Seeing Red

Hello everyone! I hope your weeks have been more fantastic than the thought of a Kiss cover band comprised of corgis!

Speaking of corgis, just a quick reminder, 50% of the profits from any of my books sold in November or December will be going to help the efforts of the Sun Valley Animal Shelter. This is a no-kill shelter in the Phoenix area that connects animals with their forever homes.

So buy a book and help Mumford here find a good home (he is also up for adoption if anyone is interested)!

In other news the holidays have descended upon us, rather like a beluga whale dropped from a bomber airplane. Halloween day, I happened to go to the store and found myself in a veritable winter wonderland of Christmas decorations and festoonery. Again, let me repeat that, on Halloween.

I let out a sad sigh over the Christmas invasion of my favorite holiday and went on my way, vowing to basically ignore it, as I do every year, until the day after Thanksgiving.

Then the first "War on Christmas" posts started. You know what I mean, the fear-mongering, imaginary persecution of those who like to celebrate Christmas. First, let me say this, if you think that there is an actual "War on Christmas" please, as a Christian myself, let me remind you of a few things:

1. No one in this country will tell you that you can't celebrate Christmas in your own way. If you want to honor Jesus, that is your right. If you want to spend all day Christmas wearing underwear on your head and yelling, "I'm a blueberry muffin!" that is also your right. No one is telling you you can't celebrate Christmas. Someone else celebrating Christmas in their own way is not an immediate attack on your rights.

2. Every school/work/organizational break is still centered around the Christmas holiday. No other religious holiday gets this kind of special treatment (unless they happen to fall sometime near Christmas), so if we're in a "war" it appears we still have the high ground.

3. Having a Menorah next to the Christmas tree at the mall really is not something to get upset about. Remember, we stole the traditional Christmas tree from pagans, whereas the Menorah was something the Jewish people came up with on their own thousands of years ago. Respecting others' religions does not constitute an attack on your own.

4. Someone saying "Happy Holidays" to you is not a challenge to a fight. I say Happy Holidays. I say Merry Christmas. When appropriate I say Happy Hanukkah as well! If someone says Happy Holidays, the correct response is, "Thank you! You too!" Everyone just calm down!

5. The fact that you can't go a single place, starting October 31st now, without running into a million and one Christmas trees, ornaments and little nativity sets, would imply that Christmas seems to be doing just fine.

I bring all of this up because the first "Christmas Scandal" splashed in my news feed on Facebook this week, causing an intense urge to attempt to stick my head in the microwave.

Apparently, Starbucks has managed to do something more offensive than misspell even the most simple of names. Apparently this year their holiday themed cups are... red!!! Yup, you read correctly, instead of opting for an entire nativity scene (which, I might add has NEVER been a part of their cups), they went for a solid red cup with their typical green and white logo for accent.

This has sparked absolute outrage, particularly from one individual who posted an entire Youtube video and Twitter rant (which I refuse to link here because he doesn't need any more attention).

Apparently by removing the snowflakes from their cups that they had last year, which I was unaware was a part of the Christmas cannon to begin with, Starbucks somehow managed to remove all of the Christmas-ness from their cups!

At first I thought it was a massive joke, but then I started seeing calls to boycott Starbucks. I'm sorry, if you're going to boycott Starbucks it should be because it doesn't matter which one you go to, they over-roast their coffee, not because they made a simple design change to a coffee cup.

And Christians, come on! We are better than this! This is petty at its best, and completely alienating at its worst! It's really hard to convince people that I have logical reasons for believing in my faith when I have people running around screaming that Starbucks is waging a War on Christmas because of a minimalist cup design!

Might I also point out that Starbucks, despite their obvious love for Satan with their all-red cup, still sells advent calendars, CD's with songs about Jesus' birth (although, does anyone still buy CD's?) and several Christmas Ornaments that... now be prepared to be shocked, say, "Merry Christmas" on them.

So before we blow up over perceived slights, can we as a community of Christians do something Christ-like and maybe not freak out over nothing? Can we stop painting ourselves as intolerant, insecure people who will overreact to any perceived slight?

We have two months left of this holiday spirit to go people, we can do it! Well, at least, I hope we can do it.

For those of you not putting me on your "naughty" list, you can always find me on Facebook and Twitter (@AllisonHawn) and you can find my books here.

Also this:

 I have imbibed in the red-cup devil's brew. Guess I need to go change my major now to Christmas Grinchery with a minor in Satanism.

Squirrel!!!

Hello ladies, gentlemen and any single-celled organisms that may be reading this! I hope everyone's weeks were more splendid than the thought of a bunny on a unicycle!

It took me an inordinate amount of time this week to figure out something to write about. Why? Mostly because every time I sat down to type my mind would be whisked away in a million different directions.

I have ADHD. No, I'm not one of those people who says, "I'm so easily distracted, I must have ADHD!"

I actually have ADHD.

Let me, quickly, dispel a couple of myths about ADHD for you.

1. ADHD is a made up diagnosis invented for people who can't control their children or own behaviors.

False. It is actually an issue with the physical matter of the brain. Without using all the giant words that I learned to get my degree in psychology, basically ADHD means that one part of a person's brain is not communicating effectively or more slowly than the rest. Our brains, being the wonderful machines that they are, try to compensate by speeding everything up, but all that really does is create more of an imbalance. This is why stimulants, like caffeine, help. The stimulants help along the part of the brain that is not firing quite right to even things out.

(Disclaimer: This is a very brief explanation so that my blog post didn't become laborious to read, so no one kill me. If you wanted to read a 90 page dissertation on ADHD I'm sure I could find you one.)

2. If you have ADHD, you should be medicated.

 False. That's a little bit like saying that because the fourth Blade movie was terrible, the previous three were awful too. This is untrue, the fourth movie was a travesty, sure, but the previous three have made many a nerd's life just a little happier.

You can't just arbitrarily group people together by diagnosis. I have several friends with ADHD that truly do need the medication that they take to focus. I am lucky to have a rather mild form of ADHD that I can mostly self-medicate with coffee and exercise. Some people need meds, others do not. It's that simple.

3. ADHD means that you're just super fidgety, right?

False. Due to our lovely little neurotransmitters not firing the way they are supposed to, it means that we can be fidgety (I have a tendency to take apart any pen that's in my hands), but mostly it means we have issues being able to focus on a single task. Imagine that you have your computer browser open, and have 1,000 tabs open at once. Your computer, at random, switches tabs about every 10 or so seconds. That is basically what your brain on ADHD feels like.

So, what does ADHD look like on the inside to a person with it? Follow along, oh wayward adventurers, down the trail of what my un-caffienated brain does when I try to write a blog post:

OK, I need to focus and write this post.
Post, post, post-y, post, post...
At what point does bread officially become toast?
I wonder if someone answered that on Google.
I bet someone did, everything's on Google.
Did I remember to lock my door?
Do gerbils dream?
Maybe I should write a blog post about gerbil dreams!
Wait, aren't gerbils the ones who eat their own young, or was that mice?
I wonder if my friend's pet snake is over it's cold.
I really should make some coffee.

Gets up to make coffee. Returns five minutes later with no coffee, but has washed the dishes in her sink.

Now, to write this blog post.
Why do I feel like I'm forgetting something?
Crud, I think I need to laundry again. Did I do laundry this week already?
Did I remember to lock my door?
Oh, and I have to remember to send that e-mail at work on Monday.
I wonder what the coffee special will be on Monday at that one espresso stand.
Right, I was going to make coffee!
I wonder if they will have that red-velvet latte this week? That was tasty!

Goes to make coffee. Successfully starts coffee maker, then picks up a random book from the bookshelf, reads three pages, sets it down, before wandering back to the computer. Sits down, stares at toes.

Why aren't toes just called mini-fingers?
I guess toes is easier to say.
Unlike the word "discombobulated," which really describes what it does to the human tongue.
Did I remember to lock my door?
I wonder how one says "toes" in German?
I'd love to learn how to speak German.
After all, a lot of English has Germanic roots. 
Maybe that's something I should add to my to-do list, after I... oh yeah, this blog post...

Twenty minutes later I will finally remember that I made coffee and go get some. With caffeine stimulating my brain, and another hour or two, I will have a blog post. It is unlikely that I will ever figure out when bread officially becomes toast. 

And that, folks, is what living with ADHD is like. Does that help explain parts of "Life is a Circus Run by a Platypus" for anyone?

Don't forget to check out my randomness on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads!

The Writing Proce-- HEY A BUNNY!

Hello all of you who have somehow managed to scrape past another week in the real world! I hope you are all alive and well.

So a question that I have been asked more times than William Shatner has over-acted in regards to "Life is a Circus Run by a Platypus" is, "What does your writing process look like?"

The last person who asked me this I decided to answer in the Socratic method with another question, "What do you think it looks like?"

This is pretty much what they described:

I think I laughed for a solid 5 minutes, because in reality this is what my writing process looks like:

Because I have been asked multiple times, I decided I might as well just post the "secrets" of my writing process here:

Everything starts out well. I select some motivational music, don my writing Batman boxers (alternatively, I also have my writing basketball shorts) and open up my most recent project, all the while contemplating the things I wish to add.

Then I stare blankly at the screen for a couple of minutes as I suddenly realize that I have no idea what I wish to title my story. I throw around ideas for a minute or two, before titling it something like, "That One Time I Dropped a Carrot," resolving to come back and think up a witty title later.

Now I can dive into my story, except I have to come up with a first line, and those are always difficult. I spend another two minutes singing along with MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This," and may or may not get up to do the corresponding dance.

Can I just say, that no matter how ridiculous MC Hammer's pants are, you can't deny that they look super duper comfy. It's like the Snuggie of pants. Anyways, I digress, which is pretty much where my writing process is at this juncture.

Of course, after singing along to a classic hit you have to look up the lyrics to make sure you got the second verse right. Then you look up the music video just to make sure you did the dance right too.

After 3 or 4 more nostalgic music videos, I finally return to writing and get a couple of solid paragraphs down. Suddenly, my mental thesaurus fails me and I return to the internet to find a synonym for "ostentatious."

When you go online, you can't help but check your Facebook, which somehow ends with you watching a video on how to peel garlic in less than ten seconds (no really, it's mesmerizing). Ten minutes later I find myself watching a video about how gerbils digest their food.

I return to writing, and get a few more paragraphs done when this happens:

 After I have extricated the cat, and erased the resulting page long line of random kitty-butt-gibberish, I get down a few more sentences.

I'm just getting into the groove when I remember that my laundry has been in the washer for approximately the same amount of time it takes to boil an ostrich egg, and I dash off to fix that conundrum.

I return, swearing that I will not lose track of time and the laundry will not be neglected. As I'm about to sit down and resume writing, I realize that I my coffee cup is empty. While in the kitchen replacing my writers' fuel I discover that one of my little fuzzy bandits has decided to open a drawer and eviscerate its contents. Cleaning commences.

Then on my way back to my computer, I look out my window to see two rednecks attempting to push a refrigerator out of a second story window, and there is just no way I am going to miss this first rate fiasco.

After the crash and half of the rednecks' porch subsequently vanishing, I finally get back to writing. At this point I finally can refocus a bit as the caffeine kicks in and I get a ton of writing done (most of which I will look at later and say, "What was that!? No, bad plan," before shuddering and deleting it).

There are days when I am a good little focused writer and I get mass amounts written. But for the most part, what you just read is pretty much how my "writing process" works.

So let this be a lesson to all aspiring writers, if your writing process involves being able to sit for long periods of time and pounding out thousands of words, then good for you.

However, if you're like me, and your writing process often times takes you down the rabbit hole to Wonderland, through Narnia and then possibly takes bribing yourself with ice cream just to get something down, don't worry. I got a book published via my method, you can too!

Remember if you ever need to be provided with a distraction of your own you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads! 

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, I did forget the laundry again.

The Short List

Hello all! I hope everyone is having a more fantastic Sunday than the thought of a thousand lemmings synchronized swimming to "Bittersweet Symphony."

Well, to start out "Life is a Circus Run by a Platypus" has been getting some pretty sweet reviews!

Amazon user Annie_Larlee writes, "Allison is able to write so descriptively that you feel like you are right there beside her as she experiences each story! This is a must-read if you want to have a good laugh and see a snap shot of the life Allison lives!!! I would recommend it to all of my friends, family and acquaintances!"

The book has also been making it all around the country!

Here it is in Georgia (thanks to B.S. Johnson for the picture):

Here it is with the contest winner Jill JP Palmquist in Washington:

And here it is in California (thanks to Marty M. for the picture):

Well, it has been a crazy (about two steps away from psychotic crazy) week for me. In one week I got a new job, moved to a new apartment and was called "darling" by no less than four different people.

If I have seemed oddly silent, it's not because I'm dead, though, with how my life tends to progress, that is a fair assumption to make. 

I am currently sitting in a coffee shop scalping internet, as my home internet will not be hooked up for a bit yet, as I very slowly drink a mocha that I am relatively sure has enough sugar in it to give a weasel an aneurysm.  Good thing I'm slightly bigger than a weasel, huh?

One of the things that moving has made abundantly clear is that I am short. This point was especially exemplified when I went to hang my shower curtain in my new bathroom, stepped up into the tub (which is about 6 inches off the ground) and my friend Sarah said, "Wow, even with you standing in a tub I'm still taller than you."

I was about to protest, until I looked over and realized I was making eye contact with her for the first time ever without having to crane my neck upwards, and yes, she was still a good inch or two taller than me.

Being 5'3" (on a good day and sometimes only if I stand on my tippy-toes) means that a lot of my conversations feel like this:

O.k., so I'm short, which has its admitted downsides (no pun intended). I can't reach the top cabinets without imitating a spider monkey, I would need a pogo stick to ever compete in a hurdle race and it is much easier for people to condescendingly pat me on the head than most.

Despite these issues, I think that being short has some clear advantages. So if you are short, like me, I encourage you to bring up these points next time someone mocks your vertically challenged state.

1. Short people tend to have mad hide and seek skills. Remember that box that you never thought anyone would ever curl up in?

Yeah, we've been in that box for 45 minutes and are perfectly comfortable.

2. We are built lower to the ground, meaning that when we fall it's a shorter distance to the ground. It's also a lot less effort to get back up again.

3. We tend not to have this problem:

4. These guys are short, and they are awesome!

5. Our lives spent as short people have improved our ability to climb things.

6. We have a lower center of gravity and are built low to the ground for speed an accuracy.

See, being short isn't terrible. So we occasionally need help reaching things out of our own kitchen cabinets and spend a lot of time examining peoples' nostrils, but at least we're harder to find, thwart or push over!

Well, I had best go before the coffee shop people begin to suspect me of plotting a caffeine fueled revolt. Remember you can always follow my exploits on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads!