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Monday, March 31, 2014

Lack of Sleep But Still a Good Day!

I think it's been about 2 weeks since I've had a decent night's sleep. I've napped, but I haven't slept a good 7 or 8 hours straight. It's beginning to take a toll me. For example, I've been trying to write a blog all day today. I couldn't come up with a topic, and I was sooo tired, I couldn't even form words in my head to type up. I'm officially mentally exhausted and it sucks, because I want to do so many things, and I can't!

On a better note, today was a very lovely day. I was surprised, because yesterday was rather nasty; wet, rainy, and at one point slushy. So to have this wonderful weather, and sun (even though I'm not a fan of the big star) was good. Especially since I went downtown today, and the thought of me getting my hair wet, made me kind of nervous. But no worries, because it all worked out.

Speaking of downtown...the reason I was downtown, was because I had a lunch date. Like a DATE date. Weird, I know! I don't date often. I'll go on first dates with a few guys, get discourage, quit, and not date again for at least a year. That's my routine, and I've been pretty consistent about it. :P But, this date was actually nice, and there is going to be a second one. *gasp* Finally, someone who understands the true definition of dating. I'm all about taking it slow, actually getting to know someone, not committing to a relationship with a near stranger; and the guys I've dated (and pretty much everyone nowadays) they're quick to attach a title and talk about weddings and kids. It's scary, people! What's the rush? Enough with instant gratification, and enough with being in love with the idea of being in love. Can we all just take it one step at a time, live in the moment, and smell the roses? Thank you. (Apparently, this has turned into a Public Service Announcement.)

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Toe-Tapping Thursday: Missing (Todd Terry Remix)

It's been a very music heavy week for me. So many songs were stuck in my head that it was hard for me to pick one. Everything from HAIM to Tori Amos to Paul Simon. I finally settled on a song and the reason why I picked it over the other ones is because all the other songs that were randomly popping in my head were songs that I heard recently. Except for this song - I haven't heard this in at least a year and it just occupied my mind for a full 24 hours out of the blue. This week's Toe-Tapping Thursday is Everything But The Girl's Missing - the Todd Terry Remix. This is one of those songs that I grew up with. I remember listening to it on the radio and thinking it was such a cool song - nothing I'd ever heard before. Of course, back then I mostly listened to Spanish music, Hip Hop and R & B...but then songs like this would play on the radio and I would realize that I was listening to the wrong type of music! Just love the vibe. And yes, it's another sad song - I swear I like happy songs too.




Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Distractions

Writing is hard enough for me as it is, between the interruptions, and procrastination, but now I have distractions too. You're probably thinking that distractions are part of procrastinating, but I'm telling you it's whole different thing!

When I finally buckle down, get the creative juices flowing, get my muse to speak to me, start writing word after word, sentence after sentence, BAM, a distraction comes along and stills my momentum.

I'm talking about this:

Seriously!? She couldn't go be cute in another room like Selene? She just had to plant herself directly in front of me. See? Distraction!

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Toe-Tapping Thursday: Illusory Light

This week's Toe-Tapping Thursday is the song Illusory Light by Sarah Blasko.

I first heard this song about a month or so ago in an episode of The Vampire Diaries. From the moment I heard the song, I knew I had to have it. Right after the episode finished, I found the song and got it.

It is such a beautiful and haunting track; and also sad. I like sad songs, I guess. Between the piano hook that plays almost the entire song and Sarah Blasko's unique voice, this song mellows me out, and puts me in a contemplative state.

I have no clue what else she sings, as this is the only song of hers I've heard, but I'll most definitely have to check her out and see what else she's got.


Monday, March 17, 2014

1 VS 2 or More

I've been debating whether I should work on two (two is my limit) different stories at the same time, or just continue working on the one I'm currently writing.

Things are going slow - slower than I would like them to be. I know it's because I'm not 100% in love with this story. And I've got other ideas and other stories I want to write, but I started this one first, and I kind of want to follow through on it.

That being said, I've worked on two stories in the past, and I think I'm more successful that way. If I get stuck one I can jump to the other. But obviously I'm out of practice, so I don't know how well I'd manage this time around.

So I'm a little torn on what I should do: Should I stick with one, or try to work on two?

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Tim The Killer

Red, sticky blood ran down my hands as I stared at my landlady, Beth, sprawled on my kitchen floor. She was dead. I killed her.

“Shit. Only two weeks and I already broke my promise.” Sighing, I grabbed the butcher knife from my knife rack and began to chop away at Beth’s body. I started with her feet – I always chop from the bottom up, a personal preference I suppose. 

Feeling the bones crack beneath the blade made me want to grind my teeth. I hated the sound of bones breaking. My thing was blood. That’s why I killed. To watch the blood ooze out of wounds. To feel the warm liquid on my hands, my arms, my face... My biggest fantasy was to bathe in a tub full of human blood. But I wasn’t supposed to have those fantasies anymore. I made a promise to someone very dear to me. I promised I wouldn’t kill anymore. I thought if I made it into a New Year’s resolution it would help me keep that promise. Obviously I was wrong.

It took me an hour to chop Beth up into pieces. After that I grabbed two large garbage bags and threw the pieces in. I saved her head for last.

“Well Beth, I guess this is goodbye. You used to be a decent landlady when I first moved in, but over the years, you just got older and crankier and honestly, I just lost my patience. On the bright side, you can stop dating all those old geezers.” I tossed Beth’s head in with the rest of her body and knotted the bag close, then put that bag inside the second bag and knotted that one as well. Setting the bag aside, I went to fetch my mop and bucket. This was too messy for my Swiffer. 

As I returned to the bloody floor I found myself mesmerized by the dark color contrasting my shiny white tiles. I couldn’t help myself; I crawled to the floor, and when I could feel Beth’s blood in between my fingers once more, I plopped down onto the bloody tiles. 

I laid there in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the smell and feel of blood until I could not be still any longer. Writhing on the floor, my entire body was covered in dark red liquid within minutes. 

This was heaven, this was the pleasure that I sought after my entire life. This moment, this feeling of euphoria. How could I think that I could give this up? This is what I live for.

Screw the promise.

(Only two weeks into the New Year had passed and Tim had already broken his first resolution: Don’t kill anyone. Write this scene. 500 words or less.)

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Toe-Tapping Thursday: One More Try

I had a few songs this week that I thought I was going to blog about for Toe-Tapping Thursday; which included more HAIM (can't help it, their album is on repeat). But then the decision was taken from my hands. I was watching The Voice (love that show) and one of the contestants auditioned with the song One More Try by George Michael.

This is one of my all time favorite songs - and I know I have a TON of all time favorite songs. It's also one of those songs that I forget about. When I think of George Michael, I automatically think of Freedom, Faith, All That She Wants, and my favorite Careless Whispers. Yet, for some reason One More Try escapes me. I'll randomly hear it on the radio every couple of years and every time I hear the first few chords I have the same reaction: I gasp, and I stop doing whatever it is I'm doing. When George Michael starts to sing, I find myself closing my eyes and I just listen. I don't think I've ever sang this song. I can't. I'm unable to do anything but listen and feel how beautiful and haunting, and heartbreaking this song is. And every. single. time. that he hits and holds that high note in "touch you" he squeezes my heart and breaks it. This song holds me captive and makes pain sound, and feel beautiful.


Sunday, March 09, 2014

Are We Friends?

Living in a different state than 98% of your friends is hard. Especially when that includes your best friends. You don't get to see them nearly as often as you would like. You can't just call out of the blue because you're bored and invite them over or just go over to their place. And when you're going through hard times and you want to be with them you can't because you're 3-6 hours away.

That really sucks.

What sucks even more though, is coming to the realization that maybe some of your friends don't care as much as you thought they did. I've been re-evaluating a lot of my friendships lately and it's left me hurt - to say the least. And I'm having a hard time with one relationship in particular.

I will not use any names, because this post isn't meant to insult anyone or put anyone on the spot. This is just a way to get my scattered thoughts down, and hopefully it helps me with what I'm feeling.

Anyway, this one particular friendship is a very complicated one. We have a bit of a messy history; I always thought that despite (or because of) our history we have become better and closer friends. Now that we have distance between us, and we haven't seen each other in a long time, I'm beginning to doubt our closeness.

This friend is almost never in contact with me. I always make contact with them first. The only times they make contact first (if it can even be called that) is when they like one of my Facebook statuses. When we do talk, it's through text. Now, I don't really have a problem with that because I hate talking on the phone...but I would once in a while like to hear their voice. Also, we don't talk about anything when we do text. It's like pulling teeth to try to get them to tell me what's going on in their life.

We made plans to see each other so we could catch up and talk. I really needed to talk to them, I was going through so much in my life and this was the person I was usually able to confide in 100%. Things beyond our control happened and we couldn't meet up. But we could have rescheduled, we had time, they had free time, and they didn't. They knew how badly I needed to see them and they didn't even bother to reschedule or at the very least call me so we could talk on the phone even if we couldn't see each other in person.

That really hurt. Even when I'm far away, I think about them; I make sure to periodically check in on them. I mail birthday and Christmas presents...I make an effort, and they don't. It made me feel so alone. Like our friendship was a sham. And then I started doubting our whole relationship.

What if they were friends with me to get to someone else? Because they had romantic feelings for one of my other friends who was always with me. What if our whole friendship was just a way for them to get to this other friend? They eventually ended up together...and they broke up...so I guess they don't need to keep up pretenses with me anymore and pretend that we're such good friends.

So that's what's been on my mind. Was our whole friendship a lie? Was it just a means to an end? Because it's starting to feel that way. Lately it feels like I've been betrayed by a lot of people in my life, and I'm tired of it. Too tired to even confront this person. Why bother? They'll just either lie about it or tell me that I'm right which won't change anything.

I'm just going to take a step back and see what happens. I'm not going to try to reach out. If they're really my friend they'll reach out to me eventually. If they're not...then I guess we won't be speaking to each other anymore.

Thursday, March 06, 2014

Toe-Tapping Thursdays: HAIM

I'm a very big fan of music. 95% of my day is spent with some type of music playing in the background of whatever it is I'm doing. So I decided to start something new on my blog called Toe-Tapping Thursdays. Every week, I will blog about a song or artist that I've been obsessed with all week. It could be a song that just came out, or a song that is new to me, or just a song that I've fallen in love with all over again.

This week I will be talking about the band HAIM. A sister trio (Este, Danielle, and Alana), they hail from California and have been picking up momentum in the States for the last year or so. When I was talking to my best friend about them earlier this week (she didn't know who they were and I decided to change that right away) I told her I thought they were like the love child of Fleetwood Mac and Wilson-Phillips. I would like to add that this love child's Godmother is either Joan Jett and/or Pat Benatar. Hehe.

Seriously though, they're good. I guess they're considered alternative rock, though I couldn't care less what box they're being put into - they're all over the place musically speaking. They have hard hip-hop style beats on some tracks, R&B melodies on another track, and kind of folksy stuff on other tracks. They know how to play around with music and sounds and mash genres well. The lyrics are cool too. Insightful but not overly complicated. You listen to their songs and you get into them, and then you end up on Youtube and watch interviews and live performances and you fall in love with them even more.

Their interviews always leave me with a stupid grin on my face. You can tell they're really close and love each other so much. Their personalities are so different and it's fun just to watch them interact with one another.

Their live performances look amazing! They have all these instruments and (usually Alana) they switch from one thing to another in between songs - ("When did she pull out the maracas?") And Este's conversations with the audience in between songs (and her bass face) have become legendary. They are so amazing, so genuine, and so fucking fierce. They have the whole package, and I don't doubt that they're going to be around for a long time.

About a week in a half ago, they premiered their new music video for "If I Could Change Your Mind" which happens to be my favorite track from their album and now it's my favorite video of theirs. I'm obsessed, I've watched it like 10 times a day every day since it came out. Now you can watch it too!




Side note: Doesn't Alana Haim look like Troian Bellisario from Pretty Little Liars?

Alana Haim

Troian Bellisario










Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Monday, March 03, 2014

Back To The Land Of The Living!

I'm back! Internet has been restored.

I've actually been back a few days, but was reveling in the world wide web. In other words, playing Wizards101 and catching up on my shows via online streaming.

So an update on the struggle that I had getting internet:

As I said (I think), my cat threw up on my dsl modem/router box and killed it. (Yay for super vomit!) This was on Thursday night. I didn't want to wait until Monday to call Verizon where they would waste my time going through troubleshooting crap that wasn't going to work just to make sure the box was truly dead, and then because I've had that box for a few years now, they would make me (over)pay for their current box which was most likely an old model anyway.

So I did a little bit of research - what kind of box I had, what kind of box I needed, what boxes supported Verizon, costs of boxes and what website had the best price. This took twice as long as it ordinarily would since I had to use my smartphone. In the end, I ended up buying one at Amazon which had really great reviews and the price was decent. More than I wanted to pay, but still decent. I signed up for a free trial of Amazon Prime to get 2 day service for free (hehe) and I was supposed to have received it on Sunday.

That's not exactly what happened though. First, I would like to say that I had no clue that the USPS did Sunday delivery for Amazon. Secondly, I was home all day, my doorbell did not ring once. Yet somehow, I missed the delivery and didn't realize until Monday when I saw the pink slip in the mailbox. I assumed they would come back on Monday seeing as it was the first attempt, but I still didn't get my package. I figured I had to call or fill out one of those re-delivery things, so I went on my smartphone and filled it out for re-delivery Tuesday.

Tuesday came, and I didn't get my order. Also checked the tracking information and it had updated; it said they left a slip on Sunday (which they did), and then 2 hours later left another slip (they did not) and then around 9 p.m. Sunday they delivered the package (BULLSHIT!). That's when I started calling. I called the 800 number on the back of the pink slip. I do not suggest that. It is a bitch trying to get the automated service to connect you to a live representative. "We'd be happy to connect you with a representative. But most issues can be resolved with our automated service. Let's go back a few questions and you can tell us what the issue is." After I finally got a real person and explained the issue, she told me to call my local post office. Makes sense, but which one? Thankfully she gave me a number.

Unfortunately, the number kept ringing and no one picked up. I found another number online (from my phone) and called it, and that number went straight to a voicemail that wasn't capable of taking messages for that particular number. Awesome.

Now it's Wednesday. 8 a.m. I call the number the 800 rep gave me. Let it ring for about 2 or 3 minutes, was taking the phone off my ear to hang up when someone picked up!!! I explained the situation and she took my information and told me she would call me back once she figured out where my package was. Bitch never called me back. In the afternoon I called again, and someone else answered (right away this time). I explained the situation AGAIN and that I had called this morning; the lady asked for my zip code and then cold transferred me to I don't know where.

All of a sudden I man answers the phone. I'm confused because I didn't even know I was being transferred. After the confusion wore off a tad I explained everything again. He did some clickity clicks on his computer and after a brief conversation with me told me it was taken care of and I should get it tomorrow. I thanked him and hung up, but I wasn't hopeful for the next day.

Come Thursday, I'm up early again, but am planning on calling my aunt to ask for a ride to the post office later in the afternoon if my order doesn't arrive. At 1:30 p.m. just as I was about to give up and call my aunt the doorbell rang. My package had arrived! FINA-FUCKING-LLY!!! Now came the hard part - figuring out how to set it up. That's what I had been dreading the entire time.

...was up and running in 5 minutes...and it only took that long because I had trouble opening the modem box to take it out. LOL.

So that is my journey. 1 week without internet. I never want to do it again!