and verily she wrote a post and verily not one rant was in it

Well, hello, my dear readers old pals old friends. I've missed you. I've been a busy, busy girl you know.

For one, I joined the gym. Again. No, you didn't hallucinate that. Cheapskate that I am, I shelled out the 30 bucks a month and I'm swimming laps almost every day and working off this thick layer of fat I've developed in the last forever months. It feels fucking great. I also hate other swimmers. But are we surprised?

I'm also taking voice lessons, which I have been promising to tell you about and which are hugely therapeutic. I'm getting out all my neuroses there, I swear.

As you may well know if you've been reading for some time, my mother is insane. She was also a stage mom (picture those pageant moms only backstage, grooming their little ones for stardom. Picture Mama Rose from Gypsy only scary. So I've had a huge block about singing for a long time. Finding karaoke was huge for me because it was a place I could sing without any pressure and actually love it. I do love to sing, I do.

So these lessons, with the sweetest most awesome woman you'll ever meet in your whole damn life, feel so incredible. And it turns out I'm a lot better than I thought, even with the bad habits I've picked up over the years and with the learning I have to do. And I have a much bigger range than I thought too and she thinks there's much more in there. And she's always gushing all over me which makes me blush from my toes on up. I don't hate it, not gonna lie.

What else? After my huge early thirties life crisis the other week, I've been really agonizing over what's going on in my life and how I'm getting too old to put off my life's goals anymore and what I'm going to do to make them happen. I can't just let my dreams pass on by, because the next thing I know, I'll be in my sixties and telling some young kids about how I wanted to be a writer one day. But I'm an artist! I'm a photographer. I'm a writer. I need to make art and I need the time and funds to feel fully capable to do so.

With all that in mind, I finally decided to look into MFA in creative nonfiction writing programs. The purpose is this is, one, to get writing full time, two, learn some skills to market myself and maybe even get paid, and, three, to hone my craft. I'm really excited, despite the thought of how I will pay for it and pay for living while I go to school. But, hell, I need to do this. And, no, I'm not leaving Oregon. So it will be a program here.

And as you know, I'm back at Sprocket Ink. My first post was up last week and a new one will be up Monday morning. You definitely need to be reading it. Also, if you haven't liked my facebook page, do that too, as well as Sprocket Ink's page.

Quoi encore? Eminem and I are doing splendidly. I'm completely, effervescently happy with him and I get the impression he'd say the same if he were quite the talker I am. But everything is just easy and breezy and calm and uncomplicated. He's pretty damn great and while I recognize that my instincts suck monkey ass and while my exes don't exactly set the bar too high, I suspect I'm a lucky girl.

Alright, my iced tea is empty and my laptop battery is about to die, so I'll leave you here. Before you go, check out these photos I took a couple weekends back at the Rhododendron Garden in Portland: