Exhaustion is a lot like pot, but it's cheaper

My life is rapidly becoming a study in how tumblr, fandom, and a writing obsession can utterly destroy a person.

And I have to say, it's not like I'm not totally enjoying it. This is awesome. This is what I love about not being in school and just having a job - I write, I ride my horse, I go out with friends, and I have disposable income. It's the best thing ever.

It makes me wonder what I'm cut out for, as a person. There is a part of me that thinks (fears) I will never be truly happy unless I am a writer. Full-time, no other jobs. But then there is another part of me, constantly at war with that part, that feels like I need something else to do in society because otherwise I feel like a lazy artist. And I hate them. Yet I am one. That's practically zen.

Terry Pratchett quotes aside, I do really feel like I need to embrace this writing thing. It's been going on since I was like, four. I need to think of myself more as a writer, less as a hobbyist. Take pride in my craft. This is what I do, this is what I love to do, this is what I want to do as well as I can fucking do it. The nursing, the other jobs, those are all means to an end. Right now, I can't write and feed myself. Right now, I have to have another job. Right now, I need to define myself as something I'm not, because I can't afford to define myself by who I am.

I need to sell that book. I need to work harder. I need to produce more. I need to hone my craft. I need to be able to define myself as a writer. Not a nurse with a writing problem, not a wannabe. Because I will never feel as comfortable being a nurse as I do when I'm writing.

We work to make ends meet so we can do what we love: that's something my mom always told me when I was younger. And it's true. But eventually, I hope, I can make ends meet doing what I love. Very few people can.

But God I really want to be one of the lucky ones.

I'm the worst blogmom

I have been neglectful and cruel to my poor little blog, and that is something that is very sad.

It's okay though, blog - my novel probably has similar feelings at the moment.

See here's the thing. I started reading Homestuck, which I documented, no big deal, but then I wrote some Homestuck fanfiction, which I swear I am trying so hard to not write fanfiction right now but it just happened I don't even know. BUT it's not all bad, and now I'm going to talk about why I think All Aspiring Writers Should Try Fanfiction.

Yeah, it's lame, alright, I get that. You write for nothing, don't make up your own characters, nothing. But here's the thing: there are no stakes. Technically there's nothing to gain (there is, we'll talk about it later) but that means that there's nothing to lose! And that means you can try shit you wouldn't normally try, or play with other things that maybe you're not fully satisfied with. The trap, of course, is getting too "fanficcy", and imitating your source too much - that's where fanfiction really does get pointless and lame. Okay, great, so you can write exactly like Stephen King, and turn out scary fanfiction by the pound. But how do you write? Do you even know how to write like you?

For a very long time, I wanted to write like Terry Pratchett. I tried to write like Terry Pratchett. And it wasn't for nothing, because I did learn a lot, but eventually I realized that okay, I could write really similarly to Terry Pratchett, but that's not how I write. And that's when I realized that I knew more about how Pratchett writes than how I write. And that was the day where I stopped writing fanfiction.

I took a two year hiatus - freshman and sophomore year of college. I think I posted maybe four fanfictions during that time period. And then junior year I took a creative writing course and found out that I could write, and I had my own style, and it was actually not terrible. I wish I could say I started writing all my own shit at that point, but that's a lie. I wrote fanfiction again, but this time I didn't try to be Terry Pratchett. I tried to be me, with my stories and my takes on the characters, and my voice. Some people liked it, some people thought it was bad fanfiction. And yeah, maybe it was. But my writing was better, way better, and that was progress.

This spring I wrote a novel, and that was the hardest thing I've ever done, writing-wise. Not only was I trying to use my own voice extensively and consistently, I was creating a story, characters, a canon, everything. I will readily admit I was stretched as a writer. It was hard. And yeah, I'm really proud of my story and of myself for getting to the end, but when I re-read it there are parts where I can tell I was reaching. I'd never done that before, never played in that sandbox or however you want to put it. I mean, yeah it's all writing, but there's so many subtleties, so much shit you have to manage and so many irons to keep in the fire (yeah Vriska), that it can get away from you really really easily. And it did and that's okay, it's my first (okay well if we're going to get super technical third, but first serious) novel.

So I am going to go back to it but in the meantime I picked up this Homestuck thing. And I found something important out about my writing: I'm still struggling with my "voice". Pratchett fanfiction has a very English feel, even when I write it, just as part of the nature of it. Homestuck though, is fun and crazy and manic and gritty and American-written. And suddenly I'm realizing that when I just write, rather than try to be from a country I've only visited twice, things just sort of fall out onto the page. I don't know why it took me so long to realize this because I've been blogging for a while, but I guess it's just one of those things you have to come to at your own pace.

I realize that I said I was going to get to things you can gain from fanfiction later, and while I just expounded on what I think it's done for me, there is one more thing it's done, and one more thing it can do: get you feedback. Get your work out there, in the hands of others. People read it, tell you what they think, and that is invaluable. Seriously. And the other upswing of that is, if people read your stuff, and people like your stuff, you gain another invaluable resource: fans. People who like your shit enough, and maybe even like you enough (as a writer, never try to be likeable and a people-pleaser: be a selfish hooker because otherwise you'll never feel right about what you're writing) will follow your career and will maybe maybe spread word of your stuff to their friends.

You can't put a dollar sign on that. You can't put a value on that.

I will never, ever tell anyone not to write fanfiction. It's not a waste of time. It's not counterproductive. As a writer, it's one of the best things you can do.

Shake your bon bon

I'm a desperado, underneath your window, in the Sahara sun I wanna be the one who's gonna take you make you . . .

It's embarrassing how much of that song I just know.

Anyway, I went on an adventure over the weekend, and by adventure I mean "to Grandma's house" and by that I mean, "I had no internet." So there you are. I love my grandmother dearly, yes, but she is tragically behind the times. Although she does get like 5000 channels, so that's something, I guess.

Anyway, I wrote a little, but mostly I'm re-reading Bea's story again. It's been a while since I looked at it, and time lends you a really good perspective. I'm noticing things, seeing things I want to change, and OH GOD MY WRITING STYLE. It needs work.

Of course, I'd love it to be beautiful and perfect and gorgeous, I mean, that goes without saying. But the flip side to that is I've never done this before. And so I'm sort of taking the zen approach to it: it will be perfectly imperfect. I must tell myself it's perfect - hit a point where that is my mindset - and at the same time accept that there will always be something else, something more that I know I could have done, or added, or changed. I'm not at that point yet, so it's not like this is how I'm going to justify the overall shittiness I've created, but I think I'll know when. At some point it's going to be as good as I am capable of producing at this point in my life/writing career, or maybe even a little better than that, and that's going to have to be okay for me. I'm not going to be Steinbeck my first time out. I don't even think Steinbeck was Steinbeck the first time around.

Anyway, my emo whining about writing aside, here's another journal entry! This one is about yoga and music for dying people. And also Good Omens. And classic rock.

"The two lectures this week were both really interesting, if for different reasons. The first lecture, on the mind/body connection and the benefits of meditation, really hit a chord (haha! A pun, get it? Music thanatology, chords, oh how hilarious. I crack myself up) with me. I have always loved meditation, especially in conjunction with yoga or other activites.

            In a way, horseback riding has always been a form of meditation for me, albeit possibly and overly-technical one. It links the peace of my mind – and really, when I have my leg over a horse it’s the only time my mind really does relax and focus on one thing – to the awareness of both my body and how I’m using it, and my horse’s body and how she’s responding to me. I can feel every muscle, it seems like, every tendon and how I’m using it, and although my heart rate goes up with the exercise, the stress just seems to melt away.

            That said, it’s peanuts to how I feel after a session of hot yoga. When I’m on a horse, there’s always something analyzing – “cut a corner there, need more right leg, she’s cycling on her left shoulder, Jesus I wish she’d lay off the bit for a minute” -  but when I’m doing yoga, it’s just me and my body. I know its flaws, I know how it wants to move and how I can manipulate it otherwise. The breathing is incredible, and at the end of each session my breaths are deep and relaxed. The meditation at the end is truly incredible – there’s no adjective to describe it. The closest you might get is “sleep but not” or “active dreaming”. The body rests and the mind follows suit, and there’s not a thought in the world that can stir the waters. It’s beautiful, and I’m absolutely floored that it’s not more pervasive in healthcare. Nothing counters stress and illness like a meditation session; it can’t cure your pneumonia but damned if it can’t help you release the tension and the stress in your chest, and focus on your breaths, impaired or not.

            Of course, meditation is a sin according to some book in the Bible, so that probably explains a lot of why it’s taken so long to get a foothold in this country.

            Music thanatology, on the other hand, that could go around like a flu in a daycare if it were more widespread. I’m hard-pressed to think of anyone that doesn’t enjoy music, and gains relaxation from occasionally just kicking back with the stereo and their own thoughts.

            Even now, the soothing and dulcet tones of AC/DC act as a balm to my weary soul.

            Now, harps are the obvious choice, I think, for thanatolgy – angels play harps, supposedly, although I think if you really wanted to imagine angels playing in any kind of Celestial Supergroup it would more accurately be a jazz band. If they do play harps – and here I’m assuming the existence of angels, because why not – it’s not much of a choir. You have your voices, and you have your harps. Where’s the percussion? Where’s the brass? Where’s the piano? Are you telling me Hell got all the decent instruments and Heaven ended up with harps? Where is the guitar?

            I sincerely hope that if I’m dying someday and someone comes in and starts wailing on a harp, they at least have the decency to learn the harp versions of some Rolling Stones songs in advance. I mean, good Lord, I love music. I mean, really. I’ve had religious experiences listening to music.

            And not a single time has that been in response to a damn harp. They’re pretentious.

            There’s a book out there where the Apocalypse is approaching – the book is set in the ‘80s, so it’s a scant 6000 years since the whole world began, anyway – and an angel and a demon are mourning the death of the planet, and their own returns to their respective sides. The angel asserts that it can’t be that bad for him, because of course Heaven will win. It isn’t until the demon points out that Heaven’s only composers are Elgar and Liszt that the horror of a heavenly victory dawns on the angel.

            And they’re the side with the harps. The demon, however, is mollified in his horror at his certain eternal suffering in the case of an Infernal victory by the fact that at least they’ll have every other musician.

            Not to say that harps aren’t great. They aren’t, but that’s not the point.

            The point – which I seem to have wandered a pretty far piece from – is that music can be comforting to the dying but, and I think this is the really important bit, music that was never comforting to them before is not going to become so just because they’re dying. They’ve done studies, which I’m not going to look up. But they’re out there. The most important thing is that the beat has to be soothing, and it has to be multitonal.

            And I’ve got news for all the harpies out there (Oh, God, I’m hilarious): the harp doesn’t have a monopoly on that in this day and age.

            So bring on the Stones. Blast the Kiss. Let me not go gentle into that good night – I want to go with guitars screaming, a drum set being veritably destroyed, and Freddy Mercury crying out in beautiful exultation.

            Hallelujah, Galileo, Figaro. Magnifico."

Homoeroticism is starkly underrated

I don't even know where that title came from, but honestly I am at the point where making up titles is a little bit repetitive. I mean, how many "LOL SCHOOL" titles can I really do? So I figure the more sensational, the better, am I right? So behold! A title.

This mindset may explain why I have yet to title my book. I don't think "Science and Zombies and Shit" would go over well, personally.

So I am still trawling through Homestuck, and I'm getting closer to the end. It's kind of glorious. Besides that, I've been totally unproductive this week, really. So since I have nothing interesting to blog, I present:

A JOURNAL ENTRY FROM MY ONE CLASS WHERE I HAVE TO TALK ABOUT MY FEELINGS.

I don't do well with talking about my feelings, so obviously this is going to be hilarious. Anyway, for my one class we have to examine our feelings a lot and crap like that, and then talk about them. For the journal assignments, we have to write down our feelings about particular lectures. So since I have nothing else to post at the moment, I will re-post these natural disasters for the entertainment of one and all.

 The first entry was on cultural competence (I have none) and spirituality (I think it's mind-boggling interesting). BEHOLD, RAMBLING.

"This week’s lecture – on culture, cultural competence, spirituality – was extremely interesting for me. I’ve always been interested in people, why they do the things they do, where culture actually comes from, etc., and how all those things combined make them tick along as a paradoxically unique person. After all, there are certainly members of the same culture who share the same spiritual beliefs, same general upbringing, and yet they are never really that similar. And at the same time, there are ‘brain twins’ – people from two different backgrounds, who have histories so dichotomously opposed, but they get along famously, as if they’d been raised side-by-side and developed the same tastes, interests and beliefs. Culture has to be at the root of this somewhere, maybe, and spirituality too, but as wonderful as those two things are, how far can they really go toward explaining the mad, chaotic, beautifully wonderful horror of humanity?

           Spirituality, I think has a lot more to do with it than culture, but of course it’s foolish to try to compartmentalize the two. Without spirituality culture can’t exist – there’s no shared fantasy among the group, nothing to believe in – and without culture spirituality shambles into disintegration, ripped to shreds by separation of interests. For the sake of this entry, though, I chose to solely consider spirituality, without the basic cultural aspect, because really, that’s where the interesting stuff is.

            When we’re kids, most of us are taught to believe in Lies, with a capital ‘L’. You start with little lies – Santa, the Easter Bunny, ghosts and ghouls and monsters and fairies and elves and magic – but those are warm-ups for the big Lies the grown-ups teach you later. Morality. Justice. The Greatest Good. We practice on the poor Easter Bunny until we’ve got it right – we know it can’t be real but we have no other way to explain the eggs around the house in the spring – and then we’re fully ready to buy that the good guys will win in the end, that humans will always pick the option that’s best for everyone. And we run with those Lies our whole lives, and act shocked and hurt when someone goes against them and acts in their best interest, or get away with a wrong. We believe in those Lies, and we commit ourselves to them wholly and blindly.

            That’s spirituality, as far as I’m concerned. You can’t prove something, there’s probably bucketloads of evidence to the contrary, and yet you still have faith that you’re right. It’s a trait unique to humans – dogs don’t believe in the goodness of humans, and if you hit one too many times it’ll shy away from people for the rest of its life, until experience teaches it otherwise. But humans are different, they really believe in society, in goodness, in justice and truth. And every day the world and other people prove them wrong in a thousand little ways, and humans just shrug it off and move on and believe.

            I’m not going to even bring a concept of God into this because the same applies there. Evidence piles up, the universe is gradually stripped naked of its secrets, and people look around and say “Golly, someone must really love us for this to happen.” Statistics scream that it’s possible, and in the grand scheme not even that far-fetched, and people sing praises to God.

            It’s all a little crazy.

            And it’s just so damn endearing.

            I realize that from the above I probably seem fairly nihilistic, possibly disgusted with the state of humanity. I’m not. I’m disgusted by society, sometimes, and I’m disgusted by people and just how terrible they can be, but for every crooked banker, for every murderer, for every psychotic gunman, there’s a person who soars so high above that, who is so much more for being human, for having the will and the faith and the belief to make that choice for the Greater Good.

            And the minute you lose sight of that, the minute you forget that unsung saint, is the minute you lose your spirituality. It’s the minute the Lies are laid bare and the wriggling underbelly of humanity takes center stage.

            As a nurse, you can’t afford that. You have to hang on to the Lies, even if it’s hard, even if you can’t imagine there’s a scrap of Truth left in the whole world, because when you let go you don’t listen anymore. Patients can be awful – it’s naïve to think they’re all pious and kind people who love their dog – but in the next room, or the next bed even, there can be someone so interesting, someone so refreshing, someone so delightfully peaceful because they choose to that it’ll take your breath away. The temptation is to disregard the monster, the one thing from our childhood that was never a lie, even if the tail and the horns and the green slime dripping from its back were, and focus on the other. But that’s wrong too.

            They both have a story.

            They both believe something. And whatever they believe, it gives them peace.

            We’re not miracle workers, we can’t change them more than they want to change. But when they’re sick, or dying, and they’re scared, we can listen. We can let them believe any and all Lies, no holds barred. We can let them, for a little while, think like kids – believe in all the lies and the Lies, and take solace in whatever sandcastle their mind has built against the encroaching tide of mortality. We can listen to their stories, and they can tell us their own lies, and we can give them the peace that even if no one else listened to them, someone did. It’s a delicate position, putting aside your own personal construct to let someone else’s in, but it’s something others need sometimes, and something we have to acknowledge. It lets them relax, it lets them be peaceful, it lets them be humans.

            And whatever else happens, humans will always be wonderful."

I'm pleased I worked the Greater Good in there. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to don my black robes and hood and murder some loiterers outside. The Greater Good. 

SCHOOOOLS OUT FOR SUMMER!

Okay, so not quite yet, I still have some Holistic Nursing stuff to finish up but SCHOOL IS OUT.

So obviously this is my cue to spam you all with shitty Homestuck art. WHO IS EXCITED? You guys.

K4rk4t h4h4h4h4. PH33R MY SH1TTY T4BL3T SK1LLS.

Impressed? I thought you might not be. Anyway, moving on, it's time for a review of

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART DEUX (aka: Wizards should learn to fistfight)

So last night I finally went to see the new Potter movie. I've been dying to since it came out, but with school and horses and all the other crap I was dealing with, it's been impossible for me to get to the theater. But last night the stars aligned and I finally was able to take it all in.

First impressions: Whether or not you like Potter, it's just a really good movie. Some of the deaths at the end lose their impact if you're a Potter virgin, but otherwise the movie's great - so much better than the book, actually. Well. Maybe . . . No, yeah, it's better than the book. It's amazing.

More in detail thoughts: This isn't going to be organized or anything, because I'm having trouble keep linear track of everything, but here we go. First of all, there was some BRUTAL stuff in this one. It seems like as the movies go on, they become more determined to set themselves aside as films more tailored to adults, rather than children; I think that's because Potter's original fanbase was . . . well, my age group. And each movie has sort of followed that - we're all 20-somethings now, and this was definitely a movie with that in mind, I think.

I remember just wincing at Snape's death. It was pretty harsh. Almost moreso because they didn't show it on the screen; you just heard the snake striking again and again and seeing the body slam up against the glass. That was . . . intense. The scene right after it though, where Harry finally saw Snape, that was kind of lame. Alan Rickman's terrible wig really distracted me though, so . . . I don't know, I feel like they sort of fell flat there. The scene, not the wig.

The scene with the resurrection stone was understandably emotionally wrenching. In the spirit of full disclosure, I had started crying when the stone guardians of Hogwarts were activated, and by the time we got to that scene I was primed to be a sobbing mess. Which I was. Seriously, tears and snot, so much of both. All Lily had to do was say "I'm proud of you, Harry," and BOOM waterworks. Harry's death was less emotional, which was good, because I'm not sure how much I could have taken.

The fight with Voldemort, after Harry came back was also fairly epic. Neville was suitably hardcore in the Nagini-killing, and VOLDEMORT WAS REALLY, REALLY GAY. I'm sorry, I feel like this needs to be pointed out. It started when he finally killed Harry; he pimpslapped Bella off himself (which was hilarious - bitch don't TOUCH ME EW), and then returns to Hogwarts and does a little dance. WTF, movie. This is Voldemort, not some terrible bad guy. He's actually a half-decent villain, let him have his moment. Anyway, then Draco goes back to the dark side (really he and his parents just peace out, which was cool; family first with the Malfoys) and Voldemort surprise hugs him. That was singly the most hilariously awkward moment in the entire movie. The manly shoulder pat was just . . . oh my God I laughed. Everyone did.

When Molly Weasley killed Bella, the theater erupted in applause and cheering. When Neville killed Nagini, it was like some no-name had just made par in a Master's Tournament. I felt like we should have been howling, cheering for Neville. But no, polite applause. It sort of bothered me. But maybe we were all distracted by the EPIC SLAP FIGHT between Voldemort and Harry, which was simultaneously thrilling and goofy. And the slow-mo wand scamper that immediately followed. But Voldemort's death was well-done, I thought (none of that JK Rowling 'shove the corpse in a broom closet' shit), and really satisfied.

Then I started crying again, not because I was happy, but because it was over. Over for the characters, yes, but more importantly, over for me. I started reading Harry Potter when I was 11. It has been a constant in my life for 12 years. And as the next generation boarded the train, and that original theme song kicked in, I lost it, because that's it for Harry Potter. There's no more movies, no more books. I was saying goodbye, and while I had expected it, I wasn't ready for it. I'd grown up with those kids, watched them go from little adventurers to heroes, watched them rise high even as their friends fell. And here it was: finality. Closure.

I didn't want it to happen. I didn't want the end to come. But it did, and I sobbed like a retard. I watched the credits roll and I cried and I said goodbye to Harry, and Hermione, and Ron and Draco. I said goodbye to Hogwarts, and to McGonagall, and Slugworth and all the professors. I said goodbye to the Weasleys, to Voldemort, to Lupin and to Snape. And even though I was crying, and even though I'll miss all of them, I was happy, because it ended right. Not well, not for all of them, but it ended right and that was important.

Thanks, Harry, for everything you've done for me. You introduced me to fandom, and what that meant. You brought me to fanfiction. In a way, you started me on the path of becoming a writer. And I'm not sure how else to properly thank you for that but in words, since you're fictional. But thank you all the same.

I'll miss you.

Oh lawds.

I may or may not have used this post title before, and I'm okay with that.

Anyway, I have been a HUGE slacker with the whole blogging thing recently, but not for a bad reason! See, because the accelerated nursing program is retarded, we go to class during the summer. So right now, I'm in class. Well, not at this moment, since it's Saturday morning (although I wouldn't put it past them!), but you get the idea.

It's wrapping up, though. I've finished up with clinical, and boy that is a blessing. Strangely, though, it wasn't bad. I actually kind of enjoyed it. They say med-surg is the hardest, and the one everyone enjoys the least, but I don't know, it didn't seem so bad. I wouldn't mind working med-surg for a couple of years, until I can get into critical care or something before I go back to school, is all I'm saying. But that's a long way off - hopefully years. I don't think I could go right back to school right now.

OH H4Y BURNOUT, N1CE TO S33 YOU.

And the l33t-sp34k in the above lends me on to my next point: I AM NOW OBSESSED (full-out, no holds barred, no arguments) WITH HOMESTUCK. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, here is the link. It . . . takes a while to get into. The discussion of captchalogs and sylladexes is kind of trying at first, it really is, but once you push through that the whole story sort of grabs you and pulls you along.

I got it on my third try. The first try I really wanted to like it, I really did, but I got so bogged down in the technicalities early on that I couldn't do it. The second try, I got a little further, but it was so ridiculous (Betty Crocker the batterwitch aside) that I couldn't keep up. The seed, however, was planted - I wanted to know more. I honestly did mean to go back to it.

Months passed. And then, as I was browsing DeviantArt (don't judge me), I ran across this picture, which was just a delightful blend of Discworld and Homestuck. And the guy in black intrigued me. You don't know me if you don't know I have a soft spot for misanthropic, sometimes psychotic skinny guys in black (Lord Vetinari, Sirius Black, Voldemort, Spades Slick, Crowley in Good Omens, Crowley in Supernatural, Famine in Good Omens, Pocket, oh the list goes on . . .), and my interest was piqued. So I looked around at more pictures of Spades and found that not ONLY was he a skinny psycho in black, he's a skinny psychotic ALIEN with one eye and A ROBOT ARM in black! With an unrequited/masochistic love interest and he plays piano too!

I had to know more.

So I started reading Homestuck again, with the singular goal of getting to the intermission so I could welcome the pointy, stabby joy of Spades into my life. And I made it there. And then I had to learn more about the trolls, because I'd been listening to the soundtracks and I sort of knew about them. Plus at that point I was pretty much really interested in Rose and John and Dave and Jade, and how they were going to get out of the game and . . .

And then I was hooked.

So long story short, I read Homestuck, I'm hooked and they've earned another fan out of the faceless internet masses. It's very fun for me to see an internet comic finally pull off a coherent story - prior to this my internet comic reading consisted of Cyanide&Happiness, Looking for Group, the occasional foray into Least I Could Do (which, honestly, if it weren't for the art I wouldn't be half-interested - I hate Sohmer as a writer with a weird passion), and Penny Arcade. Of those, LFG is the only one with a coherent beginning-to-end storyline, and Sohmer is writing it.

So it's pretty terrible. But again, the art and, oh, another skinny undead psycho in black. Richard. <3

I think I have a problem.

Anyhow, I really do love how Homestuck uses the medium, and the animation style has really grown on me. I'm reading through (I'm almost to July 2010), and really enjoying it. Soon, I think, I'll catch up and then sadness will reign, 'cause I'll just have to wait around for another update. :( But until then . . . :D!

And this has been your weird internet-comic-centered post for the day. Adios, amigos.

Ashley's Bathroom Reading!

So, for the new feature on the blog, I present to you: ASHLEY'S BATHROOM READING!!!! 

What's this? you might ask. Well, it's basically like a book review, but subtly different. I read a lot, and I don't have a lot of time, so one of the best places for me to read is in the bathroom. Theoretically. Usually I just end up starting reading while I'm brushing my teeth or drying my hair or . . . whatever . . . and wander out of the bathroom, book in hand. And then I waste hours on the couch reading my "bathroom book". BUT THE PRINCIPLE REMAINS UNCHANGED. Typically I like books that are light, entertaining, and can be read in short snatches without losing the thread of the story.

The other unique thing about books I choose for this is that I give myself permission to stop reading them if I don't like them. It's my equivalent of a Friday Night Kill Spot on TV - if a book gets downgraded to Bathroom Reading from regular reading, I'm thinking about kicking it. On the other hand, some bathroom books I've absolutely LOVED (Good Omens was a recent bathroom book, true facts, and I'm totally obsessed with that book). So just because a book hits this category doesn't mean I disliked it, or was lukewarm toward it.

Anyway, the first book in this installment is: Fool by Christopher Moore!

Chris would be honored by this, I'm pretty sure. Anyway, I do love Christopher Moore, but I really could not get in to Fool the first time I read it, when it was first published. So I let it hang out for a few years and just now tried to pick it up again. Frequently books like this become bathroom books - if I still don't like them, I just stop again and end up donating them to a local library.

Happily, this was not the case with my second attempt at Fool. The book is not for everyone - it's vulgar, it's dark, it's smutty and it's sacrilegious to the work of Shakespeare, but my goodness is it hilarious. The book basically takes place during Shakespeare's 'King Lear', but it's re-told from the point of view of the faithful, trusty court jester, Pocket.

Pocket is the kind of hero I can really get behind, and by that I mean he is pretty much a villainous, traitorous anti-hero. You get to watch as Pocket goes from relative complacency (with a dash of mild worry about Lear's sanity) to heartbroken vindictiveness, to absolute outraged fury, to, once again, happy complacency. I do absolutely love characters like this - TVTropes refers to them as Magnificent Bastards, and the name is so very rightly earned in Pocket's case. Because he's magnificent, oh yes, and a total bastard.

I'm sure Shakespeare didn't really consider that Lear's fool might be a conniving, passively homicidal man who carries daggers around with him, but nevertheless Moore pulls it off well enough to be funny, if not totally convincing. It did occur to me while I was reading that Fool sort of felt like, and could be perceived as, an attempt to recapture the same glory he got with Lamb: take a well-known, "sacred" work and put your own off-color flare on it and let it run. Lamb pulled it off gorgeously; no, I wasn't convinced that Jesus really had a best friend named Biff that ran around with him on fabulous adventures, but I laughed and I appreciated the New Testament more after reading that book, rather than losing my faith or being offended or what have you. Fool, I think, does try to do this again, but it's less successful. I certainly didn't gain a new appreciation for the message or the story of 'King Lear', and if I were to go to a performance I don't think I'd have a greater appreciation of that either. Sure, I loved the book and thought it was funny, but the book doesn't add anything to 'Lear', and it doesn't increase your awareness of some of the more appreciable aspects of the play. Where Lamb was all at once funny, touching, tragic and thoughtful, Fool only really manages to capture the funny and the tragic - it makes up for the touching and the thoughtful with vulgarity and sexiness, which is not necessarily less enjoyable, but certainly doesn't give the reader the same experience.

I did have a few issues with the speech - Moore tried to blend colloquial American English and British English with Olde English and I actually think the book might have suffered for it. The British phrases were subtitled, which lent more of an awkward and stilted feeling to the use, and overall the dialogue ended up feeling like an uncomfortable jumble when he tried too hard to incorporate the "local flavor" elements. To put it another way, I had a very hard time "hearing" the characters speak when these turns of phrase were thrown around - they seemed garbled and off-mark. It's not a big issue, and it is absolutely not enough to turn me off of the book, but it did grate a little.

That said, I loved the pacing of the book. I have the worst time with pacing, as an author, and Moore really pulled it off well. Seriously, I'm considering studying the man on this: we all have something to learn from every book, and by God if I learn how to pace my books better and handle the passage of time more gracefully that will not be the worst thing that could happen. He handled the action so that it didn't seem rushed or too fast, but it didn't drag either. The plot sidelines were balanced nicely with actual plot elements to provide relief from the otherwise heavy story, without overwhelming the story and distracting me. And, this being a book I read in short snatches rather than longer sessions, I was able to keep up with the story without losing track of it - here and there I had to read a few pages over again to clear up something I was confused about, or felt I'd missed, but overall I could pick it up and put it down as I pleased without it being too complicated.

Final Thoughts?: Fool was generally a really good book. I does try a little too hard, I think, to recapture the recipe of Lamb, and the dialogue gets uncomfortable at times, but overall these issues are small and do not take away from the actual fun entertainment the book provides. And since it's a humorous fiction work, well, fun entertainment is the name of the game, isn't it? So well done, Christopher Moore: I tip my hat to you once again, and all your profane and hilarious glory. Keep 'em coming, 'cause I'm out now.

Curiosities of Life

One of the most remarkable things you learn about yourself, when you finally move out of your parents' house and start the rough journey of living on your own, is how objectively disgusting you are as a human being. Sure, your parents always told you "clean up after yourself, you filthy creature!*" but you never really believed them. You always thought, somewhere inside, that you weren't really that disgusting. You couldn't be! If you were like me, you reasoned it away: you don't really drink much, you don't smoke, you shower regularly, how could you possibly be a dirty person?

When you move out, of course, you discover that no matter how much you shower, how clean you live, you are a human and therefore are a base, foul - putrid, really - and venal creature. Not only that, but you are lazy. How do you know you're lazy? Because you let your apartment get to the point where you can truly appreciate how vomit-inducing you are. Normal people wipe up here and there, and don't have to dust off the Fantastik just to use it. But no, you - you - are not a normal person. You just leave everything until one day you look at your living space and nearly retch at the squalor that you suddenly recognize.

Well, that's what I do anyway. Maybe you all, gentle readers, are normal people, that clean your living spaces. I mean, I tidy. Sort of. And I try to keep things neat. But I don't actually clean all that often. Now, though, now I swear I will clean more. I can't be faced with the basic messy nature of my humanity on a regular basis like this.

In other, non-cleaning related news, I am planning on introducing a new feature to the blog that I think you all are going to really enjoy. It will probably emerge within the next few days. The only clue I'll give you is that it is somewhat in the same vein as the book reviews; less serious, though, certainly. I hope you all get a lot of enjoyment out of it - I've had a lot of fun thinking about how to pull it off. I'll probably start working on it in a day or so, so look for the first installment over the weekend!

* This may have only been my parents.

Patients are charming sometimes

I had a rare species today . . . a kind, polite patient. He was oriented, independently mobile, able to feed and toilet himself, and just generally awesome. So kudos to you, Mr. UK, you win the award for my favorite patient ever so far. You beat Mrs. Vicodin because, well, you didn't cry even once, and you remembered where you were from hour to hour. Which it wasn't her fault that she didn't, but it makes it so much easier when patients don't flip out because they forget where they are and why they're there.

Of course, the floor was not without craziness. One patient was screaming her head off all day (not mine, praise Jesus) and finally some little spindly old COPD'er got sick of it. He was sitting out by the nurses' station in a chair and he ripped off his nebulizer and yelled "SHUT UP BEFORE I COME IN THERE AND SMACK YOU IN THE HEAD!".

It worked, which was even funnier.

There was also the drug addict patient who informed one of the other students, in all seriousness, that she was going to be getting plastic surgery to have her "excess skin" removed.

Ms Morphine: *grabs her giant fat roll* See all this excess skin? Do you see it?
Student: Uh, yeah.
Ms Morphine: I'm getting it all removed. Because it's just skin, you know? I lost all the fat. I need to get all this skin taken off.
Student: Uh huh.

Ah, patients. At least she wasn't mine. *evil laughter* Of course, now I'm totally paranoid - my last two patients have been pretty easy, considering. No isolation, no dressing changes, no straight caths, no PEG tubes . . . My next patient will probably have all 4. Just you wait. And they'll be a drug addict, too, just to make sure I pay my dues.

Also, I thought I'd add this lovely link to a website about a Koi-assisted water birth. You read that right. The Nurse K forums produced it and my God. I can't imagine I ever considered that there would be other ways to birth a child. The Koi are beautiful healers, and I cannot even conceive the very idea that they would not be wonderful midwives. I am going to start work on my own Koi pond immediately, so that when I finally have a child the preparations will already be made, and my Koi and I will have had plenty of time to bond and grow together.

I have to tell you a little story . . .

I've returned from the wilds of Gettysburg, alive and well! The horse show went great. I braided some horses (poorly at first, but sweet Lord thankfully it got better), drank some beer and wine, ate some delicious food, watched a bunch of horses, and had a fabulous time overall. My mother rode the wonderful Miss Lola in the pre-adult hunters and did so very admirably. I was super proud of both of them - Lola turned on her little hunter mode, and mom mostly stayed out of her way and let her get along with it. They ended up being Reserve Champion after getting a second place in one jumping class, and eighth in another, and a first place in the hack. Much cheering was had, and then we all had a beer lol.

On a related note, I am currently typing this from pediatrics class and some people need to SHUT THE HELL UP. I hate ass-kissers. No one thinks you're funny, including the professor, and when you walk in 20 minutes late and then laugh super-loudly at everything the professor says that might be even vaguely misconstrued as a joke, you're just stupid and annoying. Which, I mean, let's be honest, they're probably that way at least 98% of their lives, so maybe it's just force of habit.

On the book-reading front, I'm slowly and steadily making my way through The Most Human Human. It's incredibly fascinating and I'm super cranky that I don't have more time to read it because I'm very much enjoying it. It's not exactly what I expected, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. It's been a long time since I've read a book that's not a story, and while this is a story of sorts - the author's story as he strives to earn that coveted Human title - the science and history that he's exploring are really, really cool to read about. I should stop talking, because eventually I'm going to write a review of this book, but I am very enthusiastic about it. Obviously. After I finish that, though, I'm debating what to read next. I'm thinking In Stitches by Anthony Youn; I have that, plus two more books on AI (Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine, and On Intelligence by Sandra Blakeslee), and A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking to choose from. The AI books and Hawking's book are not super-heavy reads, but I think I might take a little break and read something lighter for a round.

Of course, there is the beach vacation I'm taking in August which will, I'm sure, include a lot of reading. So maybe I shouldn't get too worked up over what to read next, since I'll probably get the chance to read a few books while I'm there. But right now I'm leaning toward the light medical read.

So still in class, and homegirl Gina just walked in with a birthday cake for Liz and our mutual sister-figure Annie. Oh Gina lol.

Anyway, rambly blog post ending time? I went to the horse show, it was fun, I'm reading books, posting from class, generally being cool.

OH. And I have a Twitter now. Check it out, it's pretty baller: I'm gonna make social networking my bitch.

Survival

If not . . . thrival. Yeah.

Anyway, so clinicals are happening now. And unlike my classes, which were pretty painfully boring to write about (no one wants to hear about the fine line between obsessive compulsive disorder and obsessive compulsive personality disorder), shit actually happens in these! Literally. Crap.

My very first patient, who I will remember at least perpetually, if not fondly, was an elderly gentleman with a diagnosis of TERMINAL LAZINESS. Okay, not really, that's not a real condition, but it might as well have been. Left to his own devices, he would choose to lay all curled up in the bed, never turning or moving or whatever. Eventually, with some strong motivational words from the physical therapist ("there's no reason you can't feed yourself, sir") he took on a little more of his own care, but not before wasting a good deal of time in my morning running around after him ("Can you hold my cup for me?", "Can you feed me breakfast?", "I need the bedpan" which of course was immediately followed by "I don't have to go anymore", and other similar requests). Granted, he was my only patient, and believe me, I don't take that for granted at all, but as it was my first day in the hospital (EVER) I felt a little harried anyhow, and constantly having to drop everything so he could tell me how pretty I am (creepy) and ask where his tissues were (under his hand) got old, fast.

But patient #2, well, she's been lovely so far. She's pretty quiet, and compliant, and so very polite (you can do the least comfortable, most embarrassing procedure on her and she'll thank you for all your help at the end). She is a little addled and sometimes she gets kind of feisty, but after last week, I'll take it. Creepy is not okay, but feisty old ladies, fine. Plus I'm getting more comfortable, so besides being kind of poky on some things (bed baths will be my nemesis for some time, I think) I am getting more solid. 

Except for the part where I ripped an entire drawer of medication, syringes, needles and various other flotsam out of a portable med station thing. To be fair, my instructor did say "You have to pull on it really hard, it kind of gets stuck." But I suppose I did get . . . overenthusiastic. At least I provided entertainment to everyone who witnessed the event. And who witnessed me scrambling around on the floor to put all the little packets back where they came from.

Tomorrow is more of the same - feisty old lady, bed baths and meds, hopefully uneventful and without drawer-contents-ejection. And after clinical I leave I get to drive up to the ever-exciting metropolitan hub of GETTYSBURG! (Who's jealous? I know you are). There's a big show going on up there and my mom is showing Miss Lola for me, so I am going along to braid, cheer and provide comic relief.  Of which I am certain there will be plenty.

I would promise updates and photos, but we all know how good I am at that. So suffice to say I will attempt. Fingers crossed, everyone.

Backstory snip!

Here's a little backstory to the sequel . . . Working title is 'Narthecium' (the book, not this snip). I wanted to give people a look at how Greg and Jack met, but it doesn't really fit into the book, so I figured it's kind of like writing fanfiction, right? Except it's fanfiction to my own stuff, which is kind of cool. And it helps me get a better feel for my characters, so whoo hoo!

If it's got to have a title, call it 'Weighty Ghost', because it was written mostly to the song of the same name by Wintersleep. It's a lovely song, and I like to listen to it to remind me that life is just generally more enjoyable when you allow yourself to be totally happy every day, for no reason at all. I don't know if that's the message of the song, but that's what it's always meant for me, so nyah.

-

Getting a papercut hurt worse, Greg thought distantly, which was kind of funny, really. One would think that of all the things in the world, a papercut wouldn’t rank very high on the most painful list.

Certainly not above decapitation.

The world went fuzzy, the sounds muffled and tinny, like they were coming from a long way away, possibly on the other end of a metal sewer pipe. Part of him hit the ground, and he wasn’t really sure which part, because they were all blending together now. Someone was shouting. And then fuzzy went to black, and he felt very, very cold.

Very briefly, black flashed to a dark blue, the color of the night sky. There might have been someone – a Polynesian man, in a sharp suit that wouldn’t have looked out of place in New York or Chicago – and that someone might have said something, touched him, even. Greg died.

And then Greg woke back up, seconds – not even seconds – later, jerking bolt upright, out of his body. He looked down at himself and himself, bleeding into the cracked concrete and gritty dirt, and scrambled to his knees, clear of . . . him. His body.

He stood up then, as people rushed around, and the guards shouted and hustled the other prisoners away. Jonas was pinned under a pile of guards, the knife flung free of his hand and lying bloody in a tuft of brown grass. Someone ran through him as he stood and watched, listened to the cheers and screams of the other prisoners, the guards yelling. He blinked, and then wondered why he’d done it.

He’d been twenty-eight.

The thought occurred to him, out of the mist of his own thoughts, that his at least his mother wouldn’t have to be ashamed anymore when people asked her what her son was doing.

A brace of guards dragged Jonas through him and the other man laughed like a lunatic, head thrown back, hands twitching and clenching in the shackles. A single guard knelt next to his former body, rag pressed to the seeping red slash in his neck.

Absently, he reached to his neck – the one he remembered having, not the shredded one on the ground – and felt the smooth, cool skin. Whole.

He opened his mouth, made to speak, and then closed it again.

Of all the deaths in his life, his own was the least expected.

“It’s rough when you see it, huh?” The voice, clear and strong, rather than wispy and trembling, like the half-hearted calls for help from the guard, almost made him jump out of his skin. Or would have, if he’d had any. “It’s alright, you’re through the worst part.”

“You . . .” he stopped, because his own voice sounded strange here; the words had a heaviness, felt as though they were hanging around his head. “Are you the Reaper?”

“Me? God, no. Here, come on, you don’t need to watch that.” A hand – solid, his brain elated, a little frantically – landed on his shoulder, and the prison yard faded even while the walls of a cell, tinted blue and grey, appeared. “Better?”

When he remembered he had legs, he managed to turn, wide-eyed to the other. “Name’s Jack.”

“You have a bullet hole in your head.”

Jack shrugged. “So? We’re both dead, either way.”

Greg looked around. “I’ve gone to Hell. I thought I might.”

“Hell?” Jack laughed, and it was a good laugh. Greg smiled a little. “Mautinode’s bad, but it ain’t quite Hell. No, my friend, you haven’t gone anywhere.”

Panic, unbidden and illogical, seized him. “I have to get back to my body. I’m going to be stuck here.”

“A little late for that.” Jack prodded him in the shoulder. “You’re a ghost, same as me. The dice, as they say, has been cast.”

“It’s die,” Greg said weakly. “The singular of dice. Die. Ahaha.”

Jack’s hand was still on his shoulder, and he rubbed it, a little comfortingly. “You’ll be alright when the shock wears off. What’s your name?” Greg was quiet, his translucent, blank eyes unfocused and staring. “Hey, man. Come on.” He shook the other prisoner and, not eliciting a response, sighed. “You drove me to this.”

The slap hurt more than the knife, too. Funny how those things work.

“You hit me!” Greg pulled his hand away from his cheek, staring at and through it. “And it hurt!”

“That was the idea.”

“I’m dead! It oughtn’t have hurt!” He tried to flinch before Jack’s first collided with his chest, but he couldn’t totally avoid the blow. “Stop it!”

“There you go, snap out of it.” The other . . . spirit, yes, that had to be what it was, looked inordinately pleased with himself. “Start again. I’m Jack, and you are?”

“Greg.” He rubbed his chest, just below the shoulder, where Greg had hit him. “What manner of demon are you?”

“Demon? You and your divine punishment. I’m a ghost.” He spread his arms. “Plain as bread and butter. So are you, now, Greg; allow me to be the welcome wagon.”

“I saw . . . that really was my body, wasn’t it?” He looked to his hands again, and also to the floor, since his view remained fairly unimpeded by the spectral manifestations of his memory.

Jack nodded. “Unless you have some reason to be popping out of someone else’s body. Demon, vengeful poltergeist, anything? No? Good enough.” He held out a hand. “Welcome to the division of the haunted prison that’s responsible for the ‘haunted’ part. Anywhere in these walls –” he flung his arms wide “– is fair game. Except the fourth floor, I’d avoid that.”

Greg glanced upwards. “What’s up there?”

“A demon. We try not to think about it.”

“Jonas lives on the fourth floor.”

Jack cocked his head. “Who?”

“He killed me.”

“Ah.” A shrug. “Well, might help explain his charming disposition, anyway.”

The recently deceased scrambled back a few sentences, grasping at straws, trying to forget the image of himself pale, twisted and bloody on the ground. “We?”

Jack slung a skinny arm around his shoulders and guided him toward the solid wood door. “Well it’s just been me and Lucas since ’33 – before that it was just Lucas. But hey, three’s company now, right?” He shook the shorter ghost. “Hey, man, come on – it’s rough but it’s all a part of life. Everything worth doing ends eventually.”

“But,” Greg pointed out, “there was nothing very eventual about it.”

“Maybe not to you but think about the rats in the kitchen. You’re ancient!”

“That’s not the most . . . consoling thing I’ve heard.”

“Well it’s something, and that’s what you’re gonna get. Follow me, I’ll introduce you.” He stepped through the door, Greg’s eyes widening as he watched. “Come on!”

Greg stepped boldly forward, and then his head made a hollow clunking sound when it hit the wood.

“You have to stop remembering being solid first. You’ll never get anywhere with haunting if you stay solid.” Another thud on the other side of the door. Jack sighed.

“Can’t I just use the handle? This’ll take ages.”

Jack snorted. “Greg-o, if there’s one thing you’re worried about here, let me assure you: it should not be time.” Thud. “Come on, it’s not that hard – you’re past the hardest part already!”

“Which was?”

“The part where you died.”

Greg stared at the door, hands braced on either side of the jamb, scowling at the boards. “Sorry if I’m not immediately receptive. I’ve died and entered the afterlife all in one day, and the afterlife is somewhat short of what I was expecting. I’m preoccupied.” Tentative, he prodded the door with a finger. And then he closed his eyes and tried to forget the fact that he was solid, and doors were solid, and that it was ridiculous to think otherwise.

Sticking your arm through a door hurts significantly less than anything else in the world.

“I knew you’d get it in the end.” Jack clapped him on the back when he was finally through. “Not that hard, was it?”

Greg turned to look back at the door, which besides being a misty color of blue appeared otherwise normal. “And that’s what . . . that’s my afterlife now? I’m going to float through things for all eternity?”

“Don’t see why it would have to be, and it’s more exciting than you’re giving it credit for. Wait until you get someone wound up about ghosts, that’s the ticket – almost makes you feel alive again.” Greg allowed Jack to guide him down the hallway, toward the stairs. A guard strode right through them. “Reporters especially love it – they’ve caught wind of the stories and it makes for good reading on a slow news day.”

“And that’s haunting, then? Getting the living to pay attention to you?” He looked around the hall. “What’s the point of ghosts?”

Jack’s permanent smile didn’t exactly fade, but it took on a much thinner line, and it almost looked out of place paired with his sad, tired expression. He laid his hand on Greg’s shoulder. “When you figure that out, Greg, before you go . . . you tell me.”

-

So there you have it, the death of Greg and the meeting with Jack. Who's a good guy, really, when you get past the fact that his definition of 'lawful' is very flexible. I have sort of written this once before, under the title 'Everything But Murder', but I fancy I like this version a little better.

Please, if you want to share your thoughts, comment! I'd love some feedback, I really would.

I live!

I'm alive, well, and happy to be back! Not that I actually went anywhere, but our brief off-air hiatus was mainly due to the fact that I totally retreated into my schoolwork. What can I say, this nursing thing is strenuous.

My first two days of clinical were happily non-fatal to myself or the patient. I am still not totally sure of this all yet, nor have I really got on my feet as far as doing a lot of things goes (ex: emptying the Foley bag or remembering to take temperature every time I take vitals, damn thing is easy to forget lol). That said, I'm not totally disgraceful at anything, and I think with a little time I'll be all over it. The trick is staying positive with myself while I go through that change.

I've been writing a little here and a little there. I'm really getting the itch to do a lot of editing on the first book, but I really want to wait for people to finish reading it because knowing myself I will just go and make it worse. I'd like to get the story coherent, and I think it is for the most part, but there are a lot of plot holes and a LOT of things I'd like to go through and fuss over to explain them. I'd like it if Tiberius were to show up a little earlier, for one thing. I'm also considering shortening the overall timeline of the entire story so that it doesn't take an entire school year to get through.

There's parts that I really need to get rid of. Miniature golf needs to go, but the way the story is set up right now it's the major part that establishes the relationship between the main characters. Grace could do with more of a part, but then again it might be fine with her the way it is - I'll see what people say. Overall there's a lot I want to work on but from where I'm standing I don't have the time to focus on it, so I'm just going to have to keep jotting down ideas and collecting them for when the time comes.

It's all very tedious, very complicated, and very frustrating. But hopefully, at the end, very rewarding.

In other news, it's the 1 year anniversary for my dog and me today! Hooray, RD! I remember last year when I saw him at the Humane League, frantically avoiding me at all costs, urinating furiously on everything in the visiting room, skulking around the edges of the room and thinking, "Yes, this is the one I must have. This is my dog."

On reflection, I may need a mental evaluation of some sort.

In which writing continuously vexes me.

Today, Sam Starbuck wrote up a post about writers and writing. As I've mentioned, I really admire Sam, although what he writes isn't exactly to my tastes; he's accomplished a lot and he's been very savvy about it. And whether or not what he writes is my "type" he writes a lot, and he writes very well. Enviable, indeed. So when the man talks about writing, you bet your buttons I listen up.

Anyway, Sam linked to this article about the importance of story to . . . well, a story. And honestly, it sounds so stupid when I write it like that but IT'S NOT. The article is actually really great and has some wonderful reminders in it for all writers, brand new or old hat. Roland is dead on when he says characters and story are so deeply intertwined that it's hard to imagine a character without a story and vice versa. I know I tend to take more of a "Frankenstein's Monster" approach to characters - which is a very apt metaphor for the long process of building up this character, who they are, what they look like, etc. - but it all sort of falls away and comes back together when I'm writing.

Example: My zombie character, Tiberius, died in 1863. Originally, when I was writing the character, I had imagined he'd be sort of overwhelmed and confused constantly because the world had changed so much, and that worked at first. It was reasonable, even. But as the story went on, Tib's character shifted and I realized that for the story to work, and perhaps because of the story itself, he had to be a lot stronger than that. And so I saw him shift from sort of a confused lost little lamb to a oft-bemused smartass. He still has a hard time "getting" modern America but rather than every little thing throwing him hard, he sort of rolls with the punches. It was an interesting change, and certainly not intended, but I'm quite happy with it nevertheless.

On a tangent, one of Roland's other points - "Lots of things happen, but the protagonist responds in exactly the same way each time. There is no sense of progression in the story" - is exactly what bothers the hell out of me about Twilight. GODDAMN BELLA DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT. She just languishes and waits for Edward. Someone tries to kill her? Languish. Edward is gone and possibly in danger? Languish. Out of laundry detergent? LANGUISH. And then Edward shows up with the Tide and they make out. Every. Single. Time.

Anyway, that article was really wonderful and everyone who wants to write something one day, or has written something, or just is interested in the craft of writing (lol pretentious) should definitely read it. It's given me a lot to think about, especially as I prepare to do my second read-through of my own story and really tear into it (DON'T MAKE ME TAKE OUT THE MINI GOLF SCENE NOOOOO).

Got out of bed today and I thought I saw a ghost

I honestly really try to keep the nursing/medical stuff to a minimum here, because there are plenty medical blogs out there written by nursing students and medical students and PA students and the whole gamut and I don't feel like my experience is particularly novel. But . . . I have my orientation today for my first clinical rotation.

That's right, clinical. They're entrusting the care of real people to me.

I don't think they could find someone less qualified if they tried.

Here's me, thinking that our first rotation would consist of us students trailing around after nurses like lost puppies, taking in every aspect of patient care, preparing for one day getting in on the action ourselves, perhaps helping out our nurse as the weeks went on. But no. No, we are assigned a patient. And . . . we are their nurse. Sure, our instructor checks our meds to make sure we're not overdosing anyone or anything like that, but other than that, it's all us. No other nurse. Just me and the patient, one on one, getting some serious QT.

I am not prepared for this.

I'm even less prepared because I have no idea who my patient for the first week is. I will find out next Tuesday, sure, but that's little consolation. I want to start preparing now. I want to know the meds and the H&P and everything so I can walk in there on Wednesday and be . . . totally confused. But less totally confused than I might be in reality, when I've only had a measly 24 hours to prepare! I WANT TO BE ABLE TO BE A LITTLE TYPE A.

I'm not a type A person, I'm really not, but I feel like for my first patient care experience? I should be allowed to exercise just a smidgen of that personality trait. What if I have to do something I don't know how to do? I mean seriously, what if I have to put in an IV? Do a straight cath? They never taught us that. I'm not IV certified in the hospital. WHAT ARE THEY DOING TRUSTING ME WITH THIS?!

They're . . . teaching me. I guess. They're giving me the opportunity to strut the stuff I've learned since last September. And I've learned a lot . . . really a lot, and I've done well but it's time for the real deal. It's time to get my hands dirty, to give an injection, to actually bed bathe someone (God help me), dispense meds . . . It's time for me to stop being a student and start being a nurse.

Intellectually I knew that would happen. Hell, it was the desired outcome. I'm just not sure I was ready for it to happen so soon.

Ashley's Fun List Time Presents: REASONS TO NOT GET A DOG

Let me preface this post by saying there are few things in my life that I love more than my dog. He is my very best buddy, and I would not trade him or give him up for a great majority of the tea in China. That said, getting a dog is not a decision that should ever be taken lightly, and indeed had I truly realized the impact dog ownership I would have thought about it for at least 2.68 seconds longer. I have compiled here the top 5 reasons to think long and hard about getting a dog, and why you should probably just avoid it altogether unless you have some serious mental deficiencies.

TOP 5 REASONS TO NOT GET A DOG

This face is not a reason to avoid getting a dog. Don't let that adorable expression fool you.

1. I'm going to get this out of the way right out of the gate: You will become obsessed (and I'm not joking, it will seriously become an intrusive thought) with your dog's bowel habits. My parents have long been well in-tune with their dog's bathroom schedule, and I used to make fun of them. But now I have a dog and, despite my best efforts, I myself have started mentally logging my dog's constitutionals. Last night I was frantically walking RD at one in the morning because he'd only pooped once in the morning. "He must need to go!" I told myself, bordering on frantic. "Please, he has to go! POOP, DAMMIT."

2. Hair. Shedding. It will happen, I don't care if you have a Chinese Crested. Dogs shed. Maybe you'll get lucky and get one of the dogs that doesn't shed a lot. But it will still shed. If you're unlucky, you'll get a dog that sheds roughly the equivalent of two or three smaller dogs' worth of hair each day. I have one right now. As I type, I am picking hair off my laptop screen so as to better see what I'm typing. You can brush, you can furminate, you can do everything short of shaving them, but there will be hair. Trust me.

3. You schedule will be totally destroyed. Thinking of going out with friends after work? Haha! You're funny. No, unless you want to come home to urine on your carpet and a depressed, shameful animal, you must forego drinks, at least temporarily until you have a chance to let your dog out. Want to go on a spur-of-the-moment weekend trip? Hope you have dog-loving friends that aren't going! Or a handy kennel on speed dial. Seriously, your schedule is straight borked the minute you welcome your furry friend into your life. It's like having a baby without the glimmers of hopeful expectations of being able to live vicariously through them later on.

4. Your furniture is no longer your own. Picture this: you come home from a long day of work, walk the dog, mark its bowel movement's shape, color and total weight by volume, take the dog back inside, change into your comfy clothes, wash your face and have glorious plans of laying on the couch and watching TV until your brain slides out of your ears like undercooked oatmeal. But wait! No, the dog is on the couch. No. Nooooo. Because you could make the dog move, yes, easily, but are you going to? When those big sad eyes meet yours and the dog pleads for a little attention, and a little relaxation? Suddenly the fact that you have spent a whole day working hard while the dog laid at home sleeping and licking itself is forgotten, and you have laid down on the floor. The dog has won.

5. Parts of your house will be destroyed. Yes, yes, your little poopsie-kins is well-mannered and sweet, sure. That's what we call denial. I love RD and that little fucker destroyed two of my doors. My parents love their dog an unreasonable amount and she's peed on their dining room carpet so many times it's a wonder the thing's not stained yellow. Look around your house. Dog damage is everywhere, but you are blind to it. But one day prospective buyers will visit, and tour, and think "my God, these people live with a ravenous pack of wolves." And you will see through their eyes and think, "Oh God, how did this happen?" Your answer, my friend, is snoozing on the couch. Shedding.

Book Review: Treasure Island

Holy crap two days in a row! Nah, j/k there's not a lot to talk about for me BUT we have our very first installment in my hopefully-ongoing series of book reviews! And today we are going to look fondly back at my very first reading (at 23 years old) of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.

In short, I thought the book was really really brilliant. I know it's a kids' book, or supposed to be, but honestly I'm not sure I would have really been able to hang with it when I was the same age as the narrator, Jim. Not because it's dense or complicated but because the jargon and language used would have been over my head. Maybe when I got to be around 15 or so.

Speaking of which, how old is Jim? I thought he was around 13 or 14, but then some of the stuff he did made me think he was maybe older. I don't know, it didn't really get in the way of my enjoyment of the book at all but I still wondered about it.

Anyway, aside from the language issues I would have no qualms about giving this book to a room full of middle schoolers. It's fun, it's a great adventure, and it has exactly the kind of hero that I like: a clever one. Too often these days our heroes get by on the shoulders of their friends (I'm looking at you, Harry Potter) or because they're bigger and stronger than anyone else. What happened to the clever heroes like Jim Hawkins? I miss them. Jim was also kind of a delightful smartass - abandoning the captain, the doctor and the squire to fend for themselves while he scurried off to do what he thought would be helpful was both brash, truant and brave. If it had gone wrong I would have been furious at him, and I think Jim would have been furious with himself (if he'd lived) but as it was it gave him the chance to really be brilliant all by himself, and to sort of save the day. The fact that the others recognized that, too, was a wonderful part of the book.

I also just enjoyed the setting of the book. I've always loved pirates, sailing, being on the ocean, etc. An interesting fact about my family is that back in the early 19th century, most of my mother's side of the family were involved in the business of piracy in some way or another, and while it's not honorable or glamorous it's a part of the family lore that's been passed down. I think a lot of my love of the ocean and nautical tales comes from the fact that my family has that tradition of being of the more nautical persuasion, even to this day. Boating is just a thing we do. I spent a lot of time when I was younger on my grandfather's Grady-White, and some of my fondest memories are from that period of time. So books about the ocean (and Jimmy Buffet songs, yes) always hold a special place in my heart. Just reading about Jim's time at sea, on the Hispaniola, and sailing her, made me all nostalgic and gave me the warm fuzzies inside. So admittedly I may have been biased from the start; I am not a good objective judge of books about pirates/sailing.

Much of Treasure Island's charm, though, comes from the story itself; the setting and the characters just make the whole experience all the richer. You have the clever, plucky hero who it honest and practical, and manages to come across something of incredible value. You are just as boyishly excited about the whole hunt as the main characters, and your distrust of Long John and the crewmen descends totally into despair as the mutiny comes around. Admittedly, I did know a great deal of the story before I even started, thanks to the Muppets, but really there is no comparison between the book and the movie. I love them both, yes, but the book was just incredible.

So yes, in conclusion, I really recommend Treasure Island, without any kind of hesitation at all. I only wish I'd heard more of what happened to Jim after the story was over, what he did with his share, but that wasn't really part of the story, I guess. I would think it sort of was, but alas.

And that concludes my first book review! Next in line is The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches us About what it Means to be Alive. Stay tuned!

I Love Being Lazy

Happy Memorial Day! Actually, I guess, let's all have a solemn, reflective Memorial Day because apparently this is not a holiday that's just a 4th of July warm-up. Who knew? I didn't until last night. Fail. Anyway, so let me say first of all, thank you to all the soldiers who have died fighting for America. I know they can't read this, but all the same, they deserve thanking. Whether or not I've agreed with the wars is immaterial; they went above and beyond to serve their country, and that they would give such a gift for something they so sincerely believed in is worthy of a bowed head. And that's all I'll say.

In a less solemn and totally unrelated note - I have just discovered the stats feature on this blog, and it's come to my attention that a large percentage of my readership is GERMAN! So HELLO, GERMANY! I've never been there but I hear it's nice. Maybe one day when I have the cash I'll do that European tour I've always wanted to do and check out Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, etc. Maybe even Norway, but that's doubtful because Norway is cold as shit. 24-hour sun though, that's pretty sweet. I don't know, though, I might just hit up Alaska for that. Keep it local, you know how it is.

So I've taken a long weekend to just enjoy myself and relax at my parents' house. I came up Friday afternoon and chilled. Yesterday I accompanied my mother to her riding lesson, which was fun, except for the part where my mom got heat stroke and had to lay in the shade. She's totally fine, it's cool, no worries. It was hot as hell though, truth.

The problem with these long weekends of relaxation is that I always run out of time to do things I enjoy! I want to finish Treasure Island, I want to work on my writing, I want to fill out my FAFSA (okay, that's more of a need than a want but still), I want to tan, and I want to help out around the house because otherwise I feel like a total mooch. I can read and tan at the same time, so that knocks out two birds with one stone (thanks, Kindle! I love youuuuuu), but finding time for writing here is hard, just because there's always interruption and things going on. I've managed to get a few thousand words down but it's going trés slowly. I am determined NOT to fall into the same problem I did with the last book (way too long) but I also want to take my time with the story, too. I do think I can wrap this one up faster (less world-building, more expanding and a simpler "case") but it's still tough for me.

As far as the first one goes, I'm starting to step away from the emotional "Yay, I wrote a book, it's all mine!" and more to the analytical "it's pretty good but if I just tweak this . . ." That is, I think, a really good thing. I have a couple people beta reading for me at this point, so I'm excited to hear back from them. I would say, hesitantly, that you could look for it by Christmas or early next year. No telling though, it's not like I'm on a time table!

And that's all the news that's fit to print. Sorry I'm kind of boring recently - I always try to think of things to blog about, but I'm fairly terrible at that. I suppose that comes with time, though!

Better Late than Never

HEY EVERYONE! I'm not dead. :D Or raptured. I know I didn't post on Sunday, so you were probably worried. But no, no I'm still here, sitting on my couch, same as I always am when I make zer posties. Except when I'm not on my couch.

Anyway, school is done, so hooray for that. Took my last final yesterday afternoon and then went out with some friends from my program to enjoy our newfound freedom. The psych final was absolutely brutal, which was kid of unexpected actually, but hopefully I managed to pull it out and get a B in the class. I'm trying not to think about it too much because otherwise I just dwell and stress out. When the grades are posted, they're posted, and I can go from there.

In either case, I have basically two weeks off between now and when I'm back in classes. I have big plans . . . not. Getting some writing done, filling out my FAFSA form (everyone's favorite fun activity!), cleaning up the apartment, relaxing, all that kind of thing. Laying by the pool and getting tanned up also factors in. I've got a couple books I want to start/have started reading: 'Treasure Island' (so sue me, I never read it - it's really good though, I'm enjoying it thoroughly), and then there's the books on my Amazon wishlist. In no particular order, these are: 'Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine' and 'The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What it Means to be Alive'. These are related to an upcoming project that I'm working on. Well, more accurately, that I started working on, realized I was vastly under-informed about, and decided to shelf it until I could get comfortable and up to speed on it.

In either case, keep an eye out for the book reviews. I think I'm going to try to make it a regular feature on this blog - Sam Starbuck is a self-published author and blogger that I have been following for years, and I have always enjoyed how he reviews the books he reads. Not only does it give you a peek into what he's working on, it also references people to books that are good and fun but that don't always necessarily hit the NY Times bestseller list. Not that I have a tremendous readership like he does, but hey, for the three of you that read regularly, maybe you'll find something interesting. And it always helps me, too, to keep up with what I've read and what I haven't, rather than trying to remember everything.

So yes, otherwise I have two relaxing weeks. I'm very much looking forward to it. :) Yayyyy.

Rapture fanfic?

So I wrote a quick little story with my characters in response to the Rapture that is supposed to happen tomorrow. It was for my own entertainment and lulz - I didn't edit it or anything, just figured I'd stick it here for posterity. Enjoy or not, whatever. :P


--

“Hey, check this out – it says the Rapture’s supposed to happen today at six.” Tib sat back from the screen of the elderly Gateway laptop and crossed his arms across his chest. “Huh. I feel like I missed out on all the good panicking.”

Bea snorted. “I am highly doubtful. Highly.” She shoved a forkful of noodles into her mouth. “I can’t believe you’re just hearing about that, by the way.”

“How else would I have heard?”

“I dunno. I guess you don’t have the internet unless I’m around, though, true. Celmer didn’t say anything?”

“You think I’m uninformed about current events?” As one, they looked out the window to Tib’s mentor. The wizard was presently trying to rasp the hooves on one of the unicorns, with a limited amount of success, but with plenty of swearing. “The only thing he ever keeps up with is sports.”

“True. Anyway, he’d probably ignore it even if he did hear about it.”

The zombie looked thoughtful before setting the computer aside and leaning out the window. “So what’s up with the Rapture?” he called.

Celmer didn’t pause. “A little busy at the moment.”

“Laizaus didn’t say anything to you?”

“You can either come out here and help me or leave me the hell alone, Tiberius, but either way you’re going to shut up about the damn Rapture.” The unicorn jerked its leg away. “You’re an abomination unto the Lord anyway, what do you care?”

“Passive interest.” He turned back to Bea and smirked.

“So he did know about it.” She checked her watch. “It’s due any minute now, huh? Maybe I should go outside.”

“Please, you have as much chance of being Raptured as I do,” he scoffed.

“Moi? I’m insulted. As if anything I’ve done comes close to flaunting mortality.”

Tib pointed an accusatory finger at her. “Ha! Delusional. You and your boyfriend – who you’re not married to, by the way – sin every chance you get.”

She made a face. “Creepy, Tib. Creepy.”

“But accurate. Besides –” but besides what, she never found out. A shout from the back garden was cause enough to get both of them to bolt out the door and onto the deck, where they promptly froze.

Celmer was – apparently unwillingly – floating upwards, enveloped in shining white light, gold streaming to the ground from the corona. “Jesus Christ,” Bea breathed. “For real.”

“You have been called to the service of the Lord,” a voice boomed through the trees. “O, holy and pure of heart.” But just then, the white light shifted from its upward trajectory and deposited the wizard in the branches of a tree. “Nah, totally, kidding, you should have seen your faces though.” Bea and Tib turned to the right, where Laizaus, functional alcoholic and Angel of the Lord, was leaning against the house.

“What the hell?” Celmer yelled from the tree, while Bea and Tib dissolved from awe-struck terror into laughter. “This isn’t funny, Laizaus!”

“Au contraire, this is fairly fucking hilarious.” He laughed and pointed. “You, really? Holy and pure of heart? I’ll Fall before that shit happens.”

“Yeah, well, at the rate you’re going I’m due for holiness in a fortnight. Let me down, you bastard.”

“You’re a wizard, you figure it out.” He smiled glassily. “Jesus helps those who help themselves.”

“Jesus isn’t here and he sure as hell didn’t put me in a tree.”

Tib propped himself up on the railing of the deck, where he’d been incapacitated with laughter. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the real deal? When’s that scheduled?”

Laizaus shrugged, wings rustling. “No idea. Not today, that’s for damn sure. Psht, please.” He uncapped a flask and took a swig. “Heaven rarely has a clue what they’re doing a week in advance – you think someone had the forethought to pass on some convoluted mathematical code while Moses was writing?”

Bea wiped the tears from her eyes. “So half a shekel doesn’t buy you atonement?”

“No, but if you want to give me fifty bucks we can test that theory again.” There was a sucking noise, followed by a louder pop and a gust of air as Celmer appeared next to Laizaus, expression less than thrilled. “Oh, hey, I knew you could do it. I believed.”

“You are without a doubt the worst angel in the world.”

“No, I just have a sense of humor. There’s a difference.” He offered the flask. “Need a drink? Tastes like Kool-Aid.” Celmer’s expression shifted from angry to stunned. “What? Too soon?”

“Worst angel,” he concluded, refusing the flask. “Not so much thirsty anymore, thanks.”

“Maybe a little too soon,” Bea added. “I’ll explain it to you later,” she added for Tib’s benefit. The zombie shrugged – oblivious confusion was more or less a consistent state for him, ever since he’d come back from the dead last year.

“So anyway, since the Rapture was predicted for tonight, I assume everyone’s calendar is clear?” Laizaus punched Celmer in the shoulder. “Not like you ever have anything to do anyway, hermit. Your apprentice is getting bored – there’ll be lurching and brain eating if you’re not careful.” Tib rolled his eyes.

“Don’t touch me.” Celmer glared. “You have something in mind?”

“I have four tickets to a Braves game, is what I have.” He pulled the tickets out of his jacket and brandished them. “Bought them off a guy at McDonald’s. Said he wouldn’t be needing them since God was going to be calling him tonight.”

Celmer grabbed a ticket. “I hope he gave you a discount.”

Laizaus inhaled thoughtfully. “We-ell, he was going to just give them to me, but I insisted on paying full price for them, even though he didn’t think he’d have a need for money. What? I couldn’t take them for free – not when I knew it was all horse shit. He’s glad he took the cash now, probably.” He looked smug. “You’re just mad because now you can’t call me the worst angel ever.”

“No, I think you’re stupid, is what I’m thinking.” He looked to the other two, annoyed but nevertheless entertained. “You coming?”

Tib shrugged. “Why not?”

“Well since my plans of being vacuumed up into the sky fell through, I guess I’ll go.” Bea sighed the sigh of the much put-upon. “A beer and a hamburger will have to be consolation enough.”

Laizaus winched the wings in and shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been to Heaven and honestly, the beer and the hamburger sound pretty good to me.”

EL FIN

See you all on Sunday lol.