exciting things that are going on this july:

• july 1st: camp nanowrimo starts
• july 4th: freworks probably
• july 8th: summer session of pottery starts
• july 8th: rainbow rowell's new book, landline, comes out
• july 8th: the new part of the wizarding world in florida opens
• july 30th: leakycon starts
• normal summer fun things that are fun and summery 

things that i will be doing this july:

• not those things

ugh. 

outside the sun is shining, seems like heaven ain't far away

the thing about marrying a crazy sports fan is that sometimes, your plans to visit hershey, pa, home of chocolate and all things awesome, get delayed a couple of weeks due to sickness and stuff and then happen to fall on the first weekend of the world cup. and then suddenly your crazy sports fan husband decides that driving two hours there and back is much too long of a drive for a day trip, despite not having any problem with this a few weeks earlier. and you're a bit confused until the day is instead spent watching an endless stream of soccer games and how are there so many games played in one day?

have you been watching the world cup? is it just me or are there more players scoring on themselves than there probably should be? and did you see that player from uruguay that looked like his jersey had shrunk in the wash and he didn't have time to get a new one before the game?

i can't really complain, though, because in all honesty i do not mind watching sports games. and also the lazy days spent sprawled on the couch while he watches soccer and i read books are probably some of my favorites. plus, i figure that we should savor these types of days while we get them. i can only postpone growing up for so long. one day i will have a stressful career and/or a family (with real live kids) and i will look back on these early years of marriage with nostalgic longing. 

speaking of growing up, i've been doing some research for my dissertation. (sort of. like background information for background information. but hey, it's something.) research makes my brain fuzzy even though i'm pretty sure it's supposed to be making me smarter. that's the whole point of research, isn't it? i have also been burning a lilac candle and my apartment smells heavenly, and i'm just feeling really good about today. you know those days? that are nothing special at all, that are not memorable in the least bit, but that are still really good days? yeah. (i was at walmart this morning and candles were on sale and i've had lilacs on my mind (refer to previous post) and so i obviously bought one. i want to go back and buy five more. usually the candles that are on sale smell like crap, but this one is so pretty. i forgot everything i actually needed to get today, though. oops. i also got a really good smoothie. not from walmart.)

i'm thinking of making brussel sprouts for dinner. you can have a side for a meal, right? i just really don't want anything else. you probably don't care what i eat for dinner anyway. this post has gotten wildly off topic.

you know, maybe it's this candle that's giving me floaty brain syndrome. there's like half an inch or so of liquid wax that just looks so pretty i kind of want to jump into it. candles are so distracting. anyway, i should probably get back to research before i completely lose the ability to be smartish. 

*Exitlude - The Killers

all i could think about

[one] so i've been stuck on this level in candy crush for months. this is not an exaggeration. i think i got to it in january or february. maaaybe early march. and i cannot for the life of me get past it. i think they should have an option available after you try a level a few hundred times (i usually go through all my lives around twice a day, which means i try the level ten times a day on average, which means i have tried way more than a few hundred times, which means i am pathetic.) that says, "you suck and we feel sorry for you. pay ninety-nine cents to move on." i would totally pay. anyway, this morning i was playing and doing awesomely. like, i really thought i was going to win. i still had twelve moves left and was close to clearing all the jelly and then my phone up and dies on me. out of nowhere. despite being fully charged. and of course when i turned him back on, candy crush just figured i had rage quit or something and counted it as another loss. ugh. way to ruin my life, jasper.

[two] i really like rainbow rowell. the author? i've read everything she's written multiple times despite just discovering her late last year. shortly after i discovered her, her newest book (due out this summer) became available for pre-order. which i obviously did. i have been waiting all year for this book. i really have been. for some reason, though, i have thought it comes out july first. and i planned my summer travels around that, as stupid as that sounds. well, okay, so i didn't really plan it around it but i did happily think for the past three months that the timing was so perfect because her book would come out on the first and i would leave on the third and is there a better way to spend your last days before leaving the country than lost in a book you have looked forward to all year? i think not. but i just found out yesterday that i am an idiot and the book doesn't come out until july eighth and i am so disappointed. it's obviously not the end of the world and my husband can easily just bring the book when he joins me later (because he is not leaving the country with me because he went and grew up and got a job and now has to worry about things like vacation days), but still. i won't properly be able to read it because i will be doing the visiting family thing and then i will come back and do more of the visiting family thing and taking a day to devour a book will probably not be appropriate. gah.

[three] sometimes i think about the way we actually are and the way that we are remembered and the gap between those two people and if it matters at all and which one is more important. (i once started a short story that kind of touched on this that i constantly think about and say i will finish, but three years later and most of it is still in my head. which i guess is better than forgetting about it completely, but still. get your act together, sarah.) anyway, what brought on this latest round of pondering things which probably don't matter much at all in any scheme of things, grand or ungrand, was lilacs. i love lilacs in the way that i love navy blue and the number seven, in a nostalgic eye-rolly phantom limb sort of way. they were my favorite for a long while (all three of those things) because they were my mom's favorites, and growing up i really had no personality. (it was also a case of crippling insecurity and self-doubt and liking things that were valid to like, and who was a better judge of worthiness than my mom, right? sometimes i want to go back to little me and just shake her.) anyway, lilacs are no longer my favorite (they are second, though. and i'm pretty sure it's because i really like them and not just because i used to like them. my favorite flower is sunflowers and daisies because they can both share the number one spot if i say they can), and every time i see them i think of my mom. but, as it turns out, lilacs are not my mom's favorite flower. oops. i found this out last year (possibly the year before) and yet in my head, even though i know they aren't, they are. because they are what i associated with my mom for so long. i don't think i'm making sense anymore, but you get what i'm saying, right? lilacs are not my mom's favorite flower, but i will always remember my mom loving lilacs the most: my mom vs how i remember my mom.

*Landing in London - 3 Doors Down

don't matter if it's sooner or later, i know that it's gonna be alright

sometimes i think about when i am rich and famous and a published novelist and what people will think when they read my blog: the early years (of which this year will definitely be part of) and see just how whiny and lazy i really am. or, was at this point in my life. and how i would go days and weeks without writing anything despite claiming that i want to write forever. i have these grand ideas that i'll have grown out of this all by then and i will have amazing work ethic and will never procrastinate and will write for at least two hours every day and not just in november. and i will balance school and writing and family and friends just as easily as i know they can be balanced. and future readers will say to themselves, "wow, if she can do it then i definitely can," and i will become an inspiration for people everywhere.

other times i think that i may be too old to still be dreaming the same dream i have dreamed since i can remember dreaming, but then i remind myself that there are people waiting for me to become an inspiration and really, i owe it to them to become rich and famous one day. and a published novelist. also, i dunno if it's the reading or what, but despite not being a generally optimistic person, i am stupidly idealistic about certain things. one of them is me becoming a published author. it will happen. i can feel it. i just need to sit down and write until my dream comes true. and when i'm not writing, i assure myself that it's okay because one day i will start again and maybe that will be the time that i don't stop.

until then, though, i will continue to do whatever it is i am doing now. a lot of little things that sometimes feel like they're adding up to something big and sometimes feel like they're cancelling each other out to make nothing. sometimes i feel like i am in a lifelong existential crisis. sometimes i think that's just what life is. 

oh, and i think i may have to pause the already paused crafty posts because taking pictures is just way too much work. and it's summer. 

on another note, there is a little over half a month left until camp nanowrimo starts and i don't know whether to sign up or not. i didn't sign up in april so that i would feel more obligated to do it in july. i had hopes to dissertation write a few thousand words and possibly novel write a few thousand, too. but now it's extremely likely that my july will include travel and the idea of signing up and failing is unacceptable to me. (which is probably why i should just register already. jump-start this stupid research.) regardless, you should all sign up and write. i mean, it's summer. what else do you have to do?

*Days of Summer - AVPS

it's not so bad

knitting relaxes me. i can get into a groove and let my mind wander or listen to music (there's a taylor swift/miley cyrus playlist on youtube that has become some of my top knitting music and i have no idea why) or watch tv or whatever else i wanna do. my hands know what to do on their own. if i start out tense and angry, i will finish calm and relaxed and the owner of a new scarf or hat. it's awesome.

crocheting has always been the opposite for me. the minute i pick up a crochet needle i feel myself start to tense up. i get snappy and angry as i start my chain. five minutes into a project and a string of curses is falling from my lips. my fingers are constantly stumbling. i never find a groove. and it seems like i am in a perpetual state of  "ugh should i pull out this whole row or should i live with the seven hundred mistakes i managed to make in five stitches?" it's bad. because of this, i tend to avoid crocheting.

the other day, though, i saw a cupcake scarf and fell in love. i knew there was no way to knit it and so i heaved a big sigh and grabbed my crochet needles. i promptly decided that cupcakes were maybe a bit too difficult for my first crochet project in over a year, though, and since i have been obsessed with cookies lately and i was literally eating a chocolate chip cookie as i looked up crochet cupcake patterns, i decided to make a chocolate chip cookie scarf instead. added bonus: i already knew how to crochet a circle.

i'm not going to lie, the first couple circles came out a bit wonky. but cookies are not perfect so whatever, i thought. and then i somehow ended up with a circle that was smaller than the first two i made despite doing it exactly the same way and i decided that it would be unrealistic for every cookie to be the same size. basically, i decided not to take the project very seriously. it helped. and though i never did reach the point where my hands could work unsupervised, i managed to fall into a sort of rhythm. the repeating one-two-one-two one-one-two-one-one-two started to have that same calming effect as watching scenery blur by on a long car ride. and i finished a crocheting project without wanting to kill someone. yay me.

(immediately afterwards, though, i picked up my knitting needles. i am starting a rainbow scarf. well, the first rainbow scarf. i made the stripes too wide so i had to change my design, but it should still come out nice.)

anyway, here's the scarf:

*Thank You - Dido

i have written you down, now you will live forever

i am so grateful for the things in my life that allow me to be creative. that's what i'm feeling today as i sit on my couch crocheting and thinking, "hey, maybe crocheting isn't so bad after all." (the list of things i will do to avoid cleaning my apartment is ridiculous.) it's no surprise that i like to write, and sometimes i'm even good at it. i have also mentioned on here a few million times that knitting is one of my most favorite things to do in the whole wide world. (i will never understand the people who choose crocheting over knitting. never.) i take pottery classes and now have a coffee table that is virtually useless because i have nowhere else to put the stuff i make in my tiny apartment. i bake all the time - sometimes with recipes i make up on the spot. i make tshirts when i'm bored. i think nail art is fantastic and try out different designs whenever i get the chance. i have two glue guns. there is a point to this laundry list of activities, i swear.

you see, this blog has become a sort of reference for me. when i want to know when something happened or how something happened or even if something happened, i turn to my blog posts. i can usually find the answer. it's also a place where i come (albeit less frequently than i used to) to gush and rant and ramble about the things that make up my life. the other day, i realized that i failed at both of these. a while ago i baked cookies and decorated them as members of my family. they were pretty awesome. when i went to check when exactly i did this, i found that i hadn't mentioned it on my blog. not much happens in my life, guys, and i'm used to finding these small things on here. in fact, i barely talked about baking at all. or anything really. i post specific pieces of writing, so why should my other creative outlets be neglected?

anyway, i decided that i would take a few posts to talk about some of my favorite projects. partly to have them stored here for when my memory fails me and partly because i have spent the past few days sitting in front of a blank screen wondering what to blog about. here you have project number one:

(this project makes me feel like a jerk. i'm just going to go ahead and let you all know that in advance.)

at one point last summer (i think) i was scrolling through kickstarter projects and stumbled upon a lady who made and sold handmade shirts for kids. they were really cool. i couldn't decide whether or not to back her project, but i decided to get a couple of the shirts for my nephews. when i went to her site, though, i saw that toddler shirts were being sold for forty dollars each, and i am sorry but i am unwilling to spend that much money on a shirt that will only be worn a handful of times before it is outgrown. so i completely stole her idea - like a jerk - and made shirts of my own for my nephews. and then i forgot to back her kickstarter, too. oops. anyway, they are interactive shirts that allow the kids to choose what they want on them (using snaps and buttons!) and were super fun to make (kinda time consuming, though). added bonus: what i would have spent one hundred and sixty dollars on, i got for under thirty. and that includes buying a snap gun. 

space tshirts! the white and yellow stars were made with fabric paint. everything else can be snapped on/off to make the space scene you wanna wear.

sandwich shirts! wear a cheeseburger, pb&j, egg sandwich, or even tomatoes on toast or other random combinations. whatever floats your boat. 

i ended up really liking these and wanted to make more but felt like too much of a jerk to do so. part of me wants to open an etsy store and sell these. the other parts wants to punch me in the face for being a plagiarist. 

*Poet - Bastille

but all the possibilities, no limits just epiphanies

do you know that i cannot remember the last time that i stayed in my pajamas all day? i'm not even sure how that happened, but there it is. i haven't just had a spend-all-day-lounging-around-the-house without guilt or shame in so long. but today will change that. i am staying in my pajama pants forever (that happen to be way too big on me and also have hogwarts written down my left thigh) and only leaving the living room to go as far as the kitchen (and okay maybe down to the basement to grab a diet rootbeer), and no one can stop me.

there is something extremely freeing about being stranded at your parents' house. my husband's car is currently being nursed back to health by some mechanics so he took reggie (my car, in case you're new) to work. my parents drove my grandmother up to CT in their minivan, and my sister took their other car to work this morning. which all leaves me: carless. and let me tell you, it is wonderful. it's been over a year since i could use the excuse, "oh sorry i can't. i don't have a car." and i have missed it. it's also great that i'm stranded at my parents' house instead of my apartment because not only is there more space, there is also no sense of responsibility telling me that since i'm at home all day anyway i should clean and cook and get rid of all the clothes that i haven't worn in years. and with the semester being over, i can tell myself that i should get at least two weeks of summer vacation before sitting down to do the work i should have already done. it's perfect.

anyway, i hope that your day is wonderful. i am off to do whatever i feel like.

i can suddenly really relate to lemonhope. and just in case you are not an adventure time watcher, here is what i mean:

*Best Day Of My Life - American Authors

i am taking today to write. whether it will be prosetry, novels, dissertations... i'm not sure yet, but words will be coming out of my head and into some semi-permanent format. by the end of the day i will have something that i can pass on to someone and say, "look. i wrote this today. these words were just thoughts this morning, and now look at them. all grown up."

so of course i'm procrastinating on blogger. i mean, what else would you expect from me?

on a related (for once!) note, last night i had a dream that i had published a novel and that was really only one small tiny overlookable part of the dream, but i am going to mention it here because the novel was titled mary had a little lambda. and i dunno about you, but i am really in love with that title. i feel like i now need to write a book about a math nerd or something just so i can use it. maybe a short story. whatever it is, though, has to be good enough to deserve the dorky glory that is that title.

anyway, i am off to write. and at the end of the day i will edit this post to include my favorite line or something of whatever it is i have written. just to prove to the world that i wrote today. that i have thoughts in my head right now that, by the evening, i will be able to look at on paper and say, "they're all grown up."

***EDIT: so i did do a bit of writing. not as much as i was planning on or as i was really hoping for, but there are words that are written down. there are a few paragraphs that give a rough outline of a story that started as an introduction to a character in a blog draft and has kind of been simmering in my head for a while since then slowly developing a plot of sorts. there is also an extra scene in my nano2013novel. and to be perfectly honest, i probably could have written more if i didn't start rereading that. but i remember less of the novel than i thought i did, and if i want to finish it (which i do!) i will have to know what it has now. so cue the read-through. (this was all to say that i don't think i have a favorite line to put here. i guess maybe, "you can't even grow a beard" would be my favorite of the day just because it is kind of ridiculous out of context.)

but anyway, words. they exist now as pixels on a screen and bits in my computer's memory instead of just abstract thoughts in my mind. i can look at them and say fondly, "aww they're all grown up." mind you, they're grown up in the way that a child is grown up on their first day of kindergarten and the day of their sixth grade graduation. the way that means that they have made important strides on the journey of growing but that they still have quite a long way to go. the way that means, i'm proud of you but you're not finished yet. my words have started kindergarten and i just hope that one day they'll make it through high school and college and into the real world. (note to self: stop abandoning elementary students on their way through life.) (note to self number two: stop dragging out analogies.)  

some people say it's been too long. that's why i'm here, to prove them all wrong

i'm going to tell you a story. a story that spans decades (well, one). a story of my younger sister and craig david's second album, slicker than your average. let's head back to high school again, shall we? but we're not going to stop at my senior year this time. no, we're going back to the days before the ipod: the days of the CD player. (if i remember correctly, i got my first ipod for my birthday in tenth grade. it was a green ipod mini and i loved it dearly. for the first month, it only had twenty-eight songs on it. but that's neither here nor there. the point of this aside is to show that this story starts somewhere in the beginning of tenth grade, or the year 2003 if that's a better reference point for you.)

my sister and i, like most kids our age with an hour and a half long bus ride to and from school every day, each had a CD player. my last CD player, and the one that i had during this story, was red and beautiful and didn't skip every time the bus drove over bumpy road which was kind of a big deal at the time. along with the CD players, we took turns carrying a small CD case that held about ten CDs, although we stuffed it with almost twenty. (we would periodically switch out these CDs with the ones in our collection so the choices never got stale.) and while other kids on the bus would ask to borrow our CD players from time to time, it was this CD case that was really the star. because who just wanted to listen to the same twelve songs day in and day out? and our music taste was (and still is) very eclectic so we had everything from maroon 5 to papa roach to jessica simpson to sheryl crow to ludacris. whatever you liked, we probably had it. and you can bet that people asked to borrow CDs all the time.

most of the time, people returned the CDs before they or we got off the bus. occasionally, though, people would forget and we would get it the next morning. this wasn't a big deal. especially since a lot of the times the people borrowing the CD would leave one of theirs in our case as they swapped out. one day, a kid forgot to give us back a CD before he got off the bus. that CD was craig david's slicker than your average. he didn't just leave it in his CD player overnight, though, and the next morning he forgot to bring it back. the morning after that was the same. and the one after that. aaand the one after that. eventually, he said that he had lost it. his younger sister was at that age, though, where she didn't know when you were supposed to shut up about things and loudly said, "you didn't lose it. you listen to it in your room all the time." my sister said that she could burn him a copy of it if he wanted (yeah, morals and ethics were a little foggy at that time), but he insisted that it was lost and refused to give it back.

over the years, we'd joke about the stolen CD, and every time i was near a place that sold CDs i would find myself absently looking for it. i never saw it. we never bought another copy.

fast forward to last week. my sister was graduating with her master's degree, and i thought that the time was now right to replace the stolen CD. i mean, a ten year mourning period is beyond sufficient, don't you think? so i went on amazon and ordered it. it was delivered saturday morning. (i was not home.) BUT sometime between ten:thirty-six, when the fedex guy says he dropped it off, and around six, when i came home, the package disappeared. "it may have been stolen by a neighbor," amazon told me. stolen. again.

and that is when i realized that the reason we had never replaced the CD was not because we were in mourning, but because it was not meant to be. somewhere deep inside of us, we must have known this. it was time to accept it. (except i didn't, of course, and amazon is going to replace it.)

*Slicker Than Your Average - Craig David

and sometimes you can still lose even if you really try

words scare me in the way guns would scare me if i had one pointed at my head and another clasped tightly in my sweating hands and pointed at everyone i have ever loved. i will destroy everything. it is not a choice, not a possibility. it is a fact that hasn't become true yet, but it will.

i want to introduce you to my characters, but i know that if i try i will be presenting you with their corpses, dripping wet with my tears because i should have known better.

inspiration is rolling her eyes and saying that i complain when she doesn't visit and then ignore her when she does. she's right. i know she's right. but i can feel the weight of the gun in my hand, the metal cool against my feverish skin. i try to thank her for coming, try to show her to the door, but she just laughs and shakes her head. says that the only way she's letting me kick her out is if i kick out fear as well.

***
ugh. there is so much that i want to write. there are unfinished stories calling out for the endings that live in my head. there are fanfiction drabbles that claim the relatively short time it would take to finish them will be so worth it. there are characters that tell me that they finally found their stories and all i have to do is write them down. i literally dreamt of myself presenting my completed dissertation last night, and i'm pretty sure that that first chapter i've been trying to get down is hiding, perfectly worded, right behind the lyrics to the gilmore girls theme song.

but i haven't felt this in so long. i have had nothing but the company of characters with nowhere to go in my head and stories that i knew needed to be finished but that i also knew i lacked the creative abilities to do justice. and now here i am. filled with the hope that buoys me up before i sink into a new writing project. and i can't get myself to do anything about it, because i know that as soon as i put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard i'll realize that it's all just not as good as it was in my head.

so instead i'll sit here clinging to the thought that maybe it will be.

*All I Need - Matchbox 20