Writing Excerpt

I don't pretend to be good at writing by any means. I certainly enjoy it, but I know my writing lacks elements of grandeur (not to mention proper grammer and punctutaion). Despite lacking excellence in writing, I have decided to do this, National Novel Writing Month. I have been playing around with a few ideas and have this excerpt from one of them. For anyone who actually reads this, I would love for you to comment on whether or not you think this would be a good storyline. Obviously, it is just a little teaser. Be completely and utterly honest. Having had a remarkable set of English profs, I know how to take that red lined criticism. I have another promising story line Sel is helping me with/pretty much came up with that I can fine tune if this one isn't quite meeting your fancy. Whelp, here it is.

My niece Emma is lying on the floor of my apartment. Her tiny body curled in the fetal position with her soft, silky curls splayed across her face, hiding those sparkling sapphire gems she inherited from her father. She’s wearing the pale pink nightgown with her favorite Disney princess on it that I bought her two years ago for Christmas. Since she has grown quite a few inches since then, the knee length nightgown now hangs teasingly around her upper thigh. I hadn’t seen her in that nightie ever since my sister, Mel, stashed it in the basement for fear Emma would think she was the next MTV mini-skirt wearing icon. I didn’t think Emma was old enough to know or really care what a mini skirt or MTV was, but I usually try not to interfere with any of Mel’s parenting. “Focus!” my mind shouts at me. My heart pounds at an unbearable rate as I stumble clumsily to her lifeless body. I kneel down next to her and place my hand on her rib cage. Her warm side slowly rises and falls against my hand. A rush of air slips swiftly across my lips in relief. Breathing. Emma is alive! In fact, she looks more peaceful on my carpet in desperate need of vacuuming than she normally does under her fluffy fuscia comforter at my sister’s house. I gently roll Emma over to check for any bleeding or bruising. Spotless. Even her knees, an area of usual weekly scraping, appear blemish free. I place two fingers against her neck and feel the steady, quick rhythm of blood coursing through her carotid. Emma makes a tiny muttering sound and rolls back on her side. I continue to kneel next to her trying to process that the dreadful situation I imagined is not a reality. Emma is not dead. Emma is simply asleep on my floor. Emma is asleep on MY floor. The adrenaline masking thoughts more complex than survival starts to dissipate. How did Emma get here? I had spoken with my sister ten minutes before I pulled into my driveway and she didn’t mention anything about dropping Emma off at my place. In fact, I remember Mel saying she had tucked Emma and my nephew, James, into bed at 7:00PM. She had rather abruptly ended our conversation when my brother-in-law hollered at her that their favorite TV show was on and told me she would call me tomorrow. I glance at the antique clock hanging above my fireplace. 10:30PM. Three and a half hours past the time my sister said she put Emma to bed. I exhale deeply again and sit back off my knees. How did my barely six-year-old niece manage to leave Mel’s house unnoticed, walk ten miles from her house, and break into my locked apartment? I notice Emma isn’t even wearing shoes. I reach over and check the bottom of her feet. I have never seen her feet look this clean. Usually they are slightly blackened from running around barefoot with her neighborhood friends. I know Mel puts Emma and James in the bath right before bed which explains Emma’s squeaky clean feet, but certainly doesn’t shed light on how she got here. “Emma? Sweetheart?” I murmur softly against her ear. She doesn’t stir. I gently shake her shoulder. Emma turns her head and peers at me with squinted eyes. “Aunt Lizzy?” she asks dubiously. Her eyes slide in and out of focus for a few seconds before she rolls over excitedly and wraps her hands around my waist. “Aunt Lizzy! I tried to stay awake until you got home, but I was just so tired! We played t-ball at school today and I played real hard. Real, real hard. I was the best t-ball player probably in ever. And then my teacher..” I cut her off with a smile, “Sweetie, do you know where you are?”. She pauses for a second and looks around my apartment. “Duh Aunt Lizzy! We are at your house. Don’t you know where you are?” She giggles and I wrinkle my nose at her. “I need you to think really hard sweetheart and tell me if you remember how you got here.” She beams back at me, “I don’t need to think really hard. Your friend dropped me off!”  I rack my brain thinking of which of my few friends would have kidnapped my niece from her bed, snuck her into my apartment and dumped her on my floor. I try and reign in the panic I feel slowly itching along my skin. “Which friend Em?” She playfully grasps a wisp of my hair and twirls it around her hand. “Well, he said you guys had been friends for a long time, ecept you didn’t ‘member him the other day, so he was kinda in a fight with you. And then, um, and then he said he was gunna find a new best friend who, um, ‘preciated him and then he taught me the trick” she smiled back at me. A sour taste has formed at the back of my throat. Warning bells had been going off from the moment I walked in the door. Those bells had become so deafeningly loud during those few sentences Emma said. Friends for a long time? I didn’t remember him the other day? It sounded eerily like an obsessive stalker of some sort, but my mind had jumped from stalker to child molester at that last part. ‘He taught me a trick’. My heart rate begins to spike sickeningly and a red haze pulses at the corner of my eyes. Some pervert had taught my sweet, innocent little niece ‘a trick’. I know I should be asking Emma more about this friend. Questions about what he looked like, how she met him, and other questions that would help the police find this sicko. I can’t think logically right now though. Too many emotions are running rampantly through me washing my logic swiftly away. It takes me a second to refocus on the situation and realize Emma is talking again, “Wanna see the trick, Lizzy? Wanna see it?” I force myself to hold back tears as I wait for her to show me what this real life monster did to my Emma. “Yes,” I choke out, “show me the trick.” She pulls a few inches away from me and rearranges her expression into the face she does when she pretends she is a “grown-up”. “Hold out your hands” she commands. I curl my fingers into my palms and hold my fists out to her. “No, no, no!” she says as she energetically shakes her curls back and forth, “Like this!” Emma turns her palms face up and pushes her pale wrists together. I flip my hands over to mimic hers in confusion. I am trying to stay a few steps ahead, but I cannot see where this “trick” is going. Emma reaches behind her and holds up her stuffed zebra, Spots. When she first got the zebra she couldn’t say ‘stripes’ and whenever she tried, it sounded a whole lot like Spots. I hadn’t realized she had brought Spots along until now. “Close your eyes!” she chimes playfully. I pretend to close my eyes all the way, but peek at her through my lashes. “No peeking Aunt Lizzy! I can’t show you the trick unless you close your eyes!”. “Did my friend make you close your eyes too Emma?” She reaches her fingers up and pushes my lids forcefully closed before answering. “Well, he just showed me how to do the trick to someone else. He said the most important two parts are that Aunt Lizzy’s eyes are all the way closed and…” she trails off distractedly. “And what was the other important part Em?” A sudden flash of heat spills across my wrist and my eyes flutter open in surprise. “Well, he said make sure you slice the knife as hard as you can across her wrists” Emma says with a huge grin.

The Treat Streak

So I am doing this to remind myself I am actually healthy person even though I sometimes eat a disgusting amount of chocolate and ice cream and other treat like food. Minus my addiction to sweets, Sel and I are a kind of health nuts.  I feel like I need to write down the things we do right so I can feel better about all the things I have been doing wrong lately.

1.       We love exercise and make sure we put in 1 to 2 hours of it at least 4 days a week. 6 days a week if we are lucky. Cardio is our favorite, but we do fit in lifting every day too. Sel runs a mile before every workout (and is now hitting a PR of about 8:05) then alternates his next hour and half between the stationary bike and the elliptical. I am still trying to like being inside for exercise and have come a long way in the past few months. I usually go to a 45 minute long class (Zumba, Kickboxing, or RIPPED) and then run on the treadmill for 30 minutes or more. I live for my runs on P-towns beautiful trails, but the treadmill is growing on me.

2.       We also love fruits and vegetables. We are pretty darn good at incorporating them into each and every one of our meals thus far.

3.       We are not picky. This means we eat a variety of food willingly which translates to increased chances of meeting all our nutritional needs in terms of minerals and vitamins. We try to buy new ingredients every time we go grocery shopping and then whip up recipes of grandeur throughout the week. We have tried a long list of semi-interesting things (new to us): rutabaga, bok choy and baby bok choy, swiss chard, dragon fruit, clementines (this one is a big fat deal for me), acorn nut squash, zucchini squash, eggplant, brussel sprouts, millet, celeriac, figs, kale, turnips, quinoa, barley, flax, leeks and beets. We also really like getting fresh spices and herbs to base meals around. We have really liked sage, ginger, rosemary, Italian parsley, marjoram, oregano, tarragon, lemon grass, mint and our all-time favorite, basil. We actually bought a basil plant last year and use Basiey (creative name huh?) all the time for recipes. We like dried spices too, but there is something about the fresh ones that make our meals especially flavorful. 

4.       That being said, we do have our staples and lucky for us, they are mostly healthy. Favorite staples: apples, oranges, almonds, air popped popcorn, homemade bread, almond milk, almonds, unsalted peanuts, beans, lentils, hummus, bananas, kiwis, tomatoes, onions, onions, onions(we seriously use these in almost every meal), bell peppers, avocados, kale, spinach, romaine lettuce (we alternate each week with buying either a tub of pre-washed spinach, spring mix, or romaine lettuce), mushrooms, frozen fruit, plain greek yogurt, and our not so healthy love, cheese. We usually try to buy smaller portions of cheese cause we will invariably eat way too much of it if we have a giant bag of saturated goodness calling our names.

5.       We love to cook at home. This makes it easy to incorporate above healthy foods into our meals and helps control portions, salt, and fat content.

6.       We stopped buying store bought bread about 8 months ago. We make a loaf of homemade bread every week or every two weeks if we are lucky and our loaf doesn’t get moldy/go stale. That is pretty much the only partial downside to not eating store bought. You don’t have the preservatives to make your bread last longer. We don’t mind though. The difference in taste and overall satisfaction pretty much ensures we will never be able to go back to the wimpy, air-filled branded stuff. Here is our favorite recipe should you have a bread maker and a crazy desire to eat the best bread on Earth: 4 cups whole wheat flour, ½ cup ground flax, ½ cup sunflower seeds, 1 tsp salt, 5/8 cup water, 3 tsp yeast. Yup, that’s all you need for the most satisfying bread you’ll ever taste. We also stopped buying tortillas and now stick to making homemade corn or whole wheat whenever we need them.

7.       We don’t really eat red meat. I don’t eat it at all and Sel eats it maybe once a month or once every two months. This means the protein we do eat is usually chicken, some turkey, and all sorts of things in the bean family. We both hate seafood, but we are trying really, really hard to not hate it…

8.       We never drink full power soda which is great. We do, however, drink diet from time to time and are working on eliminating this completely too.

9.       We do a weigh in once a week to make sure we are keeping on track which helps keep us mindful of what we are doing to keep/get to a healthy weight.  

Here are the things making me feel like I am actually sucking at making healthy choices

1.       We ourselves don’t go out to eat more than once a month, but we eat out a ton when we get together with family. Since we have been seeing our family a fun bunch recently, we have been eating way more than we normally would.

2.       Sel is awesome at this. He keeps a running tally of how long he has been “treat free”. He doesn’t eat anything that could potentially be considered a treat and has only broken his streak twice for big celebrations, our anniversary and Kit & Kat’s wedding. I, however, make the biggest mistakes in this area. I love, love, love chocolate and then there is ice-cream and cookies and everything I know is awful for me. I know all about eating in moderation, but when it comes to these food items, moderation doesn’t really exist with me. I ALWAYS feel worse after eating even a small amount of a sweet than I do before.

Now on to the main point of this post, essentially, I am committing myself via my blog to finally man up and join Sel in the no sweet streak. From now until Thanksgiving (where I will gloriously eat one slice of pumpkin pie or pecan pie), I will not be eating any treats. No pumpkin pie shakes, no chocolate, no cookies, no crazy cake, no candy cups, no ice-cream, no frozen yogurt. It’s only about 3 months. After my 3 months are up I will either decide to be a morbidly obese person for the rest of my life OR I will actually be at a level of health I want to be at.

This may have been my most boring post yet, but if it gets me to stop eating chocolate, it might just be the best post I have written ever. Just gotta keep Lil Miss Wanda from pressuring me to eat all the delicious chocolate she hoards all over the house. Wish me luck!

Arachna-Freaking-Phobia

I have come a long, long way since childhood. In more ways than one, of course, but namely in terms of NOT turning into a pathetic banshee when I encounter 8 legged freaks. Have you seen Arachnaphobia? You know, the movie with Jeff Daniels and John Goodman where their small town inherits a nest of highly posinous spiders from South America? The movie that makes you feel like you have small things crawling creepily across your body the whole time and days afterward. The movie with the shower scene that more or less happened to me yesterday.

Our apartment has spiders and we have mastered the art of spraying their vampiric bodies with Raid whenever we encounter them. Don't get me wrong, I think spiders are fascinating EXCEPT when they crawl on me/create a potential situation by living in my apartment where they could crawl on us and bite Sel or I and then drink our blood.

I especially hate spiders when they try to eat me at my most vulnerable moments. Moments where I am butt naked and dripping wet. Moments like last night when I noticed the towel I was wrapped up in had a gigantic brown and white spider trying to crawl into my hair. I had a very irrational moment where I then ferociously flung my towel to the ground at lightening speed, streaked past a confused Sel into our bedroom screaming "KILL IT! KILL ARAGOG!!!", and then hid under our covers twitching everytime a droplet of water from my hair tricked my body into thinking a spider was still crawling on my naked bod.

Sel, being the good hubby he is, went into the bathroom while I cowered in the bedroom. He lifted up my fallen towel and Mister Hannibal Lecter Junior sprung out of it and tried to eat Sel's face off. Sel fell back shocked at the fact that for once in my life, I wasn't exaggerating when I said it was humongous.

Just like in Arachnophobia, there is a happy ending. Instead of harpooning the monster with a flaming piece of justified death, Sel used his fist of iron to squish his venomous body.

He left me the honor of flushing him down the toilet so I could feel like I sorta conquered the Beast. What would I do without my Sam who came back to save me from certain Spider inflicted death?

Other momentary thought on this. I have mentioned on my blog before the existence of a chicken eating spider. They are real. Look um up. Anyway, I had a thought last night after the near death incident about what it would be like to have a pet chicken eating spider. They usually range around the size of a large cat/small dog, come from the tarantula family-so they are fluffy, and would eat pretty much the same food that household pets like cats and dogs sometimes eat. Somehow a giant, fluffy animal eating spider seems less scary than a moderately large, posion filled spider.

Can you imagine how funny it would be to take your chicken eating spider on a walk and then watch as it tugged at it's leash in an attempt to eat a poodle?

Or what if they started creating chicken eating spider clothes the way they do for dogs? You could dress your spider in a pink little bonnet with 8 matching pink booties.

Do you think I could get one on Ebay and maybe send a few as gifts to my mom, sister, and anyone else I know who loves fluffy creatures?

Zombies with 80's Hair Dos and Other Good News

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!! That is not even half of the excitement that is going on around here. Sel finished his secondary applications for medical school in July and we have been anxiously waiting to hear back from the 18 schools he applied to. We heard “um, No” back from three schools which made me want to punch them all in the face and made Sel throw pillows at the wall and “Hate everything in the world!"

On Monday while we were preparing dinner and talking about we always talk about: Girls that wear colored pants, nerf, dragons, and medical school applications, I told Sel I had a really good feeling about this week in terms of hearing something positive finally from one of those Dengus medical schools. Sel said it would be funny if we heard “um, No” this week from ALL the schools we applied to and then whenever I ‘”had a good feeling” about something from now on we would prepare ourselves for nuclear warfare, zombies, or the resurgence of 80’s hair dos.

(So, so sexy.)

Turns out a woman’s (ahem), THIS woman’s intuition is on freaking FIRE!! Sel found out this morning he has an interview with The Ohio State (can you believe the “the” is part of their legal name?) Medical School in November!!! Nobody I know would be a better physician than Sel! Seriously, no one.  Couple his natural brilliance with his love of learning and peeps and you have a Business Majoring, German Minoring, Future Doc. What a guy, eh? We are just a little tinsy bit EXCITED over here! Feel free to celebrate this day in whatever capacity you desire cause we sure are going to celebrate. Probably by listening to Rebecca’s One Hit Wonder “It’s Friday” over and over again on our road trip to St. George tomorrow J

The Sexy Mouth Gaper

I have recently discovered it is impossible for me to keep my mouth closed for an extended period of time. Not in terms of talking (though I do tend to struggle with keeping my talking to a bare minimum), but in the actual act of keeping my lower lip hugging my upper lip. This might not seem like a serious issue, but boy oh boy is it. Can I tell you a ridiculously embarrassing story from my woeful Junior High years? Simply combining those two words, Junior and High could easily equal an embarrassing story for us all, however, I really tried to take it to the next level with my mouth gaping along with other attributes.

Attribute One: The purple rimmed oval shaped glasses that always slid low on my nose AND the mouth full of metal that caused me to gleek a lot when I spoke to other people. Definition of H.O.T

Attribute Two: The Hair. Living in KS during these angsty pre-teen years did not do me any favors. If Bellatrix Lestrange and Severus Snape had a child together, that would define my Junior High Hair. A brilliant combination of untamable frizz with some unforgiving greasy, straight as a board strands mixed in the bunch. I used to go into the girls bathroom, fill my cupped hands with as much water as possible, and pour it over my frizzy hair in hopes it would be tamed. Turns out putting water on your hair when it is dry just makes it more frizzy. Go figure

Attribute Three:  I was in Junior High Band. I really, really don’t need to say more.

Attribute Four: Nothing is quite as attractive as the ambiguous pillow shape adolescent bestows upon 13-year-old girls. Boy did I feel comfortable in that blobbish body shape. If only my hormones would allow me to experience that joyful time again…

Attribute Five: My absolute favorite part of the entire year and what I looked forward to with a frightening amount of excitement was the annual Washburn Rural Junior High Renaissance Faire. Looking back, I looked forward to this more than I did for Prom in High School

Attribute Six (The Mouth Gape): I had this idea that parted lips translated into one enticingly kissable mouth. Except for I didn’t slightly part my lips…I interpreted this idea that the more you open your mouth as you stroll along those locker lined hallways the sexier you get. Slightly parted= slightly sexy. Full mouth gape= full on sexy. Couple this brilliant idea with the lip gloss trend sweeping our tiny Junior High and you get sticky strands of metallic pink gloss lining the way to ultimate seduction. Once one of my teachers stopped my sex bomb self and asked me if I was having trouble breathing. I pretended I was and whipped out my trusty inhaler to calm his mistaken worries (Oh yeah, the missing attribute was that I had sports induced asthma in the big JH. I was so stereotypically nerdy it’s almost too much to bare)

The point of this post is not to poke fun at my poor little pre-teen self  but to bring to light how attribute six has not diminished as previously believed. Take for example yesterday while running on the treadmill. I was feeling dang good as I pranced along that never ending black strip and then I glanced at the mirror and almost cracked up at the girl in the corner of the room whose agape mouth was pretty much touching her collarbones. Then the realization sunk in. Cave Mouth Girl was ME. I usually don’t expect to look super fly when I am exercising, but I had no idea it was this bad. Other example. Today at work my co-worker was explaining something to me when I realized there was something wet sneaking along my cheek. Turns out it was saliva leaking out of my open trap. Words cannot accurately capture the shock of realizing this is probably why people feel the need to repeat instructions to me twice. Because my MOUTH IS OPEN ALL THE TIME and the drool just accents the visual signs of my intelligence. So if you see me sometime soon and my mouth is open, just put a mint chocolate truffle in there so I can feel like there is some benefit to having the incurable disease of mouthgapeiosis.

Mildly Interesting Schedules

Life is fantastic and happy and wonderful right now. That being said, it is also ridiculously busy. I have finally figured out that in order to feel super happy about life I need to have a balance between doing something useful with my life and having down time. Duh, right? Well, anyway, adjusting to working full time is going interestingly. I have worked full time for stretches of time since I was 16-years-old so you would think I would easily be able to adjust to this new stage of life, but alas, it is still leaving me slightly shocked by how little time Sel and I have. When we were both in school we would have a few hours throughout the day that we wouldn’t be around one another, but now it is always a full if not more than eight hours of not seeing each other. It makes the after work/school reunion extra happy J, but I secretly wish Sel was always at work with me. My usual schedule, since this post is going in a thrillingly entertaining direction already, goes as follows

7:30AM Wake up

8:00AM Drop Sel off at school

8:10AM Read some Scrips in the car

8:30AM Walk into work

8:30AM-5:00PM Keep busy doing fun insurance stuff

5:15PM Meet Sel and the gym and then scuttle off to either my kickboxing or RIPPED class

6:15PM-7:15Pm Run on the treadmill for 30-45 minutes, lift with Sel, stretch

7:30PM Feel like I am going to die cause I am so hungry. Throw something hurriedly together for dinner

8:30PM Do dishes for a century and a half/Pack lunches for tomorrow with Sel

8:45PM Finally throw my smelly body into the shower

9:00PM Say I am going to bed and really just read Mike’s Personal Finance Book with him, talk with Jess (when she is home), and do pretend homework assignments for my pretend classes that I wish I was in

Whoa! Right? You feel really lucky to have read something so riveting and eye opening. Welcome to the thrills of adulthood. We have been able to fit in ridiculously fun things like dinner with my fabulous roomies and Sel and I have a double date tonight with two of the cutest, most hilarious people in the universe, but it still feels a little hectic to plan anything outside of the above schedule. The thing is I freaking miss school. I know I spent much of my college career moaning about homework/tests/my professors distractingly large mole-hairs, but I wish I was able to do work AND school right now. Cause then I would really have no time and all which would be at the very least interesting…In all honesty, it really is going wonderfully and Sel is happy so I am happy and there is just a whole bunch of happiness going on in our home. On another actually interesting note, little Miss Kit & Mr. Kat get married in TWO WEEKS! Which means I have 14 short days to cutely complie their entire lives and love story on a slideshow. Get excited for them cause I know I amJ

Chicken Little Eats Flowers

Sel is a saint for multiple reasons. Number one was yesterday. Yesterday was a gloomy day because sometimes my brain forgets to think logically and realize the sky is NOT falling. Here is a text I sent Sel in the A.M.

Me “Waaa! If you hadn’t been cute and made me breakfast today it would be the worst day ever. No computer access again today even after being on hold for an hour and my supervisor is gone all day again and I am fat and am ruining your life because I am needy and destroying your happiness cause I am a negative Nancy pants and I am just going to become a homeless person cause I am a street rat and I DO buy that and I also don’t have any friends because I am awful at texting or calling them back even though I love them and actually do want to be friends and I also I am dumb and smell bad and my armpits sweat an abnormal amount and my feet are too fat for normal shoes and my bangs make me look like that creepy old lady from the Anti-Smoking billboards with the hole in her throat and we should never have kids cause I will be an awful mom and then our kids will hate me and then you guys will move to Bermuda and I will live in a park with birds except I won’t end up saving a little boy from two thieves he is trying to outsmart again and also all the sadness in the world.”

Sel:  “You’ll never be homeless because you always have a home in my heart”

Me: “I am too fat to fit in your heart”

Woof! Right? If anyone can even read through that without slapping me back into reality, they also earn a badge of sainthood. Guess how Sel responded instead of being like “Babe, take a chill pill and realize how awesome your life is”? He sent me flowers at work. Beautiful flowers. Flowers that take your breath away with their vibrant colors and beautiful, unique shapes. To top it all off those flowers were in a plum colored vase we get to keep.

The poor flower man got to encounter an awkward moment with a crazy lady for the day. When he walked into the office with those bursting colors of love, I stood up and tried to hug him…He stepped back as if I had tried to taser him. He asked if I was Elle and then I started tearing up a little bit and whispered an affirmative, which he didn’t hear. Which meant he had to ask me if Elle was in the office then because these were for her and not the psycho receptionist who had just tried to hug him. When it finally got across that they were for me, this is how our conversation went.

Me: “Thank you so much! You are so nice!” (While starting to cry a tinsy bit more)

Flower Dude: “They aren’t from me.”

Me: “Ya, I know. It’s just really nice of you to bring them to me”

Flower Dude: “It’s my job. I get paid to do it”

Me: “Well, you have a really nice job and you are nice to do something nice as your job”

Flower Dude: “Um, I gotta go”

He and I are going to be best friends for life. One last time, let’s turn the focus back to that really, really sweet man who is WAY WAY WAY too good to me.