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Erin just said to me: "Oh, something you should look forward to in this season of Angel: a WWII flashback where Spike is in a Nazi uniform." Some people know me all too well.

I've said it once, and I'll say it again: if WWII had been a fashion show, the Allies would have lost.

Yesterday I got some crying done over the finale of Glee (that was definitely more about my graduations and goodbyes than theirs) and watched Game of Thrones to take the edge off. Saved eating for well after that. Another homemade pizza, a little too gory-looking to eat during that shit. Then I watched a few episodes from the first season of Mad Men (Erin's just started it) and remembered that in the first season I kept expecting someone to just straight-up stab a girl with a letter opener. Bunch of creeps.

Now that I have a credit history, other credit card companies will not get off my jock. The only reason I can see for getting another card is if one of them would like to offer me more free money. See: I take advantage of you, not the other way around. I drink your milkshake.

My sister is installed in a dirty apartment with no mattress and no hot water and no food except bags of cookies, but she's still very happy to be there. She's within walking distance of the school where she'll be teaching, a bunch of tiny grocery stores, and the beach (not that, being from Florida, she is all that impressed with proximity to a beach, but her friends in Korea might be). She looks a lot more grown up when she isn't sitting on my couch all day, something I hope to say about myself as well, when I get out of bed this fall.

All the stuff about my car being junked has been officially cleared up for a while now, but every time I get a little message or alert about possibly renewing my street sticker or whatever, I take a moment to bask in the glory and peace of no longer being responsible for a car. No turn of weather ever worries me, and no flare of anxiety ever troubles me when I imagine a prospective commute. I've been sitting in buses my whole life, I can read a book while I travel! Just dandy.

I'm about to go sit on the balcony with a book in my pajamas. It is indeed ridiculous to even contemplate changing into regular clothes just to sit outside, but the two times that logic led me to go to the mailbox on the corner or down to a car in my pjs (you know: "it's a free country, the fashion police aren't armed, so long as you're not naked do whatever you want"), I forgot about this: LORD! It never bothered me on my college campus (not as threatening, plus no one among the student body had any room to cast the first stone about wearing pajamas in public, especially on the weekend), but here in The Big City I never can know who will come skulking through the alley at any moment to leer up at me knowingly. Fuck it, though. It's too nice a day to not even poke my face out.

I've noticed that in a lot of areas of my life, "I went to New College, so..." [or "I went to a hippie school," for the uninitiated] is usually followed by some interesting assertions. "I take you seriously when you say you're polyamorous," or "these Hare Krishnas on Mad Men seem really chill," or "that's an over-exaggeration of what an acid trip really looks like," or "even my RA smoked pot," or "if you think I haven't met someone who would braid their armpit hair and fuck a dolphin, you'd be very wrong."

Speaking of Mad Men, lord it's fun to watch them all drink themselves into our bitter grandparents, isn't it? This makes me feel like drugs are the answer, so long as you have the right question and the right drugs. Also Joan and Don? Aw yeeeeeah, hook that up!

P.S. This is what it has been like trying to pull myself out of my upbringing: bam! In case anyone was still wondering.

Dropped some books off at the library--first time I've left the apartment in ten days. I don't have a reason to leave again until my friend Jamie comes to visit in July, and don't even think I can't stay inside for an entire month. I've got mad skills at staying inside.

I kneaded out some pizza dough earlier (my sister made pizzas while she was here and left me a few packets of yeast). It turned out lovely.

Just got off an hour long Skype with my sister. She's already gotten a nickname from the other trainees: Lone Wolf. God damn I love her.

The hits on my podcasts keep going up in little dribbles. I just have no idea what is behind that.

I think I'm going to spend some time re-reading some of my old favorite books, watching crap TV, and nudging my novel further and further towards completion. When I think about school I get a nice shot of excitement and anxiety. I'm looking forward to seeing the two short stories I've sold recently pop out this summer and bolster my confidence.

Podcast #22 just got downloaded three times in about five minutes (and nine times within the first 24-hour period). Whut.

My first eleven podcasts have been downloaded between twenty and thirty-odd times, as if a group of people are listening to them in order (why are you doing that).

The drunken Mother's Day one from last year, the one I'm most unsure and uncomfortable about leaving up? Ya, that one has been downloaded about fifty times, and it holds the record for most downloaded out of all of them. Y'all are looking for blood, right? You're looking for blood in the water?

I don't necessarily have a problem with its content; I've said all that and more before, and it's all true and I never wanted to be president anyway, so I don't care who knows the truth about me. I mostly don't like that I can hear myself slurring. It's just very audibly obvious that I'd been drinking (talking slowly to try and avoid slurs, breathing too close to the microphone, walking around noisily with the mic, repeating myself, etc), and I'm way hung up on the shame of being seen as a drunky sadsack loser. It isn't anywhere near Cops-level embarrassing, but up against my other enthusiastic, fast-talking podcasts, it stands out pretty starkly. I don't have a problem with telling the truth, I have a problem with seeming weak and pathetic in front of others (which is a totally healthy motivation, I'm sure).

But what's done is done. Balls to the wall, radical honesty, I regret nothing, and so forth and so on.

Podcast #22 - If You Are Among The Very Young At Heart

Here's the study guide:

- Why you shouldn't wish to be bohemian like me.

- I submit that if you think it's interesting to be crazy, you are neither interesting nor crazy.

- I'm referring to this comic. They really did forget to put talent or even aptitude.

- I admit that I used to think I could only be a good writer if I had a traumatic upbringing, and I acknowledge that I am in no position to reach an objective conclusion one way or the other there, because I was in the middle of my traumatic upbringing when I wished that.

(Issues include: is it the trauma that made me wish such a thing in the first place; how do you quantify "good" writing and "traumatic" experiences anyway; isn't it problematic to sit around on the other side of this desired trauma and tell all those clamoring for more pain and anguish that it's actually very painful and anguishing and no one who knows that would ever really wish for it; and isn't that "past it all" wisdom what people truly want in the first place and not the real-time experiences, etc, etc.)

- I also admit that when I'm in a dark place I think I produce better writing, but again there are problems: how much better is "better" that I'm willing to be that depressed, and how much writing could I possibly do before I get so depressed that I don't bother to do anything anymore. If you ever meet a magic genie, be sure to take all these variables into consideration while drafting your wish.

- But hey, why even wait for the genie? You can start shooting heroin any day of the week! If you want a fucked up life, create one! Are you an artist or not?

- I'm still really mad at that one YA book that handed me a so-called nervous breakdown. As one of the initiated, for better or worse, I don't like pretenders.

- Here's what you should really wish for if you ever get the chance: talent, time (to read and educate yourself as well as sit down and actually write), empathy, and imagination. Then you can be yourself and a decent writer, both at the same time.

So the motto for my grad school is: Esse quam videri. Very respectable, and shared by about a trillion schools, fraternities, organizations, and the state of North Carolina.

The motto for New College remains: There is more to running a starship than answering a bunch of damn fool questions. Still one and only!

Whatever, growing up, you're no fun.

I got a bug up my ass to remember my grandmothers' maiden names this afternoon. Not a lot of reminiscing goes on in either family because of all the drunks and painful memories, so I didn't know them off-hand (turned out to be Draughn and Hopkins). Anyway I found several monster-ass genealogies coming down from 1730 on my dad's side and I've been reading them all day.

Funniest/most hideous parts:

- If the internet can be believed (and it can't, but who cares), I have half a dash of Cherokee in my blood somewhere between Thomas Brock of 1448 and the American Fields lineage. Hiram and Fanny were born in England, died in North Carolina before the American Revolution, so it's pretty aggressively white before and after the Ned Sizemore/Mahala (Martha) Fields controversy of the early 1800s (this is what happens when you don't legally wed, people, it's anarchy).

[There's argument about the earlier parts of the genealogy, but if you go to the Fields link and search for my name (Lauren Ariel), it's accurate on my dad's side all the way up to Felix Gilbert of 1881--my mom's maiden name is wrong and I can't vouch personally for anything older than Felix because it's outside of living memory in my family, but my cousins are right, and my aunts and uncles, and so is the Asbell Orell and Hazel Draughn generation--the rest I have from my dad as factual up to Felix G.]

- You won't catch me claiming to be anything but stupendously white though, because everyone of Anglo/Germanic descent (Welsh, Dutch, English, Irish, Scottish, German, etc.) is entered into the genealogy without comment. BUT. Then we come aaaaaalllll the way down to my uncle's wife: Anna Tsamasfyros. A little note under her name: Anna was Greek. Blood traitor! The Mediterranean's a little exotic for us.

- I can't date anyone in Letcher County, Kentucky because I am related to all of them. 10+ generations of the same handful of families have sat right there marrying cousins since before my grandparents were even born. There's a lot of Fields-Day-Adams-Ison cross-pollination going on over here, there's even a few lineage-to-lineage murders:

- Most killings are older than 1900: Verna was killed by Dewey, Tandy was killed by Bony, Buddie was killed by Tinsley, Elisha was killed by Chede, Stephen shot by Willie. All killed by kin of one sort or another. Hatfields and McCoys: eat your hearts out!

- I qualify to be a Daughter of the American Revolution through all four of my grandparents, and I'm such a lib that it's making me uncomfortable (I'm looking at a lot of white people born and raised in Kentucky for generations here--bet there weren't a lot of civil rights supporters in the haystack). We were pretty evenly split between Union and Confederate soldiers at least. I don't know if we were Torys or Patriots, but there are a lot of people in the bloodline fighting in both World Wars and Vietnam for the US (a few who died young doing it too).

- BEST NAMES:

~Choctaw and Queen (brother and sister)
~Ozina and Aese Fields (sisters; at least three Ozinas in following generations)
~Early Day (not even kidding)
~Ebs and Flow (brother and sister--seriously not kidding)
~a Duggar-style clan--ten kids, all the names starting with the letter L, and one of them called Lovelle Lovetta (you are a Superman character at this point)
~Coy Fields
~Cuba Fern Fields (this is my grandfather's sister)
~siblings Burl, Curl, Pearl, and Earl (their parents are dicks)
~some people named Taylor decided to call their kids Elizabeth and James (and judging by the date, knew what they were doing)
~other people getting cute with first and middle name combos: Jesse James, James Dean, Dwight Eisenhower, Grover Cleveland, and Isaac Newton (fun fact: my mom's side of the family is indirectly related to actual President Grover Cleveland)
~siblings Dorona Jo, Donald Joe, and Darien Jay
~another set (they aren't even a subset of the other DJ family, WTF)--Diana and Daniel went with Daniel Joseph, Dennis Jay, Debra Jane, Douglas John, and Donald Jeffrey for their children's names
~brothers Jeffrey Jiggs and Zachery Bounce

- Procreation prizes: along the Fields line alone, there are several families with ten or more children, and two more with fourteen, which seems to be the record. A quiverfull indeed!

- This has made me feel both insignifcant and special.

Remember that flash fiction story I wrote three days ago ("Big To Small")? It's already sold for ten dollars. Some thoughts:

- Selling any story to anywhere, for any amount of money, still makes me feel like a king. Also: I decided a long time ago that any market paying in real money is legitimate enough for me.

- This is going to make a really great anecdote on the first day of grad school. "Oh hey you guys remember that little exercise we did? I sold that as a story over the summer. Anybody else? Who hates me already, seriously?"

- The market's pretty pornographic, but my story is not. In fact it's a completely non-sexual (and non-affectionate) interaction between a father and young son (Marley and his father from The Disorder Series, back when he was wee). The acceptance e-mail said: "As a rule I shy away from publishing stories with children in them, because of all the adult content in the Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette.  It seems like an uncomfortable mix.  However, I like this story.  It is well written.  I wondered how you would make these every day, mundane details significant. The last few sentences explained it all."

- I'm more mystified than ever about when and where and how to write adult stories about kids. As far as I can tell, throwing stuff every which way and waiting for something to stick has its merits.

- Although note: when I suggest flinging stories around I don't mean spamming every market you can find with every story you've got.

(1) This place had very specific requests about how to properly format your submission, and as much as the writer in me was all, "but I am a special snowflake and shouldn't have to," the reasonable adult in me was like, "you would do this as an editor too, young lady; if people can't read the submission page, I bet they can't write a very good story either." I took the time to do it right, and I always try to find either the best story for the market, or the best market for the story (depending on which comes to me first).

(2) I just mean that sometimes when I try to tailor a story for a market I come up empty (happens a lot with themed anthologies), and when I let the story be what it has to be, small exceptions get made for me (i.e. when gay male stories end up in mostly female erotica collections, or when a story that's only mildly creepy ends up in a speculative anthology--it's not that they don't belong there at all, they're just on the edge of what's usual, but good enough to include anyway).

- The story goes live at the beginning of June. That is already my favorite thing about flash fiction: looks like it happens pretty quickly. I only sent that story a couple hours ago. Good deal!