There are several indicators that your daughter’s soccer team may not be ready for professional level play. For instance:

Coach: Zoe, you go to midfield.
Zoe: Ok!… where is midfield?

**

Player: Coach, how will everyone know that I’m goalie if we don’t have a goalie shirt?
Coach: Just turn your shirt around backwards.

**

Player: What kinds of things are fouls? Kicking?

**

The first game of the year is always a refresher game. These girls have been out of practice for several months, but frankly they did great. This is the first year that Zoe’s team plays on the “big fields” rather than the mini-fields. She was most excited when she got to play goalie… of course with her shirt turned around backwards.

She had several impressive goal kicks. No, seriously.

There were a number of noticeable improvements over last season. For one, all of the girls ran in the right direction. Zoe only cried once during the game (wind knocked out of her), and she only “took a break” (lying down on the ground in the goal during play) once.

Deacon was very forlorn that little guys were not allowed to play, as evidenced in this picture.

*Oh ball, how you vex me so.*

But then he realized that you can steal a random kid’s soccer ball and use it as a seat! And after that everything was fine.

I love my kids.

This is the face that slobbered at my knees all morning… pudgy hands clutching at my pajama pants… hoarse, choking sobs echoing through the kitchen…

All because I would not — would NOT — allow him to eat chocolate pudding for breakfast.

I instead forced him to eat banana pancakes slathered with a liter of syrup. Forced him, guys.

Votes are in: Worst. Mama. Ever.

…he’s my brother.

Opening night, two friends and I (along with my mom, two of my sisters, and a thousand or so squealing people) turned out for the Eclipse premier. I didn’t get us tickets because I’m a fan of these movies… it was more for the swag bags that were being handed out (with hair product samples and candy!). Plus, it was the first time in a long time that I had an excuse to stay out after 9pm.

I’m pretty lame in my old age.

Here are Shahara, me, and Katie at 12:30am. Lookin’ good. And flashing our book club gang sign… cuz literary is how we roll.

(See the two men in the audience? They’re in the row directly behind us… their groans of agony were nearly deafening.)

I’ve never read any of the Twilight books, so I can’t really call myself a hater… I don’t believe you can hate something you don’t know. However, the movies are rather cheese-ball. Honestly. But I went in good spirits and intended to have a good time… I refrained from making loud snarky comments to ruin the experience for anyone else. The following is my recap of Eclipse. SPOILER ALERT! There are a lot of spoilers about nothing much happening.

“Edward, I love you. I love Jacob, too. But I love you more. I can love two people at the same time, right? Let’s go sit in the meadow at the top of the mountain and we can watch your skin sparkle like diamonds.”
“Bella, I love you, too. You are the awesomest chick I’ve met in my whole 100 years as a vampire. I can’t figure out what it is that makes you so special — no one can — but I will do anything I can to protect you. Except that one time when I didn’t. My bad. Okay, let’s go watch my skin sparkle like diamonds.”

*meanwhile, Victoria (the pretty redhead — and if I were Edward, I would have gotten with that) is running through the forest. Still. It’s been, like, a year or something, and she’s still running through the woods. She knows where Bella lives, but for some strange reason she never makes it to her house, instead opting to run very fast and aimlessly through the surrounding forest. And sometimes into Canada.*

“Bella, choose me. I’m way frickin hotter, way less emo, and can really rock these denim cut-offs with hiking boots. Seriously. Check me out as I lean against this car. No, I can’t tell you what we do with all of the cast-off denim pant legs… it’s a tribal secret.

*meanwhile, Victoria is running fast some more. There is a hot “newborn” vampire guy who is “amassing an army” of about seven other newborn vampires. The Volturi (y’know, those annoying vampires from Europe) are keeping an eye on things.*

“Edward, I want to have sex with you.”
“Not until you marry me. Though I have no soul, I am a very religious member of the undead.
*sigh* “Fine, I’ll marry you. Can we do it now?”
“What?! You’re marrying him?!? When were you going to tell me, Bella? Gah! Well, that’s okay. I know that you will choose me eventually. And I will keep loving you until your heart stops beating. Or my heart stops beating. Or one of us stops breathing. Or something.”
“Okaaaaayyyy… this isn’t awkward.”

*A HUGE battle ensues, involving about 7 vampires and about 7 werewolves. Heads are torn off, which is the most action we’ve seen thus far. Bella and Edward talk in a tent. Bella and Jacob talk in the woods. Jacob and Edward talk in a tent. More talking. Victoria’s head comes off.*

Credits roll!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this review. Don’t hesitate to see this movie if you liked the other ones. And if you like a lot of talking…

(book club representin’…. HOLLA!)

Dudes! (Sorry, I know I call you guys “dudes” way too much.)

I finished my first draft. Yes-huh! I know, I honestly didn’t think I could do it, either. I never finish anything, ever. Well, that’s not entirely true. One time I was really hungry and I actually finished an entire Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese from McDonalds. True story.

But after six months and 57,451 words, I wrote the last line of my novel this afternoon. Yay!

It’s still very rough. Several of my characters changed over the course of the story… names, races, “motivations”… So if you read it beginning to end right now it might be a titch confusing. I’m going through one run of revisions before I let it out to the masses. (And by masses, I mean a select few who actually want to subject themselves to such a thing.)

To put it into perspective, let’s say that this picture represents a detailed outline of an awesome novel:

And let’s say that this picture represents what you’d like your awesome, richly written novel to look like when it’s publisher-ready:

Now, using these pictures as a comparison, here is roughly what my novel looks like at the moment:

I know, kinda gross, right? That’s what I’m saying…

But dude! I finished my draft! My skeleton has muscles!

And wasting no time at all, I made myself write that last line before I moved on to next shiny idea that’s been percolating for the last few days. I wrote the first two chapters for that today. I’m kind of on a roll.

She’s made of light and tiptoes on my shoulder, whispering and giggling in my ear with a voice that sounds like twinkling and dew drops.

And tonight, she’s prompting my eyes to stay open… urging me to type just a little bit more.

If I break another 1,000 words before falling asleep, she tells me I get to dance with her on the back porch and eat a big bowl of Grape-Nut ice cream.

I’m trying really — yaaawwwn — hard.

Okay, okay… I said that I was staying away from the blog and Facebook until my draft was finished… and it’s SO DANG CLOSE…

but of course, here I am. On the blog. (And lots of inane status updates on FB.) Before the draft is complete.

I’m really bad at grounding myself. Well, I’m okay with saying “Self, you’re grounded”, but then it’s the follow-through that I stink at.

Anyhoo, I’m breaking my silence to post up a link to a hilarious vblog by Jackson Pearce. (She’s down there in the blog roll, if you haven’t checked out her blog before.) It’s about writer’s block. Something that I’ve struggled with like most people struggle with weight or nicotine addiction or Farmville.

Check ‘er out. She’s hilarious, gorgeous, talented, and likes her breakfast pretty… which I totally admire.

Okay, back to my book. Dudes, I’m close. I was up until nearly 4am last night writing the big final fight chapter.

I will now take the opportunity to ask if anyone out there would care to try out a crit reading. My draft will be ready for a read in about a month or so. I’m willing to swap with fellow writers… my first 50 pages for your first 50 pages. No strings attached. If you don’t like my style of writing, or you don’t like my feedback (or vice-versa) we go our separate ways… no questions asked, and with no tears. (Or if you’re a non-writer friend of mine and you just want to give my story a once-over without swapping me 50 pages of your journal entries or lasagna recipes, that’s fine, too.)

Also, completely unrelated: we are rat-sitting while my sister and her boys are camping. And I just had a rat wander over my lap and arms dragging rat urine all over me. My gag reflex is workin’ overtime.

So to sum up: draft almost completed, hilarious video on writer’s block, wanna be a critique partner?, and I’m covered in rat pee.

Can’t get enough of this chick and her voice.

Just wanted to tell you that. And now, I’m grounding myself from my blog and the evil pulls of Facebook until I finish my stinking draft. I’m hitting 50k tonight, and I’m down to the final two chapters. So — DANG! — I’m close. So close I can smell it.

See you on the other side.

This week you can find me doing pretty much one of the following three things: blowing my frickin nose; writing, writing, writing; or blowing my frickin nose. Okay, I know I said the one thing twice, but that’s because it feels like blowing my nose is the thing I do twice as often as anything else. I have blown and/or wiped my nose so much that it looks and feels like red armadillo armor on the end of it. (And this is the point where I realize that I am talking way too much about my headcold and giving you way too much info on nose-blowing. So on to the real topic…)

Writing.

Hi, I’m writing. And when I’m not writing, I’m writing blog posts about writing. Because one of the oldest tricks in the book for writers who can’t think of anything to write, is to write about writing. I think it’s a lame scheme, myself. But I’m going to do it anyway.

These essays are sorta saving my life. I’ve decided that this dude is succinctly genius. He gets to the various cores of why writers give up and fail themselves, and gives a good dose of kick-in-the-pants self motivation. So if you’ve ever wanted to write a novel, or have started a novel (or, like me, several novels) and just can’t manage to get through the whole thing, take some time to read through Timothy Hallinan’s blog.

And now, back to real writing… not just writing about writing. And also nose-blowing. And also, I just paused the writing of this post to pull my toddler’s arm out of the toilet, as he was splashing in it like a kiddie pool. So after I blow my nose, I will disinfect his arm up to the elbow.

Good times. Now go. Write.