Blah-Day Boyfriends

I'm having a major BLAAAHHHHH day. Chalk it completely up to PMS. I just want to lay in the recliner in my old-man, white V-neck t-shirt that has unidentifiable stains forever marking it and stretchy fatty pants. I have a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos in the kitchen, but getting them presents two problems to me. ONE: I'd have to get up to get them. TWO: My nails have no color on them right now and Cheeto stains are a bitch to get out from underneath fingernails. The birds chirping outside are grating on my last nerve and I got mad at the TV and turned it off. Whoever decided to name an infomercial "Pretty Women" should be slapped. Never tease me with a potential Richard Gere siting during the day.

 

UUUGGGGGHHHHH. Don't you hate days like this? Mike is sleeping because he's on midnights so thankfully, he's missing out on the July Festival of Whine taking place in my living room right now. I keep grumbling about it just being my upcoming period, but then I get mopey about that too because I'm supposed to get it sometime next week after I get to the beach. Vacation is supposed to be a joyous occasion. Who wants to spend it curled up in the fetal position while on a 7-Ibruprofen high? On second thought, every person who has ever had a hangover while on vacation can probably sympathize with me and it has absolutely nothing to do with shedding ovaries.

 

On a somewhat brighter note, I've been in contact with the design company that is going to make the ebook cover for my book. Check out her portfolio here. If you are an avid new adult romance reader like I am, you'll recognize her work. I basically freaked out when I got an email back from Sarah today (owner of the company). She's like a celebrity in my reading world. I've had many people ask me "what's your book about" and "when is it coming out". I don't want to give out any blurbs yet, but basically, it's a romance. BUT! A better description would be, "it ain't yo mama's romance novels". No, no, no. Nothing like 50 Shades. It's just a realistic love-ish story told from the twenty-something main character's POV. Hope that clears some things up for now. My cover designer is booked until February so I'm thinking I'll be able to release it sometime in late February, early March. The majority of my writing will be done by Halloween so the finished WRITING product should be good to go by Christmas. Y'all won't see it til after the first of the year. I have to set goals in the form of holidays to keep myself motivated.  

 

I'm thinking the only thing to make me somewhat chipper today would be to share my list of imaginary boyfriends. Technically, they aren't imaginary. They really do exist in real-life. They just don't know they're my boyfriends. Since I'm probably going to end up getting that bright orange bag beckoning me from the kitchen as soon as I finish this post and won't be able to type without leaving orange residue on the keyboard, I'll leave you with this. Be jealous. **Please note, there is a category for every sporting event I'm forced to watch every season. Hey, might as well make it worthwhile.**

 

Sexiest Man Alive Boyfriend AND Movie Boyfriend:
 

Chris Hemsworth

 

Country Singer Boyfriend:  

 

Florida-Georgia Line (the one on the right, NOT the long-hair one)



 

Redneck Boyfriend:

BAH-lake Shelton

 

Wrestling Boyfriend:

The ROCK



 

Black Boyfriend (not so much for his looks, but for his way with children. Also, because he has more money than the entire continent of Europe):

 

Jay-Z

 

My Not-Boyfriend:

Emma Stone

 

Quarterback Boyfriend (who I will be stalking out this Thursday in RIC):

 

Kirk Cousins

 













Longhaired Boyfriend:

Clay Matthews

 





Large & In Charge Boyfriend:

Rex Ryan

 

 

NASCAR Boyfriend:

 Kasey Kahne

 

Baseball Boyfriend:

Derek Jeter (DUH!)

 

TV Boyfriend:

 Chris Meloni aka STABLER

 

Sports Announcer Boyfriend:

GREENY

 

Comedian Boyfriend:

Bobby Moynihan (SNL)

 

Dead-Guy Boyfriend:

Fat Guy in a Little Coat



 









Old Man Boyfriend (IT'S A TIE between...

Bruce Willis

 

annnnnd

 

The guy from "Up"





 

Road Trip, Episode Two

The elevator dings open and we all rush out towards the courtyard. There is a sand pathway leading down to the beach and half of it is covered with a little bridge/walkway. You can't see the actual beach from the courtyard until you stand on the bridge, meaning, you can't see any dead bodies laying face-down in a sand dune unless you get up close and personal on the path. Somebody decides to call a husband at this point, because really, in the face of a situation like this, you want to call somebody from VICTORIA hundreds of miles away. Obviously, they're gonna do us a whole lotta good. I think the advice from them was to call 911 or something responsible like that.

 

Keep in mind, I've never seen a fresh dead body. I've seen a few cake-faces in caskets at family nights and visitations, but never one just randomly strewn about in public. Plus, whenever I awkwardly look over a casket, I departmentalize what I'm seeing and fake myself out by thinking it's just a mannequin or a wax figure. I can't cope with the whole "let's lean over into this box and see what's in there" because my luck would be "I'm leaning over into this box to see what's in there and BAM! the fake dead person jumps up and grabs my arm". Why do we do that, anyway? We all huddle around the casket, take baby-steps towards it, leeeeean over (without touching the thing because, well, ew) and stare into whatever or whoever is inside. Then we make some off-handed remark about "Oh, she looks good". WHAT?! Stop lying! You are looking at a person who is no longer livinnnngg!!! They can not possibly look anything remotely related to the adjective "good". Do yourself a favor and remember these 3 words when at a viewing: AVOID. AVOID. AVOID. Even if you find yourself in a line heading towards the thing, when you finally get there, nobody is paying attention to you so go ahead and find something else to focus on behind the casket instead of the actual non-living body. Do this and you'll save yourself the awkwardness of having to gaze longingly into the 'box o' dead' and furthermore, save yourself from sounding like a complete moron by making a ridiculous statement for the sake of making a statement. You're welcome.

 

Pardon my wandering mind. The 5 of us are walking towards the path. As we get closer, we see THE blue trashcan. This means Sandy Randy is laying somewhere in the vicinity. It's funny because we practically knocked people down to get down to this point yet the closer we get, the slower our steps are. We're inching across the path when one of us hollers out, "EWWWW there he is!" We stop in our tracks and lean across one another. Sure enough, our guy is laying in a lump a few feet from the path, just past the trashcan at the end of the bridge. Lynn, who is the Matlock, CSI, NCIS queen, boldly keeps going. The rest of us are kinda frozen where we are, making "ews" and "uggghss" and "gross" comments. Lynn turns back around and says something along the lines of "bring your @$$ up here" with that crazy-lady teacher face, so I shuffle up with her.

 

The two of us get close enough to the guy that if we had a yard stick with us, we could poke him. Both of our faces look like we just took a shot of tequila sans lime when we realize his britches are wet. Like...pee pee wet. Being the face of maturity that I am, I start giggling. Which makes Lynn start giggling. So the both of us are standing over this potentially seriously hurt human being giggling at the face that he's wet his pants in the midst of his impending death. Somebody whisper-yells at us "what's so funny" so I turn and whisper-yell back "he's peed his pants!" Ryann (I'm assuming, since she's the most medically-inclined person in our bunch) says "dead people excrete their bowels before they die". Which shuts us up pretty quickly. At this point, I think Lynn and I are holding on to each other as we lean a little closer to the man. We're watching...we're watching...and FINALLLLY we see his back move a little, like he's slowly inhaling and exhaling.

 

We realize he probably could've heard our entire conversation so we turn and haul tail back towards the courtyard. Once inside, we scramble towards the front desk. We see a guy working so I walk up to the counter. I explain to him that we saw a guy laying in the weeds from our room so we went down to investigate. We thought he could've been dead, so we came down to see. I tell him he's in fact NOT dead, but is just laying out there kinda sketching us out. Front desk guy replies, "Oh. That's just our friendly-neighborhood drunk. He hangs out around here all the time. He means no harm." To which I reply, "Oh." I turn back to my people, all of us looking dumbfounded. I say the only thing one can say after that 30 minute span of insaneness: "So where're we going for dinner?"

Amazon HATES Me

I figured I'd post this instead of blowing up everyone's FB newsfeed. Let's just say it's a MIRACLE I've even gotten published...because I have proven to God and everybody at Amazon that I don't know what I'm doing. I was over-the-moon excited to see my own Amazon page the other day that I made an author FB page and posted allllll sorts of stuff for my readers to do, then come to find out, I don't even know how to do half the stuff I told y'all to go do. LAWD.

Here's the info you need in a nutshell:

**You can only purchase my blog through Amazon at this time ONLY! ONLY! ONLY! if you have an actual Kindle.

**Even if you have the Kindle App on your phone (like I previously said you could do, putting foot in mouth now) you will NOT be able to buy it. Kindle Publishing doesn't offer a format needed to post blog articles. Which is INSANE, but what do I know? (Apparently, NOTHING.)

**For the many of you wanting to leave reviews, first of all, THANK YOU! Second of all, you can't leave one unless you purchase a subscription first...and remember, you can only buy if you have the actual Kindle device.

**Remember! You can always read my blog for free at www.thekristinconnection.blogspot.com and support me by "liking" by author page.

**I'm so sorry for any confusion I've caused. I obviously was so anxious to blurt out the word 'publish' that I didn't investigate for my people first.

I hope this clears things up for all of you who've sent texts and emailed me about wanting to buy/review. I'm so grateful for ALL of my readers and I'm so appreciative of the Amazon people I've talked to since Friday. Let's just say, a few days ago they had no idea Kristin Tanner Peebles existed...they are QUITE aware of who I am now, bless their hearts.

Road Trip, Episode One

Since I'm possibly taking part in an impromptu road trip at the end of the week, it's ridiculously hard for me to NOT reminisce on all road trips I've taken with the same group of people. Before I get into the actual story, I need to give a little background info so it's easier for you to follow along. My grandparents, Gregory Dean and Carol, or "GD" and "Kurl", aka Mammaw, aka "Mama Carol", aka "Mayor Watson" had three daughters.

 

Oh, you're wondering about the "mayor" in "Mayor Watson"? Yes, she's been the mayor of Victoria (my itty-bitty hometown) for 14 years. Is it an honorable or prestigious role? No. Do I tell people she's the mayor as my claim to fame? Yes. It's been a conversation starter for me for 14 years. "Oh, your Dad's the President of the United States? Well my GRANDMA is the mayor of a town! HOLLA." Does this embarrass her? Probably. Am I concerned about said embarrassment? No. Is she badass? Totally.

 

Moving on. Two of the daughters are twins. One of the twins is my mom. All 3 daughters had daughters first, then sons.  There have been many, many, many road trips (or Griswold-type adventures) when just Kurl, her daughters, and their daughters go off somewhere together for whatever reasons. This particular road trip, and probably the most memorable, took place in 2006 (I think) and included Kurl, my mom, my aunt Lynn, Ryann (who you should know by now if you've read other posts by me--if not, she's Lynn's daughter and my first cousin/BFF) and me. We were heading to Myrtle Beach for a long weekend in November. When we road trip, it's usually me driving, with my navigator (Ryann) sittin' shotgun, yelling at me where to go, turn, stop, etc. We never go to Myrtle Beach the same way twice, so all we knew about how to get there was to make it to the "Battleship" in Wilmington. (This was pre-Garmin, by the way). **Also, I must explain that as offspring of the Watsons, it's our natural behavioral adaptation to speak as loudly as possible in a group of people. AND! for the women in particularly, we have to "out-talk" each other which may involve increasing volume and dramatics while speaking all at one time. Now imagine all of that taking place in one vehicle with 5 Watson females.**

 

After being on the road for a few hours, a few missed turns, and a whole lotta hollerin' later, we knew we had to be close to the Battleship. If you go to MB this way, you know what the top of the ship looks like. It has a bunch of wires and poles and crap that I have no idea what for. As we all said, "we've got to be close!" multiple times, over and over, and still no sign of the thing, Mammaw starts randomly shouting out, "THERE IT IS!" whenever she saw the top of a cell phone tower hovering above the trees. Because this resulted in repeated eruptions of laughter inside the car, we were basically done before we even saw the damn ship. (For Christmas that year, I took a picture of a random cell phone tower and had it framed and captioned "Battleship at Wilmington" for Mammaw. (She was not amused.)

 

Once we finally reached the beach, checked in, yada yada yada, we were all standing on our 17th floor balcony gazing down at the beach. Driving for hours in a vehicle with the 5 of us is exhausting and stressful; thus we appreciated the calmness the breeze, sunset, and waves the beach provided. The next few seconds kinda went like this...

 

(The five of us standing side by side at the railing on the balcony, 17 floors up, mind you)

 

Lynn: What is that, in the weeds, near that blue trashcan?

 

Me: Yeah, I see it. What the heck...?

 

(All 5 at the same time)

 

Ryann: I think it's a...

 

Me: OH MY GOD

 

Lynn: Pretty sure it's a...

 

Kurl: What?! What is it! I don't see anything!

 

Lynette: IS THAT A MAN LAYING IN THE WEEDS?!

 

Me: YES! Is it moving?

 

Lynn: I don't think it's moving!!!

Ryann: Oh he's dead!

 

Annnnnd imagine about 5 more minutes of that, the 5 of us squinting down at the weedy part of the sand dunes where what appears to be a man laying down, hunched up, face first, into the sand. We were all watching silently and perfectly still to see if homeboy moved or not. After realizing that we were in fact seeing what we were seeing, we starting moving about, all aflutter, talking at the same time (surprise, surprise), about what we should do. The logical thing, looking back, would have been to call down to the front desk to let them know what we were looking at. But you see, you're dealing with the 5 of us. I mentioned before that Kurl was a badass. I neglected to mention that because we are all directly (and indirectly) the fruit of her loins, we too have the 'badass' gene. Naturally, we did the only thing badasses in this mysterious situation would do. We channeled Benson & Stabler (via Law & Order, SVU) and headed down to investigate. All 5 of us. Mama, Lynn, Ryann, me, and Kurl ('Mayor Watson' if you're nasty.).

 

Please stay tuned for Road Trip, Episode Two coming soon.

 

I'm a Professional

I just got out of the shower from a post-walk. As much as it pains me to admit, I have accepted that I am not going to be able to eat whatever I want, whenever I want without doing something to balance out the horrendous calories. I tried the kale diet. That went to kale. I did bootcamp--which WORKS, but I'm restricted to only "light" exercises from my doctors. We don't want to shake up anything that could be potentially growing down under. Basically, that leaves walking or doing nothing but watching my belly grow; not from a baby, but from Pepsi, sweet tea, and anything that has the last name 'Lay', first name 'Frito'.

 

I've been walking quite a bit since I got back from the beach the last week in June. Considering I always gain like 5 pounds while on vaca, I military dieted and walked like a crazy person the first week we got back. I felt like I had lost 15 pounds. Then I started my period. The scale only showed a 2 pound loss. Bitch. Since then, I've moderated what I've been eating and I've been walking everyday for an hour. I finally got courageous yesterday and looked. I'm down another 5 pounds. Too bad I leave for the beach again in 2 more weeks. It's a vicious cycle, I know.

 

Although I'm the biggest whiner and complainer when it comes to exercising, I'm a professional walker. I grew up in Victoria on Main Street that has a sidewalk parallel to it from one end to the other. All during high school and even for a few years after, Ryann and I would walk every night, weather permitting. If you left my house on Third Street, went to Central, turned back around and headed to Wright's, it would be like 4 miles. No wonder I was a size 10 and looked fabulous from the years 2001-2005. (Sidenote: I didn't realize this until I look at pictures from the years 2001-2005. I'm sure I thought I was 'fat' then too. Hey, I'm a girl. It's what we do.)

 

Since I've been walking lately by myself, I've had plenty of trips down memory lane. I also can't help but compare "going walking" now to "going walking" then.

 

This is the Evolution of a Professional Walker.

 

THEN: Ryann and I could carry on a conversation the entire walk, thus enabling us to talk crap about every person that passed us. Which was pretty much the entire population, considering we walked Main Street in VICTORIA.

 

NOW: I can barely listen to myself inside my head because the deafening noise from my heavy breathing echoes against the speakers in my ears.

 

THEN: We'd walk in short booty shorts and tanks.

 

NOW: I walk in too-big-for-me tshirts that cover me up and yoga pants/capris that prevent Chub Rub. Chub Rub is a serious medical condition that causes severe soreness, itching, and lack of important baby-making efforts.

 

THEN: It never failed. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME we walked, we'd get hollered at suggestively from sketchy black guys at Little Bee. Sketchy white guys riding by in sketchy Honda Civics with hubcaps missing. And let's not forgot sketchy rednecks that passed us at least 5 times a night and always hollered something mildly inappropriate.

 

NOW: All sketchy black guys, sketchy white guys, and rednecks look at me with concern, probably thinking, "Is that girl gonna pass out?" or "Why is she so red?"

 

THEN: We knew basically every person that passed us. We waved at practically every car that passed.

 

NOW: I live in a fairly middle class area but walk where the rich people live. Every car that passes me is a BMW, Mercedes, or is owned by a doctor. Plus, I'm pretty sure if you combined my age with Mike's age, we'd still be under the average age demographic for our area. These people are either too snobby to wave at me or are too old to even see me.

 

THEN: One of us would say, "Do you wanna keep going?" Then the other would say, "Sure, I'm good."

 

NOW: (to myself) "OMFG. Let me make it to the next mailbox. I'm good. Huff. Huff. OMG. What time is it? This is crazy. Huff. I can't breathe. I can't breathe! Is that a car behind me? Gasp. Huff. Huff. Let me suck in so I don't look that terrible in these spandex. (*sucks in*) Huff. Huff. DON'T SUCK IN! DON'T. SUCK. IN! Can barely breathe anyway, much less holding my breathe til the car passes. Huff. Huff. Huff. Okay. Next mailbox. What time is it now? Is that a rain cloud? I need to head back. I don't need frizzy hair on top of this already hot-mess. Huff. Huff. I can't breathe. Huff. Doc...tors say...you real..ly on..ly need..... 30 minutes...of...ex..er...cise a day...anyway. It's...been like...40. Can stop...at...any..time..now. Huff. Huff. Just make it to the next mailbox!

 

As you can see, many things have changed from walking when I was 17 to walking when I'm 27. At least I'm doing it, I guess. In addition to being a Professional Walker, I've also accredited myself with other Professional titles this summer.

 

Professional Paler: When at the beach, I'm a full on Professional Tanner. (I mean Christ on a cracker, that's even my middle name!) However, these cloudy days have been BS. I can literally see the color absorbing into my skin on a daily basis. IT'S JULY! Where is the SUN!?

 

Professional Hair Grower: I've always had pretty fast-growing hair. Not just on my head, but on legs and underarms as well. Since taking additional folic acid, I've discovered the hair on said places grows like freaking weeds. I shaved last night at 5:30pm. When I got in bed at 11:30pm, I already had stubble. Coming from a girl who only shaves her legs like twice a month in the winter, shaving twice a day is becoming a real drag. I'm often concerned that while walking, sketchy black guys, sketchy white guys, and sketchy rednecks are staring at me with concern because they think I'm wearing boots with the fur...yet it's just my crazy hairy legs sprouting over my Nike's.

 

Professional Reader: Okay, I'm ashamed. I started working on a book several months ago. I'm up to 20,000 words (YAY!) but I need like 90,000 to publish. In the past 3 days, I've read 4 books. Yes, yes. Admitting the problem is always the first step. While my book is good...and I mean GOOD! I keep comparing it to what my favorite books are and I'm psyching myself out. I've also found myself editing my favorite author's books which is a cool learning process for me and it helps me work out the snags I've found in my own story. When I reach 50,000, I have a small group of test-readers that I'm sending it to  to make sure its something people would actually buy. Hopefully, that'll be before the first of August. Which leads me to...

 

UNprofessional Writer: I have so many things in my head that I want to blog about but it literally takes me over an hour to bust out a post. I'm very critical of myself (HA! Bet you didn't know that, loyal blogger-followers!) so I'm constantly reading and rereading what I write before I click "publish". I get asked all the time about posting on a regular basis, like daily or weekly. I'd love to be able to do that, but let's be honest. I'm a total lazy ass. "99 chores but I ain't did one" kinda lazy. Also, I feel guilty for not writing where I SHOULD be writing. AND I feel guilty for not giving my other jobs as Professional Reader and Professional Tanner/Paler my undivided attention on these long summer days.

 

But like all true professionals I know, we eventually get the job done. It may kill me, but at least I'll be a richer, skinnier, and hairier Kristin who will probably be pushing a honkin' stroller on my walking route with a kid I can't talk to because I'll be out of breath. Also, because I know you still have your lips turned up in disgust--I shave *maybe* twice a week in the winter. I exaggerate for dramatic purposes if you didn't already know that.