Weekend

So, well... time for a new week to start. I have a test this week and... stuff needs to be done... *slumps

But enough about that, now is the time to reminisce back to the weekend. I'll try not to be too gory with the details. ~_^

Where to begin... well, in playing in the Jazz Band, we do an annual dinner/dance for people to raise funds for scholarships. Pretty fun to do... pretty fun to experience. This year I was able to convince Pro Boxer to come Saturday night (it is a three-ish night thing). He had come one year right before he proposed (I think it was the first year we did this) and well... I felt bad for him afterward. With me being in one of the bands, all he got to do was sit around and wait for my band to finish playing with people looking on sympathetically. Sad day. But this year Pro Boxer came the same night as my parents and a couple they are good friends with so he didn't have to sit at a table by himself.

Anyway, to pull this off, we had to find a babysitter to watch the kids (and likely have the kids sleep over as the night goes really late). We were able to find some (yay!) and it was a glorious weekend. We were so pumped to have time together that we got all ready and primped hours before we had to drop the kids off... haha.

Today though when we went to get the kids, they seemed happy enough to see me again, but when we left... Bug was sobbing. He had never sobbed so much to leave friends. Which in a way I guess is a good thing... well more than that it is a negative thing in my opinion. Bug was saying things like, "I didn't want to come home with you! I want to stay with my friends!" I was starting to get more than a little hurt that he was acting this way, though I guess I could understand a bit. To be honest, we don't have the kids hang out with other kids very much, probably due in part because Pro Boxer and I are basically hermits and don't get out much. In any case, I was trying to get Bug to understand how his words hurt me, but I'm not sure I got through to him. When I asked, "I really missed you. Did you miss me?" The response was, "No." I realized then that it was pointless to try to get him to understand the pain he was causing and gave up.

No, I understand that he said that probably because, as I said before, we don't have friends his size come over very much. Or go to other people's houses. Having done that, and for an extended period of time, it was bound to be much funner than staying at home with a mom trying to finish homework and a little baby who doesn't know how to play with him with the rules that Bug lays down. I'm trying to not think things like, "Maybe I'm not really all that great of a mom," or being depressed about this, but well... tis hard. And obviously as I am blogging about it, it cut me pretty deep.

On a bit more positive note, the babysitter friend of mine was saying that when Bug and Goof Ball woke up right at seven in the morning, Goof Ball was saying, "Mama, mama..." over and over again. And when she walked in the room he looked at her and shook his head and said, "Mama, mama..." I was glad when she said that, for it shows that he missed me. But well... WHY CAN'T HE CALL ME MAMA TO MY FACE?!?!? When we were driving home, I turned around to look at him and said, "Mama?" Then he got this mischievous look on his face and babbled nonsense words that only babies can understand. *rolls eyes...*

Anyway... tis the end of my rant. Thanks for reading. As always thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

How was your day, Shay?

Oh, you really want to know? Okay, I'll tell you...

day rundown:

1. cavity refill - found out I need a root canal.

2. classes from 11:30-6, three of which I play my trumpet. and they happen to be back to back. (go figure.)

3. bb game - backboard breaks, who do we turn to for sudden entertainment (that everyone ignores anyway)? The band, of course! hence, twenty minutes or more of playing strait (with my already tired lips... none of the firsts are doing well, and even the seconds were complaining) I was starting to get worried for the safety and health of my lips... then while repairing the glass, IT BREAKS AGAIN! *ahem... back to my list...

4. pulled a muscle trying to shovel the around foot of snow to show my love for my honey. I only got half of the driveway finished... and it was the half closest to the garage... the half that we don't even drive the car on... *sigh...

5. and to top it all off, I just found out that my trumpy pendent that one of my friends made for me for Christmas has disappeared. No idea where...

Shay is also kind of behind on homework... Do I need to say that I am not really in a good mood right now? Oooh! Oreos, here I come!!!

Oh, and yes, for those who didn't know, if you play too hard, too long on a trumpet (or I assume any other brass instrument) you can damage your lips. sometimes permanently. yeah... and I have lots of possible damaging playing to do in the next few days... *sigh...

Share the love!

Valentines day is usually not a really huge thing at our house, but I love looking forward to the flowers that Pro Boxer always gets me. This time I also fell in love with the vase! Isn't that beautiful! It seems to have a bit of a brownish tint to it, though you can't tell in the picture.

Share the love people. Whether you be married, dating someone, single, widowed, whatever. Today is a day to celebrate love. All kinds of it, and though the advertisers of America always focus on the romantic love, that doesn't mean that you can't call your parents or kids up and tell them how much you love them. Or even a really good friend that you have. Or many good friends. Share the love, and share it often, but especially on this day, a day dedicated to celebrate love.

Difficulties

I feel like I am dealing with lots of them. Not really in the scope of things dealing with the previous post, in fact some of them are not hidden at all and are open to the world to find out. For one, I have a popped blister on my foot right at the crease of where my toes bend when I walk that could possibly have gotten infected yesterday when it was created and popped in possibly the same jaunt between classes. It hardened overnight (we would have treated it then, but didn't know where our first aid kit was) and this morning we put neosporin on it. Doing so caused a circle of redness and lots of pain, even thought it had stopped hurting during the night sometime. I am keeping an eye on it, but needless to say, I don't really want to go to classes today, well... I don't want to cover it back up, worrying that it might make things worse.

Another fairly obvious difficulty right now is a paper cut I got from carrying around posters yesterday (hmm... seems like they are all stemming from my day yesterday, do I need to say that it wasn't a very good day?) that lies underneath my pinky nail. You know, right in the area where the skin meets the nail. Not much I can do about that, but try to ignore the pain while I type.

Speaking of typing, that is another difficulty I am dealing with. Writing. Not really writing in general, but, well... I don't know how to word this (which I guess could be a difficulty in and of itself, not knowing how to say things when I am an English major... maybe I need to expand my vocabulary...).

The phrase, "What would Jesus do?" isn't really something that is used often in my church being a Latter-day Saint, or more widely known, Mormon. Well, I guess it kind of is, but as far as I can tell, it seems to be more popular in different ... what's the word ...? I know there is one... well, all I can come up with is churches. In different faiths it seems to be more popular to use that phrase than with Mormons. Though I could be wrong. Nevertheless, we, as followers of Christ, try to do our best to be like Christ and to follow His example. What does this have to do with writing? Well I'll show you.

As a writer, I am the mouthpiece you might say, for my characters. Who my characters are, and what they do do not reflect back on me and what I would have done in such situations. That may not make a whole lot of sense, "You made the characters, you can make them do whatever you want them to." Well, yes. But no at the same time. How do I explain this...? As a writer, in my stories, I try to create verisimilitude. "What's that??" Well, to say it grandly (what's more grand than that huge word?), it is trying to emulate real life. To make the readers believe that such a thing could have happened. Even as a fiction writer, as I am trying to perfect, I try to create this verisimilitude, this "real life", this believable story. In my Creative Nonfiction class, I learned that even though it is "nonfiction", meaning based on a true story, apparently it is sometimes hard to still create this verisimilitude. "But it really happened!" the author might say. Well, if it doesn't feel like it could have happened to the reader, then you didn't accomplish it correctly.

Am I making any sense??

That all being said, I wrote a story for my Adv. Fiction class (that I have to turn in today for workshop next week). The characters are nothing like me. Well one of them is to a point. But when push comes to shove, I wouldn't have chosen the choices she did, yet with the character that I made, those choices were right for her. I personally think she choose wrong in fact. *sigh... It might be possible for me to re-write it and make it so she would emulate my values and things more, but I don't think it would be a believable story. Not everything ends up all hunky-dory in the end.

I don't feel like I am condoning what she chose, and in fact, it is obvious through the writing that I don't feel that way at all. Yet I am struggling with the two. Is it wrong for me, as a strong member of the LDS church to have written this? The story starts out in a bar, for one.

This is something that I have really been wondering with, even with my longer story/manga that I have been working on. Yet I worry even about posting this. I don't want people to judge who I am by the things that I write. Knowing my background, I know that life isn't perfect for everyone, and I almost wonder if everything that I write will have some sort of abuse happen to at least one of my characters. In any case, I had a friend read this who is also an English major and who also is LDS. He responded by saying, "It takes courage to address such issues, and I thought you did it very nicely." I still can't help but worry. My whole life wasn't particularly wonderful. Yet at the same time, I had people around me who loved me very much, plus I had the gospel in my life. Other people who have the same issues as I yet don't have the support system I had... what would have happened to them? I think it was with this mind set that I started writing this story. After I have an idea blossom when I start writing, the story just takes on it's own life and I feel like a spectator as it unfolds. Things like what happen in my story do happen, though I hate to admit it, and... I don't know. I sometimes even wonder if I am just making excuses to justify it.

*sigh...

I don't even know if I am making sense to anyone but me. I'm still not sure about actually posting this, but I guess we'll all find out if it does show up. Though I could say that I worry about what people will think of me, I worry more about what my Savior would think of me, and maybe I should just take it up with Him. Maybe I just needed to get this all out. With my background, it makes sense that somethings that I write won't be roses and sunshine throughout the piece right?