tittytangents.com

I’m taking this creative writing class at the moment. It’s a pretty neat class, especially given my interest in writing and all that. So far, it’s been a great springboard to help me with techniques that would have otherwise stayed un-honed and I’m enjoying the experience overall.

For next Tuesday, I have due a five to seven page fiction piece on pretty much anything I choose. I’ve got my topic, and after much metamorphosis, things are pretty well-cemented down. It’s going to be filled with regret and a feeling of hopelessness, but in the end –SPOILER ALERT!– the protagonist will ultimately be thinking “Hey, I can turn my life around tomorrow. It’s never too late.”

You know, that sappy shit.

But more than a touching tale of new beginnings, this break-out short story is about riding the bus. I’m happy to report that my misfortune is now doubling as a new way to get around and my muse these days. I’m also excited that this blog is now safe from becoming one of those sitcoms where every episode is complete on its own and is never referred to in later seasons (How do those writers think we’re just going to ignore the fact that there is a totally new actor playing that character or that last week that person was on his/her deathbed only to be back in action this week with no explanation as to how the situation was resolved?)

So, faithful readers, I’m bringing back the topic of my car having shit the bed on me. I’m still carless, and I’m not even really searching that hard right now. I’m kind of resignedly dependent on the family VW and the bus for the time being. The bus isn’t that bad, though. There’s so much weird stuff going on if you just look for it. Great details to be written down for future use in a story or something.

For example, the VERY FIRST DAY I took the bus I had one of those conversations where I learned all about one person by only asking the “…and you?” questions and giving curt answers to ones directed at me. Her name is Amy. She doesn’t go to school because she can’t afford it, but she would love to go back to school. She thinks that it would be great to go back to school because on top of learning lots of stuff, she would have access to the school cafeteria and she could eat there every day. Do they serve pizza? she asked. I could eat pizza every day if I had the chance. And do they have vending machines? What do they have in them? Snacks and stuff, cool. Do they have soda machines? Do they have Mountain Dew? Man, I love Mountain Dew. I drink Mountain Dew every day (She was, at the time, holding a bottle of Mountain Dew, so I wasn’t about to doubt her).

What spurred this intimate conversation, you are wondering? I moved my backpack and asked if she wanted to sit down. I know– that will be the last time I do that.

And I saw winos! They were huddled together in the bus stop booth thing and passing around a bottle in a paper bag! Their conversation was mumbled and rambling at best (and downright incoherent and loud at worst) and they were chain-smoking Swisher Sweets. Cherry, I think.

And there was this old lady with her grey hair pulled back tight in a bun, with this black coat that covered her like some deflated parachute. She was rocking back and forth and muttering to herself. I think she was just moving her lips, because I tried very hard to hear what she was saying. Her arthritic hands looked like claws protruding from the cuffs of her oversized jacket.

And most recently, this very loud woman was talking at this man and she was telling him how she stood by her boyfriend while he was in prison and how now he’s got a new girlfriend but she’s not mad. She likes her. And she doesn’t want the new girlfriend to be afraid of her because she doesn’t want to hurt her ex, so she’d never try to get her to run. In fact, if anything ever happens to Current Girlfriend, Ex Girlfriend will call her cousins to lay the smack down on the offender because her cousins were crazy fighters and were brought up on charges for assault at one point. But they got off. But if anything happens to Current Girlfriend…

This is spun gold, people! You’re never as exciting as those unusual folks you’ll meet on the bus! Two bucks a day, two or three times a week, and I can fill up a notebook with all the awesome stuff I see and hear. And since you never really find out who these people are (except the Amys you meet), you can use and twist their stories to fit your purposes freely!

Bus stops are the Parisian cafes of the twenty-first century.

I’m pregnant.

As much as this is always a pleasure for me, it is also quite a burden at times. I’m frequently pregnant, in fact. It’s almost a constant state for me.

But how, Beth? you may ask. I thought you hated children and had an aversion to male reproductive parts in general? you might wonder. It’s time for a vocab lesson, guys. Get your mind out of the uterus and into… a dictionary. Or something.

The interesting thing about pregnancy (the kind involving storks and babies) is that everything has a different gestation period. Humans take nine months of simmering in placental goo, while elephants take 22 long months to crawl out of their warm womb. And little bitty things like hamsters have less than 30 days before they pop on out (and risk being eaten by their hungry mamas). Not unlike bio-preggers, different ways of being mentally knocked-up require different gestation periods.

For instance, I am seldom without a to-do list. Some of the stuff on my list involves important stuff like calling the IRS about free money, sorting out a mess with the Veterans Affairs office to get free money, and doing precalculus homework. These things take way too long to incubate for their priority level. I procrastinated months on my IRS free money, as long as I could afford on my VA free money, and I’ve all but quit doing my important precalc work. That’s like human pregnancy there.

Now less objectively important things I wanted to do, like email this girl from Basic Military Training I hadn’t talked to in a while, sending a care package full of acorns and leaves for a friend who got stationed in SC away from pretty Maine foliage, and updating this site also take longer than I’d like. There’s absolutely no reason to not do that stuff, but I just keep putting it off like I’ll suddenly say “I’ve got 10 free minutes, so why not do that thing I’ve been meaning to do?”. Except I don’t. This can go on in a very elephant incubation-like manner for god knows how long. I keep feeling bad, but I also keep not doing anything about it. I’d be a horrible elephant cuz I’m always forgetting to remember how much I want to do stuff.

And then I have things that are pretty low-priority, like leveling up my characters in World of Warcraft, watching five episodes of Degrassi in a row, and using this week’s Border’s coupon for 30% off when I spend $10 or more. I do this shit faster than Spiderman can shoot web to grab the remote control because he’s too lazy to stand up and get it the old-fashioned way. Hamster baby mania. I get that warm feeling, know something important is a-brewin’, and race out to get it done. Before I know it I’ve got three new books, I’m leveling and gearing up, and all my Degrassi episodes are gone. And I still don’t know the status of my free money or how my old friends are doing. At that point it’s less like giving birth and more like holding off on pooping even though you really gotta and going pee instead, just hoping that it all goes like planned and you don’t get caught up with big stuff interspersed with your little stuff.

I’m going to try to do my precalc now. I think. No I probably won’t. Baby steps. I leveled up my character yesterday, I emailed my friend two days ago, called about the IRS stuff last week, and updated just now. That’s, like, stuff from each category in one week. I’ll be fine for at least… a while.

Until next time, my little hamster babies!