I'm Engaged!

Things about the wedding plans so far:

Dave and I are getting married 2011, possibly beginning of July or end of August, or in September. We have to work around a few high school graduations, my mother's trip to Colorado, and Harvest season. Dave's entire family farms, so for us to have the wedding in August or September may not be ideal.

I'm thinking July 2nd or 9th.

The wedding will be held in Bruxelles, Manitoba, the place Dave grew up in. I thought I wanted an outside wedding, but there are too many variables. We've decided on having a secular, non-denominational wedding at the Bruxelles church. Some sort of justice of the peace or whoever will marry us. No hymms. No prayers. No priests, pastors, popes, buddahs, rabbis, Allahs or the like. Jesus nailed to a cross will be present because he is also nailed to the wall.

The reception will take place at the Bruxelles community hall. Since there's really nothing to do in Bruxelles, and no where to go, I hope that the hall can be decorated and set up the night before so that people can go straight there to hang out. I'll have cards, dice, and crib boards set out so that people can play games while they wait. There's going to be a lot of children at the wedding and they'll need to be kept occupied, so hopefully that will help while the wedding party gets their pictures taken.

I have so many thoughts and ideas about how I want to decorate, (candles everywhere!) colour schemes, (lots of green!) food and drink to serve, (Sutter Home White Zinfandel!)

We're doing our own music for the wedding. 3/4 of what DJ's play is crap and Dave and I both hate it. We've got over a year to download all the songs we want, so it won't be that hard to fill up a portable hard drive and plug it into a laptop at the reception.

Once Dave gets the website up and running, I want a section where people can request songs to play at our wedding. There will a banned songs list.

Anything by Shania Twain is banned. 7/8 of all country songs are banned. Most music from the 80's is banned. Absolutely NO gimmicky crap social songs ie, chicken dance, macarena, grease lightening, cotten eyed joe... you get the idea.

Dave's family are Beatles fans, so lots of that will be played. My family likes to polka. Dave's taking me out for couples dancing lessons. We're going to have to show off our move at our wedding! Some tango?

Anyway, I'm totally stoked! I can't stop thinking about the wedding!

Success!

Everyone wore black. Even Grandma and she never wore black. The whole family was there. Old friends. Coworkers. Jeremiah Vaughn clasped his grandma’s hand and glanced around the semi-circle that formed around his mother’s casket outside. Everyone thought it was a mistake, a bad joke. Catherine Vaughn was too young to die. She was only 45. Jeremiah turned his gaze to his fancy shoes. His mother had bought him these shoes to wear to his high school graduation five years ago. He flunked out, but she still had faith in him that one day he’d graduate.

Jeremiah could clearly hear the priest, but he was not listening to a word he said. He was focussed inward. Focussed on his pain, his guilt, and his overwhelming desire to climb inside the casket and hold his mother one last time before the dirt and worms covered the mahogany finish he and Grandma had picked out together. He longed for his mother in such a terrible way he squeezed Grandma’s frail hand so hard she yelped.

But the priest didn’t miss a beat. “...we therefore commit her body to the ground. Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. In sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ..."

Tears welled up in his eyes, but Jeremiah refused to let them fall. He could feel everyone’s eyes on his back, judging him. Everyone knew the details of how and why it happened. His mother was an angel, sent from heaven to rescue him and he killed her and sent her back.

He remembers lying in a pool of his own vomit on his bedroom floor. Cobwebs connected empty bottles on his dresser. Pennies and little pieces of lint and bits of paper were stuck in the dirty Carpet. Catherine had gone in to attempt to vacuum, but he forcefully threw her out. She was becoming afraid of him. He was tall, like his father. He had the same broad shoulders and deep set eyes. They had the same taste in cars, movies, and beer.

But his father didn’t kill her.

Even when the service ended, Jeremiah stayed. It was imperative for Jeremiah that he watch every last granule of dirt cover his mother’s final resting place. It was of the utmost importance that he arranged the flowers and wreath perfectly and then say just one final prayer before going home to a house filled with mourners. Grandma ordered a catering service to come supply dainties and egg salad sandwiches for the reception in their living room.

“It’s what my daughter would have wanted,” she said.

It was like a dream for Jeremiah. He floated from the grave back to his house. There were pictures of his mother everywhere he looked. People kept coming in and out of the house, dropping off casseroles and sympathy cards. He kept hearing her name over and over again; it was driving him mad. He drank red wine to block the sounds, but then thought of his mother’s blood, cold and still, never to flush her face again. It could have been him. He ate a brownie topped with chopped walnuts and thought of the maggots that would magically appear in the coffin and eat his mother’s face until all that was left were empty eye sockets.

Jeremiah ran upstairs to the bathroom and threw up. It should have been him.

Just a few days ago he was so mad at her. How dare she tell him what to do! How dare she compare him to his dead-beat father!

“I’m young! This is what young people do!” he yelled.

Catherine stayed calm and collected. “Young people graduate from high school and get into a good university and make something of themselves. I’ve had enough of this life. I spent two decades with a man just like you and if you think I’m going to spend even one more day living like this, you are wrong!”

“I’m not going to no fucking rehab place!” Jeremiah spat defiantly. “What are you gonna do? Call the cops on me? We don’t even have a phone!”

“We don’t have a phone because you stole the money out of my purse that I was going to use to pay the phone bill and you bought beer. You are not having anymore tonight. You’re killing yourself. You need help!” Catherine brushed past her son and grabbed the rest of the case of beer from his room.

“Those are mine! You can’t do that!”

Catherine started cracking open cans of beer and emptying them in the sink.

“I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” he screamed. “I paid for those! Those are mine!”

He lunged at her, but his depth perception was off and he missed.

“Fine,” he said defeated. “If I can’t drink here I’ll go somewhere else.” He grabbed her keys and went outside, still covered in puke, not wearing any shoes.

“You’re not driving, Jeremiah. What if you killed someone?” Catherine wrestled him for the keys. “I’ll drive you,” she said lowering her eyes.

They got in the truck and Catherine slowly reversed out of the driveway and headed toward downtown. She didn’t ask Jeremiah which bar he wanted to go to. She knew his favourite place. As they passed right by it, Jeremiah started to get upset again.

“Where are you taking me? Turn around! Let me drive!”

“It’s for your own good. Trust me. One day you’ll see,” she replied.

Jeremiah could see the cop shop up ahead, “You’re going to pay for this! I hope you rot in hell! You are the worst mother anyone has ever had.”

Catherine ignored him, “I love you, Jeremiah. I’m doing this because I love you.”

The yellow-light ahead turned red and Catherine prepared to slow down. Jeremiah undid his seatbelt and jumped out of the truck. Catherine slammed her vehicle in park, not bothering to move the truck out of the lane and raced after him. Jeremiah made it across the street. Catherine didn’t. She ran out into on-coming traffic and was struck by another vehicle. When paramedics arrived they announced her dead at the scene, Jeremiah was long gone.

Grandma came upstairs and saw Jeremiah sitting on the bathroom floor crying.

“She knows you loved her,” she said, stroking the top of his hair.

Jeremiah regained composure and wiped his eyes.

He got up off the floor and ran downstairs. He grabbed as many bottles of liquor as he could hold and went outside, still covered in puke, not wearing any shoes. He smashed each bottle on the driveway with conviction. Shards of glass went flying. He went back inside and took the wine right out of the mourners hands and threw it in the sink, glass and all. He found full cans of beer hidden in his room, in the back of closets and under couch cushions. Everyone stared. He cracked each can open and drowned his sorrows in a new way. His mother had rescued him after all.

SCI Creative Writing Module 3 Assignment B4523B

I need help, creatively. My latest assignment is to write a 1000-1500 word fictional story that either ends linearly, OR uses the flashback technique to fill in necessary details.

Let me explain.

Stories can end with a circular ending or they can end with a linear ending.

A circular ending is when the conclusion of the story comes full circle from the beginning of the story. The circular ending is a before/after or then/now contrast. The beginning and end are tied together with a turning point in the middle. It's like, that was the norm then, but this is the norm now. Some examples would be, The Wizard of Oz, A Christmas Carole, and Watership Down.

A linear ending is when your story keeps building and building and building until you reach the final conflict. Once the result is known the story immediately ends. You drive toward a single goal and stop when it has been achieved. This is typical of mystery, suspense, and adventure stories.

And as I copy from my text book: "If you tell of bygone events in narrative summary, it's exposition. If you dramatize them as a scene, it's a flashback.... The virtue of flashbacks is that, unlike exposition, they're showing, not telling."

Since I have no inclination to write a mystery, suspense, or adventure story, even though I like reading true crime stories and other suspense/thriller books, I know that when I do this assignment I will probably have to write a story that uses flashbacks and has a circular ending.

The problem is that everything I write ends up being way longer than 1500 words and I just came seem to think of something to write about that would require a flashback and also make sense to the rest of the story in a short time span.

If a story is so short that you only use 1 or two flashbacks, there's really no point in using the flashbacks technique at all. You may as well save yourself the trouble and write it as exposition instead. In my opinion, using flashbacks in a 1500 word story is utterly ridiculous.

And I can't really think of any good ideas to write about. I started one about a single mom that was in a car crash and I was going to flash back to when she was still alive to tell some of the story that lead up to the car crash, but it's just not working and the story is getting too long. I can't cut parts out of the story without totally redoing the whole thing, so I may as well just start a brand new story.

I'm totally frustrated with this assignment. Help! Creative ideas! I need them!

10 Years From Now

I seriously HATE it when people ask me, "Where do you see yourself in 10 years... five years... however many years I arbitrarily pull out of my ass?"

Maybe I'm just really terrible at setting goals for myself, but I can't see myself in ten years no matter how hard I try. I want the same thing everyone wants in ten years time.

I want to be in peak physical condition, married, living in my dream house with my fabulous husband and 2 well-behaved children. I want to have a career and I want to have been to Europe at least twice. Maybe even have written two more books.

I live paycheck to paycheck and I can't even think ahead a month from now because in those thirty days a trillion things can change, and they do change. Could you imagine the changes in TEN YEARS?

My career goal in ten years from now is literally to have a full-time job. That's my top priority right now. Forget big dreams and lofty career goals, I need a fucking job first! If you hire me now, I'll have that ten years from now question answered for you in about a year's time.

None of the "goals" I have for ten years from now are career related at all. I don't even know if I want to work in a news station for the rest of my life. I don't know if I even want to work in media in general for the rest of my life. How can there be such motivated people in the world that they know what they want career-wise in ten years time? How do you even plan that?

It's 1:30 in the morning and I can't sleep because I can't stop thinking about this. Are there people out there who are in their early twenties and know where they want to be in life before they hit age 35? I'm getting stressed out about this.

Feeling Fabulous!

So I sent out my Christmas cards and I also sent out exactly 10 copies of my book. They're autographed, so I'll know who threw it away if I ever find one in a used book store ha ha.

I didn't think they'd arrive so fast, but only 2/10 haven't told me they received anything yet. Everyone's texting me an emailing me. I'm feeling pretty awesome and I'm really glad I decided to share my book with my friends. I was unsure at first if I wanted to put myself out there, but everyone's been very kind and very flattering. It makes me want to keep writing.

I can't stop smiling and dancing around! I have 28 copies left of my book just sitting in packaging. I don't know what to do with them right now. I'll probably just save them and distribute them as I see fit.

There were a number of type-o's due to my utter carelessness in editing. They're mostly all fixed now and a new version has been uploaded to LuLu.com

My next book, Keeping Secrets is still in the baby stages. I'm feeling really encouraged to go forth hard and strong with it! Thanks for reading.

Good Things

A wave of good news has occurred this week!

1. I received a call from CBC requesting an interview for the position I applied for like a month ago.

2. My 2nd cousin, Katryna Reimer is interested in family tree and wants to talk to me on the phone and share information with each other.

3. I received a 96% on my second writing submission for my creative writing course at Stratford.
The senior editor graded my paper and has requested that I send all further works to her personally to grade because she likes my writing and wants to continue reading it. I was nervous that my 2nd submission wouldn't do as well as my first submission, which received a 94% but now I feel really confident that my third submission is going to rock her world!

I don't really feel like writing right now since I've been writing all morning, but I felt obligated to update this blog.