Failure To Thrive

I remember once when I was just on the cusp of teen-dom I got invited to a party. It was a party of all girls, but it was the first time I had been included with a particular group of what I deemed popular girls and I was very excited. I felt like I had climbed a rung on the social ladder.

This time in my life coincided with a blossoming awareness of my appearance. I had been fairly unconcerned with it up to this point, but I was coming to realize that a little lip gloss, a pair of earrings and some curl to my blunt-edged hair made a difference to how I was perceived.

So this was the night, a culmination of my sudden recent spurts of "growing up." I got all dolled up and remember curling my hair with marked excitement. Doors were opening, oh yes. I even put on mascara.

My mom had told me I could use the curling iron on the condition that I turned it off when I was done. Sure, Mom. Whatever you say.

I walked to the party, about 6 blocks away. Sure enough, there were all the popular girls and, to my smug delight, they didn't seem surprised that I would be there and I was quickly accepted into the heart of the conversation.

We did tweeny things. Talked about boys. A lot. Ate Twizzlers and Doritos. Gushed about each others clothes. It was pure heaven, with a strong current of laughter throughout.

Then my mom called. I had left the curling iron on. She wanted me to come home and turn it off. "Mom!" I protested. "Can't you just do it?"

I was informed we had made a deal. Apparently I had a lesson to learn. I could come home and turn off the iron and then return to the party or she was going to take me home to stay. Something about being reliable.

Feeling extremely mistreated I scuttled home, my curls bouncing all the way. I didn't even speak to my mother as I made a great show of flipping the tiny switch on the curling iron and heading back out the door.

By the time I returned to the party my curls were falling pretty flat. So was the party. A couple of girls had gone home. Everyone else was watching a movie that I had missed the first several minutes of and my return was barely acknowledged.

It just wasn't the same after I got back.

(sigh)

This time it wasn't a curling iron. It was a plain miserable cross-country move and then an even more miserable pregnancy.

Have I changed? Or did everybody else just shift without me?

I came back to Hoodie land and the party just wasn't here anymore. I know my efforts at reconnecting have been feeble, but having a Kindergartner, a three-year old Energizer Bunny and brand new baby have left me feeling less enthusiastic about anything but my shower and a pillow.

I guess I have changed a little.

So. Umm. I'm not really throwing in the towel. I'll still check in on y'all now and then, but I'm not going to feel guilty about not posting anymore. Sorry to the people who check in now and then. Both of you.

Keep on living the dream, my friends. Sorry I had to leave the party.

Artistic Overlap

I consider myself a tad over mediocre in the creativity department, but drawing and painting have never been my strong suits.

My dad put me in charge of designing T-shirts for our huge extended family reunion this summer. I tried to enlist a couple of artist friends who politely declined. My family is notorious for groan-inducing cheesy slogans/pictures at family reunions and I wanted to shy away from that. It would seem from past reunions that only puns and rhymes were at our disposal.

So I decided to try my hand and see if I could possibly come up with something myself that didn't completely suck.

As I thought about the location where the reunion will be held I remembered that the last time we had a reunion there, about a decade ago, the big memorable event was when a large moose wandered through our camp. I decided to make the moose our mascot. After using a few pictures online as references, this is the picture I drew to go on the shirts.

Remember, I don't normally draw particularly well. I sketched this in pencil and utilized my eraser A LOT. It took me about 3 hours, including the family name which I cropped out of the picture. I can tell you, I haven't felt this proud about creating something in long long time.

You are now free to tell me how awesome I am.

"Yeah, Right!"

My husband considers himself a lucky guy when he sends me to RedBox to pick out a movie and I come home with Hellboy II. I don't tell him it's because it's 7 PM on a Saturday night and the good stuff was taken and everything else was either college raunch or kiddie cheese. Besides, as with most fiction, I can usually always find something redemptive in a fantasy film. I'm dorky like that.

So we're watching the movie and there's a part where Hellboy is standing next to a row of lockers and the magic-smoke-guy is making all the lockers open and smack him all over. He then precedes to gradually fall down from the battery of locker doors, to which I emphatically replied, "Yeah, Right!"

My husband started laughing. "After all the stuff that has happened this seems incredible to you?"

"Yes," I said, "because two scenes ago he was fighting with a virtually indestructible troll-thing for a full two minutes and even though he was continuously pummeled and even lost a tooth he never once withered like he did just now from a couple of aluminum doors."

See, the problem wasn't that I found a magic-smoke-guy pushing locker doors open unbelievable. It was the fact that they didn't follow their own rules. This is such a basic concept in speculative fiction that I'm amazed how often, particularly in film, the rule gets broken. You can make anything happen in fiction. ANYTHING. But if you establish that your protagonist is strong enough to withstand blows that would kill any other mortal, without so much as a shake of the head, then you can't break that rule and have him wilt later at a series of much lesser blows. When you create a world you have to create its rules. It's the keeping of those rules that makes an audience able to suspend their disbelief.

Hellboy II is RedBox worthy, but don't pay more than a dollar to see it. The fantasy characters were intriguing (though I'm still wondering why the elves looked like vampires) but the action fell flat.

Language Killed the Story

When it comes to fiction I'm generally a cup-half-full kind of gal. Even when a story might not be right up my alley I'm usually able to find a measure of enjoyment in it and appreciate that it is probably right up someone else's. (Why does that sound vulgar?) I usually find something to applaud no matter what the content or style and very rarely have a beef with the author's choices. Even if it's not my favorite, I can concede that it might be someone else's.

I recently finished reading Prospero's Children by Jan Siegel. I found the story to be fascinating and I was very impressed with her grasp of language.



Until that grasp became so strong it was like a choke hold. My beef with this book was that Seigel clearly has the ability to write an enthralling book, but used so much muscle in the vocab department that it tipped the scale from impressive to irritating. The language and sentence composition became so ornate that I found myself wallowing through the text instead of gliding though it. Her lovely story was overshadowed by the flower in her words. Seigel is plainly talented and without doubt highly intelligent.

But, in some cases, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Nevermind

Overly ambitious? I guess.

Contest is cancelled. Sorry to anyone who might have considered entering at the last minute. How do you pick a winner from one or two entries?

Aw, now you're just hurting my feelings.

It's only 250 words, friends.

I retract my minimum of 15 entries. I'll settle for one or two. Your chances of winning are really high. :)

I'm Back, Baby! (WRITING CONTEST)

The hiatus is over and I'm ready to party! In honor of my re-immersion into bloggerdom I'm hosting my first ever writing contest. Tantalized? Read on, my friend.

The welcoming of hoodlet number 3 into my life has made me feel somewhat introspective and I find all my writey-thoughts simmering in the non-fiction area of my brain.

In general I'm not drawn to books biographical in nature. I think that's mainly due to the fact that so many of them read like textbooks. I'm not engaged.

My favorite non-fiction book, however, is just as enjoyable to read as good fiction. It is a memoir by Haven Kimmel called A Girl Named Zippy. It's always one of the first books I recommend to someone looking for something to read. The way Miss Kimmel writes about her childhood in rural Indiana is so sly, witty and poignant. Perky.



SO - In order to generate some excitement here in Hoodie-land, clear away some cobwebs and string up some cyber-crepe paper the contest rules are as follows-

Write a flash memoir of 250 words or less. Submit your entry to hoodiewriter(at)yahoo(dot)com by midnight Thursday April 9. The content can be anything as long as you are writing from personal experience and judging will be based simply on how engaging I find it. Basically if I like it a lot, you win. Pretty scientific, huh? Entries will be posted on this blog and comments are encouraged. And since I'm all about expanding the personal library, the winner will receive a new copy of Haven Kimmel's A Girl Named Zippy. I'll also choose 2 Honorable Mentions who, sadly, won't receive a prize, but will have that warm, honorable feeling about being mentioned.

There is a catch, however - There must be at least 15 entries for there to be a winner. Also, for every additional 10 entries above the minimum I will choose an additional winner. So, 25 entries or more equals 2 winners, 35 or more will produce 3, etc. So you see, it is in your best interest to get the word out.

Oh yeah, and in honor of my sweet, new, little thing, your entry must contain in it, somewhere, the word "baby."




Contest starts NOW!