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Yes, Motley and I are now Smart Girls. I bought us both smart phones tonight. I stalked eBay the past two nights pricing phones. I checked with T-Mobile to see how much new ones would cost. I just want more functionality. Something I didn’t think I wanted last November when I got the Samsung Stripe and re-upped with T-Mobile.  Yeah, well since November I found blogging and Twitter and Flickr. Needs change. My tiny little Samsung sucks. I bought a new Dash.

As for Motley, she has a fairly new Razr. We re-upped her not that long ago too. She dropped her phone in the sink. HARD. Now it doesn’t function very well. There are a few places I don’t take my phone for this very reason. Kitchen. Fire. Water. Bad for my phone. Bathroom. Water. Toilet. Even more bad for my phone.  So my phone doesn’t go to either of those places. Apparently, Motley thought the phone was permanently attached to her hand because she texts, IMs, and twats on it so much. Then she went in the kitchen and found out that wasn’t true. Surprise, surprise. So, being the good mom that I am *rolls eyes*, I got her a used BlackBerry 8700G.

Now, don’t you wish I was your mom?

I have a month’s worth of vacation stored up. I’m using 2 days this week though. However, after 9 years at my company, I still feel the need for that stockpile of vacation hours. I don’t think I’m gonna get fired, even on my most frustrated days. Yet, I still need the security blanket those hours provide. So, no vacation for me.

This weekend will feel like a vacation for me. Four whole days that I don’t have to go to the office. Four whole days where I can maybe spend a little money. Four days where I will get to spend some time with people I enjoy. Maybe that’s the big draw to these 2 days that I took off. I can relax and look forward to meeting people who make me laugh, make me cry, and make me feel alive. If not for these people, I would spend those 4 days in my house, at my computer, writing. Not going out. Not seeing people. Not laughing or having fun.

I’m getting old. I need more fun. I need to feel that my life wasn’t spent worrying and stressing and being miserable. These four days will be a ray of sunshine in the bleakness I usually inhabit. I’m soooo looking forward to it. So maybe it’s not a vacation. Somehow, in my heart, it still feels like one.

If you get a chance, stop by my bitch Mary’s blog to say Happy Birthday. She has some facts on there related to the day she was born. I like the Led Zeppelin fact. Only Mary would be born on a day John Bonham was arrested for getting in a fight. HEH. Hope you have a great day, Mare!

Oh, and just because UMB said he liked me for being a dirty girl… Happy Dirty Girl love to you all! MUAH!

The IRS rebate check hit my mailbox today. My return had my old PO box on it so I mailed them a change of address. Did they manage to get the correct address on my check? NO. Bastards. Did they send the check to my old PO Box? NO. Bitches. Whoever got my change of address transposed the numbers when entering it into their system. Morons. Grrr.

Since I was flush, I ordered a white pizza. And boneless hot wings. The wings were a little warm so I drank a few bottles of water with dinner. I’m full now. Thanks Dubya.

It seems like a day doesn’t go by that something doesn’t happen to make me fear my mortality. I’m sure one of the reasons I write about immortals is that I’m quite afraid of dying. Today, I got to work and discovered my co-worker’s husband had died in his sleep on Saturday. This is the second of my co-workers to lose a husband. It’s shocking. And heartbreaking.

With my mortality feeling very fresh and raw, I managed to get through the day. However, while others might feel that making sure someone has their “power of blog” is part of making arrangements, I know that’s not at all at the top of my list. I worry about Motley. I mean, the kid is already struggling. If something happens to me, she has no one. No parents. No grandparents. No family. I’m horribly afraid of what will happen to her if something happens to me.

I can’t even leave her much. 15K in an insurance policy from my work. That’s it. I own my car and some household appliances. Motley wouldn’t be able to stay in the condo we live in. She couldn’t pay for it, even if she had a roommate. This situation totally freaks me out.

I told her not to spend anything on me. If I’m still working for the cemetery, they will pay for everything except things like a burial permit, death certificates, and an alternative container to cremate me in. The only thing I wanted her to spend on was a nice urn that doubles as a jewelry box to keep me in. It should cost very little of the 15K to dispose of me. And I want it that way. She will need that money.

Fear drives a lot of the things I do. When I yell at her to clean up and stuff, I’m not just being pissy because there’s trash to go out and dust and dirt. As an asthmatic who can’t afford her meds because the co-pays are too much, my life often feels very fragile, especially when dirt and dust affect my breathing. All it would take is a virus or a bad asthma attack and Motley would be an orphan. And that totally scares me. Not for me so much, but for her.

Over the weekend, ShinyBitch went to CrueFest. She discovered Papa Roach. Rott and I have been fans for awhile, since the first CD. For my Tuesday Tune, I thought I’d play some Papa Roach. Since my theme today has been a sad one, I chose Roses On My Grave. I’m not going to be buried so there is no need for roses for me.

Papa Roach-Roses On My Grave

Go hug the people who matter to you today. You never know what you may wake up to. Or who may be gone when you open your eyes.

It felt like a long weekend. Probably because I spent so much of it writing. Next weekend will be a true long weekend since I spent some of my much horded vacation hours and took Friday and Monday off. I wasn’t sure if I would need recovery time since it’s Dave Diego next weekend. When it comes to bloggers, I’ve only met Hilly and Karl thus far, so Motley and I are truly excited about this event. Not that Hilly and Karl aren’t the pinnacle of bloggers, but you know what I mean.

I went to Blog Talk Radio yesterday to set a reminder for Turnbaby’s anniversary show, even though I knew I wasn’t going to get to listen to the whole thing. I had a Bar writer’s meeting online that I knew would pull me away at some point. However, when I went to set the reminder, I noticed a show that was on called The Mortal Vampire. Me being me, I had to check it out.

The Mortal Vampire seemed really cool and his chatroom was hopping. His guest was Bret Jordan who is an author and artist. They were talking about writing and someone in the chat asked how I’d found the show. So I told them about The Bar and that I write vampires. Bret instantly offered to put a link to The Bar on his links page. Very, very cool. I really enjoyed the show and will be listening again in the future. Many thanks to The Mortal Vampire and Bret Jordan for the plug.

Well, it is Monday, and I do have a Marcus for you. First, I have to say that I am just totally in lust with Christian de la Fuente from In Plain Sight. This guy really pushes my buttons which doesn’t happen very often with celebs. I think I totally called it last Monday when I said he was headed for Marcus status. Not that he would ever take Marcus’ place. No man could do that. I’m more than in lust with Marcus. If I ever met him in person, I would be a babbling fool because he reduces me to complete mush. Really, both these guys more than float my boat!

Last week there was a call for a shirtless Marcus so I’ve got one of those for you today. He’s young here, not that he’s old now, but 39 is old for a model. I guess it’s part of his supermodel status that he still looks good and is still working. Not a lot of guys look as good as he does at 39. He’s certainly inspiration for me when I’m writing hot scenes. My muse doesn’t really help me with those. He just tosses a few Marcus photos at me and heads off to get drunk. He knows the Marcus pictures will invoke the hottest of sex scenes.

I want to call out my thanks to Jen from Redneck Romance Writer and Susan from West of Mars for giving my Zanctuary writing contest entry a lookover yesterday. I appreciated the time you ladies took to read the piece and give me your opinions. The rest of you will get to read Silver Lining after the contest is over. The inspiration came from my past (the dude from yesterday), from Marcus and Christian, from a Lady Antebellum song, and from stuff that happens to people online. It’s an emotional piece from the get go, and yes, there is a sex scene! YAY!

Hope you all have a great Monday with whoever floats your boat!

Okay, my muse was in a benevolent mood. He didn’t fuck me at all. He kissed me really hard though, and my past came back to haunt me. Fortunately, I think that was what my muse was trying for because I ditched my original idea and let my past, and all the inherent emotions that go with it, seep into my writing.

See, I’d had this idea about meshing together bits of Defending Your Life and the Wizard of Oz into this surreal piece about a woman swept up into a tornado. She meets the Grim Reaper and he does a Defending Your Love Life thing on her because she’s got a thing about “type”. She’s met a lot of really nice guys who were attractive and interested in her, but if they weren’t bad boys, she wasn’t interested. The Grim Reaper shows her what her narrowminded attitude has caused her to miss out on. In the end, after she wakes up on a stretcher and sees her mangled car, she falls for the nice guy EMT. Meanwhile, it’s revealed that the Reaper is really Cupid. He and the Reaper traded places and the Reaper played the part of a bad boy who showed the woman that bad boys sometimes really are just bad. Oh, and the EMT she falls for in the end, totally looks like the surfer dude persona Cupid had on when he was playing the Reaper. Twisted, isn’t it?

At any rate, I set aside Defending Your Love Life. I wasn’t feeling it for this contest. I was feeling really crappy that I had posted my dream when I should have saved it for the contest. I mean, that piece was HOT! So I was moping, feeling pissy and depressed because my muse was fucking me with Defending Your Love Life, and because I really wanted another piece reminiscent of the dream piece for this contest. That’s about the time my muse decided to give me the wake up call kiss.

He made me remember my past and all the people I’ve left behind. One in particular. Maybe it’s because Hilly and Karl are in SF that I was thinking of this guy. Here’s some pics from when we were all in SF together.

It was a long time ago, but I remember what a great time we had.

So the muse reminded me of this and the idea was born. I worked on it all day yesterday. No Twitter, barely any IM. It was over 5K words so I had to pare it down. I was pretty tired by the time it was finished so I worked on the rough draft a little this morning. It is definitely in the style of the dream, filled with a lot of emotion, and, of course, some sex at the end. The point to the piece was to tug at the reader’s heartstrings. I was listening to that Lady Antebellum song that talks about silver linings and that’s where my theme came from. The piece made me tear up when I read it this morning, but that could just be because I know where I had to dig these emotions out of.

My muse is fickle and yeah, he messes with me quite a bit. I think he was dead on this time though. I don’t care if I win this contest or not, because I know that the main character’s feelings are right where they ought to be. And I know that if I were in her shoes… I would do the same thing. Sometimes your past just isn’t as far away as you think it is. Tapping into those feelings is like a vampire tapping into a vein. Your blood flows just as swiftly now as it did back then.

I could dedicate this contest piece to the man in that photo up there, but that’s not who it is truly meant for. It’s for that woman in the photo, who still resides inside me somewhere. I know she still wants to believe, but she hasn’t taken out that golden medallion in years because essentially she’s given up that dream. It’s sad, but she knows her ending would not be the same as the one in the contest piece. Still, that sadness wrought those 5,000 words. When the contest is over, whether I win or place or lose, I’ll post the piece for you all and you can judge it. If it makes you smile or brings a tear to your eyes… I will feel like a winner.

So my last blog post was hot, wasn’t it? I love it when the words flow from me, and they’re tight and passionate and so perfect for a freaking contest… but I don’t use it for such. My contest entry for the Zanctuary writing contest is dragging. It’s actually not flowing which makes it rough going aka work. I guess that should tell me something, huh?

Then yesterday’s blog post just flowed from my fingers when I was half asleep. The words were all perfect. I couldn’t really find any fault in the way I described it. It happened just like that in my dream, but I don’t know how I articulated it so well when I was half asleep and not yet caffeinated.

What kind of muse inspires something as perfect as yesterday’s bit when I’m not even awake, but can’t make Defending Your Love Life work? And where is this muse? Why does he hide on me all the time? He’s a total hit and run lover. Yesterday, he showed up, out of the blue, and fucked me in a good way. When I was working on Defending Your Love Life, the muse was there… but he was fucking me in the bad way. I’ve decided that there is nothing I can do but admit that, while I have a writing/creative muse… he’s also a Fuck Me Muse.

My muse takes great delight in fucking with me and fucking me. He hides out, snacking on my writing bites, getting fat and happy and giving me nothing but silence. Then he goes all bulimic, gets all buff and hard bodied and shows up to inspire something hot and riveting. He is a fickle fucker. I shouldn’t be able to sit down the way this muse fucks me up the ass repeatedly.

This weekend I’ve gotta figure out what I’m doing for this contest. I need another bit like yesterday’s. Longer and hotter though. Something I’ve never posted before. I mean, I was second last year. I gotta defend that and try for number one, don’t I?

I don’t have a lot of faith that my muse will show up, but you never know. I guess I should get the lube out just in case though, eh?