Tag Archives: Writing

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A prepost shameless self promotion: my first short story publication is on sale now in e-book form on Amazon Kindle store for $0.99. It’s cheaper than most candy and you should definitely check it out. The link to my author page is on the side bar.

My husband and I have debated a while now, whether we should give our now 10-year-old social butterfly a cellphone. It wasn’t so much a debate as my flat-out refusal. Maybe I refused because I didn’t want to admit he was growing up, maybe I refused because I’m cheap. Maybe I refused because I just simply thought 10 was way to young to have a cellphone.

My husband needed to upgrade his phone, and ended up with that incredibly large Note II. While there, my husband got the sales rep to convince me that only good things could come of our son having this cellphone. He had me at “you can GPS track him”. I agreed, and he walked away with a smartphone, because what’s $10 extra from the basic phone when you’re already paying that much for a phone. Our son was elated, his cousins all had a phone and he jealously looked on. My son isn’t one to beg for anything, he asks a few times but gives up a spoken fight. Now, he had something he never dared to ask for and he couldn’t have been happier. He immediately downloaded every free Angry Bird game, including that Bad Piggy one. He had me download Fun. “Some Nights” as his ringtone. He immediately started playing games on it. Then, while I was in the other room working while he played next to Daddy with their new phones, I realized my upside: I was able to text him “Go brush your teeth”… and he did.

I didn’t realize the other benefits until he went over his grandmother’s house to spend the weekend. He constantly texted us and called us. We found out that he might actually miss us when we’re not around, and that made me a very happy Mom. He constantly texted that he loved us, or that they had bought him fast food, or that he played Halo 4 and it was awesome. I felt better about flip-flopping my stance on him having a phone because he’s an incredible little boy, and that phone helped me realize I may have done a great job with him and would do a great job with our new one.

I look at my growing too fast newborn/infant. He rolls over like a champ, and rolls to his side to move around the floor. He’s only 2 months, but he seems bigger. He seems like he’s just getting too big. They both are getting too big, and while that makes us sad as parents, we should look on with pride and not teary eyes of sadness. This should be a sign that we did something very right to watch our children excel as nicely as they are.

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Things I Learned At My 10 Year Reunion

There comes a time when you sit back and wonder “I wonder how much I’ve actually changed since high school”. Maybe not, maybe you just wonder how much other people have. You’re thankful to have a few good friends you’ve kept since then, happy that there are people in the world you can’t get tired of, even if no one else remembers them. (I heart you, forgotten one.) You learn valuable lessons at reunions. Ok, not really valuable lessons. However, you definitely learn some very interesting things.

  1. It’s always funny to see them fall from grace. The most important lesson you learn is that you want to see those cocky or stuck up people fail in life. It’s human nature. You want to see that girl who was the prettiest and snobbiest in your class suddenly gain a 100 lbs. and work as a waitress at some dive. That popular football player that was hot stuff in school? You want to see them overweight and unsuccessful. Unfortunately, sometimes this isn’t the case. Fortunately, most of the time it is and you spend the entire reunion laughing. Yes, I was sober and laughing.
  2. You can leave the drama at home, but the drama can sometimes follow you. This is a sketchy one. In our Facebook group for the reunion, someone basically said “Leave the drama home at home because no one wants it”. The first thing I thought of was “if you still hold a grudge from high school at this point, you’ve got more problems to deal with”. Admittedly, this fact really gets tested when say.. I don’t know.. someone gets so wasted they use your boobs as punching bags while muttering nonsense. Then it occurs to you there are only a few options when this happens: you could a) smile and nod and hope it stops; b) push one of your best friends in between; c) walk away; d) punch offending person in the face and talk about how it was worth it while getting tossed out by security. I recommend every option but the last, it’s generally not worth  it and jail time isn’t cool anymore.
  3. Cliques are cliques are cliques. Remember everyone who hung out with each other in high school? So do they. As if high school really just picks up after 10 years, you look around noting that the same people are hanging out with each other in various parts of the bar. You have those two girls that never spoke to anyone because they were too pretty to be bothered with those who are beneath them. Those two guys that were star jocks that are still way to amazing to be bothered with everyone else unless they are being admired. The popular kids still hung out only with each other. Don’t worry though, while you make that observation you realize that you’re sitting with people you only saw a week ago and never lost contact with instead of catching up with people you barely associated with anyways. Apparently if you never cared to bother 10 years ago, there’s really no point now. And don’t judge, you’re just as guilty and you shouldn’t feel bad. There’s a reason for all of it.

Aside from realizing you said goodbye you being young and stupid 10 years ago and you feel old as a result, you have nothing to be afraid of from hitting this milestone. You’re older and thankfully wiser than you once were. (In said scenario earlier, my short-tempered self would definitely had snapped and assaulted the person like a bear being poked.) Now you can take a deep breath and face those scary 30’s because you just saw 50 other people who also used to be young with you becoming older too and sometimes not nearly as gracefully as you are. I admit that my post-pregnancy body scared me going into the reunion because I didn’t want to be a chubby version of me that gets mocked because I was a twiggy teen. But when you see people balding or much chubbier than you are for a reason not as good as yours, you feel so much better. I sure did and I’m ashamed to admit that this fact doesn’t shame me.

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It’s Officially Been a Decade

Today, my oldest wakes up a 10-year-old. I keep telling him to not get his hopes up, that he won’t technically be 10 until he gets home from school. I wonder if I’m delaying it for me or him. I’m not entirely sure if I’m delaying it because he’s getting older or because that means I am. Either way, my baby is officially entered into the double-digit ages.

It’s sad in either case, but mostly because it’s actually a little difficult watching the kids get older. I’m by no means an emotional person, but I become a little softie when it comes to my boys. According to the paperwork from his doctors’ office, he’s a tween. A tween? I remember when I didn’t want to admit he was a potty trained toddler though that was an incredible day realizing you were done with diapers. Of course, until you realize you’re still cleaning up his poop just instead of in a diaper it’s all over the walls and toilet. And even the “oops” in the bathtub. A tween? Scary.

I cringe every time he says, “Mom, I’m almost a teen!” I’m not ready for that. I wonder if I’m not ready for that because I don’t want him to grow up or because I’m convinced all kids become the devil when they become the dreaded teenager. Maybe my son will prove me wrong, and not all teenagers are Satan spawns. I try to hope, but something tells me I shouldn’t get my hopes up. Maybe if I keep the fear alive in him of being punished he’ll stay my sweet angel.

Whatever the case, he’s growing into a fine young man and I have faith that if he continues on this direction he really will change the world. Or at least whatever place he finds himself. Eventually we as parents need to step back and cross our fingers that we raised them right and set examples for them that they can use to become amazing adults. I can take comfort any moment I hide my teary eyed pride that, at least in this moment, he’s on the right path to be an incredible grown man. But he’ll still be my little munchkin that walked around Wal-Mart with his pants down to his ankles because he was too small to fit in his clothes but didn’t have enough words to say more than “uh oh’s” to let me know there was a problem.Happy 10 lil’ man.

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Congrats, It’s a Turkey!

Last week I mentioned my oldest son was doing his student council duties and attending to his shift at the canned food drive the student council was putting on for the local soup kitchen. He was happy to report that his 4th graders did beat all the other grades by bringing in 125 cans, happily noting that 10 of them were ours. He tallied them up and they had received 450 cans, well shy of the 625 cans they had hoped to reach. With a heavy heart, my son announced to his school that they hadn’t reached their goals but that they did a great job. 450 cans were a lot better than none. Still, he was disappointed that they didn’t at least achieve the goal they set. I told him that they did a great job, and that soup kitchen was 450 cans richer.

I tried to teach him the most important lesson of all, something I try to tell him every chance I get: holidays aren’t the only time of year you need to do good things, you should do them every day. Change in the world and helping others isn’t something you can accomplish one or two days a year. To accomplish these goals you need to work every day of your life and urge your children to do the same. Eventually, it’ll stick whether it be a year from now or generations. It shouldn’t matter whether or not we can see the change, but knowing somewhere you were a part of the change should be amazing enough.

I hope my children learn this lesson. Thanksgiving may be a time of year for helping and eating a ton of turkey and pie, but it’s a reminder that there’s still a lot of work to be done around us. We need to forget that these holidays exist for any other reason than an excuse to see family, drink a lot, and forget that you’re on a diet. We should remember that homeless and poor people don’t just exist once or twice a year, that they have to live their life that way and we should help them in some way when we can. You don’t need money to help, you just need to have the time.

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Pride and Trepidation

Before I get into my post, I would like to say how proud I am of my older son. Today as part of his student council duties is collecting canned goods for the student council food drive to help our local soup kitchen. The fourth grade seems to be winning their competition for what he called “the best prize of all: the warm fuzzy feeling of helping people in need”. I don’t know what I did, but I must’ve done something right. That boy will change the world I think.

Now that we got the “pride” part of our title out of the way, I enter into the “trepidation”. As my last post pointed out, I was terrified at the idea of publishing my chapter-ed short story. I always tell my son, “sometimes no matter how afraid you are, you need to suck it up and dive head first”. That post made me realize that I said a typical parental hypocritical statement. How could I tell him “you can be anything in the world you want to be if you want it enough” and “just hold your worries and do it” if I wasn’t going to do the same. As parents it’s our job to show our children that you need to always aim higher to accomplish goals, no matter how impossible it seems. Teaching your child to settle for what they have in life, to me, teaches them that they don’t need to dream and that settling for mediocrity is ok. (I know I’ve said this point a dozen times, but it needs to be emphasized.) It’s never ok to settle.

I took this to heart, and took and deep breath and uploaded my story to Kindle epublishing. Yes, I am officially published. So you can own this piece of art for only $0.99 on the Kindle. Don’t have a Kindle? Get a nice Kindle app on your phone, iPad, other tablet, etc. The title you ask? “Teagan” by Brianne LaRochelle.

I’m terrified. I’m afraid that I failed at that the story is crap and people will insult me and I’ll decide to give up instead of getting better. But if I didn’t just suck it up and do it, I’ll never know if people actually will enjoy it. I’d never know if following my dreams of writing would pay off. Most importantly though, I’d never be able to tell my sons that “mommy was scared, and she did it anyways.” Our actions, as unimportant as they seem, will always affect our children because they look up to us to show them everything.

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Is The Story Ever Really Finished?

Last year, I finished my 12000 word “novella”. It was supposed to be part of National Novel Writing Month, but I didn’t quite reach the minimum they had if you recall last year’s post about it. (See here for a refresher: http://wp.me/p1NwSb-28) I realized that I happened to finish the story I wanted in much shorter words than I was supposed to. To add things would’ve fluffed up my story in a way that would upset me.

Shortly after, I decided that the story was 100% done. I announced that my hard work was completed and the encouragement I received was awesome. I intended shortly after to put it up for sale on the Kindle, but it never seemed good enough. I sent the story to a few trusted people and got lost. Between a pregnancy made me too tired to work on more editing at first, then just made it too uncomfortable to sit down and fix it at the end, it seemed like it would never get done.

Now I wonder if I stalled it. Maybe I was just too scared of critics and reviews and anything negative that could possibly deter my dream of finally just publishing this. The story has a bit of “fart” humor to it, and it’s not always appreciated. Maybe people would think I put too many sarcastic lines or too many lines that might insult or gross out and think people would think it was unnecessarily overdone. It’s always fear of criticism of others that holds us back.

I constantly reread it. I’m at a point where I couldn’t even fix grammar problems because I’m “too close” to this project. It seems like an extreme form of procrastination that it took a whole year to feel like it’s really ready for the public. So ideally within the next week or 2, I will just close my eyes and upload it and hope for the best. Even 20 sales will exceed my expectations and be encouraging. And if I do get too caught up in how long it took to get to the publishing point, at least I can look at George RR Martin. One year for a 12000 story seems equivalent to how long we’ve waited for A Dance With Dragons. Let’s hope I build up the courage to do this.

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A Nice Salute

I come from a family full of military men. My great-grandfather, my grandfather, an uncle, some cousins and my brother. I also live in a city where there’s an airbase, basically right down the street from it. My first job was a waitress that worked with serving meals to people on their way to boot camp and deployment. The military has played an important part of my life. My son, like any son probably, loves to pretend he’s a soldier and wears a military plastic helmet and does a patrol. Living so close to the base, he often sees a person in uniform and always seems to get their attention to salute them. He wants them to know he appreciates the danger they put themselves through to protect us, and he honestly admires them. He says he won’t enlist though because his “mommy’s heart couldn’t handle football, let alone war”. He’s probably very right.

I was young when my brother enlisted. I was close to him and I remember being heartbroken he had to go away. I’m pretty sure I locked myself in my room a long time and cried. I remember when he was coming home to visit, I worked to make a nice banner for him and woke up to him making french toast. (Amazing the things you remember when you try.) To this day, I make french toast just like he did. Since he doesn’t read this, I can also say embarrassingly that every time I make french toast, I think about him. It’s stupid to think though, since he only lives a mile away and I see him a few times a week for family dinners and because our sons are friends.

I’m lucky, everyone I know that served always came home. They weren’t fighting in wars, they were helping protect people to make sure a war didn’t happen. I know people personally that weren’t as lucky, and those are the people we need to personally thank. It wasn’t just the service of our family and friends, it was the service the military families give. They give us their family and stand by them while they fight for their country. They worry constantly about whether their family member will return alive, not just mentioning worrying about the person they will be when they come back. Sadly, they don’t always come back. Veteran’s Day isn’t just about those who serve our country honorably; it’s about their families who suffer waiting and have broken hearts when their loved ones aren’t alive when they return. It’s about families who never even get lucky to see their loved one a last time or are left wondering if they are alive or dead for years. We need to take a moment to thank them too, though they might not accept our gratitude because the pain of loss is so great.

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I’m Not Proud To Be An American

The sad part of my title is that some radical people will read this because they will think I mean this because of who won our election. I can assure you that you should stop reading now if that’s what you think. This post will have nothing to do with who won the election, but more the attitudes that came about afterwards. It’s what happened afterwards that frankly sickened me, and made me lose faith in our country’s people and made me think about how I’m not proud of what I saw.

For example, I voted for Scott Brown despite the fact that people think because I’m a Democrat I should only vote that way. Most of my friends that admitted their vote voted for Elizabeth Warren. It never once crossed my mind that their vote should affect my friendship with them. They were still my friends, and I still love them dearly. I didn’t immediately insult them for disagreeing with me, I didn’t automatically defriend them on Facebook because they didn’t believe as I did. I acknowledge that as an American, it was our right to vote how we did without fear of how people will treat us after.

Elections seem to bring out the worst in people. I even wonder if the election didn’t just allow us to see people for who they truly were. It sickened me reading the social media and seeing the hate that both sides spewed. This intolerance for people exercising their rights was disgusting. I wondered where America went so wrong that because you checked off the wrong person’s name on the ballot, people were able to call you appalling things. You are not an idiot for whoever you voted for as long as you made an informed decision based on your beliefs. You are an idiot, the kinder of words I have for you, if you feel that your vote was better than another persons because you didn’t agree with them.

I’m not sure if there’s anyone to blame for this. All the major new channels obviously backed candidates and I think are the main cause of this. They spewed nothing but hate for either side of the alley. MSNBC never once mentioned that Romney could be a great president and why he would be. Fox News never once said anything positive about Obama and some even shunned Republicans who had. I don’t think politicians are entirely to blame for this; it’s hard to work across the aisle when you have people watching you to hate you if you do. The downward spiral is this.

This makes me think there’s a new sort of hatred in America that might even be worse than racism or homophobia. It scares me that we might be coming to a point where you won’t get hired for a job, not because of your race, gender or sexual orientation but for the way you’re registered to vote. It makes me sick to think that people might disown their family members because they voted for Romney/Obama. I think more people need to be outraged about how we’re treating each other than who won the election, because we should be ashamed of ourselves for behaving this way. This isn’t what America is, this is what those countries we look down on because they don’t have a democracy.

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Here’s a Ballot, Now What?

Originally today’s blog was going to be a random rant of whatever happened to be on my mind. Just like any other time a writer starts, they change their direction entirely. I became so passionate about one of my rants, that I decided to dedicate today to that instead.

Tomorrow is election day. I’m not going to give a speech about “people died for us to have this right”. I don’t believe in guilting people into voting. I don’t even believe in it myself. People didn’t die for the right for politicians to lie to us and make us overpay them. I’d like politicians to make minimum wage and not getting paid when they aren’t working like the rest of us. I’d also love them to be stuck with the same crappy choices for healthcare that the American people get. Maybe if we take away the riches and benefits, we’d get people in office that actually care about the people they’re sent to represent. I’d also like it if every law they pass also affected them. Then maybe they’d consider what they are passing before they decide to take the bribes to pass it. Also, I’d like to make it that people had to pass a general current event and civics test before they get to vote. It may be unconstitutional, but at least people who will vote have a general idea of what they are voting for and not race, party affiliation and good looks. I’m also offended that the old guy from Face the Nation (he doesn’t deserve a name, don’t bother telling me) for his commentary. Thankfully you can get access to transcripts online so I don’t misquote him:

“And here’s a confession. Sometimes voting against someone I don’t like is more fun than voting for someone I do like.And here’s the best thing of all. You can vote for or against someone for the best of reasons, the wrong reasons, or no reason at all. It is your vote, and you can do with it as you choose. In fact, you can waste it if you like.”

Really? Not that anyone probably takes his show anymore seriously than they do Fox & Friends, but he has the power of the masses. And he uses it for that? He could inspire people to make a change in the political times! He could tell the viewers, “listen, we need to vote on the issues not the person” or “you need to vote for someone who shares your same view of the country and how you want it to grow”. No, he says “waste your vote if you’d like, just do it”. He could’ve easily had said in one sentence “vote for Batman for president because Superman is from another planet and isn’t technically eligible for presidency”. This actually disgusted me. This disgusted me almost as much as most politicians do.

Growing up, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I was also smart enough to realize that writers are starving artists and you needed a job to fund the dream. For a long time, I decided journalism would be the way to go. I started writing for my middle school newspaper and I hit a moment of realization: I was far to opinionated to be a real journalist. I could be an Op-Ed columnist, and did well with that. The teacher was proud of me when I went to her and said “it would be against journalistic integrity for me to write news, I can’t do it without being biased”. Shortly after, I decided journalism probably wasn’t the right place for me because it went against my morals. Watching news today makes me wonder what makes me different from every other person that decides to actually go ahead with that career path but instead of reporting news, they report their own version of the news. It really does sicken me. There should be a political party named “The Cynic Party”, I would jump the Democrat label for that.

The point is that these people (Fox News, Face the Nation, etc.) all are able to reach people and inspire them for good. They could tell people that issues are more important than white dry erase boards and half facts. They could actually give the viewers a full story, the true full honest story, so when we go into that poll booth we can make informed decisions that suit us and our visions for our ideal country. Instead, they tell us “this guy’s a Kenyan Muslim” and “this guy is a corrupt Mormon business man” or “does it really matter, just close your eyes and make your pencil mark anywhere”. Now we get to go blind into an election and pray we come out in one piece. I’m not sure who’s more to blame for this, the politicians or our “newscasters”.

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We

In the morning, it’s hard to find anything worth watching. You’re stuck with baby reality television shows, infomercials, or biased news talk shows. So, I generally chose the baby reality shows. It makes me feel better than I’m no longer pregnant anymore and I get to laugh at how silly they look talking about normal things making it seem like they’re the first person to have to make a cold lunch for one child while pregnant. Yeah, we’ve done that move on. I find reality shows are really just comedies for me to sit around with my popcorn because the way they make every day life seem like an over-dramatic soap opera is really just hilarious.

Something did catch my attention on Monday, and I decided to watch 3 hours worth of these shows for an experiment. On the first show at 7 am, the husband of this woman who was having a difficult time with the pain begs for an epidural after several hours. Her husband stood outside talking to the camera while they were putting the epidural in and said “we really wanted a natural childbirth so we’re pretty disappointed by this. Maybe next time.” I took the controller to rewind this (thank you DVR) to see if I heard this man correctly. It turns out, I did. I couldn’t believe my ears that a person could be that idiotic.. or selfish I haven’t decided yet. So I watched for a week and it turns out that in more than half of these shows the husband or partner says something like “we had hoped to have a natural birth/breastfeed but she couldn’t do it and we’re disappointed.”

If I had heard my husband say anything like that, I’d probably punch him in the face. It wouldn’t be hormones, it would be my short temper. The “we” part of the baby process ended with the making of the fetus. “We” cannot have natural childbirth, “I” can  have natural childbirth. He can be a part of the decision and most definitely was a part of every decision that was made. But there certainly was only one of us squeezing a child out. You could say “my wife wanted a natural childbirth but was disappointed she couldn’t” and it would be perfectly acceptable. I understand, maybe the “we’ makes him feel more involved. But it seemed like “he” wanted the natural birth more than she did, and to be disappointed that she “failed” him is incredibly aggravating.

Personally, I’d like to see him pop out a baby naturally and see how long he lasts. I give him 5 minutes before he offers to do unspeakable things to the anesthesiologist for pain relief. Then I hope he’s too far along to get one and has to go at it alone. No, I don’t feel bad for saying that. The most important point of this whole rant can be applied in mostly every situation in life: It’s easy to make decisions for other people without knowing what they’re going through. In pregnancy and birth, nothing ever really goes as planned. And no one ever realizes how excruciating it is until going through it. Instead of being disappointed that your wife couldn’t “suck it up”, sit by her every second of the way at your place next to the bed and let her decide if she’s in too much pain. Get her ice chips and rub her back and make her feel better, not worse. And to you reality show “supportive” soon-to-be dads, understand that any woman who had gone through childbirth and sees you say something like that, realize that we’re all thinking about punching you in the face.