Saturday Mornings

DISCLAIMER: Below is a rant which includes me swearing for effect. I do that a lot when ranting.  Do not read past this point is you have problems with swearing or excessive complaining.

I am not a morning person. If you have ever met me, you can tell that. I am never pleasant in the mornings unless they occur after the hour of noon. Even if you give me a gallon of mocha with my wake-up call, I will probably still throw things at you for waking me up in the first place. Even after drinking my daily coffee, it still takes a little over an hour for me to stop feeling like a bitch.

I have never been a morning person. Even at the tender age of eight I was able to stay up until three and sleep until noon or later. I will never stop being a morning person. [By God, if I ever have kids they will naturally be night owls. If not, they can entertain themselves until I feel like dragging myself out of bed on a Saturday morning.]

Unfortunately, I live in a house of people filled with morning birds. My mother goes to the gym everyday at 4.30, my father is at work by 5.30, and my little brother, age 13, is anywhere between 6 and 7.30, no matter the day. None of them drink coffee. Yet, they are annoyingly conscious at ungodly hours.

The only other night person is my 20-year-old brother. Lucky for him, he lives in the basement and is able to beg out of any early morning procedure by claiming he was up late for work or studying.

Tomorrow is Saturday. This is what I should be able to do on Saturdays:

:opens eyes, stretches, looks at clock: Oh, look, it’s 12.30. Lovely. I want a coffee.

This is what tomorrow will look like:

8.15 --: Father knocks on door: Get up! I need your help.

            Me: No. Go away.

8.30 -- :Father opens door: Get up, let’s go. I warned you.

            Me: It’s still not nine.

8.45 -- :Father pulls blanket off me: Up and at ‘em! We have work to do.

            Me: :throws sharpened pencil/hardcover book/pillow at him:

9.00 -- :Father storms in screaming: Let’s go. NOW! I warned you last night. I am not going to argue this with you.

            Me: And I told you that there was no way in hell I was getting up this early. I’m tired. Go away.

After that it becomes a flurry of varied, indiscernible argument between me and my father. He usually threatens to do something, and I tell him that I don’t care.

He is determined to win. I am determined to sleep more.

Each week ends up a little differently.

Here’s to hoping that I get to sleep to a time closer to acceptable than 9 am.

Fingers crossed,

Sami

On a side note: I haven’t slept in at all this summer because I have either had to go to school or my Father has found something for me to do. Father knows this, I have told him, yet he still insists that I sleep enough and I need to get up.

Another note: Every single week he does this. He wakes me up when I am tired and I am unpleasant. He yells at me for being bitchy. (He does not use that word but that’s basically what he means.) I inform him that if I was allowed to sleep to a reasonable time I would be slightly more pleasant. I get yelled out for talking back. Rinse and repeat seven days later.

My family and I have a rather combative relationship at the moment. 

In which I say a whole lot about nothing...

Today, I spent a lot of time dealing with relationships. And, to be honest, it's a little overwhelming.

Don't get too excited, I have friends who read my blog, so I'm not going to name drop or anything. But I was blocked trying to write on my new(ish) story, and couldn't seem to get any editing done on the other precious that has been claiming my attention.

I don't believe in writers' block, but I had all of this information swimming around in my head and couldn't get anything substantially helpful written. Right, enough with my circular explanations, on to the point.

I dealt with three types of relationships today: happy, wishful, and fictional.

Relationship type #1: Happy and Stable

I spent over an hour listening to a friend of mine talk about how happy she is with her new boyfriend and how she thinks she is falling in love with him. It was all very touching. Really, it was. I mean, I love her and I did (technically) say that I didn't mind hearing her gush, but come on. I am truly glad that you are happy with your bf. I can see that you are on the point of giddiness. And I except that. (Which is a hard thing for me to do.) But you told me the exact same thing last Thursday sans a few details.

Congrats on you happy, now I think that I am going to go back to stressing over minor things and dealing with others that aren't quite as stable as you. Pardon me...

Which brings us to Relationship type #2: Wishful

I have a lot of friends. And they are mostly high school girls. Which means that they are destined to have a new crush every three months. I can't blame them for that, it's all those hormones and genetic probability. Unfortunately, as I am seen as the most emotionally stable (but also detached), I get the wonderful pleasure of listening to every. single. one.

And lately, there seems to be an excess number of times that I have deal with you wishing that X-guy notices you. In general, I can handle most of this. But the thing that really got me today was when I almost made one of clichéd bored, best friend comments about, I didn't. I was nice and held my tongue. This seemed to bother [name redacted]. She kept insisting that I tell her what I was thinking. I did not though because in the long run I knew that if I did, bad things would have happened. (Look Mum I'm learning to filter what I say.)

Moral of the story is that during this entire time (and many other times when I have to listen to friends moon after guys) I kept wanting to scream "RAWR! I UNDERSTAND THAT YOU HAVE A CRUSH, BUT IS IT AT ALL POSSIBLE TO TALK ABOUT IT WITHOUT GETTING STARRY EYED AND SOUNDING DESPERATE?"

Then again, some might argue that I'm insensitive and a horrible person. I would argue back that they need to ¡cállate!


Relationship #3: Fictional


I like this relationships the most because the characters end up with who I want them to end up with and generally do what I tell them to.

When they don't we get into heated arguments that they usually win.

But at least they will listen when I tell them to shut up and go take a nap.

When the characters don't want to do that I threaten to kill them off later on, terribly breaking their romantic interests heart, but I don't care because I'm just their cold, detached author who makes them up in my head.

Most of my characters with do what I plan out for them.

That is why I like fiction more than reality. Though it may also be why people legitimately think I am crazy.

THE END

P.S. I swear I have a caring heart somewhere but sometimes the love is suppressed by all of the layers of stress, exhaustion, and cynicism.
I'm off to do some happy writing now.

I READ YA FICTION!

So, last night (June 4) the Wall Street Journal posted an article that basically spent 3,000 words talking about how Young Adult fiction is horrible for children, and that the genre should be shanked.

Let's talk about all the problems I had with this article.

It started at the first line....and continued until the end.

There is not need to pull the article about bit by bit because there was nothing good in the article. It is faulty journalism spouting a bad argument with irrelevant sources. Did you see a actual young adult YA reader quoted? Did you? DID YOU?


I started shaking in anger and frustration when I read this article. I would have started swearing at my computer had the majority of my household had not been sleeping.

Fortunately, the YA book industry (including its readers) are not ones to sit by and "ignore the bully" as my mother and various teachers told me in elementary school. No, the internet took things into their own hands and created YASaves.

Headed by YA authors such as the fabulous Libba Bray and Maureen Johnson, teens and other YA readers began sharing how YA lit has helped and inspired them.

Using the hashtag #YAsaves, a rebuttal article was practically written, showing WSJ and the author of the article that YA literature isn't harming teens, it's making us stronger and overall better people.

Less than 20 minutes after creating the hashtag, #YAsaves rose to number 3 on Worldwide Trending Tweets and stayed there for almost two hours. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I retweeted many of the responses that I read.  I spent over an hour just reading tweets from both readers like me and big name authors like Cassie Clare, Jay Asher, and the instigators themselves, Libba and Maureen.

YAsaves has shone a light on what's been there all along. YA fiction regularly features dark subjects: rape, abuse, cutting, depression, death, addiction, etc. But all that it does is write down what is happening in reality.  It gives teens a refuge and someone to connect with.

I get frowned upon by a lot of my "intelligent" friends at school because I read YA. They see it as "fluffy" and not real literature. Regular teen stuff. And, according to them, YA lit is below them.

This really, really bothers me. I read YA lit and I'm not afraid to admit it. In fact, I'm proud to be a part of such a great community of readers and writers.

YA lit has helped me through some things that people weren't able to. It has opened my eyes to human nature, friendship, love, communication, emotion in ways that are concurrently simpler and more complex than life itself.

The YA genre takes a lot of crap, from banners to pretentious adult lit readers and writers to the librarian who was around before the genre was created. But taken a face value, YA lit has had a ton of impact on a lot of people. I would argue (and commonly do) that YA fiction is the greatest genre because it shows relevant issues with relatable characters that both inspires controversy and community connection.

YA fiction is hurting teens, it's helping them. In more ways than anybody could ever know.

YA saves. If you don't believe me, or don't want to, go read the thousands of tweets in response to the WSJ article. But believe it. Because YA fiction is probably the reason that several of your friends, siblings, cousins,  classmates, etc are still here and sane.

#YASaves