Mandajuice

Nanowrimo Day 8

I spent too much time today backtracking and trying to figure out what the hell to do with my plot. I'm not used to writing this fast! Except when it's my own idea, of course.

Anyway, here's today's sample of hasty fiction pudding:

Every other man with whom I’d shared my secret had been horrified. Literally and utterly appalled. It was written on their faces, in the way they physically recoiled from my touch after hearing the truth.

I was under thirty and naturally blond. I had an 18-inch waist and a Japanese convertible. I wasn’t supposed to be anyone’s mommy. I never saw any of those other men again and the expression on Brandon’s face told me he was ready to join the pack.

Nanowrimo Day 7

In spite of everything else going on with us - and there's plenty - I'm still making word count for nanowrimo. I feel like the book is a WRECK. I'm not used to writing so much without stopping to edit!

The next morning I woke up to find a single pink rose on my door step. Beneath it sat a square white envelope with the letter “L” written on it in Colin’s curly left-handed script. There was no other message inside, just a five-by-seven photograph of a ratty leather restaurant booth. I recognized it immediately as one of Colin’s compositions: intentionally off-center, taken without a flash, slightly grainy and framed with a thin white border. The only light in the photo came from from the dented lamp that hung above the table, a rustic chandelier made from an empty coffee can and a single bare light bulb. 

It was the exact spot in Dublin, Ireland where he’d first kissed me ten years ago.

Thirty minutes

Today I decided that all this writing and reading and general household neglect is not making me the best mother. Or even a passing one. I'm no where close to the mother I used to be, but that doesn't mean I can't at least TRY to be better. Even when I'm at my lowest, which I'm pretty sure is where I am, I have something to give my kids: I can still give them myself.

So today I gave Alex 30 minutes.

It doesn't sound like much and I'll be the first to admit that it isn't enough.

But thirty minutes without any interference - no TV, computer, Kindle, books, iphone or otherwise, no driving anywhere or dirty dishes or other household distractions - well, that's a lot more than I've BEEN giving my children. So it was a good place to start. I told him about it in the morning so he'd have plenty of time to choose what he wanted to do and by the time his sister went down for her nap in the afternoon, he had our thirty minutes all planned out.

We played legos, then cards (with a trick deck!) then more legos, then more cards. I ended up giving him more than an hour of my complete, undivided attention.

And he loved it.

And I need to make sure that if nothing else, I do at LEAST this every day. It's only 30 minutes. It might not make me a GOOD mother, but it's better than nothing.

I'm sick of feeling like nothing.

Nanowrimo Day 6

Six days and 10,004 words later, I'm still in it to win it. And by win it, I mean: learn how to write an Irish accent without it sounding like a scene from SHREK  or an ad for Lucky Charms.

“Knock it off, Colin,” I whispered against his mouth, even though his hands felt like they were right where they belonged. “Seriously. I have a boyfriend.”

“If I thought for even a moment that you were in love with that scrawny streak of piss, I’d leave ye be, but we both know yer not.”

Nanowrimo Day 5

Until I can come up with something better, I've decided to call my current work-in-progress:

PIRATES OF THE APOCALYPSE!

Which is hilarious because it's a contemporary romance-slash-family drama that features neither pirates, nor an apocalypse (unless you count a teenage pregnancy as the second coming).

I'm having SO MUCH FUN writing this, mostly because I can let go of my inner critic and write utter CRAP and laugh at myself. It's going to be a bitch to edit come December.

Here's today's fictional dilly-dally, in which I contrast my protagonist's current boyfriend with her old flame.

Brandon arrived first, in a stiff cloud of still-crisp work-shirt and traffic-induced angst, his dark blue eyes glued to the screen of his cellphone. He gave me the same distracted kiss on the cheek that he gave every other member of my family.

Colin, on the other hand, came home like a lost nomad who’d been handed a GPS. A GPS that had been pre-programmed with my body as the home address. I was the first and only person he noticed. Seeing him walk through the front door with his tie loosened and a five o’clock shadow reminded me of my father. All that stifled intensity dispersed like a whisper at the sight of his beloved.

Nanowrimo Day 4

Still chugging along making word count! Today's quick flash of fiction:

I took a deep breath and tried to rearrange my universe to include a Colin Quinn who still looked and sounded and smelled like the same slippery pirate he’d always been, but who was now, in fact, a pirate with a steady job and a fresh-cut sense of responsibility. It was a nut my mind couldn’t quite crack.

Three

My daughter spends most of her three-year-old days flailing her limbs wildly around the house in various stages of undress. She calls this DANCING and while she's doing it, she also makes ups nonsense words and LA-LA-LA's at the top of her lungs, which she calls singing.

I call it awesome.

I also call it the first of what will undoubtedly become a long list of Things That Freak Me Out Because holy crap on a cracker, THAT'S ME.

I spent 96% of my free time as a child singing nonsense songs and dancing. There is VIDEO evidence of this trait my daughter and I share. It's almost as if she's mimicking the 4-year-old me. The strange this is that, well, OBVIOUSLY, I never run around the house flailing my limbs askew and singing, so she didn't learn this from me. She just... DOES it. The same way she sasses her brother and cocks her head to the side to chastise me and puts her hands on her hips.

Do you know what the craziest part is?

I NEVER WANTED ANY DAUGHTERS.

I wanted two boys.

And yeah, I should probably lie like everyone else does and say "it didn't matter as long as the baby was healthy," but it DID used to matter to me. I was terrified of having a daughter.

TERRIFIED.

And now, like every mother who ever went before me, I can't bring myself to imagine a world without my daughter in it. I can't believe I ever wished she had a penis! What was I thinking. The fact that she was born without one enriches my life in ways I never could have imagined.

The only description I can come up with for the way I feel about her is this: SHE'S MY GIRL.

I don't believe in God, not yet, but the universe sure seemed to know what I needed a lot better than I did.

Nanowrimo Day 3

In which we meet our HERO at long last. (I'm totally writing a romance novel, in case you were wondering.) Just pretend the following (cheesy, romantic) text is being read aloud in an Irish accent (think Colin Farrell) (Also, please think: YUMM):

“I’ll let you in if you promise to keep your hands to yourself,” she said. She still hadn’t looked up at him yet.

“I’ll promise ye no such thing,” he said. He pushed his way through the door and pulled the wee vixen against his chest. She felt like twilight in his arms, half with him, half elsewhere, like an itch he couldn’t quite reach. He wasn’t sure what else to expect from her. All he knew was the he’d missed her the way a dead man missed his pulse.

Writing in third person has come with a rather steep learning curve. The blogger in me wants to say "I" at every turn. Nanowrimo is forcing my internal editor t0 weep some pretty pitiful tears.

Nanowrimo Day 2

Another day, another exhilarating race for word count! Today's sharing is brought to you by the following quick and dirty attempt to get my character descriptions down to a single paragraph.

Brandon ran every morning before dawn, but instead of bulking him up, it left him gangly-limbed, long-muscled and regular. We'd been sleeping together for a year and I still had no idea what the man actually smelled like because his skin was always hidden under designer sunblock and androgynous cologne.

In non-fiction news, I have a job interview tomorrow. Wish me luck.

The Fool-Proof Friend Making Strategy, Take two

I'm reposting an old classic today for two reasons: A) Maybe you haven't already read it (and that makes it NEW content!) and B) I spent most of this year NOT FOLLOWING MY OWN ADVICE, which was a really stupid way to lose one of my best friends. I wanted to post this again as a reminder to myself about how lame it is to ever try to be something I'm not.

The Fool-Proof Friend-Making Strategy

I should probably back up for a minute and admit that I used to ROYALLY SUCK at making friends.  I have literally ZERO friends from college and only a handful of friends from high school.  In my twenties, before having Alex at 27, I had made NO friends.  As in none.  NADA.  Not a one. 

And it was totally my fault. 

Sure, it was harder back then because I didn't have kids to help me break the ice, but I had a dog!  And (potentially) hobbies!  And a job!  But the truth is that I was miserably unhappy for most of my twenties and I wasn't in a very good place.  I couldn't BE the friend I needed others to be for me, so my friendships were always short-lived and completely unfulfilling. 

So that's where I'll start my Fool-Proof Friend-Making Strategy:

1.  BE THE FRIEND YOU WANT TO HAVE. 
I love SchnozzFest's line from that post (if you haven't read THAT POST, go read it now.  It's long.  I'll wait.) in which she says:

"Life is only like high school if you act like you are in high school."

NO KIDDING.  I never do ANY OF THAT CRAP.  If someone doesn't call me back, I assume THEY ARE BUSY.  I don't take it personally.  It doesn't hurt my itty bitty feelings and I don't let my brain start festering the idea that so and so must hate me or I must have pissed her off somehow.  Because I didn't.  I wouldn't.

Basically, if you want to have friends, you have to GET OVER YOURSELF and realize that being rejected, while incredibly rare, is NOT THE END OF THE WORLD.  In fact, it's not even about you.  It's about THEM.  (The same thing goes for blog troll comments.)  Be confident in the fact that you are a good person, natch, YOU ARE FABULOUS.  Anyone would be LUCKY to have you as a friend! 

If you start to go down that path wherein you PRE-REJECT a potential friend because she might reject you?  STOP YOURSELF.  You're not in High School anymore.  What Schnozz is saying is that if you have a hard time making friends, it's because you're probably making it too hard for others to be friends with you.

This point also refers back to my ONE CRITERIA for potential friends:  Take me as I am.  See?  It goes both ways!  I take my friends for face value.  And why wouldn't I?  They're FABULOUS.

2.  START THE CONVERSATION.
So now that you've worked out your end of the deal and you're, you know, an ADULT and all, say you're at the mall and you spot some cute mom with an adorable purse and chipped toenail polish and you have to figure out how to approach her.  Here's what works for me every. single. time:

"How old is your son (or daughter)?"

The best thing about this question is that even if they give you a one-word answer, you have some room to start a conversation.  You might say, "Four?  Really, I would've thought he was older than that! "  or "God, TWO?  Do you want a swig from this flask I keep in my purse?"  From there I often start a discussion about age differences between kids and/or how many kids you want to have.  I often throw in a story about how hard it was to be pregnant while chasing a two-year-old, a story that includes the prolific mentioning of hemorrhoids.  A little grossness always helps break the ice!  It is rare that I ever experience a conversation lull with a fellow parent because there's so much fodder there, but if it gets quiet, I just ask where she gave birth and whether or not she'd recommend her Gynecologist to me.

If you DON'T have kids, you just need to make sure you ask QUALITATIVE questions.

"How do like living here?"

"What's your major?"

"Is that a tattoo of a monkey throwing poo?"

Start ANYWHERE, the point is to keep the conversation going and see if you have any chemistry with this person.

If you aren't finding potential people to approach in the first place, then you probably just need to get out more.  And I don't mean at the coffee shop or the book store or the bar, where you aren't likely to have enough in common with a random stranger!  Take an interest-specific class, join a club, offer to write the newsletter for your neighborhood HOA.  There's a million places to make friends if you have interesting enough interests.

3. CARRY A PEN AND PAPER WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES. 

I can always tell within a few minutes of first meeting someone if they are a member of Club Awesome or not.  Usually, it's either that they will laugh at my stupid jokes or say something that makes me laugh.  If I feel like I'm clicking with someone new, I whip out my pen and paper, write down my name, phone number and my e-mail address and hand it over to the person, usually saying something like, "It might fun to meet up at the park for a play date."

As for mommy calling cards, I'm lukewarm on them.  A lovely reader actually made me some with my name, web address and phone number on them.  They were super cute and said, "Mom of Alex & Genoa," and I really like them, but I rarely use them mostly because I feel like they come across as an advertisement for my blog, which is potentially off-putting particularly to someone who doesn't blog or know what blogs are about. 

By pulling out the pad of paper, nine times out of ten the person I'm offering my contact info to will take the pen and give me HER contact info, which is what I really want.  If I hand someone a card, chances are that no matter how awesome they are or how much we clicked, they won't have the cojones to contact me.

AND THAT'S OKAY.

The other thing I always do is to write my blog address down under my contact info.  Not only is my blog a HUGE part of my existence, but I figure if someone can stomach what I write here, they're totally and completely friend-worthy.

4.  SEND AN E-MAIL.

This is why I'm so interested in getting the contact info from potential friends: I like to use e-mail.  It's my favorite form of not-in-person communication.  After meeting someone new, I usually send them an e-mail saying how fun it was to meet them, in which I reference something we talked about  and then casually suggest another IN PUBLIC meeting.

If all I've got is a phone number, I put on my big girl panties and USE IT.  I call them up and say hi.  I always like to call with a purpose, rather than just to chat (I'm not much of a phone person), so my calls will most likely be along the lines of  "Hi this is Amanda, Alex and Genoa's mom.  We met at the park remember?  Are you interested in going to the zoo next week?"

I like e-mail better because it doesn't put people on the spot and it gives them time to put their best foot forward with a response.  Also there is nothing more impossible than having a phone conversation when you have two children under the age of five.  NOTHING.

5.  ASK A LOT OF QUESTIONS
When I meet up with someone for the second time, I ask as many questions as I possibly can.  Talking a lot comes naturally to me (Ha!), but when I want to get to know someone, I try to shut my pie-hole at least half the time and asking them their life story question by question is the easiest way to accomplish that. 

Have you always lived here? 
How did you pick that neighborhood? 
Do you have family nearby? 
How long have you been married? 
Where did you go to school?
What does your husband do for a living?
Do you plan to go back to work some day?
What church do you go to?  (And how did you pick it?)

I could go on and on, but it's easy.  What I'm looking for is common ground (and admittedly, LACK OF DRAMA).  The more questions you ask, the sooner you'll know if this is a match made in heaven or hell.

6.  BECOME THE INVITER
The death knell to every potential friendship of my twenties was that I would call or e-mail a friend and then I'd never hear back.  Or I'd invite someone some place and assume it was their turn to invite me next. 

THAT WAS TOTALLY STUPID.

Now I invite people to do things or go places or come over and eat food and then I INVITE THEM AGAIN.  You'll never catch me wasting a second of my life waiting for the phone to ring.  If I want to see my friends, I make it happen.  And here's the important part: I'm pretty sure this makes it EASIER to be my friend.  If you don't return my phone call, I'm going to CALL YOU AGAIN.  And I'm probably going to keep calling you until you change your number.

Admittedly, part of this issue is that I'm an Obsessive-Compulsive Inviter.  I come by my love of entertaining genetically (see exhibit A: My Mother).  Basically what it boils down to is a fundamental need to fill peoples' bellies.  I like to host parties, feed people and give them booze.  I honestly ENJOY that stuff and feel like it's my true vocation in life.  But if you don't feel that way?  DON'T FEAR!  There are plenty of things you can do to see your friends that don't involve cleaning your kitchen floor or mincing garlic.  Take some beer to the park or find a cheap pizza place that your friends all love.  But INVITE THEM.  It makes all the difference.

And that's my Friend Making Manifesto.  I can't emphasize enough how much the new friends I've made here in Vancouver have enriched my life. 

So how did you meet your best friend?  Am I leaving anything out?  Feel free to share.

I should probably back up for a minute and admit that I used to ROYALLY SUCK at making friends.  I have literally ZERO friends from college and only a handful of friends from high school.  In my twenties, before having Alex at 27, I had made NO friends.  As in none.  NADA.  Not a one. 

And it was totally my fault. 

Sure, it was harder back then because I didn't have kids to help me break the ice, but I had a dog!  And (potentially) hobbies!  And a job!  But the truth is that I was miserably unhappy for most of my twenties and I wasn't in a very good place.  I couldn't BE the friend I needed others to be for me, so my friendships were always short-lived and completely unfulfilling. 

So that's where I'll start my Fool-Proof Friend-Making Strategy:

1.  BE THE FRIEND YOU WANT TO HAVE. 
I love SchnozzFest's line from that post (if you haven't read THAT POST, go read it now.  It's long.  I'll wait.) in which she says:

"Life is only like high school if you act like you are in high school."

NO KIDDING.  I never do ANY OF THAT CRAP.  If someone doesn't call me back, I assume THEY ARE BUSY.  I don't take it personally.  It doesn't hurt my itty bitty feelings and I don't let my brain start festering the idea that so and so must hate me or I must have pissed her off somehow.  Because I didn't.  I wouldn't.

Basically, if you want to have friends, you have to GET OVER YOURSELF and realize that being rejected, while incredibly rare, is NOT THE END OF THE WORLD.  In fact, it's not even about you.  It's about THEM.  (The same thing goes for blog troll comments.)  Be confident in the fact that you are a good person, natch, YOU ARE FABULOUS.  Anyone would be LUCKY to have you as a friend! 

If you start to go down that path wherein you PRE-REJECT a potential friend because she might reject you?  STOP YOURSELF.  You're not in High School anymore.  What Schnozz is saying is that if you have a hard time making friends, it's because you're probably making it too hard for others to be friends with you.

This point also refers back to my ONE CRITERIA for potential friends:  Take me as I am.  See?  It goes both ways!  I take my friends for face value.  And why wouldn't I?  They're FABULOUS.

2.  START THE CONVERSATION.
So now that you've worked out your end of the deal and you're, you know, an ADULT and all, say you're at the mall and you spot some cute mom with an adorable purse and chipped toenail polish and you have to figure out how to approach her.  Here's what works for me every. single. time:

"How old is your son (or daughter)?"

The best thing about this question is that even if they give you a one-word answer, you have some room to start a conversation.  You might say, "Four?  Really, I would've thought he was older than that! "  or "God, TWO?  Do you want a swig from this flask I keep in my purse?"  From there I often start a discussion about age differences between kids and/or how many kids you want to have.  I often throw in a story about how hard it was to be pregnant while chasing a two-year-old, a story that includes the prolific mentioning of hemorrhoids.  A little grossness always helps break the ice!  It is rare that I ever experience a conversation lull with a fellow parent because there's so much fodder there, but if it gets quiet, I just ask where she gave birth and whether or not she'd recommend her Gynecologist to me.

If you DON'T have kids, you just need to make sure you ask QUALITATIVE questions.

"How do like living here?"

"What's your major?"

"Is that a tattoo of a monkey throwing poo?"

Start ANYWHERE, the point is to keep the conversation going and see if you have any chemistry with this person.

If you aren't finding potential people to approach in the first place, then you probably just need to get out more.  And I don't mean at the coffee shop or the book store or the bar, where you aren't likely to have enough in common with a random stranger!  Take an interest-specific class, join a club, offer to write the newsletter for your neighborhood HOA.  There's a million places to make friends if you have interesting enough interests.

3. CARRY A PEN AND PAPER WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES. 

I can always tell within a few minutes of first meeting someone if they are a member of Club Awesome or not.  Usually, it's either that they will laugh at my stupid jokes or say something that makes me laugh.  If I feel like I'm clicking with someone new, I whip out my pen and paper, write down my name, phone number and my e-mail address and hand it over to the person, usually saying something like, "It might fun to meet up at the park for a play date."

As for mommy calling cards, I'm lukewarm on them.  A lovely reader actually made me some with my name, web address and phone number on them.  They were super cute and said, "Mom of Alex & Genoa," and I really like them, but I rarely use them mostly because I feel like they come across as an advertisement for my blog, which is potentially off-putting particularly to someone who doesn't blog or know what blogs are about. 

By pulling out the pad of paper, nine times out of ten the person I'm offering my contact info to will take the pen and give me HER contact info, which is what I really want.  If I hand someone a card, chances are that no matter how awesome they are or how much we clicked, they won't have the cojones to contact me.

AND THAT'S OKAY.

The other thing I always do is to write my blog address down under my contact info.  Not only is my blog a HUGE part of my existence, but I figure if someone can stomach what I write here, they're totally and completely friend-worthy.

4.  SEND AN E-MAIL.

This is why I'm so interested in getting the contact info from potential friends: I like to use e-mail.  It's my favorite form of not-in-person communication.  After meeting someone new, I usually send them an e-mail saying how fun it was to meet them, in which I reference something we talked about  and then casually suggest another IN PUBLIC meeting.

If all I've got is a phone number, I put on my big girl panties and USE IT.  I call them up and say hi.  I always like to call with a purpose, rather than just to chat (I'm not much of a phone person), so my calls will most likely be along the lines of  "Hi this is Amanda, Alex and Genoa's mom.  We met at the park remember?  Are you interested in going to the zoo next week?"

I like e-mail better because it doesn't put people on the spot and it gives them time to put their best foot forward with a response.  Also there is nothing more impossible than having a phone conversation when you have two children under the age of five.  NOTHING.

5.  ASK A LOT OF QUESTIONS
When I meet up with someone for the second time, I ask as many questions as I possibly can.  Talking a lot comes naturally to me (Ha!), but when I want to get to know someone, I try to shut my pie-hole at least half the time and asking them their life story question by question is the easiest way to accomplish that. 

Have you always lived here? 
How did you pick that neighborhood? 
Do you have family nearby? 
How long have you been married? 
Where did you go to school?
What does your husband do for a living?
Do you plan to go back to work some day?
What church do you go to?  (And how did you pick it?)

I could go on and on, but it's easy.  What I'm looking for is common ground (and admittedly, LACK OF DRAMA).  The more questions you ask, the sooner you'll know if this is a match made in heaven or hell.

6.  BECOME THE INVITER
The death knell to every potential friendship of my twenties was that I would call or e-mail a friend and then I'd never hear back.  Or I'd invite someone some place and assume it was their turn to invite me next. 

THAT WAS TOTALLY STUPID.

Now I invite people to do things or go places or come over and eat food and then I INVITE THEM AGAIN.  You'll never catch me wasting a second of my life waiting for the phone to ring.  If I want to see my friends, I make it happen.  And here's the important part: I'm pretty sure this makes it EASIER to be my friend.  If you don't return my phone call, I'm going to CALL YOU AGAIN.  And I'm probably going to keep calling you until you change your number.

Admittedly, part of this issue is that I'm an Obsessive-Compulsive Inviter.  I come by my love of entertaining genetically (see exhibit A: My Mother).  Basically what it boils down to is a fundamental need to fill peoples' bellies.  I like to host parties, feed people and give them booze.  I honestly ENJOY that stuff and feel like it's my true vocation in life.  But if you don't feel that way?  DON'T FEAR!  There are plenty of things you can do to see your friends that don't involve cleaning your kitchen floor or mincing garlic.  Take some beer to the park or find a cheap pizza place that your friends all love.  But INVITE THEM.  It makes all the difference.

And that's my Friend Making Manifesto.  I can't emphasize enough how much the new friends I've made here in Vancouver have enriched my life. 

So how did you meet your best friend?  Am I leaving anything out?  Feel free to share.