Stess's Journal

I think I've made it a goal to own every movie I ever loved as a child.  This includes *almost* every Disney movie, of course, but there's one or two I don't particularly care for (I have no desire to own Pinocchio, Dumbo, Fox and the Hound, or Oliver and Co, to name a few).

It strikes me that, at this point, I probably have more "kids" movies than I do regular movies.  This thought hit me as I sat here watching the "Tom and Jerry Movie", which I found at Walmart for $5, and has one of my all-time favorite songs from an animated movie.  

Here's a few I have that you might not find on most movie shelves:
The Tom & Jerry Movie
A Goofy Movie (EYE-2-EYE!)
The Chipmunk Adventure (I seriously never get tired of this movie)
An American Tale and An American Tale: Fievel Goes West
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Mary Poppins
DuckTales (Seasons 1 & 2) (yes really)
Fraggle Rock - The Beginning (it was a used disc, it has maybe two episodes?)
Heavyweights
The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under
The Great Mouse Detective
Fantasia 2000 (If anyone ever finds the original Fantasia on DVD I will love you forever)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (I loved the misfit toys.  Who wouldn't love a pink polka dot elephant?)

Not to mention a pretty extensive collection of Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks movies.  And a lot of "family" movies. 

(I probably have at least 500 movies, by the way.  Y'all, I am sad)

So, my mother and I had to change plans on a fun evening the other night, and ended up just walking around Barnes and Noble for a while.  We somehow ended up in the children's section looking at all the christmas and halloween books and reminiscing.  I mentioned my favorite Halloween book from my childhood called The Littlest Witch.  We looked to see if they had it, but no luck.

So, on a whim the next day I searched for The Littlest Witch on Amazon.  And what do you suppose I discovered?

( It's a collector's item! )

So that's my exciting story for the weekend.  Still deciding what to be for Halloween.  I WAS going to be Tracy Turnblad.  But lack of time and funds means not being able to get a decent wig and/or skirt.  I found my graduation robe while going through my boxes at home, so I think I'll just see if either my brother or my dad has a good ol' striped tie and go as a Hogwarts student.  I'm working at the 'Buster on Halloween night, so I need to think of something cool, and fast!  (I'd go as Delores Umbridge, but I guarantee only so many people would get it, plus I totally gave away my pink boucle jacket to goodwill when I moved)

It's not a diet.  It's a change of lifestyle.

If I think of it that way, I think I can be more serious about continuing and sticking with it. 

I don't want to diet.  I don't want to eat healthy until I reach a goal and then fall back into old habits, or feel like I'm denying myself food that I want, or cheating if I go out to dinner or have a soda at work.

I also don't want to have to micromanage my days.  I don't want to live by numbers - counting calories or carbs until my head explodes.  I don't want to obsess over portions and servings and calories and carbs and sugars and so on.

I want to live healthier, and by extension be healthier.  I do want to lose weight, but I don't want obsess over how much weight I'm losing over how much time.  I have a goal, but I'd rather be healthy and lose weight at a rate that is not detrimental to my body than lose the weight I want to quickly. 

I know how to do all of these things, but for years I've put off doing them.  But not anymore.  I need to do this, because I've rapidly become the one thing that I said I'd never be - grossly overweight.  It's affecting more than just my ability to wear cute clothes.  It's affecting my health - my sleep, my stamina, my strength, my face...and more.  And if I don't change this now, I may never change.

So that's the goal.  We'll see how successful I can be. The winter/holiday season probably isn't the best time to start this - but if I can do it successfully then maybe I really can change my life.

Welcome to this edition of "Stess has the most hilarious dreams of all time. Ever." !
( If you do, you win this lollipop! )

Folk-dancing hilarious. I love my dreams, seriously.

Actual conversation after this initial post:
Katy: I am so going to folkdance fight you the next time I see you  :D:D

Stess: omg i know

Katy: and this is great cause there is this "Skip to my Lou" move I have been dying to try

Stess: oh WHATEVER, bring it ON. Hell, i'll SQUAREDANCE Fight you. Elvira, beeetch. Elivira. WHAT NOW.

Katy: you wanna promenade with THIS? BRING IT! I will do-si-do your face!

Stess: Yeah, well, I'll SWING YOUR PARTNER ROUND-AND-ROUND, HA.

Katy: yea, well you better bow to this corner partner or I will end you...DIXIE STYLE!

Stess: You don't scare me none, I will TWO STEP on your GRAVE once I am done with you!

It has been a crazy week and a half! I have been a barrel of stress for about six days, but now that we are settled into our new apartment, I can finally relax.

Of course, given everything else that has already happened on the road to this move, I should have known that ( nothing would really go as planned )

Needless to say, it has been a crazy week. I have been up and down the emotional rollercoaster of being so angry I could scream, to so upset I sat down in my closet and cried so nobody would see me, to excited, to realizing that I have some pretty awesome friends, and the greatest Mom ever.

So now, it's just a matter of unpacking and organizing. Which will probably take me like, a week, but you know, at least we're in. And now, back to our regularly scheduled life.

Pictures of the new place will come eventually, when we get more settled in :)

"There is no wide road which leads to the muses." - Prospertius

I've spent my whole life wanting to be a writer.

I wrote a book when I was six about a clown named Bubbles who was kidnapped and saved by her cat, Sprinkles.

I would get ridiculously excited when we had creative writing assignments in school, and never failed to get an "A" on them.

When I was in the 10th grade, I discovered Fantasy. Not that I hadn't always known about princess stories and fairy tales - but I discovered that I could find ways to still love it as adult. And through the world of text-based roleplaying games, my eyes were opened to a new genre that reached me on a level that nothing had before. And I started to write, and the words flowed more smoothly and more quickly than anything else had.

I wrote The Guardian Quest over the course of the next three years. My writing style was disjoined, contradictory and unpolished. But I loved those characters. When I finished it, I knew how terrible it was, but I loved it in it's own special way. I wrote The Cristal Keepers after that, as a sequel, involving the second generation of the characters from the first book. It was better - I had learned some about how to write and how to outline and plot and develop a character. But it wasn't very good yet, either.

I wrote The Glass Window over the period of the last two years of college and the first year here in Indiana. It was the first thing I had written that I was really proud of. I love my characters, because the story was one I had borrowed from my time roleplaying - Aria was my alter-ego then, and this was her story, the story about someone who had to leave the place she knew, and come back to start over with the people she loved. It grew from that story into something so much more. And while I know there is still a lot I can do to improve it, I feel very strongly about its potential, and I am really truly proud of it.

And now, I have so many ideas - so many stories that I want to write. My documents folder is filled with stories I began and never came back to. I have a writing program that is basically a virtual three-ring binder, I can create separate documents for outlines and character descriptions and notes, as well as chapters and scenes. I can scan in sketches and keep them there as well. I have three of these "binders" on my computer: One for my version of the Princess and the Pea (which is decent, but will probably be deleted before long). One for a neat story idea I had for NaNoWriMo a few years ago that I'm still working on, about two teenage girls who live in a small Indiana town - Foley can hear ghosts and Geraldine is a witch, and they have to find an old spellbook that belonged to a witch who died 50 years ago and hid it somewhere in the town before the bad guys do. And then, there's the Element Magic series.

Five books. Five plots. At least two dozen fully fleshed out characters, and a dozen more secondary characters in my head. I know them all, and what's more - I know intimately the world they inhabit. The 8 kingdoms - I've planned and plotted out each of their histories, their governments. I have notes about magic and the kinds of ways it gets used by the different people who can wield it. Not to mention notes about class structures and predjudices, about the mythical creatures who are still in the world although they choose to live separate from people. It is truly an epic undertaking, and I am completely excited about the idea of this series.

But I can't write it. I can't put my fingers to the keyboard and make words come out of it. It just...isn't happening. And I get frustrated, and so I go away from it for a while. I come back to it, refamiliarize myself with my idea and come up with so much more - but it never gets put into actual story. It's all just ideas. And ideas are great - but I've been working on the IDEA for this series for over a year and a half now.

This is not about me having writer's block - I can deal with writer's block. It's more than a frustration with the lack of words happening. Because I know I can make them happen. I don't want to make them, necessarily, I'd rather not force it - but I AM capable of it.

"So what brings this on now?" You say.

Sarah.

Sarah, I know, because this will get crossposted to facebook, that you will read this. Please, in no way, take this personal, or as an attack, or anything in any way against you.

Sarah has written more, in the last three weeks, than I have in a year and a half. And yeah, her writing is choppy and unformatted and rushed and sometimes a little disjointed - and she knows that, but she's writing, and going back and refining it. She started in one place and ended up somewhere totally different, and has come up with a story that is as coherent and interesting as anything I could have come up with, and she's just making it up as she goes.

Why does this frustrate me so much?

Why does it frustrate me that people like Sarah, like Stefanie Meyer or even J.K. Rowling to some degree can sit down at a keyboard and make magic happen when they have never done it before - never tried to do it, never intended to do it, and I can't - and I want it so bad. I want to be able to write like that - to just sit down and click away - but it just isn't there - and I hate it. I used to be like that - it used to just...flow. And I think that taking more time to process the idea before I start writing has helped the quality of the writing itself, but it sure isn't helping the quantity. I don't want to resent how far Sarah has come in what she's doing, but I do and I hate that I do.

What's more - she's getting her friends, her family - to read her story. I have been trying for three years to get my mother to read mine. She has had it in her nightstand. She's read...a few pages. I have asked people to read it, and they have not. I have emailed copies to people and never heard back. One friend, one person from high school as read it and given me a critique. Sarah even has a copy. I can write - I can write well, and I know that, but I...I got rejected from a frickin fanfiction website for crying out loud, because of "characterization" or something like that when I know I wrote the Harry Potter characters well because I almost wrote EXACTLY some of the same scenarios that ended up in the ACTUAL seventh Harry Potter book! And I'm sorry if I don't write "Harry Potter plays Truth or Dare with Mary Sue" fanfiction, I just wanted something fun to do to take my mind of writer's block and excuse me if I still tried to do it well.

It's like - it's like someone who's taken guitar lessons their whole life, who isn't great but he's good, and he plays a show every night of the week. And his friends all think it's really cool that he's playing and asks him what songs he does and all this stuff, but never come see him play. But then, one day, one of his friends comes up to him and says, "Hey, Johnny just learned how to play guitar, and he's playing a show tomorrow! We're all going, want to come?" It doesn't matter if he plays better than Johnny or not, the point is that his friends will go see Johnny when they won't see him.

It is just. So. Frustrating. because I don't WANT to be petty about this, I want to be excited for Sarah that she is doing this, because I think it is awesome, I do! We'll sit here and bounce ideas back and forth, talk about her story, talk about my story, discuss her plot holes and what she should do differently and whether she's going too Buffy and the Mortal Instruments and whether I'm going too the X-Men go to Hogwarts...and I love that she has found so much enjoyment in something that I love so much. But I'm not going to lie, it hurts that her sister will call her the next day after Sarah sends her unfinished rough draft-version story to find out what happens next, and my own mother hasn't read the first chapter of the story I gave her three years ago.

There.

(as a side note, I started this note at...5:00 this afternoon. I am posting it at 10:15 pm. Also, i would like to apologize to LJ for the heinously long post, but I don't feel like cutting it.)

busy busy busy

I had a few more thoughts to share regarding Harry Potter, and a few other movie-related thoughts as well.

( Harry Potter )Yes, I'm a soundtrack nerd, what of it.

Other movie news of note:
( Coraline )

( Other Movies )

There are others, but it is time for Stessie to go to lunch! Yay!

Thanks to Transformers, the new Harry Potter doesn't release in IMAX for another week and a half, so Sarah and I opted to go ahead and see it while we can, since both of knew there was no way we were waiting that long to see the thing.

( My thoughts on the movie, cut for spoilers )

On a related note, the soundtrack is pretty good. I kind of don't want them to bring John Williams back for the last movies...I like what Nick Hooper has done with the last two... but we'll see.

It was kind of nice, to have a three-day weekend with no obligations. My folks went out of town with one of my dad's coworkers, so we didn't have any 4th of July plans. I was off work on Friday, spent the day sleeping in and playing games. Saturday I went to the Apple Store and (after waiting in a ten minute line for help) talked to someone about how to fix the crazy popups and stuff on my computer. Yay for a solution that worked without needing $70 virus software! I will probably invest in the $20 adware, but that's manageable.

Sarah and I had some interesting conversations this weekend. She has started reading more, and talking about books led to talking about writing, talking about fanfiction and ideas. We sat in the living room for two hours last night and came up with what started as a fanfiction for a series she had read, and turned into something totally different. It was pretty fun. And I'm starting to get excited about writing again. I've been trying for ages - trying to force myself into wanting to write, I do want to, I just wasn't...wasn't into it anymore. I'd lost sight of the characters and the stories that I loved about them and now I'm getting back to it. I want to remember why I was so excited in the beginning, and I want to create new ideas and new stories for the characters who's personas weren't fully fleshed out. I'm not going to set some unachievable goal, like writing every day, but I'm going to push myself to write more, and write often. Even if it's just a sentence, I'm at least going to *read* what I have as often as I can, so that I don't forget what I've already put down on paper.

July should be an interesting month. I'll be packing and getting ready to move to the new apartment. Always fun times. We'll see how things go.

So, I was all proud of myself for the deal I got on my cellphone, turns out there was SO a reason for it being cheap. Terrible, awful phone. So, I took it to the store with my mom (since I am not a registered user on the account, go figure) and exchanged it. Suprisingly, she actually encouraged me to get what I wanted, which was an iPhone, since they dropped the price to $99. So I have an iPhone now, and I have spent the last two days making it mine. It now has a pink sleeve (so that I don't destroy it) and the ringtone is either "Defying Gravity" from Wicked, "Syndicate" by the Fray, or "Flying" from the Peter Pan soundtrack (also used in some recent Disney vacation commercials). :)

In the course of this, I discovered somewhere along the way that Jars of Clay had a new album out. In April? How did I not know this!

It is AWESOME.

Go buy it. The Long Fall Back to Earth. Favorite JoC album so far. Entirely. (I still need to actually own Good Monsters)

So, y'all remember the story from a few months ago about the apartment that gave us the shaft, basically, going back on their price because we didn't respond in the time frame even though we totally did.

( Yeah, it happened again. )

So, long story short, we're moving to a smaller apartment in a different complex come early August.

Life is ok otherwise. Money situation got sorted, work is going pretty well. We're a little slow at the moment but that's unfortunately to be expected...still, we're hanging in there. Almost gotten motivated to write again, I'm coming back to old ideas rather than getting stuck on new ones, so that's good. Sarah's in Cali for the week so I have the apartment to myself. Not that it will be any different than usual, since we never see each other, it just means I can leave the kitchen light on all night and she won't yell at me. (kidding!)

Suffice it to say that this will go down as one of the worst weeks I've had in a long time. Monday started out terrible, I was *really* late to work because I overslept, and I felt like an idiot and a jerk. But I talked to my boss and everything was ok. I still felt bad, and when I feel bad I do things that make me feel better, and that usually involves buying stuff. Which I did. And I bought something I wanted, or thought I wanted, and ended up overdrawing my account.

So then I had to borrow money from my parents, which involved telling them exactly what happened, and that's never a fun conversation. The guy at the bank was really nice, and really helpful, and he helped me think of some solutions and even helped me apply for a credit card, and this time I was approved. But the good news is I'll be able to pay my folks back and pay all my bills when I get paid this week, and then I can start over from ground zero and do this right for once.

OH and I almost forgot. On Thursday our new sales guy quit. Left us in kind of a fix, so we're dealing with that.

So by Friday, my week was on the up, I wasn't feeling like a complete loser. And then I spent all night Friday and Saturday talking to my boss at Blockbuster, who had two kids going to the prom last night. And since we were being all reminiscent, it made me think of my prom. Whenever I remember prom I try to remember the after-prom - going to Lake Conroe and staying up all night, playing spoons at 2am, and swimming at 4am, watching the sunrise - because that was awesome fun. But the dance itself...remembering that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, because it makes me think of Jonathan and how excited I was to be there with him, and what a let down it was. He left me on the dance floor during the first dance...he didn't dance with me again until the very end. I still had fun, when I wasn't in the bathroom with Jessie who felt awful, but...yeah. Thinking about Jonathon doesn't help my really crappy week at all.

Time for more adventures in bizarre dreams! Yay!

( I killed the Wicked Witch in an amazonian jungle and my brother got stuck in a blanket )

Seriously, y'all, I cannot make this stuff up. My subconscious is weird (not to mention the rest of me).

I totally just snuck into my parent's house at 1:30AM and left three Easter baskets on the dining room table. Win.

Tonight has been a little insane though, I spent two hours playing a game online and getting increasingly irritated at the person leading the voyage. Then I went to Wal-mart because I forgot to get a basket for my brother, and the Easter stuff had been cleaned. out. Like, there were entire shelves just empty. And this woman walks up behind me while I'm looking at some of the leftover candy and leans over to me and goes, "I don't know where you live, but the one over in Noblesville has SO much more stuff left." I kind of laughed and said I didn't really need much. And she walks over to her husband and all sniffily said, "This is ridiculous, let's just go to the other one by our house. Absolutely ridiculous." Lady, it is 1 o'clock in the morning on EASTER SUNDAY. Wal-mart is the ONLY thing still open besides the grocery store. What did you expect? Maybe you should have done your Easter shopping three days ago LIKE I DID.

And then, to top it off, I went to grab some cokes and milk, and the manager is hoarding some teenagers carrying like, three things apiece of toilet paper out of the food isles, saying something along the lines of "You guys are in here, making a mess, and running around, and disrupting my store, I will not have it. You need to leave now." So they leave, and then I hear the manager on the intercom calling all employees to the front, and as I'm walking to the checkout he's giving them a peptalk about the teenagers who have apparently ransacked like, the entire wal-mart and they now have to go around and pick up everything these kids knocked off the shelves and stuff.

SERIOUSLY IS IT A FULL MOON WHAT IS UP WITH PEOPLE TODAY.

So, on Monday Sarah and I went to look at another apartment. I was looking online and found a really nice one for about $175 cheaper than what we are paying now, so we went to check it out. Of course, it was a special deal, but turns out the apartment was managed by the same company who owns the place we have now. They had an apartment available in early May, which would have been three months before our lease was up, but even with transfer fees and deposit, we'd end up saving what we paid in a couple months.

So we decide to go ahead and do it. The apartment was a little smaller and a little further away than ours is now, but it was a good deal. Between the two of us working, however, neither of us was able to get back over to the leasing office during the week. We had 48 hours to respond to the offer, so on Wednesday Sarah called and left a message saying yes, we did want to transfer. Thurday I called back to confirm we wanted to transfer. Both times we left messages, because nobody in the office answered the phone.

Friday I get a call from the leasing office there. "Hey, just calling to see if you guys were still interested in the transfer. The price has gone up, but we'd be happy to give you a new quote, just let us know!" I proceeded to leave a very irritated message saying I'd be in on Saturday or Sunday, and that I was not. Happy. I had communicated with one leasing person first through email, and then a different one when we went in, and the first girl emailed me Saturday, saying she didn't really know what was going on, she'd given the other girl our messages, but she would be there over the weekend and would be happy to talk to me. I sent a very irritated, slightly awesome email about how I was not pleased about having to get a new quote, how we had responded within the time frame but because they weren't there to answer the phone we were being forced to get a new price, etc.

Sunday afternoon. I went over to the complex and spoke with the girl who had emailed me. She had talked to the manager, and even though the price had gone up by over $60 dollars/month, they were willing to "split the difference" and give the apartment to us at $30/mo more than our original quote, but still less than the current price. Sarah and I were both so fed up at this point that we decided you know what, it's not worth it. The apartment is smaller, the drive is further and inconvenient, the only reason we were going to do it was because of the deal, and even though it's still a lot less, we're both totally pissed off at the leasing staff, and that's never a good way to start in a new apartment.

So that was my weekend. How was yours?

I just want you to know, I am still alive. I just haven't updated LJ in a while. I've started like, seven different entries, but never got around to finishing them.

Life is ok. Mom is doing great, she's back at almost her usual self, just a little more conscious of those things that caused the stroke to happen. I was a little sick too, week before last, but I'm ok now. Work and everything else pretty much progress as normal. I went to Kentucky with my brother for a weekend, got to see all my cousins and spend some time with family, which was fun. And this last weekend I started up RenFaire rehearsals again, so I'll be doing that for a while.

Overall life is kinda uneventful, still trying to work out how to pay taxes along with everything else, but maybe I'll make it work. I'm writing again, which is a good feeling. I'm going to try to push myself to do more.

So, um...Happy March?

So, my mother had a stroke. A small...mild I guess, stroke, on the right side of her brain. She woke up this morning and had no feeling at all in her left arm. She's a nurse, though, so when it didn't go away like what happens when your arm falls asleep or something, she knew she needed to go to the ER. She had a bunch of different tests done, a catscan, an MRI, and something else they tested to make sure that there weren't any side effects or any major things that could have caused it. She's just fine, they didn't find anything wrong. Her arm is still a little weak, but she's ok. She's being held overnight, but she is okay.

Needless to say, this...was....scary. To say the least. It was scary enough with my dad - when he had all those problems - it was a scare, and I thought then how lucky I was that I still had them both. But...then...it was so random. It wasn't like...like this. This is totally something that...that really could have... ...

So...yeah. Some things in our lives are changing. And we'll see how life goes from here. But this scared me, a lot. This...well it has not been my week, so far. And it's only Tuesday.

So, what was a relatively unexciting, boring, not-at-all interesting weekend turned very sour very quickly. And by that I mean, I did my taxes on Sunday and apparently I owe the guvm'nt quite a bit, actually. I guess they haven't been taking enough out of my paychecks, which, hey, you know, I can't really complain that much. But now I have to save money like whoa so I don't get you know, arrested. Or something. Not fun.

Once I got over the sticker shock, as it were, I realized you know, maybe this is a good thing. I need to break these spending habits, and obviously the "owing my mother over $400 thing" wasn't really doing it. Maybe the "owing the government over $1200 thing" will. I CAN do this, it will just require a lot of willpower. oh lord help me.

So, in an attempt at something of a "last hurrah of random spending" I dragged Sarah to go see Coraline at the movie theaters. You could tell that people weren't paying for movies anymore - on a Sunday evening there weren't very many cars in the lot and only two other people in our theater. That movie is awesome and creepy as hell. And very beautifully animated. And creepy. With some suprisingly good voice work by Teri Hatcher and Dakota Fanning, really neat characters and interesting music. Also, it was totally creepy. Did I mention that already? Yes.

Creepy in a good way though. It's truly a horror movie for kids. It's the kind of thing that would have given me SO MANY NIGHTMARES OMG but at the same time is totally awesome. I likened it to a more kid friendly version of Pan's Labyrinth - you sort of think you're in this harmless but slightly eerie fantasy story until everything goes so very very wrong.  I highly recommend it to anyone over the age of 12. 

Creepiest part of the story for me?   ( spoilers under the cut )

Anyway, we'll see how the next few weeks pan out.  I know I'm not the only one with financial worries, but I thank God every day that I still have a job I love, and a nice apartment and a cool roommate (who will go see creepy kids movies with me), great friends, and a loving family.  As long as I have all that, I think I'll be ok.

So very, very cold.

I have a new lj layout! I like it a lot. Yay for free iStock photos and boredom. I'm supposed to be putting away laundry, but that was a way more fun way to waste an hour.

Looks like I'm going to go to Kentucky in two weeks with my brother for the weekend! Road trip! Except he's totally going to drive, and I am going to DIE. My aunt is getting all the cousins together, since we haven't all seen each other since like, four Christmases ago. Should be fun!

We got crazy snow today too, more than 3 inches in less than 2 hours. Riiight at the end of rush hour. GREAT TIMING THERE, ZEUS. There were some nasty wrecks (one closed an entire highway, and involved more than 30 vehicles), but my office all survived in one piece. It took me almost half an hour to get to work though, and I live less than ten minutes away. It was fun times.

I really, really want to turn up the heat, but Sarah will be home in twenty minutes and she will yell at me :P electric bill schmectric bill

I'm just rambling now for an excuse to keep posting an entry instead of being productive. /end ramble.

Oh Twilight.  I have been sucked in.  I don't even really LIKE the books, and I have been sucked in.  Worst part is, I inadvertently got my roommate addicted to them as well.  (like, she drove twenty minutes away because our Wal-mart did not have Eclipse to buy, woe.  And now I don't have to buy them because she did.)  See, someone loaned her the first book, and then I finally got convinced (after several people tried) to read the book, so I borrowed the borrowed copy from her.  But then, in a truly ironic incident, I gave myself a papercut, and bled all over a page of my friend's book about vampires. :P  So i bought him a new book, which I promptly returned to Sarah, and in the process of telling her how incredibly...teenage they were, she was convinced to read it, and the rest, y'all, is history.
( And when I say teenage... )

I could weigh in more thoughts, but I have been surreptitiously adding to this post kind of all day, and it is time now to go spend time with my family and celebrate my dad's very belated birthday.  Perhaps I will write more when I finish Breaking Dawn.  (I haven't read that one yet, but I know what happens, and I laughed so hard last night when Sarah comes in my room going WHAT THE HELL.  SHE IS ___")