Hey, don't I know you?

I have no excuse for not updating my blog. Or rather, I DO, but my excuses are all ENTIRELY too lame... i.e. Laziness... Procrastination... Lack of interesting thoughts... Take your pick. Or just fill in the blank with your own imaginative lazy adjective. If I had a dog, this is probably how I would have been walking it the past little while:

But I digress. 

I was actually going to save this topic for an Insecure Writer's post, but then I figured... its not quite the end of the month yet... and if I save it for the first Wednesday in June.... well.... in the interest of pushing off my lazy blogging ways, I decided I probably shouldn't wait that long to write a post! 

Recently, Hubbs and I moved to California. Los Angeles to be exact, which is supposed to be the land of milk and honey as far as famous people go. 

BUT I HAVEN'T SEEN ANY YET!

I mean... WHAT is the point of living here if I can't hope to run into all the Chris Hemsworths and Wentworth Millers of the world? Yeah, I know. Lame. 

The super bad part of all of this, though (cause, lets be honest, its TRAGIC), is that I don't think I would recognize a famous person EVEN IF they stood right in front of me in the checkout line! 

Case in point:

I was at a church function the other day, and someone there looked REALLY familiar. I turned to my friend and said, "Hey I feel like I know that person over there, do you know who she is?" Friend: "Oh, she's totally an actor." 

Como say what!??! 

My totally awesome friend proceeds to list off a number of wicked cool projects said actress has been in, but none of which I was a religious follower of. So, of course, I did what any normal, sensible, OBVIOUSLY completely sane person would do:

I Google stalked my mystery actress. 

Don't judge. You know you Facebook stalk too. 

AND GUESS WHAT I FOUND OUT??!?!?!

She was an actress on one of my FAVORITE tv shows ... Um... Criminal Minds anyone?!?! 

"Doh!!!"...[slaps forehead]...

Now granted, said actress was not one of the main characters on the show. Just a guest star. HOWEVER, considering I've seen every episode of that show AT LEAST 2 or 3 times each, this connection SHOULD HAVE BEEN OBVIOUS!! I knew EXACTLY who my mystery actress was and which episodes were hers (once Google told me where to look, of course).

In hindsight, its probably a good thing I didn't know who my actress was a the time of sighting. I probably would have been like "EEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeek!!!!!!!" and mauled her for an autograph. 

I'm classy. What can I say?

But here's the thing...

If I can't even recognize an actress from one of my FAVORITE tv shows... what else in life do I miss? Or more particularly, what kind of obviously crap-tastic stuff in my manuscript am I missing?? Stuff that seem SOOOOO obvious to everyone else, but--like a moron--I totally miss?

I know its there. 

Every once in a while, I catch a whiff of it. Some sentence or phrase or paragraph or--heaven forbid--chapter will smell suspiciously of familiarity, and an inner dialogue will commence... 

"Self," I say.... "Self, that looks eerily familiar... do I recognize that piece of writing as crap?"

Most of the time, I brush it aside. Or when I'm feeling ambitious, I tweak it a little. But not much. When in reality, what I SHOULD be doing is MAULING that piece of crap to the ground!

Not for an autograph.

But for a good hard kick in the pants!

Please tell me I'm not the only one out there that is completely oblivious to the obvious! Otherwise, its quite possible I'm doooooooomed! Or.... at least my writing is.