bits and pieces

Inspired by the great MOE, here is a little tid bit called, "So La Ketch, how's that book you're writing coming along?"

Well, you guys I haven't really worked on it a whole lot. I did transfer it off of my blog onto my computer at home and into Word. So that's something. I did read what I have so far from beginning to end (took about an hour and a half, hmmmm). So that's something. In re-reading it from beginning to end I have come to two conclusions: 1. the middle sucks 2. the ending is crappy. I need to work on the middle and the end. So that's something. It's not much but it's something. I wish it were more but I have this wonderful excuse....

MY HUSBAND IS HOGGING THE COMPUTER!!!!

also, I'm an alcoholic.

BTW, if you haven't seen MOE's blog then you better get over there because it's FUN-EEE.

So did you hear that the guy who wrote "A Million Little Pieces" probably made a bunch of it up? God, that made me feel better about my own tendency to make shit up.

I wrote on my blog a while back about how my sister hadn't read the story yet and how I didn't want to tell her because I knew she wouldn't have time to read it; being a single working mother, she rarely checks her e-mail, etc. Well, she read it finally, a couple of months ago. My mom ended up telling her about it. My sister called me early one morning and I was like, "What are you doing up so early?" because she is in Seattle, three hours behind me. She said she hadn't gone to bed. She had been up all night reading my blog. She read the whole thing! Isn't that so sweet? What a compliment. Of course it's about her too, so who wouldn't want to read it. What I realized though, when she told me that she had read it, was that I hadn't not told her about it because I didn't think she had time to read it. I hadn't shown it to her because I was afraid she WOULD read it and call bullshit on a bunch of it.

My sister calls bullshit on things that I'm telling the truth about so when I'm EMBELLISHING, her flag really goes up. The reason she's so sensitive to this is because when I was younger, I used to lie all the time, big, long, elaborate yarns. Nothing to hurt anyone, just things similar to this fabulous tale. When we were young, there was no one I liked to hook into a tall-tale more than my sister. She is (was) so trusting and she just believed everything I told her, never questioned it. My favorite type of story to tell her was about "when we were little." Of course, we still WERE little when I told her these stories but I meant really, really little. I could remember more than she could because I was older. I was one whole year older but I made up much more than one year's worth of stories and I would tell them to her like I'd been around since the dinos.

The story she finally busted me on was one of her favorites. She loved for me to tell this story because it was so sensational. It's the story about how I threw her out of the "Dumbo" ride at Disneyland because she was crying.

The Dumbo Ride, as most of you probably know is an open air ride for two small sized people. You get in your own little Dumbo and you fly around in a circle and you have a lever that can make you go up and down. It can be pretty scary if you are really little. So the story goes that my mom let us go on the ride by ourselves and we got up there an my sister started crying and I didn't know what to do, so I yelled down to my mom who was watching us to catch her and then I picked her up and threw her out and my mom caught her.

As we got older and the story became less believable, I would tone it down a little and change it from actually throwing her out to trying to throw her out. I would tell her that I opened the door to the Dumbo and picked her up to throw her out and the guy came on the loud speaker and said "Don't throw her out!!" Then I would just say that my mom yelled up at me to not throw her out. Finally, one horrible, fated day, my sister was asking me to tell the story and my mom was in the room. I think we were about nine and ten respectively. I was rambling on about it and she was asking me questions about some detail that I couldn't provide...

My sister did something then that would change our relationship irrevocably. She checked a source. Not only could my mom not confirm that she had told me not to throw my sister out of the Dumbo ride, she couldn't even remember the Dumbo Ride story happening at all! Honestly, I can't remember what really happened on the Dumbo ride anymore. It's been too long and I've embellished the story too many times. I do know it happened though. We rode the ride together when we were very young and my guess is that my sister started crying and I yelled down to my mom and my mom said that we would just have to wait until the ride was over. I probably did consider throwing her out because I was most likely having a grand old time and she was ruining it with her baby crying.

When my mom told my sister that she couldn't even remember the event taking place, it was like all of the dots were connected in her mind. She looked at me and suddenly, everything changed, "You just make these stories up don't you?" Ummmmmm.... no?

So now, basically my sister doesn't believe a word I say about anything. To this day, if she hears me telling a story to a group of people, she will yell out from another room, "Don't believe a word she says! She makes it all up!" It's really cramped my story telling style.

I've been pretty up front with you all about my propensity to exaggerate and I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I haven't embellished a few things that I can't quite remember about the homecoming queen acid story but all in all, to the best of my knowledge, most everything that I say happened actually happened the way I say it did. I certainly wouldn't mind calling it fiction though. That way, when the people I talk shit about read it and try to find me and kill me, I can say "It's fiction, please don't kill me."

When my sister called me and told me that she had read the whole thing I was like, "Sooo, do you have some notes for me? Some corrections?" I was braced for her to rip me to shreds. Instead she only said, "You didn't wear Rebok High-Tops to the Homecoming Parade! You wore those cream boots, remember?" She's right. How could I forget those boots! Jesus. I loved those damn things.