus I was fighting off a stomach bug and barely eating. I’d come home from the hospital or Crystal’s house to pack, clean, and run carloads of boxes over to Gumby’s house. Friday evening was spent half-inside the oven and fridge as we cleaned. On Saturday I moved all of my large furniture, some of it by myself when the guys had to go fix a car. On Sunday I looked (and felt) like the walking dead. Crystal sent me home to go sleep in my own bed (which I had carried downstairs myself). Then Monday was deep-cleaning the apartment and finding surprise boxes of junk in the closets. We scrubbed the apartment so hard it looked better than when we moved in, and then turned in our keys. Almost three years of living in our little introvert’s oasis—we had good (quiet) times.

You’d think all the stress was over, right? Crystal was recovering, I’d moved in at my friend’s house, and I just had to call my new boss to negotiate my salary and start date. Except when I called him, he said he didn’t need me at this time. I’d have to wait until August before he could hire me. So I’m going back to job-hunting, because I don’t want to wait until August to work. Trying hard not to be discouraged and trust in the L-rd’s provision—for me and for Crystal, since she got laid off from one of her jobs and is on bed rest for a while.

We’re all going out of town tomorrow. Holden is going home to Michigan for a while and taking Crystal with her, and is also dropping Bethy off at a camp she works at every summer. Wasn’t going to go since I thought I’d be working, but now … well, it’ll do us all good to get out of Kansas City for a while.

So that’s been my life the last few weeks. And here I always said I never had drama in my life.

Pink; Arthurian fiction

Hey all, nothing much to report. I had an interview yesterday that went well; hoping to hear back in the next few days. Right now I’m surfing the Internet looking at ultra-light gis for summer and women’s gis in general. Is it too much to ask for them not to be dyed pink or feature pink stitching? I don’t want to look like someone spilled Pepto-Bismol on the mats.

If you’re looking for something to read, I’m in the process of posting a story I wrote years ago on my poetry/prose blog. It’s Arthurian fiction, though King Arthur has a cameo, not the protagonist’s role. Check it out if you’re into that sort of thing.