But Call Me Betsy

I really must put in fifteen minutes or so trying to come up with something for my Sat. morning writing exercise. The parameters are pretty clear--the action is being observed by a group, the scene should start in the middle of the action, and there has to be a moment when the character is described by someone else. I wonder how many people will have her looking at herself in the mirror-maybe none, because she is supposed to be being watched by others. I already blew all of my suggestions by throwing them out to the class during our online meeting, so I can't use any of them. Retirement party, wedding, bachelorette party...Where else do people gather to do things? An AA meeting, that would be like the beginning of Fight Club . An AA meeting where she's not actually an alcoholic. A yoga class. The fat girl in the yoga class. A meditation group. An operating room and she's the  patient. One valuable piece of advice from the class is how when you're writing, you should j...

Missed the first fifteen minutes and can't really pay attention because of my class which is happening concurrently. That short-haired girl hates the outdoors--Kelsey. So what if she hates being outdoors? She even admitted that she is tired from trying to smile all the time and it's making her face hurt. I wouldn't want to be there either.  One girl is dressed as an American flag (she's also a virgin. A super patriotic virgin). All of the girls appear to be wearing tiny life buoys/microphones. The girls are being interviewed by some blond women who may or may not be related to Chris. The one other blond girls says that she wants Chris to be like her grandpa. That quote is taken out of context, but still is weirdly put. Other stuff happens and there are two virgins present, and one of them is the girl with the super fake long Bambi eyelashes who admits that she has never had a boyfriend. She sneaks into his tent to tell him that she's virgin and only does anal ...

I had a dream last night that I was going back to high school, I think as some kind of 21 Jump Street undercover cop posing as a high school student. This is because I still see myself as appearing to be 16 years old, and am continually shocked when a reflective surface or photograph proves otherwise. Or when I see high school friends on Facebook and think, Wow, she looks old! And then I realize that she and I are the same age and she would likely say the same about me. In this dream, I was attending high school in Seattle and had some confidence that I wouldn't be intimidated because, in my dream, I had previously been a teenager in a major city (the city itself wasn't specified).  I spent the first part of my morning (in the dream) getting my ID picture taken over and over again as I strove for an authentic laugh/smile. When all of the photos came back (the guy took like 50 of them), every single one showed my crooked front tooth in high relief, blinding white, it was all y...

And so there were. God, in this case, is ABC and Jesus is Chris. Or Chris is Jesus. At least to all of these women, he appears to be. I hope this week, I am able to save this post so that you can get the minute by minute nonsense, even though I am again only half paying attention due to also taking an online writing class for the first hour. Jimmy Kimmel will be in this episode and the only reason I only kind of like him is because he dated Sarah Silverman. Show starts with ominous music for no reason that I can discern except that JK is there to wake up a gaped mouth Chris, who sleeps on his side with his hand under his head like a little baby. I am again struck by the fact that he has a large body, possibly one which will run to fat if he eats too much corn. Maybe JK is on the show to provide some actual humor which is largely non-existent most of the time, except for the 30 seconds of bloopers they sometimes show at the very end. I wonder how many of these women have no ...

Last week, if you will recall, we learned that Mary has taken a room at a very fancy hotel in order to shag with her would be lover. We open up with the two of them in bed together, she wearing a very lovely white slip of a nightgown that I envy, he watching her in a way that could be stalker-ish. Will he turn out to be a cad? He says, "Have you ever considered breast implants, my darling?" Dan said that. Cut to a scene with Edie and the Crawley's having breakfast in front of a giant painting. Next, Barrows interrupts Mr. Carson to use the telly-phone to place an ad-vert-is-ment (pronounced exactly like that). Mary is giving no clue as to whether or not she enjoyed her time with Todd or Tad or Tony (can't recall his name). Did he make her nether regions go a-quiver? We have no clue. He kisses her politely on the street outside of the hotel by their good bye is espied by a fat man I don't recognize The Irish interloped is having tea with the plain schooltea...

Fuck the internet connection at Small World--it doesn't work for me and the user name and password printed on the flimsy receipt is smudged and difficult to read, very similar to the password that Verizon provides where every other symbol could be a small letter, a cap letter, or a number. I wonder if some genius at Verizon (or at SW) might one day say, Hey, people seem to want to be able to use the internet connection to log on. Why not make that easier? I'm also annoyed because I choose the wrong line to wait in--it was a difficult decision. Two older ladies, both with their wallets all ready, but the one I was standing behind said something like, For my first order, I'd like a small decaf Americano with whipped mocha chai on top. I gambled and moved to the next line, and was dismayed to find that this lady was on a dogged search for quarters in her seemingly bottomless handbag. Thirdly, and lastly (for now), there's a kid in here who is talking to no one I can se...

B arely paid attention to my online writing class on Monday night because The Bachelor was on at the same time and because I did not have a copy of the reading assignment with me. One suggestion the teacher had that seemed wise is to use our daily journal not just to write what happened in this diary-ish way, but to write in scene instead, to use it to hone our descriptive muscles and scene development. This week, the one-page writing assignment is to describe the action of a character from a third person perspective, the character going about her day engaged in a specific activity. My mind goes blank. I think of things like describing the woman at the Widow McCray's Bed and Breakfast, because there's a conflict there between her job (being a hostess) and her personality (not seeming to like people). I guess for today, I could just start with that. And try not to check my Facebook in the meantime. The b& b experience comes to mind because it is so rich with  contradictio...

After an hour and twenty minutes of pithy yet intelligent, funny yet revealing, crass yet delicate writing about The Bachelor , my entire blog post vanished into the autumn mist. You get this instead, because I can't bear to go through it from the beginning.

I am confused by all of the maids mingling with all of the gentry as they are trying to work together to figure out how to create a better cricket field or something. Who is this little midget lady? Daisy's mum? James the footman is kicked off the show for getting caught having sex with the actress who played Ducky in  Four Weddings and a Funeral . Jimmy says he's grateful that he and the gay footman have become friends, because he didn't expect to be able to relate to a proper dandy. He wishes him happiness, saying in not so many words that he hopes he finds a boyfriend. My mother explained to me last week that Eddie set the fire in her boudoir on purpose, as she is desperate to be near her illegitimate baby who is being raised by a volunteer fireman. After lunch, she goes over to see the baby, who someone named Marigold. She and the husband are in cahoots to try to manufacture a reason for Edith to be around the baby more and the adopted mother does not like it. I w...

OMG, everyone, I'm so excited to be about to begin this journey of clichés and roses. And guess what? This particular episode is three hours long. And I do not still know how to add images easily, so it will be all text. AND I am also multi-tasking because I signed up for an online writing class and it runs from 8 to 9, so I may not be able to comment on every single awkward yet not actually funny moment. I do like Chris though because he's from Iowa. Lots of male models originate in the Midwest, a little known fact that I just made up. ABC is really raising the stakes this time. Having finally realized after 42 seasons of a show that draws millions of viewers but costs very little to make, they've decided to subject us to three hours of previews and flashbacks. They're accomplishing this by making Chris sift through 30 crazy women instead of 20 and eliminating however many. QQ: If this is a live show, how is it that Chris the host already knows that this will th...

By a stroke of luck, I happened to see in the paper today that the première of season 5 of DA is on tonight. I have little to no recollection of how we ended the last season. Was that when Matthew died? Are we going to be forced to see Shirley McClain again? Have they killed off the wife yet, so we don't have to watch the bad acting of Elizabeth McGovern? I believe where we left off was that Anna suspects her husband of murdering the man's maid who raped her. I missed the first five minutes, but here we are, with Edith visiting the poor farmers who have her illegitimate baby girl, now age two. She leaves crying and wheeling her bike. Maggie Smith has made friends with dead Matthew's mom (it's going to take me a while to remember their names, perhaps all season). That blond cousin will not leave Downton and she will likely continue to slut up the place. I can't keep the alliances straight. I really should've done a refresher course in the characters. Lord G...

In case you don't know what an infograph is, it's a way to visually represent stats in a way that is more palatable and interesting than just strict information. I of course did a Google search about how to make them and there are programs that allow you to DIY, but I don't have the patience to learn them. Instead, I'll do the poor man's version, as I've been thinking a lot lately about important life events. Here are mine, in a nutshell, as the kids like to say these days:  22 moves        5 states lived in   4 serious boyfriends     7 university jobs     5 people close to me who have died     5 pets owned, two dead   1 broken bone     45 birthdays 0 known STDs

I have made no new years resolutions, other than this nebulous one that says I will write more, or try to write every day and also try to write a blog post at least three times a week. I am so easily distracted, my mom said that she thinks I have ADD and maybe she's right, I can always think of something else I should be doing or looking up or checking. At this moment, I am contemplating whether or not to relocate to the living room where Dan is watching something and then I'm also distracted, wondering if I should ask him what he's watching, so I could be more specific. Or is this chair to low and so perhaps I should get a cushion to improve my writing and posture and also, I just sent a text to Luke recently, asking him if I should feed Bob, the frog, and I'm not sure if he wrote back yet, so I should probably check that too.  A constant struggle, all day long, to stay focused so that I can finish a task. If it's a household chore I need to do (laundry, unload...