Category Archives: Writing

Season One, Episode Twenty-Eight: Of Hangovers and Poetry

Posted in Random, Writing by

Blehhh.

Nothing ruins a perfectly sunny day off like a friggin’ hangover.  I slept it off til almost 12:30 this afternoon, and while the headache has finally left my cranial premises, I still am dealing with this annoying twinge of nausea.  And I have wasted said day off in the confines of a itty bitty hotel room.  Yesterday I went on quite the jaunt around Downtown Cleveland, walking around in the chilly April sunshine and taking pictures and composing random poetry on my iPhone.  I don’t have too much to talk about today, so I’ll share my impromptu poem I came up with yesterday.

 

This hotel room

Makes me feel claustrophobic

–it’s far too narrow–

Cramped and brown

It makes me vaguely apprehensive

The angle of the windows chokes out the sunlight

But if you crane your head

–just so–

You can catch a glimpse of the lake,

A tiny sliver of sparkling gray-blue beauty.

I’d rather be outside

In the windy chill

At least the sunshine is warm

When it shines down on you.

 

This park bench is prime real estate

The wood feels cold under my jeans

And the far too big windshirt that I surreptitiously stole from my boyfriend

The wind blows in off the lake

–and honestly, anyone who thinks that Chicago is the windiest city has never been to Cleveland in the spring–

Which shimmers like a murky blue jewel

In the late April sun

I sit on this bench, under the pretense of reading

–I’ve got a Salinger novel in my lap–

But really, I just couldn’t take the claustrophobic brown crampedness

Of that goddamn hotel room.

 

So I sit here, fingers chilled

The wind ruffling the loose hairs that lay against my neck

The air a vague combination of exhaust and manure and springtime

And I think

Because that’s what you do when you’re alone on a bench in a park

You sit and you think

And I watch the people and the cars

Hurrying past, off to live another day in their mediocre adventures

The wind comes up again and I think I’ve decided

That perhaps I should move my contemplation to a less windy location.

–“April 24, 2012 5:33 pm”

Season One, Episode Twenty-Four: Chubby Babies Wielding Arrows and Slutty Streetwalking Mailmen

Posted in Comedy, Humor, Random, Writing by

I hate painting my nails.  I always inevitably wind up smudging a nail somehow.  Usually it’s when I think my nails are dry and then I figure it’s safe to go pee and I smear them trying to carefully take my pants off.

Hi.

Well, anyway, I am sitting here contemplating an idea for a story that keeps tickling my synapses and researching ghost towns and drowned towns and thinking about how deliciously melancholy the idea of an entire town under water is.  I’m also thinking about fairy tales and possible names for my main character and how bright my nail polish is (China Glaze lacquer in Pink Voltage.  It’s very very neon pink.) and how much I liked the pilot episode of Smash that I just watched on Hulu.  The mind of a writer is a fantastic thing.  We multitask.

These are obviously not my nails because they are not smudged. No, these are phantom nails I found via Google.

It’s Valentine’s Day.  Yay.  This will actually be the first V-Day that I will not be at work or watching sitcoms over a bowl of Ben and Jerry’s.  I’m excited.  I’m not exactly sure what proper Valentine’s Day etiquette is, but I guarantee you that I will screw it up somehow.  I’m not exactly a particularly classeh ladeh.  Part of me keeps reminding me that there’s a new episode of New Girl on tonight and that I have chocolate gelato in the freezer.  To that schlumpy sweatpant-clad part of me, I say nay.  I will go get overdressed and put on an acceptable amount of makeup and venture out into bitter cold and snow to have a good time.  I’ll be like a hooker mailman (I just giggled at the mental image), but instead of mail I will be delivering…joy.  Yes.

Hmm. They look as though they were delivered some joy by a fat cheeked baby wielding arrows or a hooker mailman.

In other news, my unemployment was rejected on supposedly justifiable grounds, and I am not really wanting to fight the decision, although I have been advised by everyone and their mom to fight it until I get it.  I don’t really feel like fighting with my old boss.  That is a battle not worth fighting because I’ll just wind up getting pissed and I don’t need the stress.  I had four years of that shit and I actually like not having to deal with her anymore.  I might reapply, but if the state ruled that the firing was allowable, I highly doubt that I will receive any compensation.  Just saying.  I don’t feel like wasting time over $165 a week.  Hell, if I have to I’ll apply at Target or something to tide myself over until I find out what is going to happen with the casino.  I applied for state benefits, so I’m just waiting on a response from them.  I highly doubt that I will get rejected when my gross weekly income is nada.

I just thought I’d drop on in and write a quick post because I have been neglectful of a lot of stuff as of late.  This whole days blending together thing is really becoming an issue.  I’m mixing up my days of the week and sleeping a lot.  I think I need to find a routine hobby so that I don’t turn into a crazy person.  Maybe I’ll join the gym so that I have to actually leave the house on a regular basis.

A Short Interlude of Sorts

Posted in Music, Random, Writing by

I’m trying to catch up on sleep and a few side writing projects I’ve been working on, so this is like a mini post.  A postlette, if you will.  Ever since I was around eleven or twelve I’ve been a fan of Charlotte Church.  Her voice is breathtaking, and her range was something I aspired to when I was younger…since my parents couldn’t afford voice lessons, I’d spend many an afternoon after school sitting on my bed with my CD player on my dresser, singing along to her albums, trying my damnedest to hit those crazy high soprano notes.  I’m sure I drove my mom and dad crazy, but I loved her music.

I was messing around on YouTube tonight and on a whim I looked up Charlotte Church because I’d read that she’d tried her hand at pop music.  Sure enough, I found a video of her baring her midriff and shaking her shaggily cut “rock star” hair, singing a song about being “a crazy chick”.  Her voice surprised me because I was so used to her classical stuff, but I wasn’t impressed by the lyrics or the premise of the video.  I clicked on one of the side links and found the song that I’m posting below.  It’s called “We Were Young”, and it’s about her breakup with her children’s father.  Her voice is beautiful, and you can hear the pain and wistfulness in it as she sings.  I couldn’t find the album, Back to Scratch, on iTunes, but I think it’s probably available on the UK version.  I really love the simpleness of the recording, it’s much more impressive than an over-processed, over produced track–and she touches upon her classical background a little when she sings.  I love it 🙂  Take a listen, and don’t miss me too much, I’ll be back soon ❤

Season One, Episode Thirteen: Musings of a Night Owl

Posted in Comedy, Humor, Random, Writing by

Hello. My name is Lashawn, and I am a night owl.

It’s four am, and what am I doing? Am I sleeping? Noooo. I’m sitting at my laptop in my badass penguin pajamas, playing with the Biblical Curse Generator. I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty entertained. It might be because it’s four in the morning, it might be because I’m slightly jacked up on caffeine, it might be because I enjoy the simpler things in life, I don’t know. What I do know is that the shit this site is coming up with is cracking me up. For example:

“May you see your pomegranates wither, O thou dabbler in abominations!”

Take that, guy who wanted to argue with me over the price of his oil change.

Staying up late opens your eyes to a whole new world dominated mostly by network syndicated comedies (such as How I Met Your Mother and That 70’s Show) and cheesy yet überslick infomercials for hair removal products and weird spandex bra shaper things that I don’t really need. Late nights make you feel classy, like you’re better than all the people who fell asleep during CSI: Miami. Horatio Caine peers at you over the top of his sunglasses and salutes you my friend, because you stayed up long enough to see him catch the bad guy and utter some really horrible and cheesy dialogue before and after he handcuffs said villainous villain. It’s a twofer kind of thing.

Horatio Caine: "There will be no tying of virtuous young maidens to any railroad tracks on my watch, evil silent film guy." Dastardly Evil Guy: "Curses, foiled again!"

Sleep? Ha, who needs sleep.

Sleep is overrated.

People often ask me why I stay up until the birds are chirping. I say why not? I work in the afternoon, my life is pretty boring…so why the hell not? I would much rather stay up late than wake up early in the morning, if that makes any sort of sense. I’ve always been a night person, even when I was a young lass. Nighttime is me time. I can shut off the Lashawn that the rest of the world gets to see and get in my pajamas and be the Lashawn who enjoys aloneness and contemplation and a good book or a corny sitcom.

I like the quiet, the solitude of what Robert Louis Stevenson called “the black hours”. I like that I can just sit and think and not have to be a mom or a sister or a receptionist or a friend or a daughter or anything that everyone else wants me to be. I can just be me, and not have to worry about what the rest of the world thinks. I can read random crap on Wikipedia or research the French Revolution or watch an old show from the ’50s. I can sit around with my favorite fleece blanket and eat Tostitos and salsa and not have to share. I can sit on my upstairs porch and just look up at the night sky and feel so infinitely insignificant and think philosophical things. It’s my favorite time of day, hands down.

To me, the night is beautiful, in some ways just as beautiful as the daytime, in other ways possibly more. One of my favorite things ever is when the sun sets and there’s this smooth, seamingless transition of blues and purples and pinks across the sky, from east to west. Simply beautiful. I adore the stars, and I think the twinkling, sparkling “heavens” are just as breathtaking as the white clouds across a vivid blue mid-afternoon sky. You can’t appreciate the sunshine without the inkiness of night. Sunrise wouldn’t be as memorable without the sunset. I’m suddenly reminded of one of my favorite quotes:

“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness so I can see the stars.”

Season One, Episode Six: Through The Looking Glass

Posted in Beauty, Culture, Parenting, Random, Society, Writing by

I was on the site 20 Something Bloggers earlier, and one blogger, Andrea Regueria, posted in one forum a great topic to blog about–writing your teenage self a letter.  I did a lot of stupid stuff towards the end of my teen years–goofing off my junior and senior years, failing a few classes that I had no business failing, not walking with my class, getting pregnant at 18 and becoming a mom at 19, getting dumped by Nicky’s idiot father at 20, failing horribly at two (count them, two!) universities and ultimately losing financial aid at both schools–some of which made me into the person that I am today, the rest just stuff that I wish I could go back in time and kick my teenage ass over.  Instead of writing a letter, which would be too time consuming, and let’s face it, Teenage Me wouldn’t have bothered to read it because I thought I knew every damn thing back then, I am going to give Teenage Me just a little advice and a heads up on the consequences that lurk ahead in the years to come.

Christ...This is probably from between 2002 and 2004, making me anywhere from 16 to 18. I'm leaning more towards 16, but anyway, I'm the girl in the middle. I look pretty much exactly the same.

*You won’t believe me now, you won’t see it until you’re about 25, but you are absolutely beautiful.  I know you think you are ugly and you want plastic surgery on the nose you think is too big and you hate your high forehead and all your curves and features that don’t exactly blend in with all your friends, but you are so, so beautiful.  I wish you would see it for yourself at 16 because that would stem the tide of bad decisions that you make in the next few years.

*Don’t worry so much about having a boyfriend.  You’ll learn that you’re completely fine without one.  I know you think you are a loser because you haven’t been kissed yet, but you aren’t a loser.  You aren’t ugly or hideous or gross.  You just go to an all girls’ school and you are insanely sheltered.  In a year’s time, you will kiss a stupid boy at Burger King who just wants to get in your pants and since you won’t give it up, pretty much ignores you forever.  You won’t even like him.  You will feel like an idiot, and I wish that you would listen to Jari, but I know you think that there is something wrong with you if you don’t kiss him.  Please don’t kiss him.  Save that kiss for someone who deserves it.  That kiss leads to a long line of stupid mistakes with guys that you still will have a hard time with when you are nearly 26.

*School is so important.  So much more important that the kids you are going to meet at Burger King, the same kids that you try to fit in so badly with because they think you are stuck up because you go to a Catholic school and this Burger King thing is the first time in your life that you feel like you don’t exactly fit in at all.  Don’t blow your 3.5 GPA over these kids.  It’s not worth it.  You are going to screw up so bad in the next two years and everything you worked for since Kindergarten is going to go down the drain.  You never get to join NHS, you never get to graduate with honors.  Remember that you wanted to graduate with honors.  Please, please do your homework and get up and go to class.  And please stop thinking your SJA friends are lame.  They are not lame.  They all go on to four year universities while you become a teen mom who is struggling to pay her bills.  And 10 years from now you will be a receptionist who makes $10.25 an hour and is still a freshman in college.  Please just focus on school.

*You have no idea how much that postcard from Yale will still mean to you at 25.

*Stop being such a bitch.  You will regret some of the things you did and the way you treated people when you lay in bed at night years and years down the road.

*After you get pregnant, which you will do because you will become a mom to the most beautiful and amazing boy you’ll ever lay eyes upon, please just ditch his dad and do it alone.  Because you are going to do it alone anyway, and it’s easier to get rid of him before you talk yourself into falling in love with him.  You can do better, please remember that you are beautiful and you can do so much better than him.  Please don’t waste two years of your life on him.  It will take you years to finally let go and you will never trust a man with your heart ever again.  And if you don’t let go of him after you get pregnant, please don’t take him back.  He leaves you when Nicholas is 10 months old.

*Follow your dreams.  Try to become a singer.  Keep writing those stories and poems.  Don’t ever give up.

I’m sure there’s more that I could say, but I think that I covered the things that matter the most.  I think I might do another episode before my birthday in December, but please feel free to share a few things you’d share with yourself if you could 🙂

XOXO

Season One, Episode Three: Alaska, Chocolatey NFL Caketastic Deliciousness, and Tornadic Tubby Time

Posted in Parenting, Random, Uncategorized, Writing by

Today was a blissfully boring day.

I worked six hours today, filing all alone in an empty office.  I know it sounds boring, but I love it.  My favorite part of my job is when all the other girls in the office have gone home and it’s just me and my thoughts and a nice playlist that I burned playing in the CD player.  I’m a social person, I love being around people and laughing and joking and having a good time, but I also enjoy having time to myself where I’m not subjected to country music and gossip about relationships and stuff that bores me.  I’ve always been like that, to be honest, I prefer to be alone in my room with a book and music in the background when I’m not out being the social butterfly that society expects of me.  I also prefer to go out places with Nicky and my mom now more than I do with my friends.  It’s weird, but maybe that’s part of getting older.  Maybe you develop more of a chill, homebody side as the years go by?  I don’t know.

After work, I came home and watched football with my dad and ate cookies and nachos and this sinfully delicious chocolate cake–and I feel ridiculously stuffed and sluggish at the moment.  Nicky came in and sat next to me, and we watched TV with his head resting on my arm all evening until it was bath time.  Bath time is actually a lot more fun now that he’s older.  I liked “bubble tubbies” when he was smaller, but he keeps more of the bathwater actually in the tub now, and he likes to wash himself up and wash his own hair.  Next thing I know he’s going to be shaving, hahaha.  I love that he still calls his bath a “tubby” 🙂  After his bath, I put on his favorite DVD, that show Storm Chasers, and we snuggled up on the couch until he fell asleep in my lap.  In our house, we all know that Storm Chasers = Nicky is sleepy.  He usually won’t make it through an entire episode.  It’s actually kind of odd that my son watches a storm about chasing tornadoes to fall asleep.  He’s my silly silly boy…Although weather intrigues me, and we will go out on our porch and watch huge storms roll in, so he probably got that from me, along with his love of cake and staying up late…and his sense of humor, his blue eyes, and his goofy, lovable smile.  He’s definitely his mommy’s baby.

I’m currently in my pajamas, typing away at my keyboard in between texting one of my bestest friends, Destinie.  After I’m done with this mindnumbingly boring entry I plan on brushing my teeth and curling up in bed with my favorite book, Looking For Alaska (by John Green) until I fall asleep.  I was reading Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, but the story of Chris McCandless pisses me off and I’m not in the mood to ponder the sanity or motives of McCandless tonight.  I will blog about him another day, because I could write an entire post on him and how I can’t figure out if he was an idealist that we all should respect to some degree or if he was a spoiled rich brat who wanted to rebel against societal norms and his parents.

Goodnight, and here’s to another blissfully uneventful tomorrow to make me smile 🙂

XOXO