The Bittersweetness of Life Getting in the Way

Geez! I just realized that it's been two and a half weeks since my last post. I'm sorry to my sweet little blog and to the small handful of you who actually take the time to read it (I love you, by the way!). My life has just been getting all sorts of in the way. I feel guilty for neglecting my self-proclaimed life's passion but there's just so much stuff to do and so much recovering from stuff I do! I could go ahead and blame it on the end-of-summer need to cut loose or whatever, but that's a weak excuse at best. I could also blame my day job at the bar, which is a considerably less weak excuse but still not a good enough reason to be a lazy writer. When I do carve out an hour or two to devote to my laptop I have been spending that time working on a piece that I am submitting for publication in 2 weeks and I'm getting my first taste of deadline anxiety. So keep your fingers crossed that come the new year, I will be a real-life published writer! But for now I am choosing to use all three of the aforementioned reasons for why I have been neglecting my small circle of readers. Many apologies.

The highlight of my recent hiatus had to be a spontaneous mid-week getaway to my friend Gabby's waterfront house in Cambridge. Even though the trip was all of two nights, it was the perfect outlet for some much needed bowing off of steam. Five of us packed up two cars with beer, liquor, food, coffee (of course), and a few overnight essentials... and then more beer... and headed for the Chesapeake. What ensued over the next 36 hours was the perfect combination of intoxication and relaxation with some of my favorite people on this planet.

We played games, floated in the pool, watched my brother play 157 games of ping pong against anyone that wasn't otherwise occupied at the moment, sat around a bonfire, and kayaked into the sunset. Over the course of the two nights we managed to drink a comically large bottle of espresso vodka, an entire bottle of Kahlua (what's a vacation without white russians, anyway?), two bottles of wine, at least three pitchers of bloody marys, and, if I had to estimate, around three cases of beer. After said alcohol was consumed, the group congregated at the end of the pier and we all lay on our backs and watched the stars for what seemed like hours. With the exception of driving home before noon the next morning and having to cross the Bay Bridge with a wicked hangover, the mid-week mini-vacation was perfection. I would also like to mention that Brandon was not able to make it because of his job, and his presence would have been the only thing to make the entire experience complete.

So I suppose it's time to bid farewell to summer and start hitting the laptop hard (some days I would like to take that literally), because I would hate to succomb to Lazy-Writer-Syndrome, or LWS as I will now be calling it.

P.S. I still intend on offering my thoughts on the new season of Weeds, however, I can't decide how I feel about the first two episodes just yet. I will let everyone know once I have formed an opinion.

Missing: Genius

I'll just come right out and say it- I love Elizabeth Gilbert! It may be super trendy to love this woman right now but I don't even care, I just about worship her. For those who are unfamiliar, Liz Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray, Love- the international super-mega best seller and Julia Roberts is playing her in the movie coming out on Friday.

The reason I'm swooning over her at the moment is that I recently watched a video of a lecture she gave at the 2009 Technology, Entertainment, & Design Conference on creative genius and its place in our society. She discussed how the Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that humans were not geniuses themselves, but they actually possessed an intangible genius- a creativity spirit, if you will. This belief not only maintained the modesty of the artist by limiting the personal credit he/she could take for their work but also alleviated the pressure put on the artist by allowing him/her to share the responsibility of creativity with their genius. Follow? Good.

My point tonight is that my genius seems to be on vacation; it's that time of year I guess. The heat must have sent the little guy packing. I can't get my mojo going these last couple of weeks. Writer's Block is a massive understatement at the moment. So while I try to coax my little genius back from whatever remote Caribbean island he's on, I thank you in advance for bearing with me. I hope you're enjoying your Mai Tai, buddy, because I'm coming to find you!

P.S. I think I'll name him Gus. Gus has some great ideas but he can be a little unreliable.

Who Wants Some Weeds?

I find myself with a lot of down time during the week. I am only a part time bartender, my husband has the most ridiculous work schedule in existence, I live in East Nowhere, and I can only spend so many hours a day having a stare-down with my computer screen before I start to go cross-eyed. So, in order to allow my brain to recharge itself after a fun filled day of writer's block and too much caffeine, I plop myself down on my couch and look for new TV shows to watch. About six weeks ago I became fully hooked on Weeds. All five seasons were streaming live on Netflix and it took me all of about a month to watch the entire series. I come to find out, I finished just in time for the new season that's premiering on August 16th on Showtime. So here's what I'm gonna do. Once a week I'm going to offer my thoughts on the new episode. I've seen other bloggers do this about shows I really don't care about so I'm just going to start my own. So there! If you don't care about Weeds either 1) you've never watched it and I suggest you do immediately, 2) you're not part of what I consider my key demographic and you are excused from this post and all further posts on this topic (and thank you for your time) or 3) your taste in TV is awful and I don't like you

For those of you in the first group I'll provide you with a quick synopsis:

Nancy Botwin is a typical suburban housewife with two teenage

sons, Silas and Shane. Her husband died suddenly of a heart attack while jogging leaving Nancy to raise the kids alone in a big upper-middle class house in the cookie cutter town of Agrestic. Agrestic is one of those towns where everyone drives a Range Rover, has a maid, attends PTA meetings, and tries not to look racist. So what does Nancy do to maintain their current lifestyle? She starts selling weed to soccer moms and investment bankers. Over the course of the five seasons Nancy's life begins to spiral further and further out of her control as she tries to keep herself and her children out of harms way while living the life of a drug dealer. What starts as a small time, dime-bag-pushing means-to-an-end soon turns into the family business. Nancy ends up secretly married to a DEA agent after he discovers her profession so he won't be able to testify against her should she get caught. However, her DEA husband ends up getting killed by rival dealers after he has their grow house raided.  After Nancy indirectly burns the entire town of Agrestic to the ground she moves her family to a quiet beach town just north of the Mexican border. While managing a maternity clothing store that is a cover for an underground drug smuggling tunnel, Nancy meets Esteban, the drug kingpin/mayor of Tijuana. She becomes involved with him and eventually becomes pregnant. Nancy moves her family into Esteban's San Diego villa and they get married, although she does not entirely trust him and his political and illegal dealings.

So there is the recap in a very small nutshell. I'm extremely excited about the new season as I hope a lot of you are. So I will leave you with the trailer for Season 6 and I look forward to offering my thoughts. And hopefully some of you will offer yours as well.

Enjoy!

On Proposition 8 & People Who Hate

While having coffee yesterday afternoon, Jon and I started discussing politics. What started as a mini-rant on Jon's part about how much it bothers him that people are so pissed about having to press 1 for English soon detoured over to the subject of gay marriage. It was a harmless yet enthusiastic conversation because we happen to agree on our positions on the matter. Coincidentally enough, I later found out that a similar enthusiastic conversation must have been taking place at that very moment in California.

Yesterday Proposition 8, the gay marriage ban, was overturned by a federal judge who considered the ban unconstitutional. In an article appearing on abc.com one supporter of Proposition 8 was quoted saying, "If we change the definition of marriage, that is going to affect our children. So basically, we're trying to defend the children that will be adopted or raised by a couple who are not actually their mom and dad.". I have one word for this guy... ridiculous.

I consider myself a Christian and a conservative and though it may be counter-intuitive for me to be fully supportive of gay marriage in the US, I am one hundred percent. This country has lost the right to cite religious doctrine as a basis for regulating something that is none of their friggin' business! If you're going to make what a woman does with her body her choice, then you sure as hell better let tax paying citizens choose who they marry. 

You may say that God designed marriage for a man and a woman; and I agree with you. However, marriage in this country has very little to do with God anymore. And as sad as that makes me to say it, it happens to be true. So are people saying that unless two people are married in a religious ceremony, they can't get married? Why not put a ban on atheist marriage? What if you're arguement is the same as the guy's from the ABC article and you believe that two people who can't produce children biologically shouldn't be allowed to get married? OK, then why not a ban on infertile marriage? Since when can a government that separated church and state long ago make these decisions?

And what infuriates me the most are the gay marriage protesters. These self-rightous, judgemental, hypocrits are destroying the reputation of the church. I was raised in a Christian household and I was never taught to hate people who believed something different than I did. I also was never taught to shove my beliefs and principles down people's throats. These zealots can't really believe they are successfully saving the souls of homosexuals, can they? If I were gay and I saw a picket line outside the courthouse with a sign that said, "Burn in Hell, Fags" I can't really say I would rethink all my life's decisions and fall to my knees in repentence on the spot... but that's just me. Whether you believe Jesus was who He said He was or not, the man did not teach us to hate or to judge- bottom line.

With that being said, if gays want to get married, let them! Think about it; here is a group of people spending millions of dollars and countless hours fighting for the right to participate in an institution that is treated so poorly by those who get to experience it. If anything, legalizing gay marriage would revitalize the concept of marriage in this country. If they are granted the right to marry you better believe they are not going to take it for granted and show up in divorce court at the first sign of trouble. 

So, I guess what I'm trying to say to all those opposed to equal civil rights for homosexuals is: back off. You're wasting your energy on something that is really none of your business. If you don't support it, fine, but it's not your job to judge it.