The Write Woman Makes $200,000 Year (287 days remaining in the countdown)

For those concerned citizens who are up all night thinking, “My God, how does a single woman get her vision repaired when she has to drive to the eye doctor winking all the way?” Nothing is impossible—and I didn’t drive to the eye doctor with my broken glasses. I had to do that to pick up some paperwork. I drove to the eye doctor with nothing, which is really stupid, but winking that long gives me a serious headache. But in my defense, I haven’t worked out since my daughter broke them. Apparently she wasn’t quite finished playing Monkey in the Middle. But we can see where quitting the game early can get us, right?

As a final effort to do what I’m good at and something I love, I am continuing to work on my novel/screenplay of Vermillion Beach, however it’s no longer after a beech tree. I figured since the hospital she is in when she goes under the cryonic procedure is on the beach, what the hey! It can be her surname, too. So there you have it!

This morning, while working out and admiring how well my nails are growing and my body is shaping up, I was pleased how my thinking processes are changing. I mean, people who have dishwashers have all the discomfort of having to bend over and get the dishes, usually larger ones, out of the back on the lower rack of the washer. I don’t have that problem because I take my dishwasher everywhere with me—they’re tagged on the ends of my arms. People with windows have to scrub them periodically or they just can’t see, whereas we have no windows—win! When someone’s car is in the garage and the door opener gets jammed, how do they get to work in the morning and how much does it cost to retrieve their vehicle being held hostage? I don’t even have a carport. But with winter coming, a carport might be nice, I guess. But my car won’t be trapped! If my daughter wakes up in the middle of the night with the stomach flu or having bad dreams of the boogie man, I don’t have to get out of bed, I can simply roll over, push her onto the floor and proceed with a good night’s sleep. How many people are begging to trade me places now?

If you’re concerned about why I did this totally insane thing I did to make my daughter run through the house at six-thirty shouting to my son, “Mom makes $200,000 a year, Cameron! Mom makes $200,000 a year -- Woo hoo!” I made little posters written in different script with various colors of marker that state, “I Make $200,000 Per Year!” and hung them all about my house where I will see them. Now some people are probably coming to the conclusion it’s a stupid idea because if I really thought it would work, why wouldn’t I put in my thought process I will win the title of me making $200,000 a year, I can explain that. You see, I’ve heard several times that if one really truly feels as if they own something to the point she can convince herself, it happens. I figure if it doesn’t happen, I’ll drive myself to the point of thinking I am with sheer craziness, and it then it won’t matter anyway. So let me help you see Publisher’s Clearinghouse, or I will be a gazillionaire tomorrow? Because, first of all, I don’t want anyone handing me anything (although if PCH turned up on my doorstep I certainly wouldn’t shoo them away), but I just want to find a way to make my own money. I don’t want a lot of money, but enough to know each month the bills will be paid and we’re having dinner tonight—with meat! I’ll let you know if it works or not, but don’t tell my daughter the news. Just let her think I’m a stingy success.

Speaking of success gone the other way, I have to tell you that every time I saw Bill Cosby, for some reason he reminds me of my father. Granted, my father is white and Bill is black, so it wasn’t that. It also wasn’t money because Bill probably uses his to wipe the mud off his shoes and well, my father planted the seed for my financial future by laughing at the mention of university—need I say more? Finally, I figured it out when I heard Bill Cosby is in court facing charges of drugging women to have them participate sexually with him. THAT’S my father! Now tell me, what must a person think of himself to conclude the only way to have sex is to drug someone and take her without her knowledge? These women can’t even wake up and realize what happened to say, “Wow, if I’d have known it was going to be that good, I would’ve said yes!” How crushing for no one to get in line for the ride, but when it’s over have no recollection of the speeding hills, right?

And thank goodness Utah has a hole in its personal ozone layer. They have what they call Patriarchal Blessings, which is a church appointed fortune teller that sees you when you are of age, acknowledging your future if you live a worthy life. Mine told me at age fifteen that I would become a teacher of some sort. I don’t know if he meant someone to teach my kids well or a substitute teacher (which I’m currently in the running for), or perhaps someone who blogs and informs others. Anyway, I believe what he told me. But the LDS Mormons do NOT think seers should be seen unless they are patriarchs of the church, because they are the devil’s helpers. That seems a bit odd to the average thinker.

But speaking of Utah’s hole, we are finally considering bringing back the death penalty. Great news, right? The lawmakers of Utah say we cannot afford lethal injections, so they will

need to be placed in front of a firing squad instead. Hey, I’m all for that, but if lethal injections cost more than having a bunch of men fire their weapons with only one bullet between them, why not trade out the immediate injection with something like Drain-o. I’ll bet that would kill them if you gave them enough. But when they interviewed the eight men on death row to ask their preference, only three of them wanted it. Excuse me? We’re giving these people a choice in how they will die after taking other lives? I wonder if any of them asked their victims what their choice of demise was—makes you wonder, eh?

Oh and even though I live in Utah, I attend school online through Full Sail University, giving me a whole array of learning materials and experiences. You can imagine, with me being socially retarded without a television set, my dismay to hear of FSU’s campus shooting. (Keep in mind I’m working out at 4:30 a.m. when I hear this news.) Watching the news, it finally dawned on me that it was Florida State University, not even my school. But still, with finals coming up, maybe the guy should have veered away a little more from the drugs and tried to relax with a video game or something. Or maybe he was so exhausted and drugged out he actually thought he was in a video game or some wild movie.

       I’ve gotta ask the movie buffs out there, when you see a second sequel can you tell when the scales are tipping in favor of the writers compared to the favors of the audience? Maybe I should explain a little better what I mean. There are some stories that started off mind-blowing and then stayed there, like HarryPotter. But let me tell you, I am not a Harry Potter fanatic like a lot of people are, just as I’m not a Star Wars or Star Trek nerd, either. (Okay, when I was younger, I was a Trekkie, but that's old news.) But when a series is well written, you’ve gotta respect the job they’ve done and the time put into it, don’t you? On the other hand, The Hunger Games is a great movie set the pace for future movies to catch up to, but Catching Fire? What a huge, huge, and unforgivable let down. The second movie is like the part of a television show

just before a commercial. When it was over, the audience is left sitting in the dark wondering what happens at the end because this certainly wasn’t it. I can’t speak for everyone, so I never try to, but this pathetic reprise does not have the excitement built into it for a line of people waiting overnight on the curbs to be the first to see it. In a daring struggle to regain the audience, the third movie, Mockingjay claims to be the most violent yet and is itching to bring female leading roles out of the miniscule 15% films now hold. I guess if you’re into Saw and other movies with gore, you may be excited. Personally, I like stories. But stories must be fluid because if you lose your audience in the middle of the book, they’re not coming back to read the end. I can’t wait to read the reviews. Hey, maybe I’ll be utterly shocked with them because sometimes change it good.

With contacts and shrinking a little every day, I’m changing myself and so is my outlook. I could make $200,000 a year, don’t you think? Come on now, you don’t have to hold your breath and make a scene about the whole thing.

The Write Woman’s Right Eye (290 Days before Loosening my Grip on Reality)

Is it a newspaper or a zebra's derriere? It's all the same to me.

 Okay, so I haven’t totally lost vision in my right eye, however after attempting to settle the kids down after a baffling game of Monkey in the Middle, my daughter refused to settle down. I picked her up, drew her across my lap, and her thrashing made the lens pop out the right side of my frames. I understand why I can’t find it, I couldn’t find my butt with both hands right now, but neither of my kids can find it either. (The lens, not my butt.) Honestly, I can’t even see what I’m typing, so I just have to keep my eyes peeled for the ever-popular red squiggle to stay on track. Other than that, all I can see is black lines on a white background.

Yesterday I was forced to drive to the photography place with my resignation papers while squinting one eye to drive, with my one-lensed glasses—tinted no less. In the rearview mirror I resembled a goofy cartoon with one eye darker and larger than the eye without a lens, closed. Perhaps a new-fangled Popeye the Puppy program?

Oh, and please don’t bother texting me, unless you want my son to read it first. (This means to keep it G-rated) He doesn’t always understand what he’s reading and watching me respond must be hilarious. It’s all I can do to get my fingers between my phone and my face to press the buttons.  But, I still managed to change the ringtone I use to wake Cameron up. It’s a really annoying rooster crow, produced by yours truly.

The strangest thing is I used to be a nail-biter—let me rephrase that. I was not a nail-biter, more

Yeah, right. Shut up and let me dream!

like a finger-gnawer with nails so short I never had to worry about cleaning out from under them. There was no “under them” to clean. I was a wreck. But now, I don’t know what caused it, but I’ve magically quit putting them in my mouth. Personally, I believe it's because I work out, releasing stress. So my hair is growing, due to the deal I made with Nikki. I’m losing weight, to appear presentable for the job I no longer have, with a contract at a gym. And I’ll be acquiring contact lenses because my glasses are trashed. I’m going to unwittingly emerge more attractive by the time we move.

Oh, the novel I’ve been working on taught me a valuable lesson yesterday. (Between writing it and reading numerous full-length books for school and taking care of the kids while working out, I’ve been getting up at 3:00 a.m. and going to bed at 9:00 p.m. in order to fit everything in.) See, I made the mistake of allowing the kids to play a game I had downloaded for school. It’s called “The Movies Superstar,” and they love to fire people after they catch them drinking on the job. Anywho, I wrote in the morning for a few hours before taking a shower. When I came back, the kids were taking turns playing the game. I thought it was pretty cool they were getting along so well, so I let them continue. When I finally kicked them off to write some more, I said, “Oh, that’s weird, I should be on about page forty-five by now, but it says I’m on page twenty-two.” They both agreed it was odd. I even switched layouts to see if perhaps in changing it earlier, as I had, I may have altered the page numbers somehow. Deciding I’d better quit playing around and get back to work, I did. I managed to make it to page thirty-two before I needed to go back and check on a quote one of my characters said earlier. That was when it hit me; the first twenty-four pages of my novel had been erased. Holy crap! I started to hit the undo button, thinking out of desperation I may be able to undo some of my work and get the lost pages back, marking lost hours of work. But then it dawned on me that there’s no way to fix the issue by using that method. I will simply need to rewrite that portion again by using the index cards and screenplay I’ve already been working on. Oh yeah, and tell my kids they can unfortunately no longer play on my computer.

If you ever want me to ignore you, say the word “unfortunately” because it always precedes a statement meaning, “and now I’m gong to tell you that life is tough. You're not going to like what I'm about to say.” This turns my brain off faster than a nose-picker on a jumbo tron. Think about having a loved one in the emergency room and the first word out of the doctor’s mouth is unfortunately. Go ahead and start making funeral arrangements, because there’s no good news to come.

This entry is a freebie—so if I make any grammatical or spelling errors, I refuse to be held accountable. And UNFORTUNATELY, I will not be adding another blog until later this week, when I can see properly.  So, have a good day and remember, no matter how bad you’ve got it, someone else has it worse! Thinking this always makes me smile.

The Write Woman Explains Why Happy Chef Needs Bejeweled to Procreate Properly (294 Days Remaining)

In expressing how much my eight-year-old daughter loves my twelve-year-old son, she wants to know why they can’t marry. “I’m working right now, can it wait?” I ask, hoping either she will forget or some ingenious idea will strike that sounds like I know everything. It can’t wait, apparently, because she rephrases it several different ways, trying to break the barrier. What can I say? She’s tenacious. At least she isn't trying to marry a loser, right?

I feel it’s important to express in terminology she can relate to, being a kid and all, yet not making me appear as a clumsy oaf. As a former dancer, you may think I’m so familiar with the subject I can recite it in reverse. The truth is I can if it’s in four-letter words, but this is my daughter. So I figured if I expressed The Speech in relation to video games, she will more than likely get it.

“Okay,” I say, “You know how much you like the game Happy Chef?” Her head nods emphatically, so I follow up with, “That’s me! I’m Happy Chef. And I have two little games of my own that are both Happy Chef games, even though some of the programming is a tiny bit different because you’re a girl and he’s a boy, but you still have the Happy Chef genes.” Hooray, her anxious will to understand is forming.

The gene pool is where all the programming comes from when a baby is made, and the programmer says, “I want the mouth of this game and the eyes of that game to create a new game,” controlling it. I follow up with, “The gene pool thinks it’s getting two different games to mess around with to create its new game, right? But when the programmer says to use Happy Chef eyes, it scrolls down to find the Happy Chefs eyes to find green and blue. Because it can’t tell which ones to use, it may create blue eyes like yours, or green like your brothers. But what if it is so confused it gives the baby one eye of each color or maybe even three eyes because both colors are Happy Chef eyes?” My daughter watches, deep in thought, brain in high gear.

“But if the programmer says ‘Oh I can either use Happy Chef eyes or Bejeweled eyes,’ because that’s what your husband has, it isn’t confused. The same goes for whether the new baby game will be dark colored, smart, funny, tall, etc. Then it creates a whole new game from Happy Chef and Bejeweled. Maybe it’s called Happy Jeweled. Does that make sense?” Satisfied because either she got it, or she was so baffled she quit, I was just content with her not asking the gender of the Happy Jeweled baby.

Perhaps someone needs to come up with a computer generated Birds and Bees lesson to explain this concept in a fun way to kids. But parents would rather have their kids find out from their friends, with intentions of doing it themselves. Even when parents find the time, often they are lost in rationalizing, or perhaps have no clue themselves. But there’s gotta be a fun way for kids to get the facts before they discover the four-letter terminology from their friends at school. In case you were unaware, the stork story is grounded.