What's up this week?

Another lesson learned: I am perceptibly getting older.  My birthday is coming up later this month, and when I look at my sheer lack of resilience in the face of young people things, I know that I am becoming old.  When I stay out late a single night, my schedule is irreversibly fucked up for a week or more.  I become a night creature who can neither force herself to go to sleep earlier nor stay up until the next night to make herself tired, the latter of the two being my usual go-to.  And when I finally crawl out of bed the next day at 1 in the afternoon, I feel like death.  I am not a morning (afternoon) person at all.  I just sit there, feeling ill and foul and grumpy for hours if I don't force myself to make me some coffee, and lord forbid if anyone talks to me before then.

What bothers me the most about being helpless to correct my sleep schedule is that the rest of the world closes at 4 pm, so by the time I drag my ass off the couch and get dressed, things are winding down for everyone else.  I keep trying to get to the doctor for some walk-in blood work, but I can only fit in so many things before 4 after waking up so late.

I can't handle liquor anymore, and I get hangovers now.  And  EVERYTHING gives me heartburn.  I can't even have the odd bit of raw onion on a sandwich every now and then without suffering like a sinner in Hell.  Sometimes it's so bad that the pain keeps me up all night, or all morning rather, because I can't get to bed before 4 or 5 am.  I have to sleep with Tums and Pepto by the bed.  Pretty sure I have developed acid reflux in my old age, but I don't want to have to endure the esophageal probing to be diagnosed.

And the allergies, omfg, the allergies.  They never used to be this way.  I cannot exit the house without a Claritin, and if I make the mistake of doing so, my ears stop up.  I cannot hear anything, and I just wander around, grumpy af, aiming my ear at things I'm trying to listen to.  It basically cancels out human interaction, because I can't follow a conversation like a human.
First world problems, people.

Bleh, I said I wouldn't rant this week.  Well, I'm not particularly grumpy, just wish I could get on a slightly normal schedule.  Or eat an onion.  And the climb toward 25 doesn't fill me with mortal dread anymore, so woot about that.

Like a give a fuck

So I've begun planning for my birthday party, so excited over here!  It's going to be Harry Potter themed.  I'm going to make treats from the Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook, decorate in the colors of the four Hogwarts houses, and have an epic Potter movie marathon.  Also, Quidditch Beer Pong is a thing, and it is going to be at my party, both to satisfy my love for Harry Potter-themed party games and to entertain my husband and his buddies who love beer pong like a brother (I don't get it).  The game will be played OUTSIDE, and people better stay off the lawn...

What am I reading?

Lord, I wish it was something else, but I'm reading The Chamber by John Grisham.  It is just seems to go on forever, and I'm just so sick of his shit right now.  The man is not writing lawyery crime books or even touching lawyer-type general fiction stuff; he is writing complaints about the penal system and the poor state of society under the guise of badly written stories.  The protagonists in his books absolutely lack souls; they exist only to facilitate his epicly long lectures on how everything is fucked up and everyone is too much of a selfish fuck to care.  It is like those episodes of Law and Order: SVU that go on and on, but in the end, the bad guy gets away or the good guy gets raped/killed because of the failures of society and the law.  It's like that, but it's so much longer than an hour.

Also, there's none of this

I know he's very popular and all, but there are lots of popular writers that suck.  And he sucks.  Or at least the lawyery novels he became famous for do.  I actually liked Bleachers, but more about that in a second.  His subject has potential, but his stories are bad.  Sure, people should be made aware of the problems he addresses and made to question the morality of turning a blind eye to the plight of the homeless or death row inmates; I'm all for that aspect of his books.  However, the man cannot write a good story or good characters, no matter how much he obviously is trying.  If he spent more time focusing on writing relevant events into the story to teach the lesson rather than unabashedly lecturing about it page after page, he might just change the world.  But as it is, he has only succeeded in making me irritated at his style and frustrated that he didn't do a better job at his attempt to raise awareness.

But I suppose that his lawyer books are an easy read and an easy way to draw people in at the airport unsuspectingly and teach them a lesson.  However, I think that if a denizen of airport paperbacks, looking for some entertainment, were to read one of his books, it could go one of two ways: they might become either enlightened or bored.  Bored like when the teacher is lecturing angrily about something you've never heard of that you will forget the moment you leave the room.  And they would never come back to learn any more lessons.

For me, his veil of fiction is just too thin, and it makes his works unprofound where there is so much room to be profound indeed.  He wants to get his message out there, but at his core, he is a lawyer first and an author of fiction second.  For anything good to come out of a writer, they must be a writer first when writing.  Because he is a writer second and a lawyer first, his lesson is well fleshed out, but his fiction is wrapped poorly and thinly around it and never comes to its potential.
BUT THEN AGAIN, maybe he knows that his audience of bad paperback connoisseurs  aren't exactly profound people themselves and would understand the direct approach better.

Although I've only read a handful of his books, I don't think he ever came into his own as a writer until one of his most recent, Bleachers, which has absolutely zero to do with lawyering and is actually very relatable, especially for someone who grew up in the Southern football culture.


What is my current muse?

I thought that reading some more modern fiction would get me out of it, but it didn't: I'm completely obsessed with everything 1920s.  I love the people and everything they did, touched, lived, wore.  I love their haughty, jaded attitudes, their vampy makeup, their unusual and experimental fashion, their slang, their music, their hair, their drinks, their homes, their writing...  Eee, I have to go roll around with glee just thinking about it.

Appropriate gif is appropriate

I'm eating up pictures, poetry, magazine articles, magazine covers, books, catalogs, biographies of celebrities, art, fashion plates, anything I can find.  It's all beautiful.  I've been obsessed with this era before, and I'm ready to be again.  A very long time ago, I wrote a serial short story that took place during prohibition called "The Black Dog," and I always thought it could be better.  I think that this is a great time to either look at that story again or start something new and special.  One idea that occurred to me involved an apartment or flat haunted by a '20s girl.  I won't reveal any more of that one's plot, because I think it has a lot of potential and I fear plagiarism like I fear death.

While all this '20s stuff is on my mind, I'll try to make it a point to share some of what I've found in a Writspo post, because I know it will be appreciated.  It's all so good, how could it not be?!  If you know of any movies, books, poems, or anything else from the era that I absolutely must see, don't hesitate to share in the comments!

So I've noticed (and my husband has pointed out to me) that this blog provides information but is somewhat lacking my personal voice.  My new weekly post is part of my effort to change that and to thereby take this blog into a less boring and bleh direction.  And because I am a refuge from Tumblr, I shall do it with gifs.

I know that it would be most appropriate to write about what I'm reading right now or what I'm up to, but I've honestly been a little too anxious for reading or being up to things.  I had a decidedly hectic weekend, and I don't know how I didn't kill every soul responsible.  You see, I've always been a very calm person and haven't really gotten much joy out of partying or acting wild or being around people who do.  I like going to museums, seeing plays, bird watching, shopping at farmers' and flea markets, and having people over for dinner and wine.  I like things quiet and subdued and generally shun all things rowdy.  And the thing I love most in the world is being a completely antisocial shut in who loves books and Netflix and internet.    

And yet somehow, since my husband's birthday in May, my house has become known as the "party house."  This fills me with no small amount of screeching anxiety.  Each week as I clean up after the people my own age who do indeed enjoy partying and acting wild, I look forward to a quiet weekend, but the next weekend only brings more people.  
I am a person who collects nice things and who takes good care of her things so that they can last forever.  I take pride in my home.  I expect people coming into my home to treat everything in it with even more respect than I do because it doesn't belong to them, and that is the respectful thing to do.  But the people coming into my house are tearing around, making an unholy mess, damaging the furniture and floors, and acting just plain dumb as hell.  I can only clean up after these fgts like Miss Mary Sunshine for so many weeks before I lose my shit.

I don't like confrontation, so it takes everything I have in me to tell them to stop sternly several times.  If that doesn't work, I become a ball of helplessness.  At first, they listened.  However, after several weeks, they grew too comfortable with me and with being in the house, and they have now stopped listening. 

As I stand and watch everything I ever loved being destroyed

Several other factors also contributed.  My husband has tended to blow off the things I scold them for and make them seem like nothing because he has never owned furniture or nice things and therefore has no sense of preservation toward them.  This only empowered them to ignore me too, because if he's ignoring me, those things really mustn't be a big deal.  I am also very kind to people in my house (or anywhere, really), and I cannot seem to break myself of it, no matter how they treat me.  Predators like the ones tearing up my house see this as weakness.

The growing lack of respect for me and my home compounded into the unholy shitstorm that was this weekend.  Two guys got into a fight, and one of them slapped a cup of milk out of the other's hand, getting it all over the ceiling and walls.  I still cannot get the stains off, and it makes me rage to think that they would have the gall to do this in another person's home over something so dumb.  Beer was spilled around 10 times inside the house, and people were haphazardly wiping it up with my nice dishtowels and leaving giant sticky patches on the floor.  Beer was also spilled on the furniture, and the person did not tell anyone but rather tried to hide it and lie.  If I had been told when it happened, I could have cleaned it, now we have to get a $100 steam cleaning.  Someone stepped on one of our PS3 controllers, broke both analog sticks, then didn't tell us.  Someone ran into the shelf that holds my glass chickens so hard, they shoved it in front of a door and made no attempt to move it back.  They are damn lucky that no chickens broke.  I woke up the next morning to loud booms.  It was a drunk guy diving onto the feather comforter and using it to slide across the sticky living room floor into our TV stand.
Even though I banned beer pong from inside the house, I was ignored and it was brought inside.  I banned it for a reason.  Every time it has been in the house, beer has been splashed all over the wood furniture and made water spots and rings.  I have tried so hard to repair it, but it will never be the same.  We even got ants from the beer everywhere.  I am also going to have to do pricey repairs to the hardwood floors because of entire patches of clear coat being scratched off.  Even though I've told people to stay off the lawn because it tracks mud into the house, they just won't.  They've ruined a white bath mat, and I have to scrub the bathroom tiles every week.
And then here's the unholy of unholies: they harassed my canary.  That is my pet, my baby, and they tried purposefully to scare and upset him.  One guy wouldn't leave him alone, even when I yelled and pulled him away.  That is sick.  Anyone who would harass a helpless creature and try to cause it distress is sick.  It was truly terrible, and I have tears in my eyes just writing about it.  And that is why I didn't feel bad when someone slammed his head into the floor and left a mark on his forehead.

I felt more like this

I don't think I could handle it if I were to tally up how much money I've spent and lost from this series of parties that have only escalated to this magical point of craziness.  Some of the offenders have been yelled at by my husband, and the rest will be yelled at by him when he gets done with Air Assault School and goes back to work.

And the moral of the story is one I already knew a lot about: people suck.  People really and truly suck, and while you'd like to think that everyone's parents would have instilled in them some amount of propriety, manners, and respect for others, this is just not the case.  People give not one shit about anyone aside from themselves and therefore give not one shit about anything that belongs to you.  Out of the crowd of people who were at our house this weekend, only three people behaved respectfully and decently.  That is sad, but such is life.
And that is why I am a hermit, because avoiding people, especially large groups of them, and participating only in calm activities/ frivolity just makes life happier.  I've noticed that when I invite the wilder people to do calm things with me, they think it will suck but ultimately enjoy themselves.  Calm things don't equal boring things, and I hope more people come realize that.  Also, I hope more people will realize that if you're drinking, you don't have to act like a belligerent, destructive tornado of party-energy.

I promise next week I won't be nearly so bitter.  I'll probably talk about books and trying a new restaurant and happy funstuff like that.  It isn't very often that something happens to me that makes me rant, but this time, it did.  But here ends my passive-aggressive rage, and here begins a good rest of my week and good weekend.  I wish the same to anyone reading, unless you're one of the fucks that wrecked my house, in which case I hope your computer catches on fire or something.