Sweet Valley High Books May Cause Pregnancy

I am reading romantical books, ya'll. Give me a minute, I gotta quit blushing.

 ~tomato red!~

Okay, done now. 

 I've recently read a romance book. My first romance read ever. Not joking. I've only started reading the romance genre in this last year. I will blame it on cell phones. And my mother.

 You see, if I hadn't gotten a cell phone, I wouldn't have downloaded a book reading app.

 If I hadn't downloaded the app, I wouldn't have found free classic books online.

 If I hadn't found free books online, I wouldn't have started reading again.

 If I hadn't started reading again, I wouldn't have used Goodreads.com and connected with friends. These friends who used to work at a bookstore. Friends who said, "If you like historical fiction, you will probably like Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. A lot of women like that book" At this point I didn't know whether to be insulted or thankful he'd recommend something I would dive into. I went with thankful.

 I read all kinds of books now with few exceptions because of my mother. I will say on her behalf, she does not remember it this way. Why? Because it is a universal truth that no family member should agree on past events. No one remembers what happened growing up. It's Murphy's Law, senility, or perhaps the need to be contrary. My sisters and I don't even agree and we haven't the age excuse on our side. (Sorry, Mom. No, you are not old). Its some generational, space time continuum thing. In fact, my kids are probably making fake memories as I type this on my keyboard.

 In my humble and faulty recollection, which is very, very humbly recollected, my parents homeschooled me. This is not in dispute. However, the parental units allegedly had me write book reports on classics like the autobiography of Rush Limbaugh while I begged off to write something meaty and homeschooler-ish by CS Lewis or Oregon pioneer, Dr. John McLoughlin. Or dissect quantum mechanics departing from classical mechanics, primarily at the quantum real of atomic and subatomic length scales.

I was homeschooled.

What does this have to do with the book, Outlander? I'm blaming my android phone and my mother, that's what. I'll get there, now hush or go make me a sandwich.

 I vividly remember my mother, who continues to not remember, giving my teenage self a good deal of flack after seeing I checked out Jr. High romance books. Good girls don't read that stuff. Judy Blume, beyond Fudge and Tootsie? Not allowed. The new Nancy Drew was also deemed a tart and she was banned from the house as well. Sweet Valley High girls were trouble. I mean, look at these faces.

The new face of teenage rebellion.

 

They may look like innocent teens who scribble "Mrs. Sweet Valley High Guy" on their sparkly unicorn trapper keepers. But we know better.

Tears, shame and guilt pierced my Double Loving heart and like the good girl I was, I snuffed my tears, put my shoulders back, chin high, and began smuggling young adult Sweet Valley High porn under my pillow on the downlow. Until my stash was discovered.

That was a dark day indeed, my friend.

Fast forward twenty-garblefarble years and am I grown up with four kids and a husband. I still get a little embarrassed admitting I like the romance genre. I didn't want to break down an buy a book cover, but I can definitely see the appeal now.

"What are you reading?"
"Uhhh, my quantum mechanics book? Don't look at me that way...HEY! I WAS HOMESCHOOLED YOU KNOW!"

I was told by a well-read friend I might branch into historical fiction since I liked Stephen Lawhead. This is the one that recommended the Outlander series. He didn't say it's about a strapping, 6ft 4 Highlander, a strong female protagonist, drama, time travel, love story, a rebellion, humor, and all wrapped in good writing.

I blushed, I hmmm-ed and hawwwed, but my head said HEY! ITS MY BOOK APP AND ILL READ ROMANCE IF I WANT TO!

I downloaded it for a free Nook deal where it sat on my puritanical phone for a year. Which, incidentally, is more salaciously thrilling than hiding Sweet Valley High and Nancy Drew porn under a pillow.

Hey! Someone tell Ned that Nancy-girl is a firecracker. Woo woo!

After getting a new phone, I redownloaded the book app and surprise. There was the book. Highly rated and staring at me. I started reading and I discovered where the romance novels were concerned, there were a lot of varients. Also, I'm a dirrrrty girl and I liked it. A lot.

Then call me a broadsided bibliophile, Batman... there were genres in romance, too.

I soooo need a bigger pillow.

I have to mention, the peeps who tell publishers to offer a free download are pretty smart because I've purchased all available in the series in hardback (that's how I roll). I don't think I would have been brave enough to branch out into this genre without having been given the book.

I fell in love with this story and even though my mother's consternation, which she does not remember, at my choices in books is a deep-seated voice, I have learned to be more open-minded. Not that I'm going Fifty Shades of Seriously? This Is A Best Seller? anytime soon.

All in all, I would have missed this amazing world Gabaldon had painted if I hadn't taken a risk to read out of my literary box. For that, I thank my mother who still swears I'm making this up, the inventor of the android cell phone, and the deliciously wicked pen of Diana Gabaldon.

~Bee does not put covers over her paperback books.
Listening to: The Planets Bend Beneath Us by Snow Patrol 

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Don't Eat The Shrimp Platter

I'm at a bit of a loss as to why I've looked at the calendar and it's now September. It was June just last week.

Little bit of a lot to catch up on.

I went to a cemetery today. No, it's not my time yet and all the kids are accounted for. I do something far more relaxing. Less irreversibly dead. I take photos of headstone markers.

Now, I know what you are thinking, and unless you are dead from sheer boredom reading this post, you are alive and thinking, why? who does this for fun? A lot of people.

Cemeteries are as fascinating as their living counterparts. I love to people watch. Read obits. Find out what someone did with their life. The cemetery just shows the end part. Beyond that, a peek into someone's life: Someone cleans the marker. Do they miss the person or thankful for the time they had with them? Do they have a family plot and is it forgotten by loved ones that moved away? These are little glimpses into someone's life, into a place that is quite private, feels deeply personal, yet out in the open for all to see. 

In short, I'm a nosy girl and people watching is still a favorite hobby.

You'd be surprised how many love to do this. I volunteer for an online cemetery photo database. As a curious soul, researching is brain food, piecing together family, and helping others is my altruistic bit of happiness. I get a sense of paying it forward by quietly traversing over miles of grass and buried memories. The exercise and fresh air doesn't hurt either. This is where the volunteers come in.

I could exercise like this. Rome wasn't built in a day but Romans didn't have relatives with cameras who canvased cemeteries to lose weight.

One marker in particular surprised me. I promise I'm not making this up. The last name indicated sorcery and conjuring. Big pentagram on the marker. She had a big surprise after she died.

In more linear news, I had a birthday last week. Still in my dirty thirties even though I use soap all the time. I remember being fresh out of high school and thinking that 30 was old. I certainly don't cater to that ideal. But admittedly, I have been under the impression for several years now, high schoolers are looking younger and younger.

Another something-something is my schooling. Big question mark. I won't get into the hairy ordeal here. Too many decisions and options. Closed doors, closed windows, and I basically need some air. Now you're curious.

See how it feels? Not fun. I'm still making my goals a reality however, reality requires flexibility and timing is everything.

Are you confused? Me, too. 

Zus is in middle school now. He's picked up the flute for band class. I'm housing one budding guitarist, and an additional five musicians here. Our apartment looks like a music store exploded inside.

Lastly, Mr Coffee and I went to the beach with the family for our 18th anniversary last month. We experienced traditional Pacific NW coast weather: overcast, cool, and a peek of sun resulting in a bit of sunburn. It was an excellent adventure to christen our new-to-us van. Tillamook, OR, Seaside, OR, and Seaview, WA are a lovely place to visit. Bob's Cabin Restaurant and Lounge's shrimp platter was not.

That's all I'll say about that.

Well, now I've caught you up, dear reader. Next post will probably be more exciting. Or not. I just promise to blog before I'm collecting social security. 

~Bee has lots to blab about today.

Listening to: Past Is Prologue album by Tycho 

 
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Raise Your Hands If You're Sure

"What on earth does 'moded' mean?"

A few posts back I spoke of moded people, thinking to my old school self, "Self, I am so hip and getting down and jiggy with it."

"Like, for shizzle," says the white girl.

Apparently, there are old school terms and then there is old, old school. Even the old schooliest might not know what "moded" meant. The actual meaning of the word "moded" derived from "moated", in the medieval days when you would get stuck on the moat and look stupid. You would have to swim to dry land, across rank water full of people-eating eels or the Loch Ness monster or something.

Yeah. I just made that up.

If I read my urban dictionary right, it means: inyerface, burned, dissed, facejob, owned. A derivative of the word "demoted".

My sisters and I flung this word about often growing up in So. Cali. It was the ultimate burn, especially toward our neighbors. Calling names was nothing new. Almost a rite of passage, like high school prom. Or a first date. Or cleaning untended liquid broccoli from your first apartment fridge. As kids, we were rebels, calling the neighbor kids, "Ni**erpoos". They in turn, called us "Honkey Trash".

HUD apartment housing, folks. Doesn't get any better than this. Apparently, it takes a village to raise a child, and that same village to make your kids racist.

Not a shiny moment in my childhood memories but here is one shinier from long ago. I'm a greenie. I recycle.

Fifth grade was a very hard year for me. I discovered boys. I discovered Lawman jeans were cool. I discovered friends could stab you in the back and that hygiene couldn't be taken care of by a shake of baking soda.

You see, my parents were under the opinion that with four girls, deodorant was a commodity we could do without. The notion of buying deodorant for a second grader was probably not on their radar and baking soda was cheap and always available in the kitchen. Bad news for me.

I have always been a Sweaty Betty. (no offense to Betty). The payoff to looking like someone who is detoxing is that you have great skin, but again, one is always sweaty. The bane of my existence has been B.O. related from the start of second grade.

I recall that dark day when a parent handed us four girls a set of shakers to share. These shakers were rather like the red pepper flake dispensers at the pizza parlor, except these babies were full of baking soda.

To shake. Into my pits.

It doesn't take a science major to know that baking soda is prone to clumping in wet environments. And boy, did it.

Every morning I would faithfully shake baking soda into the caverns of my arms with the hopes I'd ward off smelling like a 10 year old couch in a frat house. I'd end up spilling white powder on my clothes and hating the moment that would come a few hours later. That moment, that dreaded moment, of catching wind of my fragrant..er..., flagrant self.

Being an odoriferous sort, I would nearly die of embarrassment when I would nonchalantly raise my arm and a small clod of grayish baking soda would fall out of my armpit. It would happen at the most inopportune times. And no boy would come within ten feet of me. Who knew that giving it another few years and I'd be modeling swimsuits for a living? How is that for moded? But for my fifth grade year, I stood three heads taller and was marked with sweat stains and raging B.O.


I would pray, "PLEASE don't let there be clods in my pits. PLEASE don't let their be clods in my pits." It was mortifying. By mid morning though, you'd think my body was having some gruesome white clod fall out.

Despite my baking soda pits, B.O., and dusted t-shirts, I had trouble making friends. I remember one morning, going over to my desk to start my school day. I came eye to eye with a gigantic, sunshine yellow, toile-covered basket perched upon my school desk. This was not any basket, it was a JEAN NATE' bath and body basket. I stood dumbfounded, eyes glazed in glorious wonder over who would be so kind to do that? Soap, lotions, a little deodorant, and more soap....all packaged in it's beautiful, golden yellow glory. I was so excited. I felt special.

I didn't realize the assistant teacher was giving it to me because I was emulating the Bog of Eternal Stench. My teacher may have thought that I (or my parents) needed some help in the hygiene department. I gather she didn't have a polite way of saying, "No offense but you smell like a sheep herder!" My stepmom became unglued (and rightly so) when she found out one of my teachers gave me body products. Why it was such an offensive gift, I wondered. I had my baking soda, right? Naturally, I didn't understand until it was explained to me how the teacher should have addressed my parents first.

And queue the deafening sound of a 5th grader's feelers being put through a proverbial meat-grinder. 

Everyone has an awkward stage in their childhood. I had big teeth, a bean pole body, mean school mates, and awkwardness all poured into a pair of Lawman jeans.

That was my fifth grade year in a nut shell.

I'm thankful now for those character building lessons. Armed with deodorant, my fifth grade year could have been easier. I could have forgone the embarrassment but I am now better equipped to empathize with my kids once that time comes...and it will...even if I will never, ever, ever enjoy red pepper flakes on my pizza.

You can be Sure of that.

~Bee never lets you see her sweat
Listening to: Animal by Dash & Will

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Alone Time and Not Fitting In

"Do you want to go to a Moms group with me?"

I have a friend, let's call her Julie. Julie decided that attending a Moms group with me would be fun. She admitted not attending this one before. She'd heard about it through the grapevine.

The Mom grapevine is pretty awesome. It has been a longstanding tradition and wealth of knowledge to Moms all over the planet: the best consignment stores, what wine goes best with charcuterie, the best stance against a penguin attack, or juicy stuff, like instructions on how to effortlessly cheese off the PTA crowd.

This time, news of a Moms group came down the grapevine. A secret club held in a public place. Lots of moms. Seasoned moms. New moms. Stepford Moms. Realistic Moms. Moms who have developed an unfortunate interest in sensible shoes. Moms with SUV's the size of small countries (complete with sticker of a half, smashed-in baseball mounted on the back window).

This was women en masse needing a little break from the daily grind to partake of strong coffee, breakfast casseroles, and delicious gossip from the Mom Grapevine. 

Julie is an amazing friend and trusting her judgement of all things Mom-Groupy, I agreed to go with her. My kids are out of the toddler phase and in school. However, the draw was not the meeting in particular but hanging out with a girlfriend. Coffee, breakfast, and meeting like-minded women were just a bonus.

I was quiet at this meeting because 1) I only knew one other person, 2) it's easier to count the available exits when you aren't engaged in conversation with someone else, and 3) a closed mouth catches no feet.

I'm not one for big group meetings. The older I get, the more comfortable I am in my own skin which affords a nice balance of quiet and deeper friendships with those I do hang with. Friends like Julie who take me to Moms meetings and help me not to laugh out loud when someone says something we could turn into blog fodder.

It's rude to laugh at a group speaker. I think I learned that from the Mom Grapevine or Horders, or something.

I sat quietly and read the Four Bean Enchilada recipe in the Moms Group flyer while Julie inspected the contents of her purse. She was feeling a bit left out only knowing one or two other moms there. I brought her back to reality serenading her with a short rendition of the Space Ghost song, "I Love Beans". She then thanked me profusely for coming with her.

I did have fun. The two speakers were idealistic and conservative but to each their own. The ladies at my table were really great and asked how Julie and I met. We answered proudly, "Writing online!".

This is why the irony of the Moms Group topic was not lost on me: Technology. How to use our time with technology wisely, how technology can negatively affect our families, and how to free yourself from technology addiction.

Technology addiction? I don't understand those words together.

I believe the general consensus was that Facebook is evil, the web is a tool (yeah, keep reading), Facebook is evil, you must give 110% to your family regardless of the impact on your own person, and that Facebook will ruin your life, waistline, marriage, amongst a growing list of ridiculous show of sanctimonious reasons for lack of self-control.

It turned out that out of the 9 women at our small group table, nearly half of us had jobs or demands that required technology. A real estate job. Web developing. Online school. Web design. As Julie so sagely pointed out, technology is not going away.

She found that nugget of wisdom on Wikipedia.

I had to speak up at our small group table. When it comes down to brass tacks, no object is inherently good or evil. Man makes it good or evil. I pointed out to the women at our table that no matter your view on technology, the idea that the internet or smart phones, or videos are evil is missing the point.

The issue is lack of self-control.

For instance, you walk into your kitchen twice a day, pull out your Oster blender and make a giant chocolate shake. You will most likely gain weight and will not be able to wear your skinny jeans anymore. Who gets the blame? The evil blender will not take responsibility for your lack of self-control.

One woman shared, "I was online every day for 30 minutes and my husband finally came to me and said, 'You have a problem.'"

(and here, you judged me for laughing just a minute ago)

Way to support Mom filling her emotional tanks.

This husband sounds like fun. If I'm a stay-at-home mom and I have a clean house and my tasks for the day are done, why not go online or dive into a book. I'm fueling my proverbial tanks.

Reality is this: to make myself happy and healthy for my family, I need some down time. Mr Coffee needs his down time. Alone time. Time out. Time for me.

My daughter says that everyone needs alone time, "even sharks and astronauts have alone time".

Random, but yeah. She's 8. She's really smart.

Another woman shared that Facebook made her have discontent in her life, "My girlfriends get together without me. Aunt Judy went on vacation to Hawaii. A friend got flowers from her husband. So-and-so got a new car... " 

 Facebook made her feel discontent. It MADE her do it. Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg didn't just steal from the Winklevoss twins, he's now melding your mind through Facebook.

The fact remains that indeed, a Facebook user may very well feel discontent with their life. Jealousy, envy, insecurity, and a covetous mindset has nothing to do with discontent. Things are better when you take responsibility for our own happiness.

Or you could just keep blaming it on the blender.

~Bee is blaming New Balance trainers for losing weight
Listening to Brighter Discontent by The Submarines.

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