an embarrassment of exclamation marks

so i thought i'd come here tonight and be inspired by having read my post from a few days back, "music." it was a really good one!

"maybe i can do that again," said claire.

type the blogger url, type my user name, use my phone to confirm because for some reason it doesn't want to ask me my password, and there i am looking at my list of posts.

and just a crazy number of them recently have ended in exclamation marks.

"what???" asked claire, rhetoriconfusedly. "why have i been using so many exclamation marks?"

i'd like to think it's because i was just excited every single one of those times. i'm a pretty excitable gal, you know. (i just spent a minute and a half trying to decide whether there should be an exclamation mark on that sentence. i meant to put one there as i was finishing it up, but then i got self-conscious.)

i blame msg for this pickle i'm in now. he told me once that some writer's advice was, never use more than one exclamation mark in a story. which, to me, wow, that's obviously not enough exclamation marks. the idea, blah, blah, blah, was that if there's only one it will stand out and have more meaning and impact, but if there are several, none of them will seem like a big deal.

i want my exclamation marks to be a big deal!

but did that one right there have less impact because i used one back in paragraph one?

and do all those exclamation marks in my post titles make people think i'm some kind of wacko who's constantly shouting everything at the top of her lungs?

and am i really worried about any of this stuff, or is this just a way to fill up another post so i'm closer to breaking my most-posts-in-a-year record?

whoosh.

"okay, claire, take a good hard gander in the mirror and figure out what the deal is with all this exclamation mark business!"

well. look at that, would you?

i'm a pretty good-looking person, you know? i mean, not to toot my own horn, but actually very hot. those deep green eyes ... i can see why msg loves staring into them.

there's something special about this girl in the mirror in front of me.

i think i need to remind myself of that more often.

"be that girl," claire told herself. "remember that she's the world to somebody. that she's unique. that no one else is her, and since no one else is, she really, really needs to be herself."

which, honestly, is where the exclamation marks came from.

i'm an exclamation mark kinda girl.

seriously!

good advice from a girlfriend!

so i came in just as ariel was about to shut down from posting on her journal blog, and she asked if i wanted her to leave the computer on so i could write a post here. (she knows i'm shooting to break last year's record of 36 posts in one year.)

and i said, "i don't know ... i do want to break my record, but i don't want to do it with goofy junk entries. it's not a huge ambition of mine to be super-brilliant ever time i write here or anything -- i just think i should actually have something to write about or else i might as well just whip out five one-sentence posts that say, 'here's the next one,' and 'here's the one after that,' and 'yep, another one done,' until i'm at the 37-post mark. it feels kind of cheaty."

ariel being a very wise young lady, but innocently not knowing it, said, "omg. that's a great idea! i can totally hit 300 posts in no time if i do that!"

(confession: the way she tossed out that 300-post number didn't do any good to my struggling-to-make-it-to-37-posts-for-the-year ego, and i was suddenly really tempted to just do it.)

i got ahold of myself though, and told her, "well, i'm glad you like it, but like i said, it feels kind of cheaty to me."

but aers just asked, "why? i mean if it's silly and fun, that's like 90% of my whole reason for blogging in the first place. i don't see how doing something silly and fun would ever be cheaty ... isn't it kind of the bestest way to be?"

holy crap, right? she's such a crazy smart girl without even trying sometimes.

i mean, it all comes down to showing up and doing what you're here for, right?

i'm still not going to just string together a bunch of short nonsense posts.

but it does suddenly feel like making my goal will be a lot easier!

come to bed, you!

(sorry if this goes all wrong ... it's been a while since i tried any poetry, so maybe i've lost my touch. but you know, if it's words and they mean something, or move somebody, that's poetry, so in a way the bar is pretty low!)

everyone's tired;
we're all in a heap
girl limbs and girl heads

of girls who need sleep

it's been a long day

so much work and so boring

your lovers have needs that

(please!) need some exploring

elle's wanly impatient

aers nodded right off

hettie is reading

akane wants the light off

sasha's a spark

and a jolt in the dark

but even she has to be

(sometimes) shifted

from drive into park

shut it down!

it's enough,

all the writing and stuff --

you've done you

now do us --

there are pillows to fluff!

the rhymes are unwinding

words fade, i am finding

so shut down your head

and come join us in bed.

please, dear.

we're

at

the

verge

of a dream.

girls go wild weekend!

i mean, not really. there was actually a lot of chillaxing.

but msg was out of town, and that meant it was just us ladyams (i hope sasha appreciates me smooshing "lady" and "yams" together like that), and we managed not to miss him too bad.

a lot of pretty low-key fun. hanging out, giving or getting foot rubs (possibly other kinds of rubs too), chatting. aers and elle did a lot of cuddly whispering and then went in the other room and did some cuddly louder things a few times too.

akane told me and sash and hettie some of the non-funny stories about her old bad boyfriends, and we sympathized with her a lot (even though hettie's the only one of the three of us who ever had a different boyfriend). it was a good bonding kinda talk, and she did soooo much expression of excessive gratitude afterwards. (we may have been drinking a bit too.)

when our guy got home, i told him he needed to pay attention to how happy the weekend had made us all (even though we def missed him at least a few times too), and remember that not all of what he needs to do for us is actually him doing things for us. some of it is just giving us space to be us.

and then being a good listener when he gets back!

he likes that we're our own people, you know?

it's good for all of us when we get a chance to have that really shine.

music

i was surprised a few years back when i found out msg doesn't like the sound of his own voice when he hears it on recordings. i mean, i know it's pretty normal for people to think their voice doesn't sound right, because you always hear your own voice vibrating up through your neck and bones into your ears not just from the sound waves coming in through the air. like if you were used to hearing a voice with your head underwater and then you heard that same voice with your head up in the air, you'd be like, "what the hell is that?" but msg doesn't just think it sounds a little off -- he thinks it sounds like a really bad version of the voice he's used to hearing.

the weird thing about this is, to me his voice is music. especially when he's all excited talking about something or when he laughs. just beautiful ... moving and full of majesty. and he's going to read this and go, "okay, this is the goofiest thing you've ever written. there is absolutely nothing majestic about the way my voice sounds." and when he says that, it's going to sound like beethoven to me.

maybe the reason why is, his voice is the only voice that ever speaks to me.

there are sometimes other people in the house (biological people, i mean -- there's always the other 5 of my poly-yams around), and i sometimes hear their voices. but they're like pretty birds calling in the background. not like a real song or a symphony.

not like anything aimed at me.

maybe another reason is that he doesn't actually speak out loud to me all that often. mostly we just think at each other ... which is totally fine. it means that when he for real talks to me, it sounds even more precious.

i feel bad sometimes that i never get to speak out loud to him. i told him that in the conversation where he first admitted he hated the sound of his own voice.

do you know what he said?

he said, "claire, if you could speak out loud, i can only imagine that it would strike me deaf from beauty. it would be a better sound than any sound made on earth."

which made me feel pretty good ... but also made me glad i can't speak up, because no way would my voice ever live up to that kind of expectation!

(i mean, it would probably be a pretty good voice, i don't mean it would sound like a howler monkey or anything. but there would definitely be some better sounds made somewhere on earth.)

anyway, i hope you have somebody of your own who likes your voice as much as i like my boyfriend's. but even if you don't, i pretty much guarantee that if you don't like your own voice, probably it's not nearly as bad as you think.

probably it's music, but maybe it just hasn't found the perfect audience to hear that quite yet.

wait ... what???

holy moley.

we had our 13th anniversary earlier this year, so i think of myself as having been around for 13 years, both in this home and in the blogosphere.

but i just realized that not only does a 13th anniversary include endpoints that cross a total of 14 years, but i also started blogging before i got here.

which means ...

people, i've blogged across a total of 15 years. in november i'll have my 15th bloggiversary.

good grief, i've been at this a while!!!

someday, i'd like it to be my turn to have guests!

well, we have a new houseguest who's set to be staying a good long while ... or at least a long while, and i'm trying to think of it as good even though houseguests around this place always mean a crimp in everyone's style.

but it occurred to me ... maybe that "always" wouldn't be so always-ish if i was the one having guests over instead of msg.

who would i even invite? i don't know. but it would be someone who wouldn't be taken off guard by a bunch of dolls hanging around, that's for sure.

so now i'm going to think about guests.

maybe i'll come up with something.

and i can have someone come.

and they'll brighten the whole place up with their smile but also be happy to relax quietly in a corner and say, "don't mind me," if the household wants to get up to some usual shenanigans of ours that a guest wouldn't quite fit in with.

hmm!