RAK'd and other musings..

Time flies when you're surfing the web ...

I swear it is way more fun to do flying leap into infinity when you simply find a link.. then another.. and then another and before you know what you've done you are reading about butt acorns used to smuggle information from the Confederacy to its soldiers in the Civil War (why yes, I HEART you Smithsonian magazine)

So the bullet points -

I rang in my birthday at 218 pounds... translation?  If I stop working out and continue eating muffins and drinking beer for a year I will gain 15 pounds.  Sounds about right.  (I really like beer.... and muffins)

I ran for school board.  I find out in a few days if I got the gig.  I better have got the gig.  They need me.

I wrapped up Thanksgiving with an end zone run on Black Friday.  I dig on BF.   It's competitive shopping and (as with most things) I'm a bit competitive.  If it's easy - I probably will get bored.  Black Friday ups the ante a bit.  You gotta want to save $25 bitches...

Which brings me to Christmas.  I may suck at a lot of things all year but when it comes to Christmas, I got game.  Seriously.  Decorating, cooking, gifting... I love it all.  I love the music, and the sentiment and the colors and the lights.  Secular (maybe) but I think we can all agree that it is a GOOD thing to be nice to one another.   So... I'm trying something new this year.

Every day for the month of December I am doing one Random Act of Kindness.  So far, so good.  It can be a small thing but I am trying to make sure that the person I help is not someone I know.  I thought about making a list of the things I was doing but that seemingly violates the whole "random" thing from a different angle.    So...

I'm still big (my fat pants are tight)
I've offered to help in my community
I'm RAK'ing (random act of kindness) people daily

Christmas is about more than what can I get... it's about what you can give.

Do something nice out there - pay it forward...

I still heart radio...

Sometimes you forget who you are...

So I may be a little late to the party but I am totally loving I Heart Radio.  O.k. first of all,  lets agree it is the stupidest name ever.  Once you get over the complete weirdness of saying "I found it on I Heart Radio" you can get to the business end of some really rockin' radio stations.

For as long as I can remember, I was one of those chicks who grew up recording my favorite songs off the radio... waiting for the exact right moment when it started... diving across my bedroom floor and hitting record on my "boom box" and dancing around my room like the Solid Gold Dancers.  Yes, - I had legwarmers and.. yes, they matched my damn sweater. 

Fast forward to karaoke (minus the machine) with the radio on in the background and my girlfriends and I singing into an assortment of hairbrushes, perfume bottles and deodorant.  That really did happen.

One more leap in time and you are the girlfriend of the drummer.  You roll with ripped up stockings and the rest of the band.  You sit on the side of the stage... you drink and laugh and think it all may come to something - but it doesn't.

But my true love... the thing that makes me smile every. damned. time.  is college radio.  It's a little bit like the difference between the NFL and college football.  College radio still gives a shit.  They play all sorts of new music and the best of the old.  The DJ's make mistakes... they talk like I talk.  There's usually not much in the way of commercials.  I LOVE college radio. (and I've missed it for far too long)

Back in the day (20 years ago)  I had a professor who used to play the organ in a rock band in the 60's.  He was a train wreck of a professor but he used to let us smoke in our radio studio so we loved him.  We were all sitting around drinking coffee and bitching about having to grow up and get real jobs in radio and TV when he delivers one of  "truths" - "radio is a hot medium, TV is cold - I would rather be hot".   Bring on the tropical drinks Dr. Whaley.  I'm with you.  Radio wakes up your senses - music will move you.  

I do, indeed heart radio. I forgot that for a few years... but, I'm back.

Thinking Thursday this week

So.. the weekly update, eh?

It's "game on" with the writing this month. 

To completely understand, go HERE... and read about how I'm about to write myself into fame, fortune and a lifetime of leisurely lunches.  (rockin' the alliteration today - I may bust out a limerick soon).  I don't know about literary abandon but I can tell you I got started today and I'm a mere 500 words into a story that I want to tell that is quickly turning into something completely different.

For the uninitiated... I'm back in the saddle with Nanowrimo again this year.  The short version here is that you are supposed to write a novel (50,000 words) in a month.  Translation = you need to write 1667 words per day.  Ouch.  

They assure me that it does not need to make sense.  They assure me it does not need to be perfect.  And the point of the exercise is to get used to the idea of writing.  

Apparently, after a month of writing.  I will spend the month of December editing and then... I will have a book.  

It. Sounds. Simple.  

It will not be.

I'm excited....

Zombie Investment plans...

If I'm not busy my mind wanders like a video game character searching for the next level.

Seriously, in the course of today - I've thought (and actually believed) the following:

1.  I love my striped black and orange Halloween underwear.  Why did my mom never buy me those underwear with the names of the week on them?  Maybe it's a good thing she didn't, otherwise I may have spent too much time thinking about my vagina.

2. I am going to write a novel in the month of November.  How tough can it be?  

3. I think I saw some aliens at the local burger joint.  It was a Men in Black moment fo sho...  As they walked through the restaurant I was convinced their skin was about to peel off.  Spooky.

4. Speaking of spooky - Hatchetman, the movie.  I was going to offer to write their screenplay but then I found out it was already written. - bummer.

5.  The city where I live is looking for people to sit on their tourism board.  Maybe I should apply.

6.  I wonder if I should get my MBA?   Maybe go back to school to be a teacher instead?

7. If my husband bought a mountain in WV would I be bored or could I finally be the hippie healer witch I've always wanted to be.

8.  I need to fix my IPhone.

9. The NDAA and Obama's kill list. Ho.Ly. Shit.   If I wasn't scared enough before the Patriot Act, this little piece of legislation is enough to make me lose my lunch.  Wow - we're all screwed.  

10. DRIP investments and compound interest.  How much money can I make doing nothing but investing over the course of 20 years....

and finally

11. Zombie Walk.  Plans for this weekend include getting my makeup done and wandering around our local steel town .... and, its a fund raiser - with Michael Jackson dancers - how cool is that?

Are you the shoes you wear?

When you are little, adults like to make small talk by asking "what do you want to be when you grow up?"

It may be different for everyone but I think it changes a bit as you move through your childhood, and then your adolescence.  I distinctly remember saying (in this order as I got older) - a teacher, an actress, a radio station programmer.

I did two of those things... kindof.  The local theatre company counts I suppose, but I never got paid.  I was on the radio and worked in tv for years but I never got really paid.  I'm trying to decide if I should just go full circle back to my 8 year old self.  I'm thinking about being a teacher. 

I can officially say I believe I am having a bit of a mid life crisis.  I always thought I would get to this point in my life and be the "big fish in a little sea".  I decided long ago that I did not need to be in charge of the world but I had hoped that I would be in charge of something.  Anything really that I cared about.  Turns out I am not.  I am just your average girl, doing an average job who (by my standards) is making very little impact on the community as a whole.  I suppose I thought I would be some kind of public servant or in someway work to make my little corner of the world better.  I'm not so sure that is how things turned out... and for that I am sad.

Here's what I do know. 
I want to be happy to do what I do. 
I'm not sure how. - note to self, define "what I do"
The not knowing how pisses me off.
Good Lord... I'm whining again.  UGGHH!

Non fat people calling themselves fat

The older I get the more accustomed I've become to hearing skinny people call themselves fat.
And, just because I understand why they would (that is an entirely separate post) - does not mean I can stand it.

It absolutely, positively drives me fucking crazy.

There appears to be some discrepancy about what defines a "fat" woman these days - I will take a few moments to give you a short bullet list. 

• If you can shop in a the misses or juniors section of any given store at any given time - YOU ARE NOT FAT
• If it has never occurred to you to be nervous that you are taking up too much room on the bench seat of the booth at the restaurant you are sharing - YOU ARE NOT FAT
• If you've never squeezed your ass into an airplane seat and then had to adjust the hand rests because they are wiggling up over the course of your flight due to your giggly hips - YOU ARE NOT FAT
• If you've never been eyeballed at: the bakery, the fast food store, the liquor store or the ice cream shop by a thin person who appears to be questioning your choices - YOU ARE NOT FAT
• If you've never been worried about breaking a weak looking chair or other piece of furniture - YOU ARE NOT FAT
• If you've never avoided sitting on someone else's lap because you are afraid you're going to hurt them - YOU ARE NOT FAT.

This list could go on, and on, and on and on..... 

Here's the short version.  I think I may explode the next time some size 6 pixie stick is looking to me for support because she "just can't believe" she's going to eat another Twix bar.  Kiss my size 18 ass, bitch. 

And yes - I feel bad for you body dysmorphic sisters who are bulimic and anorexic and all the rest... but fuck you into next week if you think your poor body image even compares with the level of ridicule and disgust that a truly large size woman has to deal with on a weekly daily basis. 

It is infuriating to hear a normal (read size 10-14) woman bitch about being fat.  It makes my blood actually boil to hear a size 4 woman dare to do it.  

Content critique

I'm a blog rookie.  I don't really write to an audience - but secretly wish I had one.
I won't be going out into the world anytime soon on a book tour. Until I write one.
And, I put my thoughts here so they don't spill out into my real world (which can be a bit tricky to navigate most days)

The very first time I had the ..."umph" (yes, that's the technical term and a bit more lady like than balls) to comment on another blog I reached out to a woman who made me laugh - runrollrepeat . 
Turns out Cyndi was recently slammed by a group of catwomen at a site called Get off my Internets. 

Of course, I had never heard of them before so I wanted to try to understand who these people were, what they do and more specifically what they did.   Whoa...  "catty" doesn't even begin to 'splain it Lucy.

Life is really just an extended high school.  Regardless of where you are in your life there is a social hierarchy that exists in it's own right.  I swear to God (or the goddess) - John Hughes hit the nail on the head back in the 80's with the Breakfast Club.   In any given situation, you can break it down to the popular/princess, the jock, the criminal, the geek and the basket case.  And - because I like to put a bow on everything like Johnny boy - we all have a bit of each.

Turns out some of the princesses in the microcosm of blogosphere regularly decide who is cool and who is not.  I'm glad they've got that covered, I wouldn't want the pressure. There will always be bitchy/mean people (in fact, I can be one - I speak from experience). 

Should my blog ever get read by anyone other than me, maybe someday - I too, will get flamed.  I suppose in the nanosecond where I am judged by a mysterious psuedo-anonymous screen bitch I will feel hurt and upset.  Then, I will realize that this blog and the microcosm that surrounds it is just part of my life and that they can't hurt me unless I give them power to. 

I am a criminal, a princess, a jock, a geek and a basket case.  So as a preemptive strike against those who would rail - fuck you ahead of time.