In Search Of Written Words

In Search of Written Words. . . Writing Prompt, alternate grey scale world that only find color when you find your soul mate.

It was grey scale—all of it.

Everything his black eyes touched, monotonous tones of grey, black, and white. It had been most of his life; except that one brief moment when suddenly the colors poured in, over-saturated, blinding and resilient.

They said it would happen. If you found your soul mate, and as long as you saw them—

He caught a glimpse of her as she trotted down the street; his eye following the spaced that filled with color as she passed in a blue and red plaid suit coat that cinched around her narrow waist and then flared out over her nave blue pencil skirt.

Her cinnamon colored hair, done in victory rolls, seemed to glitter in the sun under her crimson hat. Her skin reminded him of freshly poured milk. Per he’d never seen milk, but his mind seemed to think that was the color. Her chili colored lips pursed in concentration.

She must have felt him.

He was staring so hard, how could she not have felt his eyes following her?

She stopped, turning slowly on her heal to see him. She held a gloved hand up, her lips pulling into a little smile. Her chocolate eyes brightened.

He felt his hand go up in the tiniest wave. Was she seeing him too? What did he look like to her?

She put one red pump into the street, making her way towards him. His heart quickened as he followed her lead putting one foot out there. It wasn't a wide street and no one was coming. Ten more paces and he’d have her.

He’d never want to leave her—never.

He stretched out her hand to grab hers.

A streak of canary yellow ripped her out of his grasp. A scream, and then another. Breaks squealed as they grinded the small car to a stop. People shouted in horror, but he didn’t hear them. He stood, unable to move; his hand still stretched out, gripping the air, expecting to clasp around a navy blue gloved hand.

Finally, he pulled himself away to look at the scene. Shouldering his way through the crowd, he saw her, lying on the ground. A bloody dribble slowly descended from her mouth. Her milk white legs splayed at awkward angles.

Her black frame eye lashes stared at him. He watched as her navy blue coat suddenly turned a dull brown. Sucking a breath, he dropped to the ground next to her, clutching her hand. He watched as her flaming red shoes became a light grey. Her skin turned to a dull white—like grey scale milk. And finally, the chili color drained from her lips. They were a bland dark grey.

It was all grey scale—everything his eyes touched.






As Always,

In Search Of. . . Fitness Week 4

In Search Of. .  .

Weight: 140 Still… it just won’t go away

Work out: Brazilian Butt Lift

Week 4 Measurements

B: 41.5

W: 31

S: 38

H: 38.5

R: 40.

T: 22

C: 13

A: 10

Here’s a little bit of info on weight loss.

Also, if you want leaner muscles, use less weights and do more reps. Actually, if you don’t’ want to get to exhausted working out you don’t have to use weights. You’re body just needs to do the motions. Weights just help you work the muscles harder.

Another little tip that works for me. When you do squats, you’re supposed to put your weight on your heels and sit all the way down. I lift my toes to force myself to put my weight on my heels.

I can see the differences in my body, so I know I’m losing something. Maybe it’s just my mind. Oh, well. I guess I’ll keep plugging along.

As Always,

In Search Of. . . Written Words: Not your typical Disney story

In Search Of. . . Written Words

"And they live happily ever after."

It's a typical ending to the romanticized fairy tales; especially the Disney sanitized fairy tales we gorge ourselves on.

Before Disney got a hold of them though, some of the fairy tales were ridiculously dark. Not to mention the skewed idea of love, but I will save that rant for another post. For now, I just want to compare/contrast a fairy tale and the Disney version.

For the Reading Challenge, I had to read, or rather re-read, three different fairy tales: "Rapunzel", "Snow White and Rose Red", and "The Little Match Girl". Since Disney, to my knowledge, has not done "Snow White and Rose Red" or the "Little Match Girl", I'll work with "Rapunzel" and Disney's Tangled.

All right, so Tangled. It's a perfect example of a modern Disney movie.

It has beautiful scenery. (I read somewhere that the designers wanted every scene to be picture perfect, and they achieved it.) It has an adorable story line, with a loveable, finally 18 year-old, plucky heroine and her foil anti-hero, who does turn out to be a good guy in the end, a sly villain, and humorous sidekicks.

Yep, typical Disney.

Returning to an original version by the Brothers Grim, we cancel all of that out. And, just so you know, Grimm sanitized their version too. The Italian version isn’t so . . . sweet.

So first major difference. Rapunzel isn’t a princess by birth. She just has a selfish mother who would rather put her family in danger then do without. Her prego mom sees some rampion, or Rapunzel plant, in a witch’s garden, and refuses to live basically, unless her husband gets her the plant.

Not exactly like the loving mother we see in the movie. I would suppose to make a clear villain, Disney had to make her mother a victim of a baby snatching rather than Rapunzel's father bartering her away for his and his wife's life.

So, that's really how Mother Gothel got the baby. It does take the creepiness out of a greedy, baby snatching woman. She was actually probably a better mother than Rapunzel's own mother would have been.

Mother Gothel raises Rapunzel like in the movie, but she only puts Rapunzel in the tower when she notices her daughter hits puberty. Oh, and just as a side note, the only magical thing about Rapunzel's hair is it's length. It doesn't heal.

So we fast forward a few years and Rapunzel's matured, but stuck in a tower. She's bored, lonely, and quite frankly, ready to get out of the tower. Enter a nameless handsome prince, not Flynn Ryder and his comic smolder or his thieving ways. He climbs up into the castle pretending to be Mother Gothel, and immediately asks Rapunzel to marry him. Rapunzel, never having seen a man freaks out, but in a Bella-esque move, reacts to his kind words and immediately agrees.

Personally, I'm all for the frying pan idea.

So that takes out the whole lantern thing, which is a sad element to loose since it adds so beautifully to the cinematography. It's also a lot creepier that she would just agree to marriage to an utter stranger, but it was 1889. Go figure.

Rapunzel opens her big mouth and tells the witch that she's met a Prince. Furious, the witch cuts off her hair, and hides her away in the desert, which eliminates the need for Flynn Ryder to allow himself to die to save Rapunzel. The Prince comes to get Rapunzel but instead finds the witch. Avoiding the witch's fury, he falls out the window and has his eyes put out, and then wanders around for years.

Somehow he finds Rapunzel, and like in the movie, her tears heal him, but just his eyes. Then they skip off to their happily ever after.

Or maybe there's a sequel where Mother Gothel, who doesn't die, comes back to exact revenge.

So that's a short comparison/contrast of The Brothers Grimm "Rapunzel" and Disney's Tangled.

As Always,

In Search Of. . . Fitness Week 3

In Search Of. . . Fitness
Week 3

Weight 140 lbs.
Program: Brazilian Butt Lift

Week 3 Measurements
Bust: 40.5 inches
Waist: 31 inches
Stomach: 40 inches
Hips: 41.5 inches
Rear: 40.5 inches
Thighs: 21.5 inches
Calves: 13 inches
Arms: 10 inches

So, I’m going to take a minute to be honest with you guys. I spent most of this week seriously discouraged.

I've been working out, and I seem to be getting bigger. Of course, I know I have to factor in the fact that I've developed muscle under the fat and that’s why my measurements won’t go down, but still.

I see a difference in my size, but I guess I have it stuck in my head that those numbers mean something to other people.
I guess I should really start dieting now, if I want the fat to come off. Working out can only do so much. I do try to watch what I eat, in the sense that I eat smaller portions and I don’t worry about “Cheat days.” I decided a while ago, that I was just going to eat the way I wanted, the way that suited my life.

Anyway, I won’t stop working out, but at the same time I feel like it’s pointless. Sorry, nothing cheery here today.

As Always,

In Search Of. . . Written Words

In Search Of. . . Written Words

So, here's another partial update of six, because eleven just seems like a lot to read at once.

1. Julius Cesar, Shakespeare. High school read. And the only thing I remember is "Et Tu Brute?"

2. Macbeth, Shakespeare. Another high school read. I read all the Lady Macbeth parts, which was fun. . . not.

3. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka. This is a morbid little novella and it's really weird, but that's Kafka for you. (Expect a little essay on this later, maybe).

4. Mrs. Dalloway, Virgina Woolf. The entire stories written in stream of conscious, not for the eye, but the ear. Make sure to read this aloud, because half of it doesn't make sense. Actually, the entire book is really sort weird. Beautiful imagery though and faintly Poe-like. The book gives a good look into the emptiness of the early 20's after the war, and the mind of Virgina Woolf, since it's kind of biographical on her own pains with mental health.

5. The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde. Another deep "Gothic Novel." This really explores the debauchery of man. I mean what would you do if you had eternal youth, but could see all the follies you committed on a painting?

6. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen. No reading list is complete with out this this title. It's a book of manners, made to show how manners are more important than money. Or at least they were back then.


More to come, of course.

As Always,

In Search Of. . . Written Words

In Search Of. . . Written Words

As some of you may have noticed, I've taken up the "Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge"

You may ask, "Why?" To which I will reply, "Because I have no life."

Not really. Well kind of, but that's beside the point. I've taken up the challenge because it will keep me from obsessively reading Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. (Honestly, I read like twelve in the course of three weeks, and they aren't short books, either.)

Besides that, it's such a broad spectrum of books. The list includes nearly everything, from classic to modern literature; fiction to non-fiction; short stories, novellas, and novels. Which I think, as my teachers used to say, will broaden my horizons.

So far, I've already read 21 books from the list. Now I have 378 more to go.

I'll give you a brief idea of the first 11 of them.

1. 1984, George Orwell. Everyone should read this book. Orwell understood the Totalitarian regime and explains it clearly through this story. It is one of the few books that has stayed with me.

2. Alice in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll. It's almost exactly like the Disney cartoon, just in black and white, and a few more scenes.

3. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath. It's actually her autobiography, but she didn't think it was of any literary worth, so she made it into a work of fiction. That was Plath though.

4. Devil in the White City: Murder, Madness, and Magic at the Fair that Change America, Eric Larson. Great book for non-fiction lovers, and fiction lovers. All the research is primary, and it gives so much information about the first World’s Fair and a notorious serial killer.

5. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson. This is a novella. You can read it in a few hours. People say it's about the repression of the Victorian Era, but I think it's about man's struggle with himself.

6. Frankenstein, Marry Shelly. Is not a scary story; it just isn't. And the monster can talk, and Frankenstein’s really just a selfish jerk face. Not a horrible book though. It’s all about pushing boundaries and knowing our limits.

7. Gone With the Wind, Margret Mitchell. I never did like Scarlet, but this is one of the most accurate representations of the Civil War era.

8. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Another personal story turned fiction. There is no real reason to love this story, but I do. The color imagery is amazing

9. Great Expectation, Charles Dickens. If you like superfluity, this is the book for you.

10. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad. I never really could figure what this was about. Editions have a lot to do with. Maybe I'll re-read it one day. It describes exploration into Africa, slavery, and something else. Wasn't my favorite read.

11. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott. Jo didn't make any sense to me, but I guess that's because she's a girl. We don't make sense. I read this in high school for a literary analysis, so that might be coloring my opinion.

Those are the first 11 books, and maybe I'll do the next eleven or something like that.

As Always,

In Search Of. . . Fitness Week 2

In Search of. . . . Fitness Week 2 Measurements

Weight: 1 stupid 40 lbs.

Week 2 Measurements
Bust: 41 inches (Bigger? Go figure.)
Waist: 31 inches
Stomach: 38.5 inches
Hips: 38.5 inches
Rear: 40.5 inches
Thighs: 22 inches
Calves: 13 inches
Arms: 10.5 inches

So only half an inch in some parts, but it means I’m half an inch smaller in most parts, right? So, I will take that.

This week I’m going to talk about working out and life, and how they go together, or rather how they don’t.

Life has a lot of things we must accomplish, the feeding, the bathing, the working, and the house cleaning. Of course there are our vegetation hours when we become large stalks of broccoli. Getting a schedule together to accomplish everything you need to in one day is hard, especially when you want to get a good work out.

When you work out, you give up time you could spend watching T.V. (Although, I’d work out with DVD on the lap top and watch Diner, Drive-ins, and Dives. No clue why.) It is possible to kill two birds with one stone. Mostly like though, there are going to be days when life and working out aren't on speaking terms.

So yeah, accept right now that there will be days that you will miss your work out. Accept it!

For example though, I had to take a whirlwind trip for my late brother birthday and my nephew’s birthday as well few weekends ago. I left Friday morning and got back Sunday morning; I just didn't have the time between all the driving. It threw me off, and I missed four days in a row.  

On the fifth day, I checked my calendar and realized that the previous four day were missing the fluorescent yellow “WKOT” I put on there to keep track of myself. Irritated, decided it was time to work out again.

And there are also days where you just don’t want to work out. Don’t feel badly about those. These must also be accepted.

Just keep mind that when you've missed days, it’s one day out of 7, 30 to 31, and 365. You just can’t let it keep you down. Get back in those workout clothes and workout.

As always,