Living a Life I Don't Know How to Live

But no concerts in caves, alas. That would be fun.

Life has kind of blown up this summer, writing and work and social activities. I keep meaning to write up longer posts about everything, but that is not going to happen, at first because I've had no time, and this evening because I had a pretty dangerous mood drop over the weekend and am sliding into depression. The mania lasted quite a few weeks this time. I hope I can keep making writing progress through this shift.

Alice in Chains and Guns N' Roses

Reconnected with one of my high school BFFs this year, and we road tripped up to the Guns N' Roses concert in Kansas City. I swore I would go if they ever got Slash back, and they did, and I did, and it was amazing. Alice in Chains opened, and put on a fantastic show, and Guns N' Roses absolutely killed it. I can't believe they are still putting on such energetic shows, and playing so damn hard. I continue to love Slash beyond the telling of it, and everything was absolutely wonderful.

(Well, no, early on a visual element triggered my vertigo, so I had to deal with that all night, but it was still worth it.)

horror movies

High School BFF: Do you like scary movies?
Me: OH HELL NO WOMAN, I SAW SCREAM, I AM OUT OF HERE

High school BFF and I both love horror movies, so we've been going to the movies together lately. It's nice to go with someone else who loves them, since J merely puts up with my movie choices most of the time.

So far, we've watched The Conjuring 2 and Light's Out. Both were fun enough, though neither stuck the ending, and I thought both relied too hard on similar jump scares throughout (not similar to each other, necessarily, but repetitive ones within the movie itself).

St Louis Science Center

One of my law school BFFs came down for the Fourth of July, and joined me on an adventure that was part work and part fun, visiting a new exhibit at the St Louis Science Center that was focused on local growing and farm to table. It was raining the day we went up, so I had to rush through most of the outdoor exhibits, but it was pretty fun. Mostly targeted toward little children, which I did not expect. J and his mom went with us, and I grabbed Niece H (still youngest niece, though I do have a great-niece who is younger) to come with us. She's maybe a year or two too young for most of the Science Center, but we had a good couple of hours running from one display to the next before she lost interest, and then we all went out for delicious bbq. (Her birthday just happened, and while there we went through Build a Bear for her gift. I'd never done it before, but it was really fun, if pretty cheesy. She adored it, though, and had a great time whispering her secret creative dream as a part of the one she picked out.) Niece H is just delightful, and I'm so glad we got to spend time together.

After we dropped her off, we took J's mom home, and on the way stopped to play with little chicks and a young pig who were on display at her local farm store. TOO CUTE.

Meramec Caverns

This past weekend, we spent the day at Meramec Caverns with J's family; Meramec Caverns is a large cave system here in Missouri on the Meramec River that does guided tours. I've been through it only once before, one summer of law school. It is still beautiful, and the tour slightly different this time than the last time. There are plenty of places that are open and closed at different times, so it changes a little depending on when you go. Every June, they do a lantern tour, and I think next year we'll give that a try. After, we took a quiet, slow boat tour of part of the river, which was very short but super relaxing.

Pottery

I am not quite back to pottery classes regularly just yet, but the other night, J and I went to a pottery show my teacher was in, and there were some gorgeous, inspiring pieces. There were also things that were completely over-priced, but such is art.

I've trimmed one piece and thrown a second, but am not back to regular lessons until September. Probably. Failures still really mess with my mental health, so we'll see.

Writing

Mostly, I have been writing. I finished a novel-length project (more or less twice; the first draft had no ending, so I had to start over to figure out where I went wrong, and then finally got an ending on draft two, though it's still not right), and I'll start editing it soon to prep it for early readers. I'm already well into my next novel length project.

I've written 340k so far this year. My goal is 500k. When I set it, I didn't actually expect to make it, because when I used to set 350k, I would get close, but never actually get there. This year is apparently a good writing year, and it's been a great lesson that I really do write more and better when (a) I write every day or almost every day and (b) I track my daily word count.

Poor tessagratton, I just babbled at her because -- well, here, I will babble at you, too.

Tessa posted this round-up of places off LJ she's been blogging lately. In it, she said, "I talk about scary things, blogging, why I decided to set my book in southern Missouri, of all places. . . ."

And I perked up a bit, because I am homesick right now and I am sometimes fond of southern Missouri and so I went to read it.

Here is the interview with Tessa. This is the part which really struck me hard:

I’m from Kansas, and went to high school in Missouri, so I have an affinity for the area. I’ve done a lot of camping in the Ozarks and in Trail of Tears Park near Cape Girardeau. The area is so beautiful! I love the land. It feels old and mysterious and rich like Mississippi and Louisiana (where I have family), but also lighter – more hopeful somehow. So it’s really the feeling of southern Missouri that I wanted for Blood Magic: southern gothic, but hopeful.

And this is the babbling comment I left for Tessa:

I kinda have a love-hate relationship with Missouri for a lot of reasons (mostly doing with conservative politics and being queer), but I am really, really homesick for my family right now and looking forward to moving back to Missouri. So when I read this reason for setting your book there, I almost burst into tears because it's so perfectly true. I grew up in southwestern(ish) Missouri and did my undergrad in Cape Girardeau and spent so much time walking along the Mississippi telling stories and hiking in the Trail of Tears Park and learning to find the magic in a place which made me mad much of the time.

Even though I was already looking forward to reading Blood Magic, I am now -- looking forward to it even more? Words have failed me right now, but I was looking forward to it before and now I feel like this is necessary reading for me. And in some ways, I'm glad it's not available yet, because I think if I tried to read it right now, so homesick as it is and so stressed with life, the setting would overpower the rest of the book for me and I'm really excited about the premise so I don't want that to happen, but oh, has it given me something to crave.

I will stop babbling at you now.

So I stopped babbling at her and instead came to babble at you. I lived in Cape Girardeau for approximately six years (four years of undergrad and then a couple years working after), and yes, often I hated it there. But I also found these moments of magic; the full moon above the Mississippi River and the rise of dark trees across the river, walking around downtown with the old murals and no-longer-working fountains, the stones and the cracked sidewalks and the broken streets. I found magic and monsters and adventures in cornfields and big bonfires and covered bridges and empty fields. I told werewolf stories in the darkness and watched a bridge be destroyed and took pictures in the woods. This icon is from a picture I took in the Trail of Tears park, on one of the many photography hikes I used to take with friends.

I think I've finally had enough distance from some of the worse parts and what I'm left with is the magic and the monsters in the darkness. And I am very eager to read Blood Magic.

Kansas City has a drive-in theater! I am absolutely filled with glee!

I-70 Drive-In

They have awesome double features for super cheap. I think tomorrow I will go watch either the Terminator/Star Trek double feature or the Drag Me to Hell/Angels and Demons double feature. (I might skip A&D, but even for one movie, that's still cheaper than the other theaters.) I love drive-ins! There's one near where I grew up and I find them absolutely enchanting, even slightly creepy, dirty ones like the one near where I grew up.

Drive-in theater! I found a Sonic Drive-In near my house here, so my drive-in experience is very nearly perfect.

Now what to do tonight? Bookstore, maybe? I'd like to get away from people for awhile and I need to get dinner soon. My roommates are having a party tonight and I am just not feeling up to being around strangers, though I'm welcome.

I've spent too much time around strangers this week.