A Week of Firsts or Hoochie Dancing is More Dangerous Than You'd Ever Believe

So I recently took my first kid-free flight for my first visit to New Mexico to be in a dear friend's wedding. While in New Mexico, I was treated to my first massage ever, an 80 -minute affair involving hot stones and oil and a strange sensation that my friend assured me was the normal feeling of relaxation one has during a massage. I also experienced my first mani-pedi combo, my first real sushi platter (yum), and my first hot-air balloon ride, which was amazing and surprisingly gentle at the end. The wedding was beautiful and the bride was breathtaking and the wine was really, really good, and the reception was a ton of fun, even after the DJ gave me a tambourine and a mic (two very gutsy moves on his part). Yes, it was an incredible trip, so much more than I ever could have planned on my own, even though I had another big-deal first on this vacation: my first broken bone.

Man, I wish I had a good story for my first broken bone! I wish I could say that a grizzly bear crashed the reception and started giving a really lame, drunken toast, and I broke my wrist wrestling the mic out of its paw. But no, the truth is, I shattered my wrist hoochie dancing. That's right: Hoochie dancing. I did a high kick, forgetting that my gown did not have a slit up the leg or any give in the hem, and I basically pulled my foot out from under myself, landing on my wrist. Everyone heard a bang and assumed I had hit my head on the cement; what they heard was the sound of my left wrist shattering. The rest of the evening is a jumble of memories: At some point the best man jokingly asked if I was having a seizure; I remember being told that I probably just bruised it; I saw an odd bump on my wrist and got so grossed-out that I passed-out, and then passed-out again when I tried to stand up... My husband carried me to our suite where I spent the rest of the night adjusting an ice pack and not sleeping. It wasn't until the next day, after breakfast (homemade blueberry-pine nut waffles), that I finally dragged my ass into convenience care to learn that my wrist was "pretty much shattered."

I would write more, but these short paragraphs have taken me over an hour to write already. Yeah, this is another first: My first one-handed blog post. Honestly, I thought it would be better. Oh, well. My next one-handed blog will be awesome, I promise. But for now, I'm just letting it go, and I'm giving-in to the Vicodin my lovely doctor prescribed to me.

If it slaps me in the face, I hope I'll recognize it...

I'm not going to blog about how much I dislike my job. Sure, it's fun, but I can't complain all the time, right? Besides, I haven't had to work much in the last few weeks, thanks to a demanding filming schedule, so I don't have any new horror stories anyway. Wait... Did I say "filming schedule?" Yes, I did. I make films. My dear friend Eric and I have logged many hours writing screenplays and making said screenplays into adorable little movies for the whole world to enjoy. We are currently scrambling to finish a short comedy about evil Michael Bolton-loving clones. This fall we plan on filming a short horror film we wrote almost two years ago, and there will also be more comedies to come. It is not currently a money-making endeavor, though we have confidence in our brilliance and our ability to make money with it someday. Here's a little taste of what we do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvBrWVys6hA&feature=channel_page

Yes, I love what I do. I've said this a few times about a few things in my life, but never about a paying job. See, when it comes to careers and things of that ilk, I'm a bit of a, well, I guess you'd say I'm a bit of a failure. I've struggled with this aspect of my life since the day I graduated from college. Part of the problem has been my own laziness, some of it has to do with my location and my degree (an English degree in my little town doesn't amount to much unless you want to be a teacher, which I don't), and there's also the fact that I share my life with three other people, so I can't just do whatever I want whenever I want to do it without regard for the consequences. Sometimes I wish I had concentrated on my career a little more before stepping into married life and motherhood. These things cannot be changed now, though, so I've decided to stop punishing myself for all the bad decisions I have made and to start making better decisions now. The difficult part of this is knowing which decisions are better decisions. Whenever I start thinking about careers and jobs and such, I feel like such a child. I don't know what the heck I'm doing, and it's embarrassing. All I do know is that I want to write, and that I want to get paid for it. I also know that I'm very good at solving my own problems, so I have faith in myself and my ability to get whatever it is I'm looking for. I guess the first step is to start looking, right?