How did you know it was your last?

TIDBITS
Being the cheapass woman that I currently am, I have not had and still do not have any desire to go back out into the big wide world to purchase the microsoft office package once again. That shiz is about one hundred dollars that I do not have on account of paying a mortgage and also moving house. Yes! I'm doing the delightfully fantastically thing that is moving all my possessions from one side of the city to the other. The Joy!
But it really is a joy. This new house is always slightly warm, which I'm hoping will be amazeballs in winter, but for now it just means that I wear hardly any clothes and try not to sweat out all the nutrients I put in.
And this carpet is THE BEST THING since sliced bread, and WE ALL KNOW how versed I am on the subject of bread. Peace. Love. Light be with you.

Ok. So there's the Word problem. How do I go about writing out the stories and ideas that I do not want published on here without actually buying Word, or slaving away at the public library, where privacy is nil and the computers are as slow as they were when dial-up was a thing?
Why, pen and paper of course!
Pfftt! Wrong! I can tell you now that my handwriting is so atrocious I should have been a doctor, in fact, I may actually still have time to study and graduate and do the whole lounging back on the office chair with a stethoscope around my neck and say things like 'the test results were inconclusive' and 'the bathroom is just down the hall, only half of the cup needs to be filled', while gazing serenely over my steeple fingers or gesturing calmly to the door with a bowed head.
It's not the path I chose, but it is the path that I can and probably should not fill. I am grey enough already.
Not to mention the cramp-hand I would get from all that writing. Weeks down the line I will squint at my notes in a fit of despair, scratch my head, and most likely toss a million dollar idea down the drain.

@__@

Yes! Apart from using my failing ipad that has a keyboard setup akin to a sensation of dragging your fingernails down a chalkboard or rowing a canoe while scraping your knuckles on the hard edge every time, I have decided to use this blog as a way to calm my swelling tide.

Without further ado! I present...

THE NOVEL
It's been 12 years since I lugged this folder around with me to math class and science class. I'm sure my classmates thought I was super studious, but the fact was I just hid my pages of novel notes on graph paper, and I LOVED it. I simply adored carrying this folder class to class with ideas swirling around in my head like a melting rainbow paddlepop. I felt like this folder contained my life work and I never imagined for one second that I would leave it on a shelf for TWELVE YEARS.
I'm almost (almost huehue) heartbroken and deeply ashamed.

In the sleeve of this folder contains pain sample cards, really old, from a paint shop, with names like: Pink Orbit MID
Orange Fizz W
Ice Needles
Peach Portion
Candy Time
Rose Relic

I fancied I would incorporate those names into the novel. I believe Peach portion, candy time and rose relic all relate to one of my characters called Rose.

CHARACTERS
My favourite character and one featured in many short draft stories is Eden. I love the name and her theme is Faeries. She is obsessed with them. I feel like I based her on myself, and that she is maybe particularly easy to write, or was easy to write back in the day.

Next is Brandi- the girl obsessed with becoming a Water Goddess. She meets a gnome when little (a real-live tall man who looks gnomish or otherworldly who says he comes from the caves) and he promises to turn her into a water goddess if she commits a real act of sin. It's horrendous, but she is in the right frame of mind to do so. Things become really tricky and nasty afterwards. I enjoyed her as well because she had more going on. Eden was perhaps a little boring as a character, even though she has a lot of elements I like, but Brandi has this cool plot and twists, darkness, a real fine detail to her. She meets Eden when they share a class together and they both sort of faun over each other. It's very cute.

Alyssa and her younger sister Frances are both witches, or really into witchcraft. They start off with some amateur spells from books and do some rituals, but soon they notice things happening and I must say, their story is the darkest of them all. I shy away from writing about them because I don't fully understand them. As a result of a family tragedy, they have their younger cousin Cate, who is about Frances's age, come and stay with them so the girls get her in on it, too. Their story saddens me. I think it's going to be the toughest emotionally to write.

Last is Rose! Rose is the fun one. She has the misfortune of becoming cupid, or the messenger in which love can travel through. Rose must run all over the place creating love and magic, while trying to sort out her own life. Her story is chaos, and I have a hard time getting it together. I have elements I like but they all seem to be different, which makes it hard to flesh out an actual character and situation without it seeming childish or silly. Cupid, love, and potions are tricky because it can go one way or the other. Also, Rose is about three or four years older than the others. She doesn't have the dominating figure of parents, so I have to be mindful of that and hopefully some of the scenarios show her maturity.

So there is the faery, the witch, the cupid, and the goddess.

All of them interweave. The younger girls all go to the same school, and Eden and Brandi meet and become friends, the other girls notice each other in a 'background character' way. Rose is the only girl not in school. I envisioned a scene where they're all on a train and they all unite when it crashes or something, but that was around the time I stopped writing to focus on my 'real world goals' of getting a job and being a normal woman of society. Life gets in the way.

Aside from that! It's all running on a shell of a novel. The outer structure is there in place, I have the colours, the general gist, the beginnings and the endings, I just need to fill it all in.

>I admit, I feel quite anxious about writing due to the fact I have matured over the years. A decade has passed, I have new memories and experiences, and even though I have not changed much in appearance or character, I feel like this novel represents an age-old me with a naivety and ideas that will be hard to replicate.

In essence, I feel a bit boring. When I first looked at this novel a couple of months ago I became overwhelmed with nostalgia. Life is better for me now but in every character I saw pieces of myself or my life back then.



~
We're going home

If we make it or we don't
we won't be alone

When I see your light shine I know I'm home

*💝*

But where would I get one?

Today I woke up rather abruptly with thoughts of chocolate, coffee, and cats.
Coincidentally that is the name of my second novel. I know! How will I ever have the time to complete two novels by my 40th Birthday?
Well.
I'll actually have quite a few years to play around with it all, but still. Also, the novel title has the word 'coincidentally' in it instead of chocolate and it's just a really fun project to work on but I feel a foreboding sense of doom as well, because a thing cannot be too fun if it is to be taken seriously.

The other day I bought a can of corn and was, like, SUPER excited to use it in some pasta. Like, stop the clocks now, or just wind them forward to when it's pasta-eatn time, because I wanna chow on this delight stat.
It's like going to bed feeling really excited and content at waking up in the morning because coffee. Coffee is everything.
Sometimes I'm annoyed or scared to go to sleep because it's such a short amount of time that it seems wasteful. It seems to be over in a flash. And yet you're at your most vulnerable, so many things can happen, so many opportunities for disaster that it's almost the worst thing you can do.

So fast-forward a few weeks later when I was singing a tune of rainbows and adorable parakeets, just standing in the kitchen ready for some corn time, and what should happen? I put my finger in the ring-pull, peel off the ring-pull and need to then use a manual can-opener, only to discover that my corn kernels are INDEED, corn of the cream kind. I had inadvertently picked up Creamed Corn. Corn of the Cream. Creme a la Corn.
And I WEPT into my canned abomination.
Or did I?

Cream Corn is not a great product. The world could have done a better job handing out food varieties than creaming a vegetable that has no right to be creamed.
A fellow named Caspian who is always full of congestion is the only person who should be trusted with the job of farming, picking, canning, labeling, stacking, delivering, and even consuming this product.
"It's all I've ever known!" Caspian would say earnestly- a little too earnestly, if you ask me. The world does not need such earnest people. The world needs more deceivers, more unwilling participants, more people rising up to declare FUCK YOU AUTHORITY! WE DESIRE UNCANNED FOOD, FOR WE ARE UNCANNED PEOPLE.
Right they are.
Caspian would look shocked, and I would lean in close and mutter, 'Fellow, if there were ever such a time that an escape was to take place, now would be that time.'

And we would escape, me taking Caspian into the wide world of the City and Caspian showing me how to make a daisy chain that I have NO time for, but patiently sit through anyhow. He will no doubt show the classic signs of corn withdrawal, and I will be made to hand over my hard earned pennies so that his appetite can be sated, all the while eating an increasing number of red and orange foods. In the end, I will cut Caspian loose because the price of having him near has made me extremely adverse to any yellow food of any kind, including banana caramel pie and rainbow sprinkles. Not to mention the insane build up of mucus in my sinus region. I have never known anyone to need six boxes of tissues in the bedroom. EVER.


   ( )
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,\(   )/,
0 __ 0     # more than corn

Was it getting real?

Yes!

Life is all about being crazy and taking chances.

You must do what you fear. Do what you dream. Look ambition straight in the eye and say "I am coming for you."

Then stop off at the local bakery and buy a double-decker chocolate cream cake because life is hard balls with a LOT of curved ones.

You must Take The Chance and do The Thing!

What do you dream of doing?

I dream of one day building a house. From scratch! I want to see the concrete slab with my own two eyes and walk across it in a walk only those who dared to make their dream come true can do. I want to see the sweat, feel the sawdust, hear the hammers, taste the tears, be victorious! I want to watch a door being put in, and narrow my eyes in a suspicious fashion because that window looks a bit too big guys, who's in charge of the window fitting??? Let's get the sizing done, ok, I want numbers and I want shinyass glass that makes me squint in surprise and awe and wonder.

I dream of working on my dusty old novel. Raising chickens. Making Amigurumi. Sewing, knitting, drawing with a light table... actually being that artistic mofo I see in the mirror. 

What if there were hidden cities all around us just waiting to be tapped into?

We must uncover the magic all around us because soon the time will be gone, and we will be gone, but no matter! Someone else will come and do the uncovering, for there will always be secret worlds existing around us.

Isn't that creepy af though?

Where I am sitting now, in my bed with the window open, someone else could be walking to that exact window this exact moment and closing it. Or maybe we both stood in the same place at the same time and I opened it while they closed it. But I didn't notice a thing. Am I out of touch or just not in tune with the layers upon layers of worlds that overlap ours?

What if when you hear a baby crying while having a shower, there actually is a baby crying in the other plane, and your maternal instincts kick in or moral instincts/good Samaritan/decent human-being/ tuned-in-aura is in full ON mode?

Like sometimes if everything is quiet in the house, I swear I can hear mumbled talking as if the tv in the other room was on. But it's not. Is it my hearing, or something better?

Do we not make spontaneous occurrences, believe in serendipity or fate and good luck? Nearly everyone believes there is something going on around us, either through God, or the universe, or spirits, fairies, aliens, and there are miracles happening everyday, tragedies ripping our responses right out of our bodies, delights and things being created that were thought impossibles, daring theories proved right, normalities proved wrong, all around us all the time we hear of things changing. What is extraordinary if not something entirely ordinary that no one ever thought of, was, did, discover, or invent before?

All I am saying is: I went for a walk the other day and I realised how plugged in everything is.

So I am going to build my house.

I am going to C L I M B out of this sinkhole I have somehow crawled into, and I will throw my magick in everyone's faces  wake up  because life is about cats and shawls and glittery balls and falling asleep with hot cocoa instead of trepidation and coffee in cafes and running for the bus and trying not to lose that sudoku book with all those personal notes written down the sides  since when did I *learn* to fear almost every single thing I see?

Just you wait

# A tribute to a very special time in my life. Bittersweet is not just a persimmon. 💘💞

Egg shells or custard tarts?

On Tuesday I thought I was a ghost.

I drove to work like normal, but when I turned down the street to work, I thought 'is this how it always is?' 

The air seemed foggy and I had a weird sensation as if I was the only person alive in some kind of different plane. Everything was quiet. Eerie.

And when I arrived at work, the woman who is ALWAYS parked in the SAME PARK wasn't there. I checked my phone. Same time as always. Or was it?

I hurried inside, made my coffee, cursed the early morning once again because, really, why do shifts start at 6am? What is the actual purpose? As a form of torture, I'm sure.

SO, the rest of the day went as smooth as the only type of peanut butter allowed, except that almost every conversation I had seemed to operate as if I was either too fast or they were too slow. As if the recipients were receiving information from the other side and there was a delay in delivery.

Example:

Woman: 'Hey, Cerri, how are you?"

Me: 'Yeah not bad, you?'

Woman: 'How's your day going?'

Me: 'Oh not bad, and-'

Woman: 'I'm good thanks'

Me: 'Oh, sorry aha-'

Woman: 'No go on, sorry-'

Me: 'Oh! I just noticed that there's a new pink car today, and I was wondering who's it was, it's very bright.'

Woman: 'Tell me about it.'

Pause. Woman wrings out a mop.

Me: 'Well, must get my stores, have a good day! It's-'

Woman: 'You too-'

Me: 'It's hectic-'

Woman: '- have a good day.'

Me: 'Thanks!'

Woman: 'Oh, you saw that pink car, too, I wonder if so and so bought a new one?'

~

And much of the same. This made me assume, once again, that I was somehow only existing as half a person. Maybe something glitched while I was sleeping? Or I had walked through a fairy veil from the front door to my car?

This new neighbourhood is certainly magically quaint. There's always a bird chirping, a group of birds splashing about and fluffing around a puddle, fat birds waddling around not pecking at the grass because who can be fucked bending down so low? There's cute little red-brick houses, and lots of trees with flowers that fall onto the cars. The grass is green, children laugh and wail every hour, and there seems to be a lot of homeyness going on.

I have to wonder sometimes. And to the faeries with their veil strung up in such a common, highly used area, I say: welcome. What took you so long?

     .^.

   ../  \..

*U__U