This year is a very hard year. My DH has been laid off and despite numerous job applications, few interviews have come in. Employment Insurance from the government allows us to get by but not by much.

Last month we had to replace our furnace- it was smelling like gas in the house and our computer power supply died.

We have some savings for Christmas set aside. Again- not much. People are getting hand-made items.

It’s really hard to do that. When we got to my dad’s my brother, step-brothers and girlfriend’s all work in the oil industry. They give my dad and step-mom expensive presents that we couldn’t afford even when we both worked. And I always felt … bad about it. I know I shouldn’t but I do.

But then I realized that maybe I’m okay. My one step-brother won’t commit to his gf. We are quite close and this upsets her a lot. My brother has his own issues with his girlfriend and her children and their baby together.

I’m happily married with one beautiful daughter and lucky enough to have his support and excitement when it comes to our second child, quite actively kicking me.

We have our health. This pregnancy is going just fine. I have my job I love. I have time to write. My daughter is able to continue karate. We continue to have a roof over our heads and food in our fridge and bellies. We haven’t had to ask for outside assistance (other than EI).

We are rich in many ways. We will be able to spend Christmas with family and that’s probably what is most important to them anyway.

Forrester: Paragraph three starts…with a conjunction, “and.” You should never start a sentence with a conjunction.

Jamal: Sure you can.

Forrester: No, it’s a firm rule.

Jamal: No, it was a firm rule. Sometimes using a conjunction at the start of a sentence makes it stand out. And that may be what the writer’s trying to do.

Forrester: And what is the risk?

Jamal: Well the risk is doing it too much. It’s a distraction. And it could give your piece a run-on feeling. But for the most part, the rule on using “and” or “but” at the start of a sentence is pretty shaky. Even though it’s still taught by too many professors. Some of the best writers have ignored that rule for years, including you.

Who decides on grammar rules? Is it the same people who decided on swearing? I never understood why swear words are so bad. They are just descriptive words. And over time they get absorbed into everyday language. Will my great-great-grandchildren use FUCK like we use damn?

Can grammar rules be broken? I know grammargirl will be upset with the idea. But, grammar rules get broken all the time. By published authors. Not all sentences are complete with subject, verb, predicate.

What started this was reading a couple of posts about publishing industry and where things are going?There were a few comments about editing.

From Edittorrent: I do run the Word grammar checker. And I ignore almost everything it flags. But it catches enough gunk to be worth running. By the way, the things it flags which I generally ignore are: fragments, reflexive pronoun errors, which/that distinctions, and what it refers to as “possible verb confusion.”

Good thing we run a grammar check so we can ignore all the grammar errors it finds.

From Levi Montgomery:Second (this is where I start to get angry — ok, I started a while back): You’ve just told me, without reading a single word of my writing, that I’m such a bad writer that any random person who decides to call himself an “editor” can make my book better. That anything that random person does will make it better. Frequently, the claims made include such doozies that every book should be cut by ten percent, or that deleting all adverbs will make the book better, or that half the adjectives need to go, or that you should always use active voice and always use nouns and verbs. Period.

And a comment on The New Money Flow: (I’m a deconstructionist so I don’t mind certain grammar rules. Watch, I’ll end a sentence in a preposition later on.)

As I ranted on Levi’s blog post, I realized I should shut and write my own which hopefully I do tomorrow and you will be able to read 6 months from now. Right. THat’s my usual way to go to right.

All I can say is thank goodness for spell check. Otherwise I wouldn’t be a writer.

The new trend in job interviews/applications is asking for your username AND passwords to any social networking site, in particular Facebook.

HELL NO.

Any job that is that interested in my personal life is too much.

In my off hours I’m allowed to engage in any legal activity and broadcast that to the world if I want.

I’m paranoid enough about my writing hobby getting out. I try to use my pseudonym and not my real name wherever possible. And I’m careful about where my real name is used. I’m about ready to use one of those IP masker so anything with this name can’t be traced back to my account.

Would I be judged on Facebook for joining LBGT Rights Groups? announcing my Atheism?  On of my groups is Pro-Sex Liberals Against Child Abuse. How would that fare?

What I do on Facebook is none of your business. My email is also private. I understand that anything I write online could be accessed publicly, albeit not easily but it’s possible.

Anyway, I think it’s ridiculous that anyone would ask for my private password. There is a reason you have to set a password. PRIVACY. Invasion of privacy. How long before one of these employers are sued for invasion of privacy?

My DH has been looking for a job for several weeks. He’s had 2 call backs out of goodness knows how many resumes sent out. (I’d count but most of the stuff is on the computer without a power supply).

And I’ve been reading blogs and trying to figure out how to make extra money.

It comes down to the question, “What problem can you solve better than anyone else?”

I don’t know the answer for either of us.

Things I’m good at and enjoy doing: cooking/baking, meal planning, writing (but not editing), budgeting on a limited income, sex, reading.

I don’t really have a focus, which seems to be necessary when writing online. Plus anything I”m interested in- there are a million blogs out there writing about the same thing. Aren’t there?

Then again maybe not. Every time I stumble upon those types of blogs they are christian. Hmmm, something to think about asrai. Something to think about …

In the meantime, I’m working up a re-written fairytale. sorta … not sure if it will fit into where I mean to submit it to. but i’m sure there’s a market somewhere out there … if you like fairytales and sex.

Or even weekly.

I find that I unsubscribe from blogs that post content everyday. There are a few expections to this rule. But on the whole, I don’t get online everyday and I enjoy a wide variety of reading material.

I’m enjoying slow blogging. Only posting when I have something to say. Means I don’t get a huge following. But if one person is reading my words I’m a happy duck. Or fae.

I don’t blog often becuase I’m too busy writing elsewhere.

Then again this is also my personal blog. I have finance ideas and cooking ideas and crafting ideas that I could blog about. I could spend a lot of time blogging about them. And I might use them for submission to Wisebread, or Hubpages or Askables. I have no desire to run a finance blog or cooking blog or crafting- I don’t do any of those things on a daily basis. And I have a day job and I’m a mother and wife and ….

Part of it is I’m afraid to make a commitment I don’t think I can keep. I can’t promise to blog everyday or every week even.

Read My Novel:

Second Chance Romance, read my erotic short stories.

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook.

For the first time in about 4 years I’m not doing NaNoWriMo.

I am writing a new novel. I started it a few days ago after several months of plotting and replotting. I started it several times before this week, but threw it out as the characters and conflicts didn’t catch my fancy. I’m currently on version 4.5 I think or 4.7. I lost track because I stopped writing it down because it was changing so often.

Anyway, I thought about waiting til November 1 and writing it for NaNo.

But then I thought, I’m exhausted from work. I don’t always get to the computer (our fam. only has one computer). And pregnancy doesn’t always leave me wanting to be in a sitting position. I’m 15 weeks pregnant and have had 14 weeks of morning sickness so far- all day sickness there was no letting up until this past weekend.

Growing new bones and teeth and muscles and nerve cells is really exhausting. And my work is INSANE. I can’t even tell you. So writing isn’t exactly my priority these days.  I can’t see myself doing 2000 words a day every day. And I don’t want the pressure of it over me, because I know my past successes will make me push myself past what I’m capable of physically.

Failure is not an option when it comes to writing for me. Esp, NaNo.

Also, I don’t know if this story has 50,000 words in it. Second Chance Romance ended up gaining 10,000 words after NaNo. But, Summer Fling ended up being only a little over 40,000.

I’m trying not to let this be another flashback story like Second Chance. I didn’t want to do another story where the characters had old history. But, they forced me into it. Right now they are playing twenty questions at the bar. I have no idea where they are taking me, but I finally have characters who want a story. That’s good enough for me.

So many other things to say … and the Vatican chooses to point fingers at others and haggle over word usage.

Sex abuse rife in other religions, says Vatican

Only 1.5 to 5% of clergy were involved in any abuse and they weren’t pedophiles but ephebophiles. The different being the former victims prepubescent and the latter being post-pubescent.

Nothing like minimizing what was done. Any percent of clergy abuse should be unacceptable- these people are THE POWER THAT BE over so many people’s lives.

It’s like saying “i only beat that guy up, I didn’t kill him.” Hello? Still wrong people.

Oh screw it. The article comes Via Carnal Nation.

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• Shifting Blame (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)

A lot of people I follow on Twitter are writers who talk about self-publishing and publishing and writing.

I followed a link the other day that talked about published (REAL) writers vs. unpublished ones.

Apparently I’m totally going about things the wrong way. I have a free blog I update infrequently. Also writing at night is bad. I should be getting up at 4 AM to write.

Of course, I’m not a real published author. I have a job and no big publishing agency is picking me up. Not that I want them to. Oh, I never published that post. Haha, another day then.

I hate reading all these buzz words. At least what I consider buzz words. Building a platform (sounds like a pedestal upon which to preach … just my thing). And a brand. Gotta have a brand now too.

The same blog as mentioned above had a post on how to write proper blog posts. I couldn’t tell if I was doing it right or not. The author cautioned against making titles TOO interesting. WTF is too interesting? Are my titles too interesting? Is that why no one is commenting?

And don’t write things too long. Nothing over 1000 words. I really don’t pay attention to word count. If I have something to say that takes over 1000 words, then I will write those 2000 words. And if you don’t want to read the whole damn thing, well that’s too bad. I needed all those words to get my point across. (Sometimes I later regret my point, as in the case of some stupid comments I made about the state of feminism and men … but ).

Small paragraphs are good as well.

Guess I lost you up there already.

No point in using the return button quite so often. Some of the great literary classics have long paragraphs. Anne of Green Gables talks in long monologues which lose my 7 year old, but is still beloved. If Internet readers are so easily distracted, that’s their problem. My blog is for me to express myself.

I don’t want to cater to a following. If you like or hate what I write, then comment and keep reading. Same thing on Facebook, Twitter and everywhere else online. I’m here for me. And I’m not ashamed to be selfish about it.

I post this video on my Facebook recently. I cannot embed the video so you’ll have to watch it.

It’s an amazing 6 minute video about child brides in developing countries.

And this “guy” I knew from school, he was actually in a band with my brother, comments “that girl who set herself on fire, that’s crap.”

And I wasn’t sure how to take that comment. Was it crap that she felt that cornered in her life that she resorted to setting herself on fire, or is it bullshit that she really did or what?

My MIL messaged me and says, “your friend is an ass.”

So I questioned what he meant. ANd he replied, the husband should be blamed for the girl setting herself on fire.

Which results in a 10 point argument back and forth. Me saying that the girl had no choice in who she married, how much education she got and so on, and she felt she had no other choice but to try to kill herself (I presume) by setting herself on fire.

He replies: SHE DID IT. She’s to blame.

and

c’mon if you were in her situation, would you set yourself on fire?

I dunno, living here where I have a choice about who to marry, when to marry, if I get a college education or not and how many children I have and a TV costs a weeks worth of work, I have NO IDEA how I’d react if I were 15, married and broke a TV.

And then it went on a bit more with the same. and finally I had to remove him as a friend, because I was almost crying and definitely shaking with anger.

I don’t understand the comments.

Her husband didn’t set her on fire. This is true.

But, I know there is a world where girl’s are so afraid of their fathers/husbands/uncles/cousins/men-around-them that they will kill themselves rather than face these men. Where girls are routinely- sold, married as children, beaten, raped and then blamed for it happening and then often killed. Where they cannot choose EVERYTHING I take for granted- choosing HOW to live my life.

And it hurts me deep in my soul that ONE person would have to live like that.

I’m one lucky bitch.

I came across from Help a Reporter Out a query for an article about parents who post TMI on their facebook statuses about their kids. And thus across, STFU, Parents a website dedicated to making fun of parents who post too much info on their kids.

Some of them were humorous- potty training exploits and the like. Some of them are reasonable status comments- like moms who love taking pictures of their cute new baby or talking about lack of napping with other mom friends.

Seeing as how this is what being a parent equates to and Facebook status updates are the minutiae of your life.

And all the comments allude to the posters/submitters being better than the parents who are posting on Facebook. Judging people.

Don’t you dare say anything about how offensive it is to make fun of your friends, because the website is ALL IN GOOD FUN.

Shenningans. Going behind your friends back and making fun of them is NOT FUN. That’s passive aggressive at best. Making judgements of people (which I”m guilty of doing all the fucking time) is not fun.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the insidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.
~Tyron Edwards

When We Judge Others… (article) by S. J. Reisner on AuthorsDen (22 July 2009)

Judging is about making yourself feel better and someone else feel bad.  In this case, parents who post about their kids latest potty-training exploit should feel their lives are sad and pathetic, because the reporters don’t want to read/see that shit (literally).

Too bad. When you friend a parent on facebook (many of the submitters to the site claim “I don’t know why this person is on my friends list, I barely knew her … ” or something close to) this may be what you get. And if I friend other people I’m going to get all sorts of weird things- like right now a guy I knew in high school is posting at least twice a day that he’s bored. I don’t really care, but that’s his status so … on we go.

I try not to post things on my Facebook that other people won’t want to read. I try to make my life a little more witty than it really is.  I’m hyper aware of privacy issues stemming from Facebook- I try not to even post pictures of friends’ children unless I know they have done so themselves.

I have more thoughts on judgment to be posted later. Including, how I judge people.

The moral of the story is you will be judged on your Facebook or Twitter status. It doesn’t get much more shallow than that.