Sherri Cornelius

It would have to turn blustery today, when I'm going back for my second visit to the used car lot.

For those who don't know, this 1992 Plymouth Voyager has been my only car for the family for three years. Hubby drives it to work, while I stay home with the kids with no transportation. I hate buying a car so badly that I'd rather drive <----that embarrassing vehicle than put myself through the ordeal. However, I've put this off so long that isolation has started to become agoraphobia, having passed depression a long time ago. I can't bear the thought of another summer with all the kids home and nothing to do.

So the van will stay with the hubby (since he stunk it up with cigarettes a long time ago, he gets to keep it) and I'll buy another car this weekend. I have my eye on two: a 1997 Saturn SL2, and a 1999 Mercury Sable. Unfortunately their website is acting goofy, so I can't show you pictures. They're both very clean with around 100k miles. Here's a sad little tidbit: After being stuck in 1992 for so long, test driving a '97 felt almost futuristic. It's a 12-year-old car, in case you forgot it's 2009 now.

Anyhoo, wish me luck.

I'm so bored. Bored with blogs, with housework, with TV, with everything. I have so many home projects I could be working on, but I just can't generate the interest. You should be impressed I've mustered up the energy to post this link:

Guest Post: How to Cure Your Writer's Block

One thing that stops me from writing is thinking of how huge the project is. This article reminds me it's not as big as I think.

I think I would like to talk about writer's block someday, when I am further removed from it.

Now back to the boredom....*sigh*

She haunts the kitchen, mostly./ Her pleas echo, though too  ghostly/ to do more than register above a whisper.

The children run straight through her body/insignificantly disembodied

He has flesh and bone, she ectoplasm. So why is she in charge of his orgasm She rails, rattles pots and pans

When I'm on the treadmill the thoughts fly through my head. I like putting them down here as they come to me, but I must admit it's nerve-wracking. Except for minor tweaking of language, the treadmill posts are unedited and uncensored. I don't stop to think about what I'm saying, and afterwards I wonder if I should take it down. And no, it's not because I've said anything horrible or misrepresented myself. It's just that despite my apparent over-sharing tendency I'm pretty guarded in some ways, and accidentally exposing something I meant to keep hidden is my biggest fear, and second to that is offending someone I didn't mean to offend. Both have happened to my detriment, have made me timid.

So I think the treadmill posts are actually good for me. They scare the hell out of me, yeah, but they also expand the boundaries of my self-trust.

I'd planned to discuss love in this post, building on the comments from yesterday, but I'm out of time. Next time, then.

• I'm fat. Can't deny it any longer. I feel skinny, but I'm just not. I think I've been able to deny it so long because I had pretty good muscle tone. The muscles are leaving and the fat is replacing it, so even though the needle on the scale has been stationary for a couple of years, I am increasing in size. My lower body has been getting bigger since I started exercising, I think, because my muscles are getting bigger but I'm not losing any fat. Hopefully this public declaration will help push me into a proper diet. I'm don't like diet helpers like pills or drinks, because I know when I go off them I'll simply gain the weight back. No yo-yo dieting for me. I'd like to eat natural foods and very little sugar and literally exercise my ass off. 50 lbs is my goal. I'll even post my starting weight to properly embarrass myself into decreasing the number: 178.


• Having a teenage step-daughter in my life (Hi, Z) makes me think about love. What is it, really? Is it based in the physical, i.e. a hormonal imbalance leading to temporary delusion? Based in a higher power, moving us toward our soul mate? A karmic fulfillment of your purpose as a human being? I take a different view for each of the different types of love, and I wish to hell we had a different word for each one. LOVE is too broad.


• Which leads me to the question: Should you feel guilty about your feelings? In any case, love is not a conscious decision, so if you "fall in love" with someone (whatever the eff that means) at an inopportune time, is that something to regret, or to celebrate no matter what? The emotion itself is a good thing, right? Or is romantic love inherently disruptive?


• Bohemian Rhapsody just came on my media player. Woo!


• Also thinking about the recent economic downturn as portrayed by the media. People are saying things like, "People can't even send their kids to college anymore!" "This guy can't pay his $7,000 mortagage and may have to go to a smaller house! It's a tragedy!" "They've had to forgo their yearly vacation to the Bahamas! In my world, people don't send kids to college. The kids do it themselves. People live in very modest dwellings and buy their clothes at Goodwill to save money for entertainment. They have no savings. They don't take vacations.  I'm not saying it's fun to have the rug pulled out of you at any income level, and I hate what it's doing to our economy as a whole, but on a personal level I guess I just can't fathom having that much money in the first place, and so I can't sympathize as much as the media wants me to. That makes me sound like a total bitch, probably. From where I am, the middle class is a myth. Am I middle class? I think I am, barely. But the middle class I see represented on tv as the "average"? Those people are rich to me. To say there's a huge difference between $30,000/yr and #100,000/yr is a massive understatement, but they're lumped into the same category. My mind is boggled, that's all.

This was a heavy TftT, huh? Discuss among yourselves.

That's my new superhero alter-ego. Super-Chipper Girl blinds the bad guys with her dazzling smile, and giggles them into submission. Her weaknesses are rainy days and reality checks.  However, her super-chipper energy shield is self-healing, so chinks don't stay long.

This whole thing started as my self-deprecating joke on Twitter and somehow...evolved. Darcknyt got an idea for a Super-Chipper Girl header, Falcon joined in, and the final result is what you see above. Then I bragged about my new header to Ian, who became inspired and promptly whipped me up a lady to go with the theme.

Pretty cool, huh? I'm keeping the new header for a while. It's fun.

I know it's Friday and nobody and not their dog will read this post, but I have some rambling to get out, and it must be done.

So I have this book I'm writing. We'll call it BVA. I love this book. From the very first day I've thought this book will be my "break-out" book. Now before you get all excited, this isn't about BVA breaking out, I just want to convey how cool I think this book will be when it's finished.

I wrote another book a while back, EG. Completely different look and feel than BVA. EG is sensual whereas BVA is bleak. EG's setting is medieval while BVA's is contemporary. The main character of EG is all girl, and BVA's is a tough cookie. Looking back, EG was delivered with relative ease. I am still in labor with BVA.

I haven't thought about the EG world in about a year, maybe longer. It's with the agent making the rounds, and though I had planned at least two more volumes, there's no point in writing a sequel when the first one hasn't sold yet. So instead I've been working on BVA. Or rather, pummeling on it.

Yesterday I decided to take a break from BVA. Agent has the submission package so it would be the perfect time, when one month will make absolutely no difference. The point I'm at now, I don't think I'll get anything significant done in the next month anyway. And plus, I need a break, darn it!

So today during my writing time I pulled out the dusty stacks of notebooks and loose paper which represent every idea I've ever had, and started through it. The first thing I came across was the notes for CT, sequel to EG. I read. I got lost in it.

I remembered CT being very rough, and it was but it didn't matter. I found myself with a pencil in my hand, making notes in the margin, but I didn't remember grabbing the pencil or deciding to make the notes. Surprised the hell out of me. That is some good shit. And it just goes to show that I HAVE NO IDEA OF THE QUALITY OF MY OWN WORK AND NEVER HAVE. I'm not saying that in a self-aggrandizing way, I'm saying sometimes I think what I wrote sucks, sometimes I think it's good...and it always turns out to be about the same quality. It's freaking crazy. I absolutely have to start trusting myself.

And yet I can't apply that trust to BVA because I'm too close to it. I know where my blind spot it, and BVA is smack in the middle of it. I used to love the plot but have no idea how to execute it. Now I know how to execute it, but the energy is not there. I'm numb. I need to write something that excites me, but it's not the right time for CT. I need some ideas. Maybe now that I'm not constantly thinking about the physics of the Black Veil I can catch a new minnow with my net.

I'm done rambling, I guess. Any questions?