Tag: help!

feelings

fact finding mission

abby mumford

i learned something new the other day. it started off with boredom. boredom with my hairstyle at the same time i had a very posh wedding to attend. clearly i couldn’t show up with the same old hairdo, but my hair is stick straight. if i can get the ends to bend under, it’s a good day. i thought about what to do and decided i wanted something like this:

one problem. i can’t french braid. trust me, i’ve tried. there’s something so elegant and chic and yet casual about it. my friend carrie has worn her hair in a similar style, but i wasn’t sure if she could recreate it on me. as i sat there on the bed and let her nimble fingers twist and twine my hair, i was struck by the thought that i’ve known her for 16 years and somehow didn’t know this one small fact.

she’s a master french braider.

even after all these years, there was something i didn’t know about her. i loved this, but yet, i am freaked out when the character i’m working with (one i’ve known only for a few months) does something unexpected? why is this? why can’t i embrace that newness like i embraced the news about carrie? sure, my character’s not french braiding my hair for me, but that doesn’t mean she’s any less entertaining.

i realize you’re only going to know what people/characters want you to know, but how do you make sure to ask the right questions? and what do you do when something unanticipated arises in the plot or with a character? do you roll with the punches? do you manipulate things to your satisfaction? do you let yourself (and your hair) get twisted up?

feelings

scary 101

abby mumford

it’s a well known fact i’m a wuss. i blame it on my overactive imagination that takes a tiny seed of truth (a pineapple, a monster in the closet, a murderer upstairs while i’m babysitting, an alien, a man hiding in the dark corner, a ghost) and expands it until i am shaking and crying and LIVING MY WORST NIGHTMARE. knowing this about myself has helped me to be proactive about this over the years. i’ve stopped watching scary movies. heck, i’ve even stopped watching scary movie previews. when commercials come on (yes, i know. i watch commercials. i don’t have a DVR. i’m so ancient), i can hit the mute button faster than the first note of the scary music can finish.

i don’t have a finely tuned response towards scary books, though. sure,  i know not to read anything with stephen king on the title, but what about one that says susan beth pfeffer?

LIFE AS WE KNEW IT is easily one of the scariest things i’ve ever read because IT COULD HAPPEN. (it could totally occur within the next ten years. or fifteen. or two.  even with all the technology available today, weathermen are still wrong A LOT, so what’s to say an astronomer or NASA expert couldn’t be way off as well?) this book is also one of the most mesmerizing things  i’ve ever read. i couldn’t stop reading, couldn’t put it down, actually, wait, i did put it down once when i went to check the pantry to make sure there were enough canned goods in there. (read it, you’ll see.) i read this two christmases ago and i STILL think about this book on a weekly basis, which means it should be on my top ten list of great books, but for some reason, i never consider it. probably because it scares the bejeezus out of me and i do my best to forget it, but IT WON’T LET ME. just when i think i’m over it, something like the supermoon happens and i’m right back in the trenches with miranda. this doesn’t make it a bad book. it just makes it a bad book for those that are wusses like me.

although, honestly, even that’s a lie. (see what scary books do to me? they make me lie!) because as a “writer”, this is the kind of book i want to write. no, no, not a scary one, but rather one that drapes itself over your shoulders and covers you from head to toe and wriggles into your brain so you can NEVER FORGET. NEVER. EVER. EVER. NEVER. NOPE.

in fact, i think it makes it my next recommendation of what YOU should read.

note: there are two other companion novels in this series: THE DEAD AND THE GONE (book 2) and THE WORLD WE LIVE IN (book 3), but  i didn’t realize that at the time, so i read book 3 before book 2 and was a bit confused at some of the missing details. i actually haven’t even read book 2 yet. hmm, while you read book 1, i’ll read book 2. deal?

feelings

pressure

abby mumford

i am one of the few people i know who does NOT work well under pressure. the few times i’ve procrastinated, something has come up at the last minute and i’ve had to choose — finish the model of Westminster Abbey/pass the class or skip school for a day/with mother’s help in both skipping school and with model building (hey, i was in the 4th grade). that was a tragic day because i had to SKIP SCHOOL and ask my mom for help. sure, some kids would be cheering, but i was just worried about all the work i’d have to make up.

another time, i choose to wait to fill up my car’s tank of gas until the day of departure which resulted in having to wait 45 minutes at the gas station (long story) plus, that 45 minutes allowed all the other cars to leave work and hit the road which added up to two more hours on the highways.

the reason why i have pressure on the brain (other than this cold i developed on friday) is that i witnessed two of the best procrastinators i know at work. one being brother G and the other being my uncle T. and they pulled off the best videos/presentations of the night (i’ll tell you about the party at a later date). i don’t know about uncle T, but i know brother G has my mother’s ability to stay up until the wee hours of the night, which helps when your deadline is only hours away. me? i’m a sleeper. a napper. a go to bed early-er. a wake up later. i’m pretty much always tired which severely hinders things when a deadline is only hours away and which is a driving factor of why i don’t adhere to the “why do something today when it can wait until tomorrow” but rather to the “why do something today when i could have been done yesterday.” (i wonder if being a night owl (or a really early bird) helps with this procrastination thing…?)

yes, i’m the girl who, when applying to undergraduate colleges, told my mother that if she didn’t read my essays by week’s end, i was going to mail them in without her comments. she’d had them for two weeks, but yes, i gave my mother a deadline, which was still weeks ahead of when the actual applications were due. me, who had lacrosse practice and games six days a week plus all sorts of school work plus friends to see plus books to read for fun on top of all that.  my mom still laughs about it to this day mainly because she was the one nagging my other siblings about writing their essays whereas i was the one nagging her. (oh man, how early are the signs? i am becoming my mother!)

this is the only “good” way i differ from my siblings: i stay on top of things (tee hee). i blame G and J because they are both so naturally smart, i had to study extra hard to be able to match the grades they brought home. and then there’s the whole blushing thing. it’s bad. still is. but i figured if i was prepared with the answers (well, except for math class), perhaps i wouldn’t blush when the teacher called on me. didn’t work, but i didn’t stop trying. some call this tenacious or ambitious. others call it stubborn. it depends on if your glass if half full or half empty.

what’s the point of all this? there isn’t one, really, but everyone either is a procrastinator or knows one and in my cold medicine ravaged brain, this is the post you’re getting. talk to me about your procrastination efforts. ever get into a jam you couldn’t get out of or are you the type who spins gold out of dust?

(seriously, talk to me here. i want loads of comments. this is a general topic, so i KNOW YOU CAN RELATE TO IT. speak up. your voice is important! *offers cookies*)

p.s. speaking of pressure, i don’t recommend flying when you have a cold. the part where the plane descends for its landing? yeah, the pain will radiate downwards from your ears to your jaw to your teeth and back up to your sinuses until you’re forced to check your ear to make sure it’s not dripping blood from a ruptured ear drum.

feelings

the art of lying

abby mumford

i was in killington, vermont this past weekend with a group comprised of my high school friends and their husbands/BFs. i’ve been snowboarding since college, but i prefer to stick to the easy slopes, especially this year since this was my first trip where i had my own gear. *cue euphoria* i wanted to stay on the greens (beginner slopes) and blues (intermediate slopes) because i wasn’t sure how my skills would react to the absence of sub-par rental equipment.

nearing the end of the day, instead of going down a slope we’d previously done, four of us split off to try a new run, took a wrong turn, and ended up halfway across the mountain. bud and jaime quickly consulted the map.

bud: we’re going to take a blue to another blue to a black to a blue to a green and then, the lodge.

abby: *squeaks* a black?

(sidenote: a black color coded trail is for experts. i haven’t done anything past a blue on a board.)

bud and jaime exchanged a look. bud looked back down at the map and over to me: ok, new route, all blues.

and off we went.

except, we didn’t take all blues. bud had lied. we took the original path he had suggested. that was the fastest way down and with the pouring rain and sore muscles setting in, it was the way we had to go. yes, kids, i went down a black diamond trail and lived to tell the tale. granted, i went about it in a sissy manner and grated my way down the steep portion instead of executing proper turns, but hey, i had survival on the brain. i merely wanted to come back in one piece. so, mission accomplished. and snowboarding outside my comfort zone? mission further accomplished.

later, we were all safely ensconced in the warm and, more importantly, dry condo and were enjoying some post exercise cocktails and appetizers. the heat from the fireplace plus the warmth of nine people tucked into a small space sent the temperatures inside soaring.

POP.

i almost choked on the carrot i was eating the noise was so loud and unexpected. but the ringing in my ears sounded vaguely familiar. after a second of thinking, i was able to place why. and then, i almost choked again, but this time it was on my own laughter. you see, julie and jaime’s birthdays are in march and we were planning a small, secret celebration. balloons had been blown up and hidden upstairs, but you know how heat rises and rubber expands and all that science-y stuff? yeah, one of the balloons popped and our secret was about to blow up in our faces.

with everyone staring at each other — us in the know with guilty looks on our faces and jaime and julie with confused looks — a lie slipped out of carrie’s mouth. “it was the pot. i’m filling it with hot water for the pasta.”

neither jaime nor julie bought it.

caitlin quickly covered. “i think it was this bag of chips.” that plus the guilty look on her face sufficed. both birthday girls believed it.

two lies (ok, three) in one day. one got a girl out of her comfort zone and into the realization that she can handle it when scary slaps her in the face while the other kept the surprise a secret until the big reveal later that night.

i’m beginning to think that perhaps the art of lying is merely the power of persuasion incognito.

feelings

SPAM! or i’m going through twitter withdrawal

abby mumford

i haven’t been addicted to many things in life, besides coca cola, coffee, chocolate, reading, and twitter, and thus far, i’ve only had to cut myself off from one, coffee, and that was because it was physically making me sick. it’s easy to cut something out when the NOT having of it outweighs the having of it.

’tis not so with twitter, even though it was self imposed.

friends, i’m going through withdrawal.

i find myself thinking in 140 characters. copying links and then pasting them into bit.ly so they’re shareable. wondering what everyone’s up to. pondering what uproarious conversations i’m missing. flailing in the real world without the digital world for a compass. wondering who can hear me now?

however, i must remind myself this is what i wanted. not forever, OH HECK NO, but for now until i can establish better boundaries and stronger writing habits. i need to think first in people characters, not 140 characters.

and thus, my banishment continues.

BUT since it’s only been a week and change since i cut out my heart closed twitter and my bad habits are slow to diminish, i had to find a new way to procrastinate. what did i do? i cleared out my blog’s spam filter. i found that someone or something hawking cheap laptop batteries had made it their mission to flood my blog with comments about the band mumford and sons. i get it. my last name is mumford. i’ve written about the band. but why write multiple unrelated comments about the weather and the band on a post where i’m talking about going dark/offline for awhile? and what does that have to do with cheap laptop batteries?

seeing all those spam entries one after the other got me thinking because with this departure from twitter, i find myself without a platform to talk, *cough* she says while writing a public blog post *cough*. what i mean is that with twitter, it’s instant gratification. you pop on, type up a quick thought and BOOM, instant audience. BUT THEN i realized, all those times where i’m sharing a link or trying to be funny or weighing in on writing or blabbing about books and hoping someone will join in on the conversation, it’s THEN that I’M NO BETTER THAN A SPAM BOT. well, okay, that’s a little drastic. i am better than that, but you know, twitter encourages and even exacerbates this behavior because unless it’s an @ reply, all of what we write is offered up for the whole internet to read. of course i don’t write each tweet 25x or incorporate offensive swear words or talk about cheap laptop batteries until someone responds, but i guess what i’m saying is i understand the spam.

perhaps, though, it’s a good thing i’m taking a break because i don’t like having this as my reflection: