{"id":332,"date":"2009-07-08T08:48:57","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T15:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=332"},"modified":"2025-11-08T09:30:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T16:30:16","slug":"conversations-with-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=332","title":{"rendered":"Conversations with Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was fascinating.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I went to the gym, per my usual routine.\u00a0 Got there before 6am and did my 30 on the elliptical.\u00a0 I’m reading a wonderful book so I can’t, just can’t do Gina’s suggested “Torture 12” (what Eithne and I call it)\u00a0 It’s the usual for 4 minutes then for 4 minutes we do 30 seconds of “let’s see if we can break the machine if we go super fast”, 3o seconds of normal then back to fast.\u00a0 Back and forth for 4 minutes, then we get normal for the last 4 minutes.\u00a0 We’re so out of breath we can only curse her name in our heads!<\/strong><\/p>\n

But the book is too good, a David (huh…a David, shrug) Weber anthology of little bits from all his series.\u00a0 A great way to see\u00a0a series before you start it.\u00a0\u00a0 Anyway,\u00a0after my 30 minutes I’m off to the weights.\u00a0 Usually I just use the machines but Gina’s got me brave enough to be one of those women standing in front of the mirror with all the guys and trying to not seem too uncoordinated.\u00a0 The key is to go slow so it looks like you really know what you’re doing ’cause you’re concentrating so hard.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But ow!\u00a0\u00a0 All day, everyday, ow!\u00a0 My shoulders and upper back are letting me know what I’m doing is working and they are lazily complaining!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Good, but ow!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Soooo, I’m leaving the gym and it’s almost two stories down of stairs.\u00a0 I always watch the people as they walk up to see their expressions.\u00a0 And today this guy stares at my feet the whole walk up.\u00a0 I’m grinning ear to ear because he’s obviously got a foot fetish and can’t take his eyes of my red manicured toes poking out of my black sandals.\u00a0 He never once looked at my face!<\/strong><\/p>\n

It flashes me back to\u00a0when I used to work at a pool hall as a waitress.\u00a0 (Flirty fun, lots of work and its amazing how good you ‘think’ you are at pool when you watch it all day…I suck at pool.)\u00a0 The oldest son of the owner had a thing for feet.\u00a0 So every day at least once during work I’d slip off my shoes, \u00a0flash him my toes and he’d dramatically fall to his knees.\u00a0 No, really!\u00a0 I do have adorable feet but probably only to those who love feet!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Poor guy, though.\u00a0 His lovely girlfriend wasn’t Armenian and to his Armenian family that was the worst thing he could date.\u00a0 And I wonder if it gave him a sense of freedom knowing he’d could tell her anything and blame his “I can’t marry you” crap on his family’s approval.\u00a0 I give it another generation…maybe two and the kids won’t care who they marry.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it happens with every immigrant group.\u00a0 ‘You can only marry a Chinese girl!’\u00a0 ‘What, he’s not Italian!’\u00a0 ‘Where are all the good Jewish girls!’\u00a0 All that falls to the wayside by the 3rd and 4th generation because the kids see themselves less as Italian and more as American and they’re now looking to connect with an American who thinks like them.\u00a0 Well, maybe not so much the Jews because that’s tied up in their religion and the fact being Jewish follows the mother…so if she ain’t Jewish you got a problem!<\/strong><\/p>\n

AANNNYYYway that was this morning.\u00a0 I popped home, did some quick emailing, popped the day’s blog up and readied the kids for the beach.\u00a0 Sandwiches, chairs, sunscreen, fruit, frozen juice, umbrella, boogie boards.\u00a0 Locked and loaded and off we went.\u00a0 Only 30 minutes behind schedule, risked the 5 with NO problems and got there in a hour.\u00a0 Loading the three kids up with stuff we managed only one trip from the car to the shore.\u00a0 After set up and sun screening we head for the water that they’ve been begging to hit since we arrived.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then its, “too cold!\u00a0\u00a0 Ewww, seaweed!” and whine and whine and wheres’ the wine!\u00a0 Convinced they’re too irritating to drown I head back to the beach chairs under the umbrella.\u00a0 It was windy…and cold…but it warmed up by the time we left!\u00a0 Had to leave early due to an appointment and I was worried over traffic because of the Michael Jackson funeral.\u00a0 Lucky me…got none of it and we had time enough to pop in at home before we headed out so I could get my laptop and ‘rip’ more words out of Cat.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m becoming quite the slasher on my novel.\u00a0 “We don’t need that scene!” I savagely yell out while this little voice says, “But that really develops Samuel’s uncertainty…”\u00a0 Screw Samuel…he’s fine!\u00a0\u00a0 See, words gone and he’s fine…blissfully pleased he’s boinking Cat!\u00a0 Onward!\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Truthfully I’m at the part of the 1st full day and 2nd night and the novel really slows here so I’m being very brutal in my condensing.\u00a0 I realize I wrote it as if I’d lived it.\u00a0 Which is great for the important scenes but I was filling almost every moment with interaction and conversation.\u00a0 It’s like tagging along while the hero rides to the rescue (which takes hours) and he and his sidekick just kick the conversation around.\u00a0 Some parts might be funny, even interesting, but the reader’ll get bored ’cause there ain’t no action.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By the time I got home from the appointment, kids in tow, car unpacked, stuff de-sanded and dinner cooked\u00a0 (Okay, heating up corndogs isn’t hard but it counts as cooking to me!)\u00a0 I.\u00a0 WAS.\u00a0 Exhausted.\u00a0\u00a0 Physically.\u00a0 Mentally my brain is going on and random things, per usual.\u00a0 So I thought, hell, let’s blog it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because the above is what its like to have a conversation with me, although you do get a word in…its just edgewise.\u00a0 I bebop about, bringing up unusual things that happened to me, which brings up a funny story from my past, which segways into a personal opinion piece.\u00a0\u00a0 And all of you who’ve experienced talking one on one with me know just how true that is!\u00a0 I think it’s one of the reason I so enjoy meeting strangers.\u00a0 Not only are they fascinating characters in waiting but they are unsuspecting willing recipients of my entertainment side.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In other words…they haven’t heard ANY of my stuff!<\/strong><\/p>\n

UPDATE:\u00a0 I just HAD to add this.\u00a0 Almost a year and a half after writing this blog I was single and met a man who KNEW the pool-hall, foot-fetish guy.\u00a0 That brave Armenian man married his Latina love and they had 2 kids.\u00a0 My friend dated for quite a while their little sister.\u00a0 Tells you how progressive this family was, my friend was Black!\u00a0\u00a0 So cool.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Today was fascinating. I went to the gym, per my usual routine.\u00a0 Got there before 6am and did my 30 on the elliptical.\u00a0 I’m reading a wonderful book so I can’t, just can’t do Gina’s suggested “Torture 12” (what Eithne … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3453,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions\/3453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}