Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!

If you sung that as you read it, congratulations, it worked.

You can probably tell there's some changes coming up. A few weeks ago I was formally offered another position within my company - one that's a step or two up from where I'm currently at - and I accepted. I have to go get certified for the things I've been doing for the past two years, and then once I come back from Pennsylvania, I'll be out in my new position for the start of the season.

Out in meaning out in Buffalo.

By the end of March/beginning of April, I have to move from Central New York to Western New York. Which, considering my original time frame - as discussed back in December - was end of May/beginning of June...well, I think I'm probably a little overwhelmed.

And trying to find an apartment to move into in little over a month.

So. That's where I'm at. And I'll hopefully do better at keeping an update and just the whole blogging thing in general. Like the trip to Savannah, GA, I took with my parents last week.

-Molly Louise

Hello 2016

Hello Lovelies,

Welcome to 2016!

I hope everyone's end of 2015 was fantastic and fabulous - I spent New Year's Eve with M (my boyfriend - we'll just go with his first initial, and yes, we could refer to ourselves as M&M because of our first initials, which makes me giggle like an idiot) and we finished the 1000 piece puzzle my friend H (who lives out west in the desert) sent me for Christmas. She - and M - knows I like to do puzzles, and while I usually stick to 750 pieces, a few days before Christmas, M suggested the 1000 piece.

We had some wine, watched some hockey (Buffalo Sabres unfortunately lost), and then worked on the puzzle. We turned on the NYE's countdown at about 20 minutes to midnight, and watched the ball drop. Finished the puzzle, and then went to bed.

We are clearly party animals.

As always, this is where I mention I'm going to try to do better at blogging. Hopefully, I can actually make this happen. Baby steps, here. Baby steps.

So, Happy Tuesday, Happy New Year, and let's wander into 2016 with the aim to smell the sunflowers, get hopelessly lost, and find adventure wherever it comes.

-Molly Louise

Erm...Hello?

Somebody give me a minute so I can wipe the dust off this place, and make it look like it still functions.

It does still function. I just do a damn bad job of making it actually function like it should.

Anyway.

Hi.

This is either a revival or a resuscitation or a bit of both. But we'll give it a go again, because I kind of don't know how to quit or give up. It's great.

Right now I'm sitting in a coffee shop, wandering through the Manuscript Wishlist and sending out queries for both FROST and TWO FOR THE RENT. Fingers crossed on that front. I've currently just run out of coffee, I'm craving a pastry, at some point I need to get bread, and later on today I'll go to work because second shift. Second shift is a bit brutal, at times, and this might be one of those days when I don't get home until 3:30 in the morning. Happy Weekend!

So. Let's try again. Because everybody needs a revival now and then, and maybe I'll put some CCR on. Or I'll just stick with country music.

Starting Over, Starting Out

My phone rang way too early on a Tuesday morning mid-March, but the news was good: I'd gotten the job I'd interviewed for the previous Friday, was required to be at company orientation on April 3, and start April 7. Between that time, and a trip to NYC we'd had planned since mid-January, I had to pack what worldly possessions were going to come the 55 miles from my parents' house to a new apartment I hadn't started looking for yet.

It was a lot to squeeze into two and a half weeks.

First apartments aren't supposed to be glamorous. We'd like them to be, but the truth is, a lot of the time they aren't. My first one on Tompkins Street in Cortland, NY, while being only two blocks from downtown, wasn't anything to really write home about. But it was mine. Mine to come back to each night. Mine to pay the bills on, stock with groceries, and just be a place to call my own.

 

And it worked, for a while. It worked until it didn't anymore. Until living between a frat house, a sorority (with another one across the street), and generally just being in the middle of college housing (while not in college) wasn't where I wanted to be working the kind of hours I was working. There was also the small matter of no parking, and bottom line, it didn't feel like home anymore.

It took me about a month to find a new place. This was after multiple daily looks at CraigsList, scouring the newspaper, calling various phone numbers, and trucking out to Homer, McGraw, Tully, and on one occasion, Cincinnatus. All with nothing really promising, nothing that screamed home to me until one day. Until this place. 

There were a few must-haves for me when I was looking. One of them was full-size appliances in the kitchen. Saying I like to bake is an understatement. There's still the thought in the back of my head about going to pastry school, so I spend a bit of free time with my oven. (My current kitchen, pictured above, has brand new EZClose cupboards. It was a huge tipping point.) Also on the list of my requirements was a bathroom I didn't have to back into in order to use the toilet, and that actually had a tub instead of a tiny shower stall. 

This is my apartment. All of my furniture is secondhand and most of it certainly doesn't match (not that I care, I was just happy to have furniture in general), but it's here. So is my houseplant who's been with me since my first year of college, my framed photo of lower Manhattan pre-2001, and the photo board hanging on the wall features the most important people in my life, proudly on display. But more importantly, I can say that shortly into September, a few days after I moved in, this went from being a bigger apartment in a different location with new cupboards to being my home. A place to come to recharge, to have quiet nights in, and to host out-of-town friends who stop by for a visit. A home that gives me a sense of contentment I didn't feel in that first place.

It was a struggle to find such a place. I'm pretty sure, when I was looking to move in August, there were tears of frustration at one point. Thankfully, there's sites like Urban Compass that help people do just what I did - find that first apartment, get settled, and have that feeling of starting over, starting out.

#smallcourage

Hello!

I swear I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Seriously.

But what I have started doing is #100HappyDays over on Instagram. (I can be found here, and really, let's not talk about how unimaginative I am about creating screen names, though there is something to be said for being able to found across multiple platforms with relative ease.)

One of my favorite hashtags on Instagram is #smallcourage. And it's something I figured out last summer, after having surgery.

Being told you have to be cracked open like a walnut and patched up like a popped tire is terrifying no matter what age, but it's a special kind of horror when you're only twenty-three and feel like either the road will go ever on or you won't see another step of it. Signing all the papers and giving the doctors free reign to do what they need to is big courage. It's bravery on a whole new level (I'll write you a dissertation on the subject if you disagree with me, trust me, I can).

Small courage is different. It's the idea that, despite how much it hurts or how much you don't think it's going to be okay, you get out of bed each new day. It's how you say today will be different. It's how your sternum feels like it's healing together again and you have a few odd beats more in one day than you usually do, and yet you keep going. Small courage is the courage it takes to just keep on keeping on, day after day, even when it seems like the last thing you absolutely want to do. It's sending out one more query letter after five rejections. It's finding a way to go to NYC for a weekend even after your boss tells you no, you don't have any time off to use to take a Friday.

It's stepping onto an indoor soccer field 2.5 years after your last college intramural game, little over a year out of major traumatic surgery, and trying to find your footing again. It's knowing that it might not go like you want it to go, but damn it, you're going to try anyway.

Big courage decisions come every so often. Small courage comes on a daily basis, and it reminds us all that we are very brave, very courageous people deep inside. And that is something none of us should ever forget.

Have a lovely Tuesday.

Society Woman

Last weekend was, for many, the second weekend in August. For anyone in the Twin Tiers region of New York, specifically the southern portion of Seneca Lake, last weekend was also NASCAR.

I'm not normally a NASCAR fan. I just don't see the point of driving in a circle turning only one way. But when they come to WGI? That takes true driving. The wheel goes both directions - it's a road course - and I will happily sit down and spend three hours of my life watching about 40 high horsepowered vehicles burn off copious amounts of fossil fuel. However, I rarely actually get to watch it.

My family has been part of the Grange organization for years. As a way to "make money" in which to pay the bills for the building, they've also been volunteering at WGI since, I believe, the early '80s. I spent many a NASCAR weekend up there in a food stand, pulling sodas with my cousins before the track transitioned to selling bottles instead of cups. Though we got out of the food stand a couple years ago, we still volunteer. This time we sell souvenirs.

I like to volunteer. I happily spent nearly two full winters volunteering at my local library during Saturday mornings and weekday evenings, and I did many hours of service in high school and college. I went on a week-long service trip to Virginia for two Spring Breaks, and I genuinely just enjoy helping others. So when Mom asked me if I would come back that weekend and help them out, of course I said yes.

Many of you know I had open heart surgery last summer (we're coming up on a year!) and that I have a fairly substantial scar smack dab in the middle of my upper chest. Really the only time it's not visible is if I'm wearing a t-shirt and sweatshirt. Other types of clothing usually mean the very top portion is showing. This doesn't bother me; I'm rather fond of my scar. It's a part of me.

Which is why it kind of caught me off guard when an older gentlemen, who was looking at some stickers last weekend, noticed it and, rather quietly said, "You've had open heart surgery, haven't you?"

To which I replied yes. Mom added we were coming up on a year. Turns out, he had had open heart surgery, too. He'd recognized the size, placement, and shape of the scar for what it was.

That's the moment that I kind of realized I was in a sort of club with everyone else who had ever had such a procedure done. Much like I am as a writer, I'm now part of a larger community that's been through something monumental and traumatic. It's a really awesome thing to know someone else has been through exactly what you have, and they, like you, have come out on the other side, too.

All in all, it was one of my favorite experiences from last weekend, and certainly a conversation that will stick with me for a while.

Who, Me? An Unofficial Official #PitchWars Mentee Bio

I should not be doing this. I should be frantically cleaning my apartment because my landlord is showing it to someone this afternoon while I'm at work since I'm moving this month. I feel like Loki's I DO WHAT I WANT gif his highly appropriate here, and, you know, maybe one of these days I'll teach myself how to put gifs in my blog text. Pictures I can do.

PitchWars is back! Yay! If you're not sure what PitchWars is, go here and see the lovely Brenda Drake (she has the details).

So who I am, besides a clearly Wandering Sagittarius? Weeell....I'm a performance grade asphalt binder technician for a construction company in Central New York. I work with the stuff that make roads and can use my BA in chemistry on a daily basis. Pretty much. So, my life is kind of like this.

Maybe not that extreme. More like this, really.

My coffee has clearly worn off. But this happens when you work 40-60 hours a week.

Righteo. Some cool things about me.

1) I'm Part Cow
Yes, you read that right. I'm part cow. I found out in March 2013 that I was born with an ASD - atrium septal defect - in which the hole between the top two chambers of your heart don't close when you're born. My cardiologist wasn't comfortable with the size of the hole (huge, apparently, and we later learned that huge meant size of a half dollar) and sent me to another cardiologist who was going to put an artificial patch in. Well, when he looked at the size of the hole, not only was it huge, there also wasn't enough on the one side of the heart wall for it to anchor to.

About a year ago (August 29, 2013) I underwent open heart surgery at the age of 23. They put a patch made of cow (they usually use pig, but I have cow) over the hole, wired my sternum back together, and my cousins dubbed me "The Iron Cowheart Lady" when they gave me an Iron Man arc reactor t-shirt while I was recovering in the cardiac step-down unit.

2) I've Always Been a Writer
When I was six I thought writing a book was taking a published book and transcribing it into a notebook. Now that I'm significantly older, I know that's called plagiarism, and I've since then started really working with my overactive imagination and ideas. As a result I've finished five novels - two of which belong in a series - and three of which I'm seriously querying to find an agent/get published. This includes my PitchWars entry, FROST, which is a retold fusion of Jack Frost and The Pied Piper set in a small town in the New York Adirondack Mountains. What's pretty cool is that FROST didn't start off as a novel, it started as a dramatic text I wrote for a class I took in 2010 while studying abroad in Wales. 

Though I still haven't managed to finish that ten composition book monstrosity I started my first year of high school, I did decide to start to rewrite it. There's something really fulfilling about reconnecting with the first set of characters you ever worked with.

3) A Dead Poet's Practical Magic
I'm a movie junkie. I have an ever-expanding crate of them, a years-old Netflix subscription, and can basically quote you certain films line by line. My favorites are by far Dead Poets Society and Practical Magic. My current favorite TV love is the BBC's The Musketeers, though I am a lover of all things geek, including various series of Star Trek and shows like Stargate: SG-1, The Big Bang Theory, Stargate: Atlantis. Superhero movies? Love those, too. My BFF came to visit a couple weeks ago and brought me mini action figures of Data and Riker. I squealed loud enough to wake the entire neighborhood at 1 am.

A Few More Random Fun Facts
- I can't have pets in my apartment, so I consider Henry the Houseplant my pet.
- My writing tends to have either alternating POV's or multiple POV's.
- I am not the world's biggest fan of first person POV, though there are some exceptions - like Kenneth Oppel's Matt Cruise series (which is phenomenal).
- I put together 750-piece puzzles in my spare time.

That's pretty much me in a nutshell. I'm also a hot mess of crazy most days, but nobody needs to know that. Thanks very much for stopping by, and good luck to all my fellow mentees, who's fantastic bios can be found right here. Go check them out!

Little Steps

This isn't what you think it is. Trust me.

This past weekend was, for many colleges and universities, graduation. Which, aside from the fact that it made me realize I've been a year since my own trip across the proverbial stage to get my BA, is a time for new graduates to just bask in their potential. And there's a lot of potential in almost all of those pictures currently flooding my Facebook feed of caps, gowns, and shiny new diplomas.

I'd like to know when I got quite as cynical as I have because my response - and congratulatory status update - included mention of getting slapped in the face by reality.

Because it is coming. Whether you, as a new graduate, want to believe it or not, it is coming.

Unless you're one of the few that have been hired back by the place you did your unpaid internship at, it's a tough as shit job market out there. I have a degree in chemistry, and it took me roughly a year and a half to get a job. My friend, who's a teacher at an all girls Catholic high school in Rochester, took about year after her masters degree to find a position. My other friend is currently still jobless, and she's been out two years.

Nobody is going to hand you a job when you hand them a resume with your credentials on it. You have to apply. You have to get rejected. You quite possibly have to go all the way to Chicago, IL, take two civil service exams, and then come all the way back home to realize, yeah, that might not happen either though you're more than qualified.

It sucks, it really does. It feels like a never-ending uphill battle. In some cases, it really is. But you have to keep trying. Even getting a first interview is a big step. But it's also a little step. And the important thing to remember is that what you might end up doing is not something you would have dreamed you'd do in the first place.

Case in point: I never thought I would work with hot mix asphalt cement for the same employer my father has worked at for thirty years. (Does this mean my father was the one to get me my current job? No. He suggested I put in an application, and he sent it in for me, but the rest of it was my doing. We also do very different things for the same company.)

But it's a job. I enjoy going to work every afternoon (hooray for second shift! Seriously, I love it.) and I find it interesting. Did I also swear to myself as an undergrad that I wouldn't ever work in a lab? Yeah, I did. I also swore I'd never willingly look through scientific literature articles and materials post-graduation, and hey, I do that on a regular basis, too. With excitement.

Times change. Situations change. And you, yourself, will need to be a little flexible at first. It's not going to be perfect, but it's going to be something. You just have to keep trying, and take it one little step at a time.

Striking Out (In a Good Way)

[Hi. I'm going to be utterly shameless and pretend that the past however many months of inactivity haven't happened. I hope you'll indulge me. If you won't, well, there's always bribery by baked goods, so maybe that'll work.]

I'd like to start off by saying, in an answer to the last post on my lovely blog, I didn't make it into Pitch Wars. I did, however, make it into Pitch Madness, and had both some success and some failure there. Overall I was pleased.

Except for when I thought I might actually get a contract with an agent and then got the email that dashed that for the moment. But hey, you win some, you lose some, and you spend more time in life doing an abbreviated cha-cha than probably walking in a straight line.

I have no idea if that made any sense, but I've already put in an hour and a half of overtime this week, and it's only Tuesday.

Good news! I got a job in my degree field (chemistry) and moved out of my parents' house. This is the start of my second full week in my little apartment and, coincidentally, the beginning of the second full week of my new job.

I am a performance grade (PG) binder technician. This has to do with asphalt, and what I do is that I look at the binder, or the stuff that holds what crews later put on the road together. I run lab tests on it (I get to use a blowtorch on a regular basis, how cool is that?) and I ensure that product meets certain specifics. So, if we have a batch of something the guys at the tank farm have made up, I get to certify that it meets certain requirements and can actually be used.

It's pretty cool. It's fun, it's definitely different, and I do enough different tests to where my days are probably not going to devolve into the pattern of "same shit, different shift."

Also, said job pays more than minimum wage (not that there's anything wrong with minimum wage, but let's be honest, minimum wage isn't a living wage, not in today's world), and has a full benefits package. I have my own health insurance. I'm twenty-four years old, a recent college graduate, and I have a job that's got benefits and a 401(k).

With all that good stuff comes the other side of it - I pay my own rent, and my own utilities. I caved in today (because Mother Nature has seen fit to dump snow on CNY like it's still January) and turned up my heat (because I don't need pneumonia), and I'll also pay my gas bill, too. However, I don't have cable, with no real intentions of getting it, either, but I did go get a MyFi from AT&T, because the whole living without internet thing? Yeah, not a big fan of that. I lasted a week, and then realized that I would probably burn through all of my data and going over that wouldn't make my mother happy.

So this is really the first time I've been out and about in such a way on my own. Yes, there was that little apartment my ninth semester of college, but it wasn't really mine. I had to give it back. Granted, if I move out of here I have to basically do the same thing, but it feels different. And that's the important part.

Do I feel like an adult? Eh, sometimes. Usually more so in the morning when I put coffee in a to-go mug, fight rush hour traffic, and park my little Buick between the massive pickup trucks everyone else in my building seems to drive.

I'm quite happy where I'm at, and content to take it a day at a time.

The Haul and Wait

Monday, December 2, 2013 was the submission day for the fabulous Brenda Drake's PitchWars. (To find out more information on what PitchWars is, feel free to click the link - it'll take you to her blog and she can explain things a hell of a lot better than I can at the moment.)

Bottom line, if you have a finished manuscript that you're ready to query with, you apply for a mentor. They'll read your query and your sample pages - sometimes even ask for more - and then they'll give you feedback on why they did or didn't accept it on December 11. I know that's only five days away, but it's going to feel more like a month away, really.

I'm not very good at waiting.

The last time I entered a contest like this was during my semester from hell (I think) and I entered Sage, and I totally botched my applications, in all honesty. It was awful. Last year I chose not to enter, because I didn't have anything that I really, really thought would be worth it.

This time I offered up Matt & Topher like proverbial lambs. I've had some success with them in pitch contests on twitter, and I've gotten plenty of rejections with them doing e-queries, so I'm really curious to see how they'll do. It will also be an opportunity to find out what I need to work on - because there's always something that can be improved - and that advice will prove valuable even if, ultimately, the boys and I go nowhere but back to the drawing board.

In the mean time, so I don't freak myself out totally while waiting and obsessively checking the Pitch Wars hashtag, I work at the hotel (for a rather funny picture from Wednesday, check out my Instagram feed for the chalk outline from the kitchen) and I work on getting a little further in Frost, my re-working of Jack Frost that I started three years ago. In other words, I keep busy so I won't go nuts. So far it's working. Hopefully the next five days will go much the same.

Happy Friday and have a good weekend.

Something to Be Thankful For

Last week was Thanksgiving. We had, as per usual, a boatload of people in the house. We also had a boatload of people staying in our hours for the week, too. My aunt and uncle from Maine, my two cousins and their dog from South Carolina, stayed at our bed and breakfast (what we jokingly call our house in the summer because it's like a permanently revolving door twenty-four hours a day with who is getting up for work, leaving for work, and coming home from work...but that's a different story for another time) and we had something like sixteen or seventeen people for dinner Thursday.

I had to work. It was an utter madhouse at the hotel: we did 685 for our buffet dinner, ran out of turkey, and had fun with each other so we didn't go absolutely batshit crazy. Well, we went batshit crazy anyway, but the highlight of having to work on a day when we were supposed to be with our families - which people continually thanked us for - was sitting down at the end after all the customers had left and the dishes had been taken back to the kitchen, and having our own sort of family dinner from the left overs. We were all tired and punchy and it was one of those things that I'll hang onto for a long time.

What I'll also hang onto is that a week ago Monday was my twenty-fourth birthday. With all that happened this year - and it's been a rough year - I honestly, at some points, didn't think I would see it. But I did. And to be able to celebrate it, and look forward to another year patched up and ready to take on the world is something that will make this birthday the most special that I will ever have. I will always remember this one. Not because of the food or the presents, but simply because I am still alive.

My family, the jokers they are, have hinted they're going to get me a cow tag - like you can buy at Tractor Supply - with the number 23 on it. I have to say I really like this idea, and I'm hoping to find it in my stocking on Christmas morning. And if anybody asks me about it, well, I have a story that's stranger than fiction. But they say the truth usually is.

Hope you all had a happy holiday, and oh, hey, it's December. When the hell did that happen?

Throwback Thursday

November/December 2010. It's the view from my room - ABN 3, 4F - at the University of Wales Trinity St. David Carmarthen campus. The empty space is from a car that had only recently left. Those who live in the UK aren't accustomed to driving in snow, whereas the New Yorker who was being a creeper and watching the mayhem as someone tried to leave their parking space and up the hill is used to it. (I told him to put his foot on the gas and not let up until he was on the flat past the hedge. He finally made it.)

This is also from the same time frame and was one of the cork boards on the wall of my room. I like to send and receive funny cards - getting mail is fun - and I pin them up after I get them so I can always have a quick chuckle if I need it. It became a tradition while I was at college that sort of died when everything went to hell my senior fall. 

There's so much about this picture. It's when I discovered the timer on my camera. The stack of books by the curtain were supplemental materials for my two papers due for Living in an Old Country: The History and Heritage of Wales. Newcastle Brown Ale (my absolute favorite beer and my preference) comes in cans (it's also a domestic instead of an import). My traveling orange winter hat is there, too. That hat has been everywhere since I first bought it in Belgium in 2008 while overseas to play soccer for a week. 

This was also the place where the idea for Jack and Mari was born, where I worked on Sage and made sporadic updates for Murphy and Me. 

I miss it and I can't wait to go back January of 2015 for graduate school. It won't be Wales, but ARU is only an hour from London, and Carmarthen is only another four hours by train.

Things to Know VII

- If I hadn't already been totally happy with where I'm going to go to grad school, the fact that they called me this afternoon would have sealed the deal.

- I can't imagine what it cost them for that 11.5 minute conversation.

- That predictable American girl stereotype about British accents totally applies to this chick.

- I'm not ashamed of the above.

- The library gave me permanent volunteer hours on the first Monday of the month, and I'm also still a sub when necessary.

- I'm more excited than I should be to have library hours tonight.

- November is National Novel Writing Month.

- I dug out The Icicle Man and have been playing in that sandbox since last week.

- It's rather fun to give my recently-turned-human character the emotional mood swings he's experiencing.

- Though I do feel kind of bad.

- I discovered Star Trek: The Next Generation on Netflix.

- Due to the above, I can confirm what we already knew: I'm a Trekkie.

- I still cry during Star Trek: Into Darkness.

- I'm also going to cry while watching the final episode of Sherlock and therefore haven't yet.

- The next season starts in January and I'm not sure I'm ready.

- I have a cold, most likely can't take any old meds, and will be suffering through with copious amounts of orange juice, cough drops, and decaffeinated tea.

- All of my Twitter followers, you have been warned.

- I'm still waiting to hear back from an agent and choosing to take no news as good news so far.

- Don't ask me how many words I've written for NaNo because I don't have a clue.

From the Vault

My weekend was, barring a flat tire while traveling to the Farmer's Market with my sister, rather uneventful.

This morning I had coffee with a good friend of mine from high school. She went to college for English, and we've both always been very interested in writing stories. We even looked at some of our old stuff and had a good laugh over it.

Naturally, with November being only four days away, we talked about what we were going to do for NaNo - National Novel Writing Month. My original intention had been to finish Terrathela and Two for the Aisle, but we got to talking and I got to thinking about how much I really liked an idea that had started off as a dramatic text while I was abroad. I'd started a new view on the idea of Jokul Frosti while I was in Wales, kind of spliced it with elements from The Pied Piper, and the beginning efforts of the novel are only about 12,000 words right now.

I'm going to go play in this sandbox again for the month of November. The characters are fun to work with, the plot is fairly solid, and Jack isn't a protagonist I'm familiar with working with. He's darker, and in a way, he's a little flat because he doesn't have a clue what to do with human emotion.

Wandering back into the urban fantasy neighborhood, too, is a promising prospect.

This excitement over ideas and story lines is what makes it fun to be a writer. Though, in a way, I'm also looking forward to the frustration that's going to make me want to pull all my hair out.

Flashback Friday

We're going to completely ignore that I missed Throwback Thursday yesterday on my Instagram, and roll with Flashback Friday instead.

All the way from March 2008 and somewhere in Belgium. I went over with other students from my high school athletics section to play soccer for a week. Played one of the best games of my life as a goalkeeper there, too, after we had gone from Belgium to Germany. That soccer uniform - including my white goalkeeping jersey - wound up in a plastic garbage bag in my soccer bag in the bottom of my suitcase. That week was a ton of fun, and I met a lot of great people. 

(Mom really loved unearthing that bag when it got home. It was beyond gnarly.)

Things to Know VI

- I can drive again. (Considering I've had my license since I was sixteen, this shouldn't be a big deal, but it is. Trust me.)

- I'm back to doing volunteer hours at the library and loving every minute of it.

- It's friggin' cold here.

- I got accepted into my first choice graduate school - Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England - and am waiting to hear from them whether they're going to defer me for a year so I can start January 2015.

- It feels really nice to have a goal to work toward again.

- I still haven't heard back from that agent that requested the rest of Two for the Rent.

- Because of the above I'm attempting to develop patience.

- So far that's not working.

- I seriously do wonder how the people who follow me on twitter find me.

- But I'm still not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

- Sneezing still hurts enough to make me swear in languages I don't even know.

- I have the attention span of a gnat.

To Those Who Wait

There is the idea that good news comes to those who wait. In a fit of brilliance last Thursday I totally forgot to check my email all day and the result was that, at roughly 9 pm that night, I had 18 new messages in my inbox.

One of them was a conditional acceptance letter to the University of Central Lancashire.

I only applied to three programs, and the one I've been conditionally accepted into is my second choice. Still, I ran through the house (as best one can with a still-healing sternum) and very excitedly told my parents because, well, I've been accepted to grad school!

It was unexpected. It's not that I have that low of an opinion of myself, it's just that my four years of undergrad were rough in places, and my GPA reflects that. I missed finishing with a 3.0 by .13, which, at the time didn't seem like a lot, but when you put it on an application along with your transcripts starts to feel like a chasm.

The other good news is that one of the other universities I applied to - University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow - wants an academic reference. I'm choosing to take this as a very good thing.

In the meantime, I will wait to hear from the other two, as well as the agent currently reading the rest of Two for the Rent. Good vibes and crossed fingers are much appreciated.

Through the Looking Glass

My first legitimate college paper for my first history class was done via my first academic all-nighter in the lounge outside my first dorm room and I ate nearly an entire package of Oreos by myself. I was also pretty damn sure I was going to fail my upcoming Chem 110 exam, and then there was also exploratory abdominal surgery to look forward to over winter break.

Good news was that I didn't fail my exam, surgery went fine, and I later went on to graduate with a BA in chemistry.

During my sophomore year I wrote a blog post titled Definition. In that moment I not only felt beautiful, but looked it. At least to me. As someone who had played over a decade of competitive sports having a positive body image was, sometimes, difficult to manifest. I later read this same post aloud in front of a room full of my peers - while wearing that same flannel shirt - during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. I did some tabling for NEDAW, too, as one of my good friends used to have an eating disorder. All of those involved worked hard that week putting up sticky notes with positive messages on bathroom mirrors, showing how out of proportion a life-size Barbie is, having an open mic night, and much, much more.

The bottom line is that women, men, people in general come in all sizes and shapes. There are those who fight constantly to look in the mirror and find one good thing in a sea of negativity.

Which makes it frustrating beyond words when Fat Shaming Week actually becomes a thing.

I'd like to be kidding. Unfortunately, I'm not.

To the men at Return of Kings fat shaming is not only acceptable, but something that must be done. In a recent post about the success of their week, cultural blogger and RoK creator Roosh writes: "Fat shaming is less about bullying individual fat people than reaffirming the fact that obesity culture is not okay in America, and attempts to brainwash people of that fiction must be immediately be destroyed with logic, science, and schoolyard insults."

It's things like this that not only make me lose a little more faith in humanity, but also drive home the importance of To Write Love on Her Arms, NEDAW, and other social movements.

As a woman and a person, I wasn't put on this Earth to be someone's object. My body is my own and, like one of my recent Twitter updates - found here - it has been to hell and back in the past two months. If a man isn't as fond of my wide hips and love handles as I am, that's fine. Nobody wears my skin but me, which is why there's absolutely no justification for anyone to make me feel ashamed of it.

RoK wants to change the cultural mindset of America. My advice is to start with their own.

Thankful Thursday

I knew, sort of, what a non-traditional family was. I'd  used them a lot in my writing, too: Ralurick spends his childhood with a single mother and his adolescence with his grandmother; Ella's raised by her grandmother; Topher's raised by everybody on his mother's side except his mother, and Matt seems to be the only one who has the seemingly requisite mother-father-siblings dynamic.

I have that, too. I have two parents who are still married, and a sister. But my nuclear family has grown a little bit. It grew six years ago with the birth of my niece. And it changed two years ago when, on the outset, everything went to hell.

We've always been fluid. Sunday dinners during the winter are one of my favorite unofficial traditions, and I can't remember when we started them. Whether they're at our house or my sister's is up for grabs throughout the day, and sometimes whoever isn't responsible for dinner itself brings dessert.

When I first came home from the hospital post-surgery, stairs weren't really something I could handle a lot. The result was that I took a lot of my meals upstairs, sitting in one of my mother's straight-backed chairs. When I gained a little more mobility - and less fear of falling without being able to catch myself - and my mother started going to work for the latter half of the day, I ate dinner with my sister and niece.

That has been, hands-down, one of the best things about my recovery. The ability to see those two smiling faces on a daily basis, to help with homework (we're not large fans of Common Core math because sometimes it feels like two women with four-year degrees don't have a clue what's going on and the kid is only in first grade), to read with her, and to sit on the back porch and look with new eyes on an old, trusted view.

For these two I am grateful and thankful beyond words.

The Process

So last blog post, way back when (yeah, I'm good like that, eventually I'll know what the hell I'm doing) I hinted about something that I'd share...soon.

Classify this as soon.

There really hasn't been much available on the job front for me. Which is weird, because I have a bachelors degree in chemistry with a minor in theater. I'm still waiting to hear anything useful from Chicago - or anything at all, I'm not picky - and the other jobs that I've applied for through government agencies have been fails, too.

That being said, I applied for grad schools.

Three, so far, and all of them in the UK. I try not to think too hard about what it means for the future of American education when I can get a masters degree for between $16,000 and $25,000 in a year to fifteen months abroad where doing it in my own country would cost at least double that.

Now it's just a waiting game, and most of you know how much I love waiting. Which isn't a whole hell of a lot. So keep your fingers crossed for me, if you remember. And this will probably make me feel like I've gotten into college all over again. Because, well, technically (hopefully!) I will be in college all over again.

And sometimes second chances are the best thing for a person.