Don't you love it when people say to just anyone with a few good or funny stories, you should write a book?

100 posts ago, (yes, I know I should spell out 100 if it's at the beginning of a sentence, but as long as we're blogging and not writing literature, and reading blogs and not newspapers, we might as well keep throwing correct writing to the wind ... So creativity can whistle in easily).

Ahem.

So, 100 posts ago, the first Side of Honeydew was sliced, around New Year's Eve 2010. One year later, my resolution to blog every day turned into more like a couple times a week. But a schedule was learned, habit and style explored. And only now do I fully realize the best things to write about when you're 28 years old are worth living first.

How else would you broach even a pathetic approach to the next great American novel with only a few decades of life under your belt? Like Annie Lamott says, "write where you are, write what you know." As much as writers understandably fight this advice sometimes, when you need to overcome writer's block - often enough to marathon your way through a plot line's thousands of words - the only way I know how is with the most honest writing. This is when your melting pot of experiences and self-deprecation comes in handy. And hopefully rings most true.

As 2011 dangles twinkly on the horizon, I think, bring on some more living - because that's the only way I have anything to say that comes close to being anywhere near worth reading. Unfortunately, I draw the line at "fucking and punching," Hank Moody. However, Jhumpa Lahiri - the youngest author thus far to win a Pulitzer at age 32 with the Interpreter of Maladies (2000), a short story collection to boot - is giving me a run for my money. Or lack thereof. Both of which make me want to channel Hank more than ever. Darn scruples.

Speaking of money and morally controversial television, the hus and I are enjoying our best purchase ever with things like Treksgiving (wholesome) and the Dexter season finale (gruesome).

The 52" HD LED Sharp Aquos (1080p, 120 Hz) and Black Friday blue-ray player have me watching television without glasses (maybe 3D one day though), blissfully streaming Netflix, and appreciating things like skin bumps and couch-side seats to Laker games.

It's been worth every second since 3 a.m. that dark morning, even curbside at the Navy Exchange, forced to NaNoWriMo in a small beach chair surrounded by weirdly humid November air.

When there's time - or when we're so sick of staring at computer screens and cockpit diagrams - we laze on our gratefully hand-me-down and luckily plush couches to watch The Next Generation in the best kind of marathon to run. Sometimes Top Gear. The American version is coming along. Sometimes Shake it Up!. When Cary's not in the room. The result is though, I can barely turn on the midget TV in the bedroom. It's painfully small. I best work harder to avoid death by squinting if I ever want to watch TV horizontally again.

With the novel in edit mode, and freelance jobs underway, I picked up a quilting project under the very kind hand of a friend willing to help. It's quite fascinating really. And relaxing. The fabric store filled with happy, knowledgable seamstresses. The hum of the machine. Family Guy playing in the background. It's not fucking and punching, I know. But it's stitching and bitching, as my oracle says.

And Cary picked up Primary Flight Training. The week after Thanksgiving, he began primary school at the Naval Air Station Whiting Field. It's been less intense than API so far, but more of the same. Long days. Heftier studying in segments. A lot of tests this coming week. He's specifically in Training Squadron 3 (VT-3), a Red Knight. And the Knights were assigned the T-6, officially.

He'd kill me for saying this, but the Red Knights wear red T-shirts under their olive green, canvas-y feeling flight suits - and it looks really cute, er sharp; it matches their VT-3 velcro patch and everything. It’s also Christmas-y. This is all very important, you see. For pictures and memories and Top Gun reenactments.

Whiting is home to other cooly named flyer squadrons including the HT-8 Eightballers, made up of helicopter pilots. And the HT-28 Hellions. I seem interested in this now, but when Cary was showing me around Whiting Field for the first time, before his mandatory class on marriage in flight school (hee hee), I just wanted to go eat a sandwich. But I really am proud. And full now. He’s leading an exciting life that one. He should write a book.