Making it Up As I Go

I’m eating a Tootsie Roll. I love Tootsie Rolls. I could eat a billion of them. But I never buy them. I never even think about buying them. They don’t even cross my mind until they somehow show up – usually in a Halloween bag, but today because B brought some home from a party at work. Then I eat them and want to keep on eating them until I die.

I should be editing and rewriting a piece for the writing club I’m a part of. It’s the first chapter of the novel I wrote a couple years back, and while I dream of it being published someday, I’d kind of rather shoot myself in the foot than work on it. The process of writing is just tortuous for me. It always has been. I enjoy sharing ideas, sharing stories, but sitting there picking out the right word, the right imagery; it’s like dry heaving before you finally have the release of actually throwing up. (How’s that for imagery for ya?) And I know that’s what it’s supposed to be like- it’s work, after all. But I’m realizing recently that I’ve lost my drive to work in a lot of areas. I don’t want to go through the effort, I just want the result. I don’t want to work out, I just want the body. I don’t want to focus on cutting straight lines, I just want the perfect quilt. I don’t want to write, I just want the finished book. I’ll admit it, I’m getting lazy. And that’s problematic. I need to do something about that.

Speaking of lazy, I have two super good books that I should write about, but I just don’t have the energy to expound about them properly. (And I’m starting a new blog soon with all of my recommendations, so they’ll be up there.) But, should you care to investigate them yourself, they’re  A Girl of the Limberlost (that cover is lame, so don’t judge the book by it, the book is AMAZING – honestly, life changing), and The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews. Yes, THAT Julie Andrews. And it’s just as perfect as you’d expect from Sister Maria herself. Z is just *slightly* too young for it, but kids probably 5 and up would LOVE it. It’s part Wizard of Oz, part Narnia, part every book I LOVED as a kid. It’s seriously SO wonderful.

I’m tired and should go to bed. I need my sleep – I get to go see Burn the Floor tomorrow with my seeester for her birthday. But it’s kind of like my birthday, I’m so excited. Anya and Pasha will be there, Janette, Ashleigh (I hate her face) and her husband, (I’ll tell them you said ‘hi’, Hilary), and…. Mary Freakin’ Murphy. I seriously could die. I may die. This may be my last post ever. You may never get another recommendation from me again. And if I do die, you can take that AS a recommendation. MARY FREAKIN MURPHY!

I’m really hoping that my girls sleep all the way through the night, and that they sleep in tomorrow. They’ve been sleeping in gorgeously for the last week or so, but for the last couple of days they’ve been waking up closer to 6:30. It’s still dark at 6:30. Before long, the rulers of the clocks will tell us that 6:30 is actually 5:30, and my girls won’t listen to them. I don’t want to be up at 5:30. Heck, I don’t want to be up at 6:30.

I’m listening to the Synth-Pop Mix on my iTunes Genius Mix thingie, and Tragic by Erasure just came on. It’s such an odd, evocative little song. I think it should be in a movie soundtrack. If I made a movie, I would use it. I would also use Plainsong by The Cure, right at the end when the girl is walking down the street and the boy comes around the other corner and they walk closer to each other as the wind chimes … chime, and then, as the little explosion of music happens (you know, with the cymbals and the tinkly sounds), their eyes lock. They keep walking toward each other, and the next explosion comes, and they kiss. And the credits roll. But it would stop before the actual singing starts, and segue into Beautiful by Moby when the screen is actually black with the majority of the credits.  What? You don’t think about stuff like this? What will you do when they put you in charge of a movie? Get on it, you don’t want to be unprepared!

A bit of trivia – I have 15 songs with the word ‘beautiful’ in the title in my song library.  47 items with the word ‘beautiful’ in the song title, album title, or name of the band. And The Beautiful Ones by Prince is one of my top 10 songs of all time. Goodness me, I LOVE that song. I saw him perform it in concert and I almost hyperventilated. (Tangentially,  my sister and I have determined that had we been Beatles fans back in the day, she would have been one of the girls screaming and crying hysterically, while I would have been of the passing out persuasion.) But yes, it was amazing. His concerts are the best I’ve ever been to, he’s simply a mesmerizing performer. Especially the time we were only 5 rows from the stage- yowsa, that was amazing.

And now I’m just stream of consciousness-ing. Speaking of which (hah!) I’m also supposed to be reading Ulysses for the I Will if You Will book club. I even got a reference annotation book. And instead, I’m reading Johannes Cabal the Detective.  Apparently I’m experiencing flashbacks to my college life, avoiding what I’m supposed to be reading and writing.  But again, it ties back into the being lazy thing. I’m finding it difficult to summon the effort. (Though I’m not completely convinced it will be worth it. I really liked Joyce’s Dubliners, but didn’t care at all for Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.) But I’m also supposed to be reading Tom Sawyer for the RS book club and I haven’t gotten to that either, so maybe it’s just the condition that spreads to many members of book clubs wherein the book you’ve really wanted to read suddenly loses all appeal during the month directly before your book club discussion.

Ok, enough of this. It’s time for bed. But before I go – how many songs do YOU have with beautiful in the title?