Seven Things You Didn't Really Want to Know About Me, but I'm Telling You Anyway.

LYRIC O’ THE DAY:

Expectations only mean you really think you know what’s coming next

And you don’t.

--These Important Years, Husker Du

I am totally honored to have been chosen for some delicious blog awards.  First, from Alynza at The Write Journey is the Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award AND a Versatile Blogger award.  I want to eat the first one, and then write a dissertation of the existential plight of man while changing the oil on my Jeep with the other.  Because I'm versatile.  I also received the Versatile Blogger from S.B. at Writing the Other, so I was doubly versatiled.  I am finally receiving recognition for my ability to multitask!  No longer can people give me grief when I call them while in the bathroom.

As part of the tithe for these bits of glory, I am supposed to share seven things about me and then pass the torch to five other bloggers.  Doing this exercise made me realize that I need to start doing some interesting things with my days, because I'm a little vanilla here.

Seven Things about me:

1.  When I cut things, I unconsciously move my jaw up and down with each bite of the scissors.  I can’t stop myself and it drives people crazy.  Once I made a set of paper dinosaurs for my son and had lockjaw for three days afterwards.

2.  I was going to be a theater major until a bizarre little man who resembled Beetlejuice (aka my college advisor) talked me out of it.  Now I can only reminisce about my high school performance as Abigail in The Crucible.  I was the state of Nebraska's best actress in Class B in 1989, by the gods!  I coulda been a contender!  Consider yourself fortunate for my misstep on the career pathway, Winona Ryder.

I saw Goody Proctor with the Devil!!

3.  I am irrationally afraid of clowns, which stems from watching Poltergeist at too young an age.  The hospital where I work has a clown day once a month, and every freaking time I end up trapped on the elevator with them.  They try to talk to me and all I can do is punch the button frantically and whimper.  I don’t think there’s a diagnosis code for “clown-related psychosis.”  I can't even post a picture of my fear, so instead I offer fuzzy baby kittens:

4.  I nearly died as a baby from Rh disease, also known as hemolytic disease of the newborn.  Basically my mother formed antibodies to my blood.  I was born premature at the University, hospitalized for transfusions and got septic with E.coli.  I know this because I found my hospital records on microfiche when I got into the University medical school.  I never knew before that.  And I've felt lucky to be alive ever since.  Also might explain my vampire fixation.

5.  I love high heels.  I arrange them by amounts of time I can stand wearing them.  Thick platform heels are the best for work, those are usually my 12 hour heels.  The others all vary between 6 and 10 hour heels.  Flats steal my power.

My favorite heels.  These are all 12 hour babies.

6.  I know how to can.  As in preserve vegetables for posterity.  Every year I make sauces, salsa, and pickled things.  When the zombie apocalypse comes, I will be quite comfortable in my underground bunker.

7.  I worked construction with my dad for two summers when I was in college.  One of my jobs was to be “the vibrator girl.”  This involves a large canister vacuum-looking device with a wand on the end that--you guessed it--vibrates.  You plunge said wand into wet cement in order to vibrate out the holes of air that may be trapped.  It’s much less erotic than it sounds.

Judging by this picture the construction tool business is not above sexual exploitation.

Now I pass the love to some very worthy bloggers that I want to know more about:


A.G. at Rejected Riter
B.E. Sanderson at The Writing Spectacle
Maggie at The Unibrow
Lexcade at Going from Nobody to Somebody
Liz at Home is where the Cat Is

The Crop Circle: Message, Music, or Marsupial?

LYRIC O’ THE DAY:

Another night I feel all right, my love, for you can’t wait

--Don’t Go, Yaz

It’s fall in Nebraska.  That means football, apple cider, and following a John Deere combine for twenty miles down a busy stretch of highway.

This week for Sunday Mythbusters I present an homage to that spectacular art form of agriculture, the crop circle.  Since the 1970s, sightings of crop circles--and the mythology behind their appearance--has grown exponentially.  

Milk Hill crop circle 

My cousins and I tried to make one in grandpa’s field using a two by four and an unwilling German Shepherd one summer.  Unfortunately, I had just read Stephen King’s Children of the Corn.  He Who Walks Behind the Rows ultimately beat out my prankster nature.

The earliest depiction of a crop circle comes from a woodcut done in 1678 called “The Mowing Devil.”

Text attached to the piece says that a farmer refused to pay a mower to harvest his crops, saying he’d pay the devil to do it before he’d pay the price the man charged.  Rumor has it, the following morning his field was cut into a satanic design so intricate that it was impossible to blame a human for its creation.

Or was it?

The first modern sighting of a crop circle is the case of the Australia Saucer Nest incident in 1966.  A farmer apparently saw what he described as a saucer-shaped flying object rise out of a lagoon near Tully.  It left behind an ellipse of flattened reeds nearly 30 feet in diameter.  Despite media sensationalism, the phenomenon was ultimately attributed to a whirlwind over water called a “willy willy” by the Aussies.

Since that sighting, 26 countries have reported over 10,000 crop formations.  Ninety percent of those are in southern England. They are often associated with ancient monuments (i.e. Stonehenge) and with specific ley lines.  Ley lines were historically suggested to be ancient pathways of travel and ceremonial worship by an archaeologist in the 1920s.  Since then, they have morphed into a less tangible and more supernatural path imbued with psychic energy.

North American ley lines.

The phenomenon gathered worldwide attention in 1991 when two English sexagenarians by the name of Doug Bower and Dave Chorley came forward with the story of a prank spanning two decades.  The pair got the idea to make crop circles from the Tully incident while fueled by the local pub’s finest lager.  Using a plank, a rope, and a compass made from a baseball hat with a wire attached they created more than 250 crop circles.  They were able to make one in a little less than an hour with their crude tools.

A Doug and Dave circle from bibliotecapleyades.net

Still, even with this admission, conspiracy theorists refused to believe, claiming Doug and Dave were a government attempt to discredit the phenomenon and the presence of paranormal activity.  Some asserted that the men were linked to the British Ministry of Defense and the CIA.

Crop circles became the agricultural Beatles of Europe, even spawning an artist cooperative called Circlemakers who still create the formations for art and profit.  Their most famous American client may be the band Korn, who performed in a crop circle Circlemakers designed outside of Bakersfield, California in 2010.

All of you Scullys out there are nodding your heads, totally convinced that man-made hoaxes explain it all.  If you are a little more scientifically minded, perhaps you believe crop circles are a bizarre meteorologic creation, the result of tornadoes or ball lightning.  Stephen Hawking supported this theory in 1992 by saying crop circles were likely formed by a vortex movement of air--if they weren’t a hoax.  

Possibly the most comical theory came out when wallabies in Australia were blamed for crop circles found in opium poppy fields.  Turns out Australia has acres of medicinal opium fields, and a variety of creatures come by to get their Limbaugh on.  These marauding groups of wallabies apparently jump in circles while high on opium.  Which begs for the question, how many stoned wallabies does it take to form a crop circle in Australia?

"I see aliens."  

For those of you who channel your inner Mulder, I can’t leave out the UFO angle.  Some are not fans of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies, but I love Signs.  In the movie, the crop circles are marking beacons for a group of hostile aliens looking to harvest the earth.  Indeed, many believe crop circles are some form of communication from an extraterrestrial source, although hopefully it’s not to give us the big intergalactic finger.  In 1974, to celebrate the remodeling of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, scientists (including Carl Sagan) sent the Arecibo message into orbit.  It contained binary code for numbers 1-10, the atomic numbers of the elements essential to life, a depiction of a DNA sequence, our solar system, a human figure and a picture of the radio transmitter itself.  Three decades later in a field in the UK an “answer” appeared--with significant changes including the depiction of an alien humanoid.  Debate over the validity of this crop formation continues today.

The aerial view of the field with the Arecibo reply.

The two codes, side by side.  In cross stitch.  Croppies, those folks who believe in the UFO theory of crop formations, are very creative.

The best known video suggesting that UFOs make crop circles was filmed at Oliver’s Castle in 1994.  It shows 4 lights spinning above a field shortly before an elaborate crop formation appears.  Unfortunately, the video was later declared a hoax.  Undaunted, UFO supporters continually point out that hoaxers ruin and crush the plants involved--whereas “real crop circles” bend the plant in a way that suggests use of high heat or microwave energy that had to come from an extraterrestrial source.  However, using a hand held magnetron and a 12 volt battery, one scientist was able to recreate the same bending effect, right down to the microscopic changes in the plant stem.

Carl Sagan in his The Demon Haunted World:  Science as a Candle in the Dark concluded there was no evidence to link UFOs with crop circles.  And I guess that’s good enough for me.

Some of the most intriguing theories behind formation of crop circles may lie within the earth itself.

The Gaia hypothesis popularized in the 1970s states that the earth is one single complex system made up of all organisms and their surroundings.  The earth is a giant work of symbiosis; crop circles (as well as other geologic phenomena like earthquakes and flooding) are messages in response to problems with the entire creature.

Scientists have built on this theory indicating that electromagnetic fields and energies from within the earth could be the basis of creating crop formations.  An electrical engineer in the UK named Colin Andrews described magnetic impulses detected within crop formations.  These impulses rotated up to 3 degrees about the center of the circle, and if strong enough could theoretically cause plants to lie down and twist into intricate designs. 

The crop circle theory which resonated the most with me (forgive the pun) is the theory of harmonic geometry, in which sound waves create visual patterns. 

A Swiss scientist named Hans Jenny caught on film the geometric patterns created as sound vibrations traveled through a variety of substances.  With changes in frequency and medium came increasing complexity of shapes.  In essence, Jenny “froze music,” creating art.  Others refer to these as Chladni patterns, after the German father of acoustics, Ernst Chladni.

A Chladni pattern created by sound.

Indeed, people describe hearing odd trilling sounds in the areas in and around crop circles, although it’s unclear where the sound originates from--perhaps geological shifting.  Using theorems of Euclidean geometry and diatonic relationships, Emeritus Professor of Astronomy Gerald Hawkins laid the groundwork to developing computer software that would actually measure the crop creations and turn geometry back to sound. 

I would have thought it would sound more like rock and roll.

Then again, maybe they were just listening to the wrong crop circle.

The King.  Elvis isn't dead, he's just in space.

I'm funny, but looks aren't everything

LYRIC O’ THE DAY:

Simple joys have a simple voice,

It says why not go ahead?

--Simple Joys (done by Ben Vereen), Pippin

Today kicks off Alex J. Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group.  It’s a little loving web support for writers to share their hopes, their fears, and their neuroses with other stark raving lunatics creative souls.  Many thanks to Alex for putting this together with the grace and style we've all become accustomed to!  So get comfortable, put on some show tunes, and show me your jazz hands.  Because everyone’s a star today. 

I am not a classic beauty.  

My face is all angles and lines, and we’re talking more Picasso than Porizkova.

I am not photogenic.  I’ve never been the girl in spring break photos with big doe eyes and blinding Chiclet white teeth.

I’m the girl who shows her uvula in pictures; the one that ruined your class photo with a well-timed gesture.  You’re welcome.

I’m the funny one.  Although at times I’ve been referred to as “strange,” “spaz,” and the ever popular, “dork.”  Talent is so subjective.

Around age seven, I realized I was failing as a princess.  Pink’s never been my color.  That’s when I discovered Lucille Ball, and playing the jester seemed like a more viable plan, tiaras optional.  I’ve spent my life following the irreverent girls, the ones who laughed too loud and too often, even at their own jokes.  Olivia Newton John may have rocked her poodle skirt in Grease but I worshipped Rizzo’s smartass charm.  Sally Field exuded quiet strength in Steel Magnolias but I wanted to be in your face like Shirley MacLaine. 

Everything I write has humor in it.  Making someone laugh is a high for me; my shot of tequila without the risk of waking up naked in a hall closet.  To me, life is only worth living if you’re laughing.  Maybe this stems from my career in health care.  Humans are sensitive and easily broken creatures.  I’ve learned that if you can’t find the joy in a bleak situation you’ll drown in sadness.  

But there’s a serious side to my happy jester act, a truth that hides not so far under the surface.  Humor is my way of dealing with insecurity, a way to mock the darkness before it can swallow me.  My greatest fear is no one laughing, and then the joke’s on me.

But when someone finds me amusing, has their outlook brightened for even a moment by something I did or said?

Affirmation.  Absolution.  Acceptance.  I banish the sober face of doubt for another day.

Humor is my insecurity blanket.  So please, laugh with me.  I want to bring you a smile, hell, I’ll even settle for a exasperated eyeroll.  I’m easy like that.

  “I’m not funny.  What I am is brave.”  --Lucille Ball.

Flash Fiction--The Man of My Dreams

LYRIC O' THE DAY:

I remember searching for the perfect words

I was hoping you might change your mind

--Riding on the Metro, Berlin

Excitement abounds!!  Today marks the first challenge in Rachael Harrie's Platform Building Campaign.  The rules were to do a piece of flash fiction, exactly 200 words, starting with the prompt "the door swung open" and ending with "the door swung shut" if possible.  Having never written flash fiction before, this was great fun, and a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be.  It seems I'm a wordy girl.  Anyway, here goes nothing:

The Man of My Dreams:

        The door swung open, expelling a stench so foul it made my stomach twist.

He filled the entire door frame.  Six feet of lean muscle, posture too elegant for a man of his profession.  Dark hair curled damp against his collar as he shook his head in disgust.

He thrust a cold metal object in my palm.  Sparks danced up my arm.

I held my breath, not from the smell, but to force my heart to slow its wild pace.  His eyes glowed an ethereal green as he watched me, waiting to finish the deal.

I owed payment for my follies.

We stood face to face in the foyer as he glanced at the tchotchkes lining the walls, but trinkets didn’t interest him.

“You better dunk that in bleach,” he growled in a sultry southern drawl I had come to crave.

I looked at the prize in my hand.  Diesel the Tank Engine grinned up at me, mocking my obsession.

He opened the front door, grasping the handle with his talented fingers.  A wry smile turned his lips.  “Please keep your son away from the toilet, ma’am.  Then I won’t have to keep coming back.”

And the door swung shut.

The Tooth Fairy: Mouse or Menace

LYRIC O’ THE DAY:

And the devil in the black dress watches over

My guardian angel walks away

Life is short and love is always over in the morning

Black wind come carry me far away

--Temple of Love, The Sisters of Mercy

Good morning!  I have been loving Rachel Harrie's Writer's Campaign.  I'm steadily visiting lots of new blogs and meeting so many talented folks.  If you've stopped by and I haven't followed you back, please let me know!  Now, on to Sunday's mythbusting.

Armed with a backpack that made him look like a giant turtle, my son reigned victorious over his first week of kindergarten.  He also returned with a valuable bit of information, thanks to a loose tooth and kindergarten lore.

“Mommy, the tooth fairy is going to bring me a lot of money for my tooth when it falls out.”

My boy looked a lot like this during his declaration.

Ah, the currency of calcium.  A child has 20 deciduous or “baby teeth” to lose between the ages of 6 and 12.  For most cultures, it’s a simple rite of passage.  To lessen the blow of leaving childhood, the idea of a benevolent spirit purchasing a freshly extracted tooth has become well accepted.  But before I started this post, I had no idea where this myth came from.  To my surprise, there was no dentist to blame.

Teeth have long been symbols of power, luck, and protection.  Teething rituals date back to ancient times with the earliest mentions of the tradition in the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda, the most extensive written account of Norse poetry and mythology.  Viking folk were quite wary of witchcraft and demons, and believed that teeth offered a pearly protection.  If a child lost a tooth, their warrior parent would give them a “tooth fee” for it.  The Vikings often wore them as jewelry; a toothy talisman against demons.  This tradition is still practiced today by warriors of the celebrity sect, as shown by my favorite Rocky Horror sweetheart, Susan Sarandon.  Here she wears a bracelet made from her daughter's baby teeth.

I actually think this is kinda cool.  Photo from hollybaby.com

Native Americans often used teeth in their medicine bags, believing them to have powers in love and protection magic.  Gypsy lore suggests that parts of another human--like nail clippings, hair, or teeth--can be used in sympathetic magic.  This is similar to how voodoo dolls are used.  For that reason, they would destroy lost teeth in a fire, or in some cases, have an adult swallow them.  Yum!

I suspect that’s something Paula Deen will NOT be covering in butter anytime soon.

Some cultures buried lost teeth to help the child “grow a new one.”  In Asia and Africa, teeth were thrown on the roof for scavenger animals to retrieve.  Supposedly if a mouse or rat ate the tooth, that would ensure future sharp teeth for the child. 

Speaking of the order Rodentia, the Europeans seemed quite taken with tales of mice with tooth fetishes.  In Scotland, a white rat purchased lost teeth.  In Spain, “Ratoncito Perez," aka Perez the little mouse, promised money for each lost tooth.  Italy, Germany, and the Czechs all had their own version of the tooth mouse.  Not to be outdone, the Finnish went so far as to create a “tooth troll,” a vile creature named Hammaspiekko that would drill holes in children's teeth if they ate too much candy.  

Now that’s something you don’t read in a Dr. Spock baby book.  Although this clip from Metalocalypse is enough to make me stop eating candy.  And serves as a reminder to let my kid know that teeth only grow back once.

At some point, the tooth mouse morphed into a fairy, and an 18th century story called La Bonne Petite Souris (The Good Little Mouse) may be the reason.  In this tale, a beautiful fairy disguised as a mouse saves a princess from an evil king by repeatedly biting him in the face, ultimately causing his death.  It’s probably much more poetic in French.  

The diabolical tooth mouse.

America helped the tooth fairy finally wax her whiskers and became a proper lady.  A three act play titled “The Tooth Fairy” came out in 1927, but the first published children’s story on the subject as we know it is believed to be by Lee Rogow in 1949.  Some folklorists think that once Rogow’s story established the legend, the media, post-war affluence, and a more child-centered mindset in American families allowed the Tooth Fairy to take her place with Santa, The Easter Bunny and The Great Pumpkin.  

What pre teen boys hope the tooth fairy looks like.  Drawing by 14-bis on deviantArt from google

What the tooth fairy actually looks like.  Drawing by wolfgangmustdie on deviantArt from google

Rosemary Wells, a professor at Northwestern University Dental School, was a leading tooth fairy authority.  She had an extensive collection of tooth memorabilia showcased in The Tooth Fairy Museum in Deerfield, Illinois (now defunct).  Her research showed that the idea of a tooth fairy and treats in exchange for teeth was universally shared in most cultures as a way to soothe the transition from child to adult.  Simply, it was a way to get children to look forward to something normally unsettling.

  

The Tooth Fairy still shows up in popular media.  Take 2010‘s creatively named cinematic zenith, “The Tooth Fairy,” starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.  Didn’t see it?   I guess mouse to fairy to WWE warlord was a folkloric jump people were not willing to make.  Give it another 100 years. 

In literature, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series has a story line of tooth fairies who possibly originated from the bogeyman.  His fairies always carry pliers in case they can’t make change and need to extract an extra tooth to make it all even.  For horror lovers, Thomas Harris’s novel Red Dragon follows a cannibalistic serial killer nicknamed, “The Tooth Fairy.”

Tasty Teeth, a Hellboy story from Guillermo del Toro, tells how tribes of fairies would suck the marrow from children’s bones.  In 1226 Pope Honorius made a pact with the King of the Fairies to end the carnage--the fairies got children’s teeth in exchange for a silver coin.  According to the story, children stopped believing in the fairies, so they started their grisly marrow suckage again.  Grenades and explosions followed soon after.  Gotta love Hellboy.

The Tooth Fairy is a myth that most people can easily give up.  But my six year-old?

Anyone got a set of fairy wings I can borrow?

Why writing is a lot like a bikini wax

LYRIC O’ THE DAY:

I’m out on the edge, but I’m not defeated yet.

--Don’t Fall, The Chameleons

Disclaimer:  Men may not get this post.  Actually, women may not either.

I have spent a significant amount of my womanhood removing hair.  I started shaving in high school.  I plucked my eyebrows in college.  In medical school I discovered the depilatory.  I still fondly remember the pleasant roses-and-sulfur smell of Nair.

In spite of my Bohemian heritage, I find pleasure in being less hirsute.

It was only natural that I would eventually try waxing.  It has actually become my go-to sadomasochistic beauty ritual, right behind exercise and eating fiber.

It just so happened that my routine bikini wax coincided with me finishing my WIP this week.  This is the WIP that has drained me for six months, taunting me like that one crazy thick hair that occasionally grows on your chin, making you feel like the Wicked Witch of the West.

I relished my success as I stared at a salon ceiling listening to the soothing sounds of a pan flute.  Apparently Zamfir has convinced aestheticians everywhere that mood music will somehow make you forget that hair is being ripped out of your nether regions by the root.  And then I had a epiphany.

Writing is a lot like a bikini wax.  

Why?  Well let me share the four most eventful waxes of my life with you, and perhaps you will agree.

The first time I ever tried to wax was a lot like prom night; it involved a bottle of wine, me half naked, and a package bought from Walgreens for $10.99.  After popping the wax in the microwave for the allotted 30 seconds, I prepared to experience the ultimate in long lasting hair removal. 

My hand only shook a little as I used the little spatula to smear a thick glob of honey colored goo on my most precious areas.  In retrospect, I should have started small, but the cloths were the size of envelopes so I thought that indicated the recommended size of waxage area.  I smoothed them on, feeling my skin tighten to alarming levels as the wax hardened.

Minutes went by.

The wax was now a substance of super glue proportions.

I had one of those moments of clarity you get right before you do something insane

. . .and I chickened out.

Luckily, my fiance chose that very moment to arrive home.  I still remember the look of horror on my betrothed’s face as he watched me run across the living room, cloth strips fluttering wildly from my lady parts while I hysterically begged him to pull them off.  Two hours and a warm sitz bath later, my delicate flower was free of its wax prison, and our relationship stayed vanilla flavored.

And God bless the boy, he still married me.

Reason #1 why writing is like a bikini wax:  When you start, you need some help from the professionals.  Almost no one writes a bestseller out of the box.  Good writing takes preparation.  Practice.  Courage.  Go to writer’s websites--one of my favorites is Query Tracker.  Read writer’s blogs. Take a class or two. Commiserate with other writers further along the journey.  And then you might be ready.  

The second time I tried to wax, I went to a salon armed with knowledge from that bible of feminine mystique, Cosmopolitan.  I arrived early to peruse a disturbing book of coiffure creations, settling on a sensible style called “The American.”  I was led into a room no larger than a coat closet that smelled vaguely of borscht and patchouli by a small Russian woman who looked to be around Methuselah’s age.  She barked at me to sit on the table and strip.  That was it.  No small talk, no hand-holding, just wham-bam take-your-pants-off ma’am.  She smeared the wax on like she was basting me for Thanksgiving, her face morphing into a mask of feral glee eerily resembling Dick Cheney with a shotgun and a memoir.  When the first strip of wax came off, I screamed like a rabbit in a mower whimpered bravely.

Reason #2 why writing is like a bikini wax:  Your first time often ends in embarrassment and will be much more painful than you anticipated.  And yes, you might cry.  My first trial out on the writing trail ended in flames.  There was head hopping.  Chapters dedicated to infodumping.  A plethora of “he lookeds” and “she felts.”  I queried that piece of crap and got enough rejections to keep my kids in scratch paper until they’re in college.  But it was a hell of a learning experience.

I avoided the wax for awhile, falling back into the arms of Master BIC and his cheap shaving thrills.  That is, until my sixth month of my first pregnancy, when I no longer could even see my lady parts.  I was hell bent that I would not give birth resembling a yeti.  I blame hormones and pimento cheese spread for this momentary lapse of reason.  I think the combination short-circuited my neurons.

The waxer was a perky twenty-something with narrow hips and skin that glowed naturally, not from sweat induced by the pimento cheese-craving fire ball in her womb.  She looked down her perfect little upturned nose at my innie-now-outie and obviously was making mental notes to never have children.  I felt bad for a moment, like there was something wrong with what I was doing.  And then I just hoped maybe I’d accidentally pee a little to really horrify her.

Reason #3 why writing is like a bikini wax:  Sometimes people don’t like your stuff.  This whole writing business is subjective.  What floats my boat might make you want to shove a ball point pen in your eye.  But there’s a genre for everyone, and someone will love your innie, your outie, or in the case of the tummy tucked, your nottie.  Never compromise what makes you happy--write what you love first, then worry about the audience. 

After years of practice, I now have met the master of the art of hair removal.  Her name is Chevy, and she’s the best damn bikini waxer in the Midwest.  You’re in and out in less than ten minutes, smooth as silk and ready for the beach.

The first time I went to Chevy, I was at a crossroads, needing something different.  So I decided to go the full tilt Brazilian.  All was going well until she pushed up her sleeves and said, “Can you Sphinx for me?”

I wasn’t really sure what that meant, although the Bangles’ Walk Like an Egyptian started playing on my inner soundtrack.

She said it again, in a way that I--a graduate degree carrying career woman--could understand.

“Get on your hands and knees.  Like the Sphinx.  You know, in Egypt?”

The Bangles suddenly morphed into Judas Priest’s, You Got Another Thing Coming.

If you’ve ever thought there’s anything more vulnerable than being naked with a woman you just met ten minutes prior who has a tongue depressor covered with hot wax coming at your backside, please direct message me.  We need to talk.

Reason #4 why writing is like a bikini wax:  Sometimes you just gotta put your ass out there.  It takes a lot of guts to expose your work to the world, to face the rejections and gracefully accept the accolades.  Keep doing it! 

I admire every single one of you.