Showing posts with label Empathy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Empathy. Show all posts

Sunday, October 25, 2009

I am still alive

Wow, so much has happened since I last posted, where to begin.

First off, I haven't been avoiding posting, and I have been busy but the main reason I haven't posted in so long is my desktop computer is screwed up and won't let me access any websites that require log in. I have no idea why, it's messed up and I have yet to figure it out and fix it. At any rate every time I attempted to log on here to add an update it refused to allow me and so I just gave up. I am on my laptop now though, and I'll try to be more regular from now on (but you know how I am, so good luck with that).

Oh, big news!! I'm officially divorced!! We finalized in August and I am now completely free and single again!! I got the alimony and child support I wanted as well as the house, and pretty much everything is going well now. There have been some points of contention between us as he refuses to take care of my daughter's allergies. We found out back in February or so that she is allergic to cats, dogs, milk, wheat and eggs, but he refuses to be considerate of this and had a cat and dog living in his house (which goes against our custody agreement) and more recently he was giving her eggnog which is basically milk, eggs and sugar. Why he refuses to take care of her with this I have no idea, it doesn't seem like rocket science to me but he takes it as a personal insult. He turns it into an me verses him thing instead of thinking about the fact it's our daughter's health. Ugh, I'll leave that alone for now.

In other news, I'm not really single any more as I have a boyfriend. Yep, I finally dipped my toe into the dating pools and after a few interesting and sometimes disastrous experiences I found a keeper. He is the most well balanced, kind hearted, sweet and loving man I think I may have ever met, and it kind of freaks me out sometimes because he is so easy going and handles everything so well. I'm not used to that. I'm used to people who freak out and go nuts on me, and he never does that. He's also incredibly honest, which is amazing, and so what I need right now. And he's incredibly patient with me, which as anyone who knows me I can spaz out and kind of freak a little at times and he doesn't get ruffled at all he just stays calm and holds firm and I settle down. It's the most amazing and incredible thing I've ever experienced, and I'm just in awe of him.

One caveat, he's younger than me. Eight years younger to be exact, and I sometimes struggle with that. It's entirely my own issue, age is totally not an issue between us and in fact we seem to get along together on just about every front wonderfully. To be honest I fought dating him at the beginning because of how young he was, but he persevered and we talked for hours on the phone and I finally gave in knowing that it was all in my head. He really is amazing, intelligent, soulful, loving, and sexy to boot. I'm crazy about him. Oh, and he absolutely loves bacon so I'll call him BaconBoy, although he did say he would give up all the bacon in the world for me, which I thought was incredibly sweet. Seriously, so crazy about him.

Let's see, what else. I'm still working at the medical center, and I'm pretty settled in now. I am apparently the comic relief and everyone in the business side of the office says the day drags when I'm not there. I think I'll be called into the office to get reprimanded soon because sometimes we get a little loud when we laugh, and I laugh a lot, but I'm trying to keep it in mind and keep it settled down.

The kids are back in school again and doing well. I haven't been doing much artistically or with my writing as I've been busy but I'm trying to get back into it and I've signed up for NaNoWriMo again. I hope I'm as successful this year as I was last year, but it will be challenging as I work and I'm a single parent now whereas last year I was a stay at home mom. I believe I can do it though. I still haven't edited Empathy from last year. I haven't even read it, bad me. I need to get with it.

Anyway, the kids want to play a card game and I need to finish up the laundry so I better go. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and in case I don't catch you before then, Happy Halloween!!

Be good, love lots, and stay warm. T out!

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Everything is Beautiful

Evening has fallen, and I'm about to head off to bed. Tomorrow is Monday and we start the whole rush again. I had a pretty decent weekend, I got my grocery shopping done, got out for some Korean food, and worked on some things on the computer. I also came up with another story idea for the file.

Emphysema, my grandmother was in the hospital last week and has been diagnosed with Emphysema. I'm sad, but she smoked most of her life so really, it's not a big surprise. She's home now and on oxygen but otherwise doing fine. I love her.

Edward Cullens, so what is it exactly that makes Edward so sexy and hot and everything? Is it Bella's obsession with him? Is it his extreme good looks? Is it his mysterious life? Is it the danger and thrill of being so close to death? Is it the thrill of the chase? You can apply that to either the book Edward or the movie Edward, I don't care. Robert Pattinson was pretty yummy as Edward. I don't know, in the book the fact he was ice cold and marble hard was just too hard for me to get past. I'll admit I kept thinking "careful, you'll chip your teeth". Bad Tina, I know, but what can I say?

Education, my kids are thoroughly enjoying school. I am torn on that. On one hand, it kills me, I really loved homeschooling, and I wanted it to work. On the other hand, I'm so relieved they enjoy it and do well with it, and it's kind of nice to know it's taken care of. I started culling through the homeschooling stuff and getting rid of it. It's hard, but I'm getting there slowly.

Empathy, yes the novel is still untouched and unloved. Poor thing, I pour my heart and soul into writing it and then I loathe it for the bloated monster it's become. I did find a program this weekend called "Revision Hell" which is a class/challenge thing where you focus on revising 20 pages a day for (I think) two weeks. I'm thinking about trying this. I seem to do better with controlled deadlines and motivation like that, and with it only being two weeks it's not really long enough for me to procrastinate and goof off on like NaNo did. I'm also thinking about enrolling in Holly Lisle's "How to Think Sideways" course, although I'm still deciding if I can afford the almost $300 tuition. I know that has nothing to do with Empathy, but I might not be able to think of another "E" word to go into it with so I tossed it in here.

Early, well I do have to get up early tomorrow to get the kids off to school so I better close here. I could come up with more, but I guess I'll start thinking of "F". Okay, so I'm not every day but I have been sticking to the letters of the alphabet, so I can't be all bad. ;) Have a great week and take care!!

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Mired but still Fighting

Hello, seriously I suck at this daily journaling thing. If journaling was something you could do five times a year and be good, I'd be golden, but remembering to be regular at it, that's hard. It's not that I don't have things to say, goodness no, I could blather on all day long, it's just taking the time to sit and type it all out and post it here that is the stickler.

Well what's new, hmm. I'm enrolled in some online classes. I'm taking accounting, admin assistant, Excel and computers for the workplace. All in the hopes that I'll get a job soon, high hopes, high hopes. Computers for the workplace is a cake walk, it's stuff I learned years ago but I'm hoping there will be a few tidbits in there I didn't know about before. Administrative Assistant is interesting, although kind of scary. Excel is a lot more fun than I thought it would be, I thought that would be the hard class and instead, it's the one I want to play on all the time. Accounting is kicking my rear. I'm so glad I took this class before enrolling in a whole four year accounting degree program, I would have been miserable!! I love money math, but Accounting takes money math and warps it into accounts, and accounts are weird! I'm trying to learn the whole "assets increase debit, liabilities increase credit" thing. That seems so backwards to me!! The only way I understand it is that it doesn't make any sense so it has to be that way. I'm hoping it will click in soon. Then there is the whole double reporting accounts, that warps my brain a little too. I'm doing well with it but I am very confused.

On the writing front I'm stalled out. I haven't written in two weeks. I've been trying to edit Empathy and I'm failing. I suck at macro editing, I have the first two chapters that need to be whittled down and reworked into a single chapter, and I can't seem to do it. I want to pull my hair out, scream, and burn the damn thing in effigy. Maybe I will, I still have it electronically backed up. I'm determined to get through it today if I have to tie myself to a chair to do it.

In other news, I am attempting to Twitter. Considering how frequent I am here you can imagine how great I'll be at that (not to mention do I ever do anything interesting enough to tweet about? I'm not sure). Conor Knighton, the host of infoMania, mentioned he twittered and I followed his link to check it out. Now I have all the people from infoMania followed, as I love those people. InfoMania was the one and only show I would watch, but now I also watch The Rotten Tomatoes show with Brett Erlich and Ellen Fox, and I am actually watching a show on television again (pause to gasp in shock), I'm watching Castle, with Nathan Fillion. I love Nathan Fillion, he's very entertaining to watch and also watching the main character, who is a writer, go through his though processes is pretty interesting. Although I will say, episode three did not have so much of the "writer" part in it. We'll see how long I can stand watching TV again before I give it up again.

Speaking of the writer process, I love to hear about how other writers do their thing. Well heck, I love to hear about how anyone does their thing, no matter what the job is. I chatted up the Department of Transportation guys at the job fair two weeks ago on how you make asphalt and the different purposes of surface materials, why? Well it's kind of interesting for one, and they were very friendly and willing to talk for two, and heck, you never know when that information might come in handy for three.

My process? Well first I get a bud of an idea, an image, a question, a person, and I start turning it over in my mind, like a pretty rock I'm trying to identify. Then come the questions, who is this, why is this, what is this, who cares? I keep asking questions and more and more of the idea comes into view, and then if I didn't start with a character, one will step out of the ether and begin to talk or react, and I'm looking at this person, and they begin to take shape and form and develop. I watch them, listen to them, see them move through situations and discover new things. Usually another character or two will slip out then, and they start to interact, further flushing themselves out. Then I start to see where they are headed, what they are doing, why the initial idea was important. I let them talk and play and explore in my head for a week or two, sometimes more, then one day, I sit down, and I write.

I also have an "office" where my characters apparently enjoy meeting up with me and chatting. It's odd because when they chat in my head, they discuss with each other, they don't interact with me at all, I'm an invisible observer, however when I'm in my "office" they step out and speak to me directly. They tell me what they are unhappy with, what they want to do, what they don't want to do, they crab at me for not writing about them, or for writing the wrong thing. Yep, they talk to me, in my "office", which happens to be my shower, I suppose because that's the one place in the world where for a few minutes I get peace and quiet and solitude, so why not have the spectres of the brain come out and harass me in there?? Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but I'm beginning to think you have to be a little crazy in order to be a writer. At the very least your normal has to be skewed a bit.

Other than that I've just been dealing and wheeling. I did get out this weekend and saw Paul Blart Mall Cop. Kevin James is funny. He has some skills on a sequeway too! I have no idea if that's the correct way to spell sequeway, I'll just say that now as I'm not sure spell check will know what the heck I mean and correct it. The kids just started school again after having a week off for spring break. They had a pretty good time, we went up to the Oklahoma Aquarium and to visit some family and then their cousins came out and spent some time with them and they went camping with their dad. I think they also went to the zoo and saw a couple of movies with their dad too (yes, while camping). They also went fishing and apparently caught several fish although they had to throw them all back because they didn't have something to bring them home in and my daughter was upset because she wanted to cook and eat her fish. Too funny! Oh, speaking of fish, at the OK Aquarium we saw a 98 pound blue catfish, that thing was a monster!! I love seeing huge fish, although sometimes they scare the crap out of me.

All in all, not too bad. The weather is getting warmer, although that means I'll have to clean the yard soon, which means the risk of snakes. I hate snakes, I hate them, I hate them I hate them, they scare the crap out of me. I'm such a wimp. I'm seriously considering moving into an apartment just so I don't have to deal with snakes. Of course with my luck, they would still end up there. Still, I prefer the warmer weather to the cold weather, and it's nice to be able to run around in shorts again.

Well I better get off here and see the kids off to school. I hope you have a beautiful day and take care of yourself!

Sunday, February 22, 2009

I'm back

Well, after a long absence I'm finally back. Ever the Tina in Transition I have changed a lot in the time I was gone. My marriage is over, my children are no longer homeschooled, I no longer have pets and pretty soon I'll be a working girl again, but you know what, it's okay, it's glorious, and I'm ready to start the next chapter of my life.

In writing news, well I finished my NaNo book, which is currently tentatively titled "Empathy". I'm in the editing process now with it and I'm working on another story for my local writing group. My soul has embraced my desire to be a writer and I now know that one way or another I will keep working and moving forward to becoming a published author. It's kind of scary, but I know it will be worth it.

Other than that, I've been dealing with being a single mom, driving my car with renewed interest, enjoying the friendship and compassion that those who are close to me offer, and generally I'm surviving and thriving. I did miss blogging though, so I'm glad to have it back.

I wish you all the very best, and I'll post more soon. Peace, Love and Cookies!!