Things to say

Well, here I am, writing a blog post.

I recognize that I don't have many readers over here anymore, which is awesome, because my ramblings become more boring as I go on.  And now I have a school assignment to keep a writer's journal, which is simply too much for me given all the other kinds of journals I already keep.  So I'm going to try to blog once a week instead... we'll see how that goes.

I must confess, the concept of a writer's journal is largely lost on me.  My sister has one, and she writes things in it like, "Red is the best color for a car," and "What if there was a story about a giant who didn't like eating goats like all the other giants?"  This means that when various inspirational thoughts occur to her she actually has the energy to go find her notebook, open it, find a working pen, and write her thought down.  This is where it breaks down for me.

Also, it seems the older I get the less I enjoy writing as an outlet.  It's still an awesome hobby, but I wouldn't think of myself as necessarily an artsy-fartsy person who likes to do things like sit in a Starbucks and write about the smell of coffee and the Arabic couple arguing at the next table over.  I guess it's part of settling into wife-hood and facing impending mother-hood...  everything must have it's box, and if the boxes start running over and falling into each other, chaos ensues!  So I'm a writer when I sit down to do an assignment or to work on my manuscript, but not when I get up to unload the dishwasher.  I'm going to go ahead and accept that this does not make me a terrible person, just a boring one.

But, since I have the excuse of this being an assignment, I might as well mention that I actually am at a Starbucks right now, and there actually is an Arabic couple arguing at the next table.  At least, I think they're arguing- it's hard to tell since they aren't speaking English all the time.  Looking at them is in a sense familiar to me now, since I live in SeaTac where it's unusual to see a white person walking down the street.  And yet, I was just learning in my novel writing class that it's essential to be able to write about people who are different from you, and I know I would be totally incapable of writing about the lives of someone like that without doing a LOT of research.  Isn't it so interesting that we live side-by-side with people we know absolutely nothing about, people who's lives we couldn't even imagine by looking at them?

Also, at this Starbucks there are two workers, the same two workers who are almost always here when we come in the evening.  They are quite a pair.  One of them is a big tall guy with a major head of curly hair, whose church I've actually gone to a couple of times- though he doesn't remember me.  It's weird because he's friends with a lot of my friends and he's the popular type, so I used to hear about him a lot.  Every time I come in he's leaning over the counter talking to someone, usually a female someone.  He's the kind of person who wears his heart on his sleeve and is pretty much always happy, and always in love.  It's weird to order coffee from someone whom you know a lot about.  Last week I was dying to ask him if he was still with the girl he was apparently so head-over-heels in love with in High School.  Can you imagine the look on his face?

The other guy is shorter and thinner, with a very distinguishing (not to be confused with distinguished) goatee.  Yikes, he's sweeping behind me right now... I hope he doesn't look up at my screen! He's the music-lover, the indie one- but the two are both very vocal and have very creative vocabulary choices.  They don't talk like most mid-20 year old co-workers, they are interesting and engaging.  It's kind of refreshing, actually.