"And now you can say what you needed to say/ And that's just a risk you're willing to take"

...... and send.

Oh. My. Gosh. I did it. I sent the book to my sister. My hands are actually shaking as I type this. But I'm trying to tell myself that if my own sister doesn't like it (and there is a character based on her), then no agent, editor, potential reader would ever like it, so might as well jump over this hurdle now. * deep breath * This thing has been sitting on my desktop for a week and I just couldn't find the courage to send it. But now it has soared through interwebs all the way to Seattle and has been received by sister's Gmail account and is sitting there, waiting to be read. Yikes.

Well and one big prompt was the fact that our desktop computer crashed yesterday and even though I've been saving the book on a flash drive (this is honestly the number one question I get asked about the book: "Do you have it saved somewhere else than your laptop?" Do you people think I'm an idiot? On the other hand, maybe you do, and now you'll be impressed with the book even if it's just mediocre. Win?) it will be an additional form of insurance to have it sent to my sister in a PDF and MS Word doc. Just in the event a contagious, icky, mean, hell-bent computer virus is creeping around our house. Gotta play it safe.

Oh and as a little bonus for you reader, since why should my sister get all of the fun, the title of the book is * da da daaaaaa* Square One. I've actually used that phrase in a couple of posts as a little hint (I'm like the writers on LOST, I just give you a little bit and it's so small you probably didn't even realize it. But I DID use it in the "guess the title" post so I did give some fair warning). I don't know why I was so secretive about the title. It's not like you can really take anything away from that. But if you want to try, sure. Go crazy about guessing the plot.

Okay, time to be a in a perpetual state of almost vomiting while I wait and worry. * fingers crossed *

UPDATE: So far so good. Our resulting gchat conversation:

LA: i just opened it. square one- cute! ooh, annie, i have all the answers. i'm going to leak it!

me: NO! you cannot

LA: ooh, i love it. i just started, i couldn't help myself. i'm on page 2. this is so exciting!

me: haha thanks. did the first sentence hook you? i tried really hard

LA: why am I nervous? yes, it did

me: YES. thanks

Well at least she's liked the prologue so far.

"I just can't enough of you baby"

How about a little "Friday Favorites" post? Okay! Here are a few of my new favorite things. Well, three of my new favorite things to be exact.

1. These cookies are heaven. I mean if it says Trader Joe's in the name, it has to be good. And you read the label and you think "150 calories for 12 cookies? I can eat twelve of these things? That's awesome. Nom nom nom. Wait, so was that my eleventh or twelfth? Well I might as well make it fifteen, I mean what are a few extra calories?" They are delicious! And the reason there is so much table in the picture is because since I already tweeted this a few days ago, I didn't want everyone to be able to see how many cookies are missing in a few days' time. Seriously, they are addicting.

2. The iPhone app Angry Birds. There is a free version with six levels and then a full version for 99 cents. You use a slingshot to launch birds (some have special abilities) at these towers to cause stuff to crash down and kill the pigs that stole your eggs. Oh my gosh. It's addicting. I was playing when my nieces were over and they were watching me and laughing at how the pigs grunt when they get hit (I also screamed in excitement when I finally beat a tricky level and niece MG did a victory dance for me). Some levels are easier than others and sometimes your best approach is just to launch the birds at the same spot over and over to weaken the structure. I wish I could say I was kidding when I say I was up for a hour before bed playing this game to the point that my eyes were actually closing while playing and then I may have dreamt about the game, but I can't. It happened. I never pay for apps so it says a lot of I coughed up the dollar (this and Blocked are the only two I have ever purchased for the record)

Meet Lauren, Emily, Payson, and Kaylie.

They will be your newest obsession.

3. Make It or Break It. Mondays @ 9pm on ABC Family. This one I stumbled across when I was sick on the couch that one weekend and nothing was on. I mean, I loved gymnastics when I was little and took lessons and it's probably my favorite sport still, so why not? OBSESSED. It follows four girls (and their parents) who are on the training at The Rock in Boulder, Colorado in hopes of going to the 2012 Olympics:

-You've got Payson Keeler, the determined, stubborn, overachiever who is the best bet for the gold. But she has a herniated disc in her back which is standing in the way of her dreams and starts shooting up cortisone shots behind her parents' back.

-Then you have Kaylie Cruz, the girly girl who has a lot of charisma but not as much drive. She's in a relationship with one of the boys at the gym when dating is forbidden. Sneaking around and lying ensues.

-Then you've got Lauren Tanner, the spoiled manipulative girl who will do everything to get ahead and do anything to get what she wants (mainly her best friend's boyfriend).

-And finally there is newcomer Emily Kmetko, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks who was discovered at a playground and brought to The Rock on scholarship and she trying to prove herself.

It's the parents and adults where you see some familiar faces. Full House alum DJ Tanner (Candance Cameron Bure) makes her return as super-Christian Summer who manages the gym and dates a number of the male characters. The lady who played Roz on Frasier (Peri Gilpin) is Payson's mother. I have a bit of an issue with her: mainly the way she talks and takes pauses and her accent. .... ironic since she was radio host on her previous show. And a couple of LOSTies are here too! Goodwin (the married dude who was sleeping with Juliet and pretended to be a Tail-Ender and got a stick through the chest thanks to Ana Lucia) plays Payson's dad. And Namoi (the British chick who jumped out of the helicopter with a picture of Desmond and Penny and got a knife in the back thanks to Locke) plays MJ, a sports agent dealing with some of the girls. So familiar faces all around.

Out of the four girls, I'm the biggest fan of Kaylie. Payson is a little closed-minded for my taste, Lauren does some bad stuff, and Emily is a whiner. Out of the parents, I like Emily's mom, Chloe the best cause she is trying her best to make her daughter's dream come true even if that means she has a crummy job to pay for leotards and warmup suits.

But the ladies aren't the only reason to tune in, the boys are as well: Kaylie's boyfriend, Carter = adorable. The three guys fighting over Emily (though the fighting over Emily part I don't understand): Razor, Leo, and Damon = awesome times three. Nicky Russo, the male Payson Keeler who is the #1 male at the gym = good lookin. The only downsides are the girls' fathers. Lauren's dad is hands down the most annoying character on the show and you really wonder who he was sleeping with to get a part on this show cause he cannot act at all.

OH and the true reason this show is AMAZING is the coach, Sasha Belov (Neil Jackson): a former Olympic gold medalist who dropped out of the gymnastics world for unknown reasons for several years and then comes back to be a renegade coach at The Rock. He has chemistry with almost every female character on this show because he is so smoldering and attractive, he just can't help it. I hope they don't make him have a relationship with one of the younger girls but I wouldn't be surprised because the chemistry is there cause this guy is smoking. He is English, hot, and supportive yet gives the girls some tough love when they think boys and the prom are more important than their careers. I'll just leave you with a picture cause all of my words don't do him justice:

Sigh.

Honestly, I just love this show. Sure it doesn't have the most complex characters and the plot can be contrived at times but we are dealing with 17 year old girls here. There is drama, heartache, cheating, infidelity, backstabbing, and a whole bunch of other awesome stuff. All I'm saying is, if you have nothing to do on a Saturday and see a marathon is on, maybe just stay on the channel. Or actually don't cause then you are going to be addicted and run over to your computer to watch all the episodes on Hulu and become addicted like some people. Not speaking from personal experience of course. But here's a preview from the first episode so you can decide for yourself! Don't say I didn't warn you.

Wow, I talked about MIOBI a lot. But I'm off to watch another episode, so it really makes sense.

"Tell me how I'm supposed to breathe with no air/ Can't live, can't breathe with no air"

My sister LA's daughter NP is turning one in a few days (crazy!) and she asked me and my mom for some ideas for kid games at the birthday party. It has a cupcake theme. The following exchange took place:

Me: How about something with balloons and they can be the cherries on top of the cupcake?!

My mom: No, nothing with balloons. Little kids can choke on them.

Me: Well, why don't you just take the air right out of my idea?

YES. This is the type of humor you have to look forward to in the book. Did your hopes just deflate (oops, I did it again!)?

I'm not going to lie. I am a dork (and I realize it is "wind out of my sails". I had to make it work, okay?) and laughed so hard at my own joke and my mom and LA's reactions that I actually made myself cry. Well I was also crying cause I knew it was so terrible but I just couldn't help it.

"I'm like a bird/ I'll only fly away/ I don't know where my soul is/ I don't know where my home is'

Twenty-five out of twenty-eight chapters done for the second round of editing. I have never been so sick of myself in my life. Reading words I wrote, characters I created, little lines I thought were so cute and witty--- I hate it all. And it's not even like I can simply skim over it. I have to actually read it for little mistakes like "begin" when it should really be "being". Ugggggh. But apparently you are supposed to really hate and lose faith and never want to look at the book again for a few months before sending it out. So that's good news cause I am totally there.

I basically spent my entire weekend at Starbucks editing. I would start off so enthusiastically: "Oh I am starting on chapter 6. I can probably make it to chapter 20 in a few hours and call it a night." ...Two hours pass... "Oh no, I'm only on chapter 8. How did I waste two hours on two stinking chapters. Okay let's try to make it at least to chapter 15." ... Two more hours pass... "Chapter 12 is done? Okay, all finished for today."

But I mean really, it is 359 pages and 111,043 words. TOO. MUCH.

Do you enjoy little stories about my stupidity when it comes to editing? Well here come some!

- Leaving off the "-n't" completely changes the sentence. Obvious? Yes. But I know what I am trying to say but sometimes I don't read what I've actually written. I've made this mistake at least twice in crucial sentences.

- I have a lot of "gripping" in the book. Seats, chairs, podiums, tables, banisters. But I guess that makes sense since my characters don't breathe properly. They need all the help they can get.

- ERRONEOUS COMMAS. Seriously, I use them like they are going out of style and I found them on super clearance with an additional fifty percent off. I have to stop.

- There are only so many ways to say someone wraps/ curls/ slung their arm around your waist or shoulders. And I pretty much just listed the three ways to do it.

- Luckily in my Advanced Composition class (a fancy way of saying non-fiction writing) we talked about editing and how to get the most punch out of a single sentence by omitting unnecessary words (even though we students argued that we put in the fluff to meet the teacher's ridiculous page/word length requirement). But this has come in handy while editing especially in terms of possession and the word "of". Why say "the edge of the table" when you can just say "the table's edge"? Sure it only saves me two words but multiply that by 1,000 and this thing is probably 2,000 words shorter than it could have been.

- And thank you B'Way in AP English for teaching me not to split the infinitive. See? I even did it just now: "not to split" instead of "to not split".

- "Just" is still a problem. But I've just accepted it by this point. And no I did not purposely use it just then. Or then. I'll stop now.

- Definitely found a few spots where I used my sibling's real name instead of their character name. Most certainly will be doing a search of each person's name before this whole thing is done. So pretty much in three hours.

- Two of my favorite words I like to use: Nonetheless and albeit. Don't know why I love 'em but I do and always have.

- I have overused the word "surprised" and its synonyms. Apparently my characters are easily impressed (well, that or dumb).

- And the absolute worst part of editing: I have the scenes so clearly imagined in my head. I know what I need to say, I know what I need to get across. So I will be editing and find a word that I don't care for. So I think for a minute before coming up with an awesome new amazing word. So I delete and replace the stinky word with the new word. I give myself a mental pat on the back and continue on my way. Only to skip down three lines and... oh... I already used the perfect word here. So that's why it seemed so perfect. And it's back to square one.

And seriously, people watching at Starbucks never disappoints. Yesterday the terrible twosome reappeared with their mom and her much younger boyfriend/fiance who felt the need to make out in the middle of the place. Classy. I also found out the satanic children's names and am fighting the urge to change my brother's name in the book since it is the same as one of the little demons. Here were the highlights from our encounter:

1. The older boy came in and yelled, no, make that screamed, at one of the workers that he needed a cup of water. George the Worker held up a finger (not the one I would have chosen) and said "One minute, I'm with a customer". Well the kid kept screaming until finally someone else got him the cup. Which he promptly took to a table and wrenched the lid off and spilled, I'd say, 1/4 of its contents on the table and floor, stuck his straw with the paper still on it into the cup, and ripped off the now wet paper and threw it on the ground. It was at this point that I actually gave the children, yes children, dirty looks. They were behaving horribly and I was appalled.

2. The younger boy was eating a brownie or a cupcake or something and dropped it on the ground. The older brother stepped on it with his shoe and mushed it onto the floor, refusing to lift his foot. The little boy still ate it when it was finally relinquished two minutes later (he also spent these two minutes spinning in circles directly next to me yet again).

3. I did see the mom's boyfriend/ fiance throw the kid down in a chair outside and grab his face and scream at him for sliding across the hood of the mom's convertible. But it was probably more so for doing potential damage to the car as opposed to actually disciplining the little hellion.

Fortunately, the kids weren't there today (Just for the record, the first time I wrote that sentence, I forgot the "-n't". I have a problem). But I did get to encounter this:

Yeah, that's a parrot (that talks and scratches its master's head with his beak) in the middle of Starbucks. Does this not violate some type of health code? My best friend in high school was terrified of birds. It's a relatively common fear. I sort of wanted to see someone freak out. One lady kept her distance while clutching her chest but that was the best I got.

There was also a high school aged looking girl (named Haven, I saw it on her notebook) who sat down with what I assumed was her dad at the table next to me. Haven kept turning around and looking over her shoulder in my direction. There is no way to make some feel more self conscious than doing this 50 times in 10 minutes. You can think I'm exaggerating but I happened to look at the seconds on my clock right when it was a new minute and I thought, hey just for kicks, let's count how many times in 60 seconds she looks over. I didn't pick a particularly active minute just to prove a point. It was a completely random minute. How many times in sixty seconds? FOUR TIMES. Multiply that by the 30 minutes she was sitting near me and I actually fought the urge to ask her to switch seats with her dad so she would at the very least stop glancing over her shoulder and could just look straight ahead and out the window. At first I thought she was just trying to see the parrot since the man did go outside but then I guess she was just waiting on her math tutor to get there. Haven, staring is rude but so is blogging about strangers so who I am to talk?

Oh and way to get your act together Atlanta. BEAUTIFUL weather this weekend. Hard to believe there was snow on the ground a week ago. Let's keep it in the sixties this week, please!

"When all you've got to keep is strong/ Move along, move along like I know you do"

Round one of editing: Done! And what does that mean exactly? Wellll, I knew going into it there were certain chapters where I was going to have to increase the description and detailing because I sort of slacked on it in the beginning. And there was a certain aspect were I needed more examples of it, so I had to write it. So I've now increased the final page count to 356 (ten page increase) and the word count is 109, 643. Do you know how insane that word count is? I think that once you go over 100,000 it can't even show it in the little box anymore. I broke Microsoft Word!

Speaking of Microsoft Word: They need to release a hip, updated, down-with-today's-lingo version. I ran spell and grammar check for the first time today and it seriously took forty-five minutes. And more often than not I was hitting "ignore" as opposed to taking one of their suggestions. Words that should be included and not get the squiggly red line of death:

-iPod, earbuds, and playlists. Yes, iTunes does play a role in the book. :)

-Woah, Geez, and "oh my gosh". For some reason "oh my gosh" gets the green grammar squiggle. Not sure why.

-homegirl, douchebag, skank. Terms of endearment? Nah.

-Lip gloss. No hyphen necessary.

-No space necesssary in "Coldplay" or "gameday"

- Text, texted, texting. Oh geez, the red is freaking out on here too. THEY ARE WORDS. Text messaging is a main form of communication today, just accept it Microsoft.

Also, I heard on What Not to Wear or maybe my sister told me after hearing it herself that purple is a color that compliments virtually every skin tone. Some of my friends (I'm looking at you HW and NV) have some of the cutest dresses I have ever seen. The color of previously mentioned dresses? Purple! So apparently, I've remembered this fact in my subconscious because anytime I've mentioned a skirt, dress, top, nailpolish on any of the female characters, what has the color been? Purple. And I feel like I'm now overcompensating on overusing purple and now it's almost been completely eradicated. I wish I could be cool and "a producer on LOST-like" and have it so that the colors are symbolic of the mood or represent an action but, I'm not that cool.

Literature also plays a role in the book and I really wanted to be cool like they are on LOST and have the books mentioned mirror themes in the book. But since I'm sort of not 100 percent sure what my "theme" is, I couldn't really accomplish that. Maybe in the next one, if there is a next one.

Also, a little vent time: I really don't care for parents who treat Starbucks like it is a playground for their kids. There are no clowns, animatronic mice or happy meals here, so please leave. This one lady, I've seen her around before and I'm sorry but she has always seemed a little strange to me. Anyway, she comes in today, by herself, and then starts talking to this other woman. A good five minutes later, her children who had apparently been playing outside unsupervised came waltzing in. They had little toy guns and were shooting people and running back and forth down the pathway in the restaurant. There is another woman who frequents Starbucks and has a cane so she has trouble walking (she gets the VIP treatment from the employees) and one little boy crashed right into her, causing her to be off balanced. Any apology from him or the mother? Nope. She is too busy yapping at the table in the complete back of the store. One little boy stood about three inches away from my table and spun in circles for two minutes straight, obstructing the path through the restaurant. It was at this point that I seriously contemplated getting out my phone and taking a picture and tweeting it. I wouldn't have even been discreet. If he (or his mother) saw me I would have said "Yeah, I'm sharing with the world what a little brat you/your kid is. You should be embarrassed." And the little boys were playing outside, again unsupervised, where there are cars and potential kidnappers. One kid was climbing onto the newspaper stand and pretending to shoot his little brother. These kids were only 4 and 6 for the record by my guesstimate. So then the four year old came in and told his mom he was thirsty and she gave him her debit card and told him to get it himself. Are you serious? A four year old? And then this sweet grandmother lady was there with her two grandkids (who were perfectly behaved) and the boys are running around and she said to the barista "I don't know who they are with" because she too was befuddled by the complete lack of parenting and supervision by their supposed mother. I seriously think you should have to pass a test or take a class or something in order to become certified to be a parent. It was truly appalling. And I have no problem with children. I have seven nieces. I've worked at a day camp. I babysit. There was even a precious little girl yesterday at Starbucks, toddling around and picking up bags of coffee and putting it back. She was precious with her little curls and light up pink sneakers. These little hellions today though, they were an entirely different story.

Oh I also apparently have a "Attention Creepy Old Men: PLEASE Talk to Me!" sign on my forehead that I am unaware of. Well this man wasn't creepy but he came up to me the other day and started telling me how he has owned several different Macs and apparently one like my iBook but it had a seam on the keyboard so he sent it back to the store. Are you confused? I was too so I just nodded my head along until he had to leave after a few minutes. Another old man raced up to me and asked if I was on the internet. I said no and that you have to pay to use it and he corrected me by saying you need a card and then just walked off. It was strange. Oh and there is a man who makes me think of Ralph Lauren and he is super nice when we have to share the outlet. I like him.

And seriously some of the conversations you overhear when your iPod is switching to the next song are unbelievable. There was a lady with a crystal hanging over a map or diagram of some sort and yelling on her phone with a client who had apparently lost someone and was very upset. Why she chose to do her line of work in the middle of a corporate company like Starbucks and not out in nature is beyond me. She also asked Mr. Fake-Ralph-Lauren if he had ever lost someone. Maybe I left out the part where Ralph Lauren is at least 65 if not 75. He answered his parents and she replied "I just knew it". Thank you Captain Obvious. Cause a 70 year old is still going to have his parents around. And they talked some mumbo-jumbo for a few minutes. And then I heard the tail of a story where she said when she turns 60 later this year she is going to get a tattoo on her butt that says "I Love Steve" cause she made a bet with herself when she was 40. She was a whackadoodle.