Monday, April 15, 2013

anybody know what a birthday deathbed is?

i say i'm a 'child of the 90s' like it was last week and not twenty years ago.

TWENTY YEARS ago i was 14.

i listened to breeders' "cannonball," and "linger" by the cranberries. pearl jam had come out with "daughter" and i think i wore out the track on my friend alicia's cd on the bus trip to regionals that year. (coronado swimming...woooooo!)

i wore doc martens and flannel shirts, even in el paso where the heat is pretty much on point until that three-week span in december.

i loved stone temple pilots. LOOOOOOVED stone temple pilots and harbored this undying love for that knucklehead scott weiland and his amazing purple hair. (not to say that i didn't go ba-nay-nays for swv and tlc and all manner of acronymed all-female hip hop groups also, but my hearthrobs were the grubby lookin' guys who sang about crap that flew so far over my head, i was CONVINCED they were geniuses...)

today "dead and bloated" came on the radio as the kids and i were driving around in my truck mooing at the longhorn herd that lives near us. i turned it up and sang out loud as embarrassingly possible, but dom's always a good sport about music and the tinies in the backseat are too young to care how obnoxious i look.

but then, the mood in the truck changed.

"what's a birthday deathbed?"

*crickets*

dom asked an innocent enough question, i guess. he's always interested in what artists mean and i can usually BS with the best of them...once convincing him that a "juicy j" song was all about musical groups performing so well that girls couldn't help but dance. (need a clue? see: "bands to make her dance" and tell me i'm not THAT good.)

but seriously...what the ham was a birthday deathbed? and why was scott weiland smelling like a rose that somebody gave him on it? and why did i think it was such a cool song when i was a sophomore when clearly i had no idea what it meant.

and let's just be honest for a second and assume that even scott weiland probably had no clue what he meant by it, either.

i shrugged and turned it up louder, drowning out any possible questions about "when she peeks i start to run."

seriously. no clue.

lord help me if he ever stumbles on 2 Live Crew, ya'll..


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Thursday, April 11, 2013

crowded sketchbook: i call him "mouse hugo"







there are many reasons i am not an artist. i'm too influenced by cute illustrations i like. i don't have the patience to learn to illustrate on computer. and i'm a writer. i'm too old to learn to draw well enough to complement the words at this point. but sometimes, a character will not come out on the page until you give him a face. thankfully, it's only been picture book characters so far and not real, adult characters. that would creep me out a bit.

i call him "mouse hugo" and i have no idea why he's got himself an outrrrrrageous french accent. he's holding a flower, but maybe a pastry of some sort would have served him better. but i cannot draw pastries or cakes or muffins of any sort. so gerbera daisy it is.

do you know another reason i am not an artist? have you ever seen the supplies of professional artists? they are not afraid of getting things mixed together and untidy. i, on the other hand, have a conniption when my watercolors run together. i have to pull paper towels out and clean the crevasses between paint pots before i can rest easy. and did anyone else notice that mouse hugo has no whiskers?

poor mouse hugo.

writer it is...

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playing "photo a day" catch up

i didn't realize i was missing a day or two in my challenge. so, really, i can only post up to day 6 today even though it's the 11th day of the month. go figure. it's been that kind of day. see here for more information about the challenge.









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my new career never took off

i'm drawn to people who are passionate. who do what they love and attack whatever is in front of them. in writing, it's the writers who keep churning out material (fic or nonfic, doesn't matter to me). it's the reporters who come out with really exciting series that keep me chained to my computer screen when i should be folding iron man undies.

i've also been drawn to the coverage of samantha koenig's murderer. the same serial killer who killed bill and lorraine currier in vermont.

(i tried to type his name twice in this entry, but my entire body recoiled at putting his name anywhere in this blog.)

hours and hours and hours of interviews he did with the fbi before killing himself this winter were released yesterday on the alaska dispatch and i listened more than i'm proud to admit i did. i'm morbidly curious about a man like this...maybe not so much a man as a monster. a creature of his own making, so self obsessed with his image after he's gone that he was particular with his demands and just how much he'd release and when.

i read more about him and came across the name of an investigative reporter who is covering him. i followed the rabbit hole down a few more links and soon i was in the world of true crime writers and bloggers. some considered themselves victims' advocates and pursuers of the truth. others were looking for the next network to give them a ring for an interview.

but for a few nanoseconds between pulling the fishsticks from the oven and depositing a few of my progeny in the bathtub, i researched true crime bloggers. i wondered how many unsolved crimes existed in houston and whether i'd be able to help any with a sense of purpose and dogged research.

why couldn't i be a true crime blogger?

the answer didn't take long to appear.

somewhere in the midst of reading about a double murder torture in tennessee that is currently being prosecuted, i took a deep breath. wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes after reading about the victims and the horror they endured. and then i turned my computer off and answered my own question.

i could never do that work because i could never read about how horrible human beings are capable of being day in and day out. hours and hours of researching the grisly details of psychopaths and their often unwitting victims. i would never sleep again and my kids would never be allowed out in public.

i'd never go to church. i'd never get my car fixed. i'd never go out after dark. i'd never nod a hello at a stranger. i'd never greet the people who live in my building without wondering if they were holding some pedestrian hostage in their granite countertop bathroom that looks just like mine.

i'm too soft. too prone to nightmares. too sure that i'd be the next random victim in a world gone mad. no, sir...a true crime writer i am not.

maybe a cupcake maker. i'm pretty sure cupcakes wouldn't give me nightmares.


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Saturday, April 6, 2013

katy folk life festival (or, "i would never survive pioneer life")

we went to the local pioneer festival today and for a moment, i felt like i was 10 years old again...digging through the dino bones pit in zilker park at the austin "safari" festival. i loved the chuck wagon. i hated the washing station. not much has changed in history, i guess. i'm pretty sure i would have lasted a few hours in frontier texas...but the walk though time was a blast. the kids made tin ornaments, husk dolls, kenna made a rag doll, we made cheese, shot arrows. dom even touched a corn snake while i hyperventilated a safe distance away.















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Monday, April 1, 2013

April "Fun" Hack: Photo a Day Challenge


I put myself through diets. Through procastination-busting binges. Through cleaning binges. But I rarely just do a month-long challenge just for fun. Thought I'd give this one a try and post weekly photo dumps on Sundays.

Hope it's sunny wherever you are!

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