I love Valentine’s Day. To me, though, it’s less about boyfriend/girlfriend stuff than just telling the people in your life you love them. My family always used to get each other stuff on Valentine’s Day and I still like to send out cards to family because I am a dork. I would still send them out to friends too if the stamp price didn’t increase every 10 seconds. I think everyone is getting a Facebook Valentine this year.

I was never really big on Barbie but my favorite was a “Loving You” Barbie my dad gave me one year on Valentine’s day. Her dress was white and all covered with little hearts. I found her on eBay to show you what she looked like. She’s awesome, right?

Anyway, despite my love for the day in general, my husband and I have terrible luck with the day. One of us always gets sick or something goes wrong like the time there was a worm in the box of chocolates he gave me (epic gross). So we try really hard to not make any big plans on the day so Valentine’s Day is very intentionally not a big deal with us which I guess is sort of backwards. We just hide at home and hang out which, frankly, is all I prefer anyway so it works.

The only thing we are doing relating to the day is my gym, Curves, has a big Valentine’s Day party every year where the men can come and work out (it’s a women only gym usually) and they have wine and cheese. We are going to that tonight and I am going to make my husband do the advanced workout AND make him hit all of MY numbers. Mwhahahaha!

I really need to find a better way to do the quote board. But, in the meantime, if I don’t write things up as they happen, I totally forget them so this will have to do in the meantime.

You multitask like a motherfucker. – Steve to me

Steve: Do you mean the pony with worm flowers on her butt?
Me: Worm flowers?
Steve: Whatever. *long pause* I guess they are called butterflies.

*phone rings, I see it is my mother and answer by saying* We have to go BAAAAAACK!
Mom: What the hell are you doing to me over there? I was going to say that to you!

“Sam has done a complete 290!” -Mom (I was going to argue but Sam changes his mind so often, 290 might be more appropriate than 360)

Me: Netflix has Spaceballs for immediate viewing.
Steve: AWESOME!
Me: Don’t we have that on DVD anyway, though?
Steve: Yeah but it should be required viewing for everyone.

“I will rip your fucking googly eyes out & shove them in your sparkly belly button!” -Steve

He was talking to the Beaver on the right in this photo:

I’m trying to not be a nutcase about the names of things in my book. I don’t care if they mean things or have symbolism, though if I get really stuck I will go the meaning route just for inspiration. But I do have a need to make some of the names sound like they are not from normal Earth and I have a different naming convention for each world so its a little bit of insanity.

The biggest problem, though, are the “normal” names. I am having a hell of a time because I don’t want to use the name of anyone I actually know or knew in real life. Why? Well, because parts of this story are going to seem autobiographical to some people and I don’t want them to think my book is about them.

Example: One of the secondary characters in my book is named Kim. I actually had a very good friend in elementary school and high school named Kim. This Kim is not that Kim at all. I used her name as sort of a tribute to her for being my friend. But now I feel like I need to change it because I feel like the real Kim will be offended if the character does something that she herself didn’t do. Should I care what a single person thinks, probably not. But if its a friend that I am still in touch with, it makes my life awkward.

I am almost more inclined to name a character after a good friend rather than an acquaintance. If I name a character after one of my best buds and make that character a villain, I would assume that my friend, as long as I alerted them ahead of time, would be more honored than offended, esp since they understand that I am just using their name.

Am I over-thinking this? Maybe. Let me ask you guys, friends and strangers alike. If someone you knew in school named a classmate of their fictional character with your name, would you assume it was supposed to be you? Or, if your best bud named a character after you but that character was a jerk, would you take it personally?