Bethanie's Brain

(WARNING: Contains graphic photos of arachnids in ....erm... positions.) I am terrified of spiders - terrified. They make me scream like a girl – which is OK in some ways and not entirely unexpected, since I am a girl. However, it’s not really the thing to do in front of the three-year-old. First of all, it seems to make the three-year-old scream too, and we get plenty of that already. Second of all, she really doesn’t need to be terrified of spiders. Logically, anyway. We are people. People are bigger than spiders. We can easily squish them. They are more scared of us that we are of them. (You know that line – your mother told you that one. I haven’t actually said it to my daughter yet, since I’m not convinced of it myself and I’m a terrible liar). In any case, I don't particularly want to pass this terror – or whatever bit of it isn't genetically programmed - on to the tyke, so I've been working on it. Working on it means that I try to tone the decibels down a notch or...

(WARNING: Contains every word in the book. Feel free to advise me of any I forgot.) People don’t cuss properly in The South. Especially women. Women in The South hardly seem to cuss at all, as a matter of fact, and most of them look at me funny when I do. Which is why I can’t cuss at the office (I work in a hospital, and they sorta frown on that anyway). The husband, on the other hand, gets to swear like a sailor all day. Which isn’t even remotely fair, since most of the guys he works with are pigs and they know some really good ones – in other words, I’m missing out. What it all boils down to is that I have no place to vent my potty-mouth - except here, I guess, which is why I’m just going to let it all out right now and hopefully get it over with. Yeah, so, on to other places I can’t cuss. Having cured myself of road rage (with music and NPR) I don’t cuss when I’m driving much anymore either. I mean, yeah, there’s the occasional jackass trucker who needs me to lay on the horn and ...

I don’t belong here. I don’t fit it. I don’t even WANT to fit it. I’m actually am starting to feel like I did in fucking high school. Because there are a lot of similarities between me in high school and me in exile in The South. High school was all about appearances – who had the best clothes, the best – and highest (hey, it was the 80’s) hair, the best car, the best boyfriend, on and on and fucking on. Ad. Fucking. Nauseum. Well, The South, is just like that. I can’t go to the fucking grocery store in sweat pants anymore, because no one else does and I get fucking stared at if I do. Most women here can’t go out of the house without make up on (thankfully, I’ll never cave to that one, too much fucking trouble). And they’re all so fucking polite – to my face – that it makes me ill. OK, it’s not all bad. We have family here (his, not mine). That’s nice because it means free daycare and the occasional child-free night to ourselves. But his parents are divorced and there are politics an...

I had no idea, of course. No one does. And no one can explain it to you beforehand. No one can warn you. I read a lot of things about becoming a mother before I became one – and there is just one passage that has stuck in my head as the “most true” thing I read, the closest approximation in words of what it’s like to become a mother. I don’t remember who wrote it, but it goes something like this: having a child is signing an agreement to allow your heart to walk around outside your body for the rest of your life. That about sums it up. But it still won’t prepare you. Nothing can – there is just a billion universes of difference between reading something like that, sniffling through the inevitable, empathetic tears and having your heart exit your body from between your legs and handed to you wrapped up in a towel. Having experienced all of the above it’s fairly inexplicable that I didn’t instantly fall in love with my baby like a lot of women say they do. And maybe they do, I’m not doub...

I have written most of a novel. I guess. Let's see, it's 340 pages and 170K+ words (yes, sorry, the boasting and bragging will now ceast and desist...). So, I suppose, technically, that counts. Lengthwise: it's a bonefide, gorram novel. It will never be published. I'm OK with that. Because what I finally figured out, just this past week (I've been working on this frikkin' thing since March, I'm a bit slow sometimes) is that what I've really been doing is two things. One, is world building and the other, is learning to write. Learning to write - more than likely, I will never stop doing that. But the world building thing... another story. Prior to starting this 'project', I spent nine months - nine friggin' months - doing what I thought was world building, in a very classical, orderly sense. I mean, I had categories fercrissake. You know: Geography; Social Structure; Religion; Physical Characteristics; Weather. It was all very, very sterile....