Daydream Believer

Clean ALL the Things!

2010-09-04T15:30:00.000-05:00

And away we go...

Whip It Good

2010-09-03T13:35:00.000-05:00

I just had a client have to remind me that this is a holiday weekend when I tried to schedule a conference call for Monday. That might be sad, but not as sad as the fact that what's exciting me most about the prospect of an extended weekend is finally having time to clean my house. Not that I'm such a clean freak that putting the emphasis on the "labor" part of this particular holiday fills me with joy; but our house still hasn't recovered from our camping trip last month, and I can't even remember the last time I vacuumed the carpet. This house needs some serious whipping into shape, and it looks like I'll finally have time to do the whipping.

Of course, I shall have to do it all whilst wearing my new t-shirt.

And if I'm really feeling ambitious I might even tackle the mountain in the garage that represents two years' worth of backed up recycling -- the first step in converting the garage from a big space to throw the crap we don't want to deal with into an organized haven for craft supplies and camping gear. Party on!

This month is shaping up to be a pretty good one, work-wise. It never ceases to amaze me the way freelancing is always feast or famine. Never does it happen that one client needs something one week, and another the next, and so on so that I've got a steady stream of work and nobody's ever competing for my time. Instead it always happens that most -- if not all -- of them have major projects that need done all at the same time, or hardly anybody needs anything from me at all. Right now I'm looking at a feast of web design and VA work, so that's going to be keeping me busy for the next few weeks.

Gotta say I'm relieved, because as much as I appreciate that Demand Studios is there to get me through the famine times, it's definitely not my favorite gig, probably because it's the one that requires the most mentally taxing work for the least pay. After a long day of struggling to focus enough to research and write just a few articles, I'm always too mentally fried to do anything else. I'm feeling energized just thinking about having some truly creative work on my plate again. Even so, I'm going to try to keep doing at least a few DS articles a week, just to ensure I'll have a steady, if small, paycheck to buffer against the unsteady nature of freelance pay.

Somewhere in all this working and cleaning, I've got to be sure to get outside and enjoy this perfect fall-like weather we're having. This would, of course, be a lot easier if Matt would let me take the laptop out on the patio, but he's afraid I'll smash it to bits on the concrete and then we'll have to spend a big chunk of money to replace it. And he does have a point -- I do tend to be accident prone, and I wish I could say that I don't have a history of expensive accidents, but... well, let's just say I don't have solid ground on which to argue in favor of ever leaving the house with my laptop. So if I want to go out I guess I'll just have to leave the computer behind and, like, get some exercise or something. How novel!

A Girl and Her Turtle

2010-08-27T19:35:00.000-05:00

I lost Matilda the other day. Only for about ten minutes, and Matt found her before she found a hole in the fence, but those were a frightening ten minutes by the end of which I was nearly in tears. I was so sure that she'd escaped and I'd never see her again, that she'd gone under the fence and right out into traffic and that was the end of her, and I'd never, ever forgive myself.

I don't normally take her out of her pen in the middle of the day, but the weather has been gorgeous lately, like early fall, so I decided to sit out on the patio while I outlined some articles, and I figured she'd enjoy an afternoon stroll around the yard. Then one minute I was watching her sunbathe and munch on a dead cicada, the next I looked down at my writing to jot some notes, and by minute three I looked back up and simply could not see the turtle.

You might think that it would be hard to lose a turtle within the space of a minute. After all, they don't exactly have reputations as speedsters. But they are, in fact, faster than you'd expect, and on top of that they have built-in camouflage that, as it turns out, does an excellent job of blending in with the overgrown grass in our way-past-due-to-be-mowed yard.

I spent about five minutes walking the yard and poking through said grass before I went to get Matt, to have him stand guard at the most likely point of escape while I continued to scour the yard. After another five minutes, he spotted Matilda hiding behind a cement brick by the back fence. That's the chain-link one with links that she can't fit through, thankfully, and not the wooden privacy fence that lines a busy street and has gaps that she has yet to discover are just the right height for her to slip right under.

Afterwards, I tucked her safely back in her pen, where she burrowed down in the dirt in her favorite sleeping spot beneath her hollow half-log, and then sat down to recover and be amazed at how attached I've become to a turtle. I mean, yes, I've wanted a turtle just like her for a really long time. But she's not exactly cuddly, and all she does is eat, sleep and crawl around. But she sure is cute doing those things, and it's neat to watch her hunt for bugs, and she seems to enjoy being baby-talked and having the back of her neck rubbed. As it turns out, I love her for all of that. And I will never, ever, ever leave her unsupervised in the back yard again, not even for a minute.

How Jeanie Got Her Groove Lack

2010-08-19T13:41:00.000-05:00

This has not been the best week for me, productivity-wise. It got off to a rocky start on Monday when we spent over an hour trying to jump-start Matt's truck before finally giving up and deciding it needs a new battery. After that I still had several errands to run, and by the time I finally sat down to work, my focus was shot and I was good for nothing.

Tuesday was better. I spent all day writing articles for Demand Studios, which is pretty much my full-time job until my business picks back up. I wrote enough for a decent day's pay, but I was still frustrated because I could have done more if I didn't have focus issues. I know there are people on there who can hammer out 10 articles or more a day. I've never been able to manage more than five--which is really enough to make ends meet, but wouldn't it be nice if I could write enough to actually make some extra money for a change? Sigh.

Yesterday I actually managed to knock out a couple of articles despite not being home most of the day. Thanks to an online ordering screw-up with the university bookstore, we had to drive to the campus 45 minutes away in my hometown to pick up one of Matt's textbooks so he can study for a test on Friday. And since we were in town we figured we might as well visit my mom, which was lovely, but there went any chance I had of getting more than two articles, or anything else, done that day.

Which brings us to today. And here I am blogging instead of article writing, but I have to figure out how to fit blogging in somehow. I haven't even had time to think about topics for my Task Wrangler blog, which is no way to build up a readership for that one. And don't even get me started on the state of my house, which still looks like a camp site blew up all over it a week and a half after our return. It was great and necessary for us to get away for our little camping holiday, but it totally messed up my groove, and I'm still struggling to get it back. And of course Matt's ready to go camping again as soon as the weather cools off and his schoolwork lightens up a bit, so most likely I'll find my groove again just in time for that to happen, because that's the way these things go. Such is life.

Camp Wear-you-down

2010-08-09T14:59:00.000-05:00

We're back. And let me tell you about camping. Or I guess about vacations in general, because it seems to me that the whole point of vacations is to make you shut up and stop whining about your day-to-day existence and appreciate how easy you've got it on a regular basis, because it seems like my vacations always leave me feeling more worn out and drained than when I started -- which of course I never remember until after they're over -- and this was no exception. Matt and I both came back burned, battered and just plain beat.

But about camping, specifically. To hear my mom tell it, my family went camping all the time until I was about two years old, then they up and moved to the lake and there was no longer any need. So for all intents and purposes, this was my first time. Matt's camping experiences were both sporadic and long ago enough that he was essentially a newbie, too. So it should come as no surprise that we made a lot of rookie mistakes.

Mistake the first: not traveling light enough. Before we left we stocked up on everything we thought we could possibly need or use over the weekend. Our little Aveo was so crammed full of crap that there was barely any room left for us. We only ended up using, eating or wearing about half of what we took. We brought along way more food than we needed, and we weren't so far from a grocery store that I couldn't have just gone shopping after we'd set up camp. We also took gallons and gallons of bottled water when our Pür pitcher would have been more than sufficient. Next time, we'll pack much, much lighter, which will make the next item less of an issue.

Mistake the second: parking too dang far away from the camp site. This wouldn't have been an issue if we'd stuck with the lot we'd originally reserved. But once we got there and saw an available lot right down on the water, we were so lured by the prospect of doing all of our swimming and fishing right there next to our tent that we didn't care that we couldn't drive down to it and had to park 50 yards away up a steep hill. It wasn't so bad carrying all of our stuff down hill on the first day, but having to schlep everything back up that hill on our last day pretty much undid all of the rest I'd managed to get in the interim. Which wasn't really that much, considering...

Mistake the third: setting our tent on rocky ground and trying to rely on cheap water loungers for air mattresses. Both of which popped about ten minutes after we turned in on the first night. The next morning I wasted no time driving into town for some quality camping air beds, but we're both still covered in bruises from that first night of having to try to sleep on the ground with nothing but a tarp, the tent bottom and cheap thin plastic between us and the gravel. A situation that was aggravated by...

Mistakes the fourth and fifth: not taking ear plugs or an animal-proof locker for our food. Ear plugs would have made it easier to sleep through Pete's incessant barking at the raccoons that invaded our camp looking for food, and the locker would have kept them from finding it and strewing hamburger and hot dog buns all over the camp site. After that first night we started keeping the non-perishable foodstuff in the tent with us, but that didn't stop the critters from trying to get to it. And let me tell you something. In my house, when I'm safe in my own bed, I cannot sleep without having my feet covered, because I have a basic, deep fear, which precedes Paranormal Activity by about thirty years, of being awakened in the middle of the night by some unseen thing grabbing my feet. So when that actually happened the other night? Knowing that the unseen thing that had grabbed my toes through the tent wall was a cute and furry raccoon didn't really make it any easier to stop being terrified and go back to sleep.

I'm sure other mistakes were made, but these are the major ones that I think rectifying will make our next camping go-round a lot more restful. And there will be a next time, because despite all of our shiny new aches and pains, we had enough fun that we're already planning to go back for a weekend fishing trip in the fall. Matt caught a couple of fish, and the fact that they were too small to eat and had to be let go didn't make it any less exciting. The shore we camped on was rocky and I kept banging myself up on underwater boulders, but swimming was still fun, especially watching Pete swim back and forth between us until he was pooped enough to make a break for dry land. Despite the extreme heat, between the lake breeze and being able to jump in the lake when the breeze wasn't enough, we managed to stay pretty cool. And in between all of the swimming, fishing and hauling stuff up the hill, we fit in a lot of lazing about, as illustrated in this picture of Pete, who'd had all of the hyperactivity worn right out of him.

Now that we're home, we need a vacation from our vacation, but a single day of recovery will have to do. I woke up this morning feeling stiff and achy and sore all over, but also really appreciative of my own bed and all of the small luxuries and creature comforts we enjoy on a daily basis, and of not having to carry anything up a big hill again any time in the foreseeable future.

Chill-away Camp

2010-08-02T17:03:00.000-05:00

I'm still nursing my wrist, and still doing a lot of non-blog writing, which is still seriously cutting into my blogging time. It's been cutting into my Twitter/Facebook time, too, so I figured I'd better leave an update so nobody thinks I died.

Our air conditioner is broken. Again. It's done this every summer since we moved into this house, which I think is a good argument in favor of replacing the ancient piece of spottiness. We took out a debt-consolidation loan large enough to cover a replacement, but Matt's still nervous about committing to throwing that much money at the house, even though that thing's so old that any new AC is bound to be way more efficient and lower our cooling bills, no matter whether or not it's rated high-efficiency, which I think is another good argument in favor of a replacement. And also that we'll need to replace it before we sell the house anyway, so we might as well get it done now and reap the benefits for a few years. I think you can see which side of the argument I'm coming down on. But we're both too cranky to discuss it calmly and come to a mutual decision because it's so motherlovin' HOT, you guys!

By the by, this week I learned that a broken AC, short shorts and a leather desk chair are unmixy things.

Anyway, maybe we can figure out the AC business during our long weekend camping at the lake. At least, I think we're going camping this weekend. Matt suggested perhaps putting it off until the weather cools down a bit, but I pointed out that we can be hot here, or we can be hot there, where there is a great big lake to jump in to cool us off. Besides, the whole reason we were scrambling to go this weekend in the first place is because we realized he starts back to school next week and by the time the weather cools off he'll probably be too buried in studying and paper-writing to go. So it's pretty much now or... not this year.

And, you guys. This is my ONLY shot at getting a vacation this year. And you know, if you've been paying attention AT ALL, how desperate I'm getting for a vacation. Even if it's just a hot and sweaty long weekend in a tent at the muddy-bottomed lake out by where I grew up. At least it will be a long weekend without internet access or cell phone reception or anywhere to plug in my laptop, all of which will force me to, y'know, chill the heck out. Which at this point is ALL I NEED.

***

Matilda the turtle is doing well, for those who were wondering. She's the only one of us who doesn't mind the sweltering heat. She just buries herself in the back yard for the worst of it, and at night it's saving me from having to turn on the reptile heater in her indoor tank. I've got a pretty good handle on what she likes to eat, or rather, what she likes to be fed on the days when she hasn't managed to catch some bug the size of her head and remind me that she is perfectly self-sufficient, thank you very much, lady who is holding me prisoner. But for all that she still makes a beeline for freedom every time I let her roam the back yard, she otherwise seems to be enjoying all of the attention and pampering. I'm pretty confident that a bigger habitat will nix her escape attempts.

How Is a Turtle Like a Tree?

2010-07-24T16:46:00.000-05:00

For a long time now, I've been wanting a pet box turtle or tortoise. But since the local reptile sellers never seem to have box turtles in stock and tortoises run too far out of my price range, I figured I'd just wait until I encountered one on the side of the highway in need of rescuing. Because every single summer of my life there has always been an abundance of turtles plodding right into traffic and needing someone in possession of better common sense to stop and pick them up and save their lives. Every single summer, that is, until I decided I wanted a pet turtle. It's like word got out and they all made a plan to stay hidden whenever I drove by.

Apparently one turtle missed the memo, because on Wednesday morning, while I was eating breakfast, it strolled right up onto my patio and settled in to chill. I squeed so hard I almost choked on my Kashi, then ran outside to pounce on it. I couldn't believe it. A turtle! On my back porch! In the middle of the city! What are the odds?

It was good timing, too, because I'd already planned to take the day off to give my wrist a break. So as soon as I could I set to work McGuyvering an outdoor habitat out of things we already had around the house and yard, which included flowerbed fencing, plastic chicken "wire", bread ties and paper clips. Yes, I actually used paperclips to hold the chicken wire in place, and it worked like a charm. Add a bowl sunk into the ground for a "pond" and a half-log Matt had left over from his reptile-keeping bachelor days, and it turned out to be a pretty nice, if small, turtle habitat.

Now before anybody reams me out for taking an animal out of the wild, let me say that I did take time out to check my conscience on that. My yard is surrounded on two sides by busy streets and on the other two sides by a big dog and a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant family who appears willing to eat just about anything that moves, so I didn't like her odds for survival once she left our yard. So we decided to keep her on a trial basis for a few weeks. Originally, I was thinking that if she didn't take well to being a pet, we'd drive her out to the country and release her, but now I can't stop imagining some bozo on a four-wheeler tearing through the countryside and ending her, so I'm thinking it would be better to see if the zoo or any local wildlife sanctuaries would take her. On the other hand, if she seems fine with the pet life, we'll build her a bigger habitat with plenty of room to roam. In the mean time, she pretty much just sleeps and eats in the little pen, and the rest of the time we let her roam around the yard or the house. Supervised, of course.

Since she literally walked into my life, I've been doing a lot of research on box turtles, and here is what I've learned:

How to tell the sex of a turtle - her yellow eyes, shortish claws and convex bottom shell tell me that she's a she (you can also tell by looking under the tail, but I won't get into that here - this is a family blog).
How to tell the approximate age of a turtle - this is the answer to the title riddle. Turtles have growth rings on their shells that you can count to get a good idea of their age. Going by this, she's 4-6 years old (a couple of the rings were faint enough that I wasn't sure whether they should be counted, hence the +/- 2 years margin of error). She'll live around 30 years, so it's a pretty major commitment if we decide to keep her.
She's an ornate box turtle and as such won't get any bigger (her shell's about 4 inches long), and she needs a drier habitat than other turtle varieties.
I have to feed her bugs, which is gross, and she particularly likes roly-polies, which is just sad. Hopefully I'll manage to get her outdoor habitat populated with enough of these that she can hunt them on her own and I won't have to feed them to her.

After spending some time with her, I've decided to call her Matilda (after trying on and rejecting Phoebe). This is her fourth day with is, and so far she's doing great. She's already used to us enough that she responds when we baby-talk her, she's totally over any initial fear she had of the other pets (although they're still pretty freaked out by this strange rock that can sprout legs and come after them), and she's taking food out of our hands. Well, out of tweezers, since she accidentally bit Matt hard enough to draw blood while snatching a roly-poly out of his fingers. At night we bring her inside and let her sleep in a heated terrarium,another left-over from Matt's pet reptile days. If we decide to keep her, we'll also build her a bigger indoor habitat in time for winter.

She's pretty neat, and I'm having a lot of fun with her. If we end up having to give her up to keep her happy, I'll definitely have to start saving my pennies to buy a captive-bred turtle. But she already seems to be getting pretty comfortable with the ridiculously pampered lifestyle that goes with being our pet. I have a feeling she's going to stick around for the long-haul.

***

In other news, I haven't blogged all week mainly because my tendonitis has been flaring up a lot lately, and I can't type for very long without pain. I've also been having to write a lot of eHow articles for Demand Studios to help make ends meet while business has slowed down for the summer, and that's pretty well pushing me beyond my pain tolerance threshold. Any time I can make for blogging is mainly going to my new Task Wrangler blog, and I'm only managing to post there once a week.

As a compromise to tide me over until my wrist quits acting up, I've started a Tumblr blog, "Falling In the In Between", meaning that if it's too big for Twitter but not really appropriate for here, it goes there.

And now I have to go write some more articles to make up for Wednesday's turtle-centric slackitude.

Weekend Lulz On a Weekday - Batdog Edition

2010-07-19T17:49:00.000-05:00

My tendonitis has been flaring up big time lately and it hurts to type, so here's a pug that can say Batman.

Croutons

2010-07-15T16:02:00.001-05:00

Notes from the Twitterverse to spice up this blog salad...

17:57 Cleaned up at used book store today. New (to me) @scalzi, @marjoriemliu and Tess Gerritson. I'd be reading all week if I didn't have 2 work. #

18:45 I should write some articles but my wrist is killing me. Numb fingers probably mean I should get off the computer for a while, right? #

13:10 Did a kickboxing workout DVD w/ my sister and it almost killed me dead. Ow, my thighs. #

13:16 Supposed to rain tomorrow. Must mow today, or else the lawn will swallow us up like Jordy Verrill. #

13:17 But first: must write articles until my wrist gives out. #a mwriting #

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Croutons

2010-07-14T16:01:00.001-05:00

Notes from the Twitterverse to spice up this blog salad...

16:09 Today I blogged: Due Date - bit.ly/d8uyPI (sadness warning. Could be triggering if you've had to deal with miscarriage.) #

17:21 I need some music to write about algae-eating fish by. #

17:37 Punny! RT @taerin: @jmbauhaus Dr. Demento introduced me to this fishy song a very, very long time ago. :-) bit.ly/9WFItu #

17:42 Pretty & non-intrusive. Just right. Thanks! RT @taerin: @jmbauhaus Paul Winter (with whalesong) is also good: bit.ly/c79lgv #

19:23 Finished my fish article, which shouldn't have taken me this long. Fact-based articles are definitely not my favorite thing to write. #

19:26 RT @wilw: This is the best way I can think of to honor Sir Patrick Stewart, as we celebrate his birthday today: bit.ly/ciksHe #

21:58 Wrist is giving out. Time to call it a night. #

00:00 I'm cool with that: I write like Chuck Palahniuk. Proof: bit.ly/cmkFxB #

00:06 Now it says the sad thing I wrote today is like Douglas Adams. Um, okay? #

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Writing Lessons From Lost

2010-07-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

Last week I started re-watching Lost from the beginning. Why? Because it's summer and there's nothing on, and Netflix has seasons one through five available for instant streaming. I finished up Season One this weekend. As I barreled through the season in three- to four-episode marathons, a few things occurred to me that I could apply to my own writing.

Pacing is everything. The first season of Lost has 25 episodes. The second has 24. A normal TV season in the US is 22 episodes. Even watching the entire season in one week, there's a lot of filler and meandering in the middle that's a little tedious to get through. No wonder it's almost universally accepted that this show got so much better around Season 4 when the episode number was cut nearly in half, and suddenly there was little room for filler. The latter seasons maintain a momentum that keeps viewers on the edge of their seats, and that momentum is sorely lacking throughout big chunks of the early seasons.
Don't make characters difficult-to-impossible to like if you want the audience to feel sympathy for them. I know there's a big "I Hate Jack" contingent out there, but I'm not even talking about him and his tiresome self-righteousness and guilt-tripping ways. I'm talking primarily about Shannon. Remember her? Remember how awful she was? And then how (spoiler alert!) suddenly she was supposed to be sympathetic after she became a dubious love interest for Sayid while remaining manipulative and demonstrating that she was perfectly willing to use him to exact revenge on Locke for Boone's death? I'm so confused about what this show wants me to think of her. Frustratingly, that goes for most of its characters. I'm not saying that protagonists have to all be likeable (or antagonists unlikeable -- after all, the most despicable villain on this show turned out to be one of my favorite characters), but show some consistency in their motivations, and for the love of Glow Cave, make them interesting. Especially if you insist on telling people that your story is character-driven. Which brings me to...
When writing a character-driven piece, don't make your McGuffin more interesting than your characters. Was there anybody who was more interested in Driveshaft's falling out or in Jack's daddy issues than in what the what was going on with that island? Not that the flashbacks didn't provide necessary character development, but with few exceptions (e.g., how did Locke end up in a wheel chair? And why is Jin being such an overbearing jerk? And what is up with Walt?), mostly I wanted the flashbacks to be over with so we could get back to the island weirdness. I'm sorry, Cuse & Lindeloff, but the island overshadowed the characters. The lesson learned is to maybe not provide such a fascinating mystery if you want your readers to focus on the characters instead.

And now I'm going to go start Season 2, which I'm sure will yield more lessons on writing. Hopefully I won't be too busy counting the hours till we get Ben and full-time Desmond to notice them.

Due Date

2010-07-13T16:05:00.000-05:00

I feel bad that I can't remember my first baby's due date. Somewhere, there's a slip of paper bearing a positive pregnancy test result with that date written on it, but I can't find it. I guess it's not vitally important - the due date is just a guess, after all. What matters is that, had the baby made it, it would have been born this month, some time in the second half.

If that had been the case, then right now I'd be huge. I'd be overflowing with anticipation, and maybe a little fear at how drastically our lives were about to change. Matt's office would now be a fully-converted nursery, with a crib ready and waiting, full of toys, and a chest full of tiny clothes and tiny shoes and other tiny baby things. My hospital bag would be packed, and when people asked me when I was due, I'd beam and tell them "Any day now," or maybe groan in semi-mock agony as I pat my extended belly and say, "I know, I look like I'm about to pop, right?"

But that wasn't the case.

It's been over seven months since that first nightmare trip to the emergency room, after I felt my first baby, impossibly small, leave my body in a gush of blood and tissue and lost hope. It tends to be overshadowed by the second - the one whose tiny body lingered for weeks after its little heart gave out, only for an ultrasound to reveal the truth that broke my heart all over again, a mere three months ago. But the first is still remembered, as fresh as the second, and held in my heart as fiercely as I would hold it in my arms if given the chance.

This is the month - perhaps even the week - that we would have welcomed that baby home. But Matt's office is still just an office, and no bags are packed. That homecoming is never to be.

Croutons

2010-07-13T16:02:00.001-05:00

Notes from the Twitterverse to spice up this blog salad...

17:27 My head hurts. :( #

20:14 Hard up for cash, so #amwriting article on Chinese medicine treatments for acne for Demand Studios. I might have to try some of these. #

20:53 RT @BillCorbett: Also the name of a HARRY POTTER warlock-metal band, I believe. yfrog.com/izuqxrj #

20:56 Article finished and submitted. Chinese acne detox diet forbids too many fun things. Think I'll stick w/ Clean & Clear zit cream. #

21:18 Just submitted yesterday's article to Guideposts. Fingers crossed. #

21:21 And now I'm hungry and my brain is mush. Time to get off the computer. #

13:32 I do too. RT @sunbrae: I think it would be awesome to start a writing group for people with mental illnesses. I could co-facilitate. (Maybe) #

13:35 These are slaying me. RT @Slate: Shirtless Old Spice guy responds to the ad's YouTube comments slate.me/9s6sTz (via @grubreport) #

13:42 That pretty much sums it up. RT @finalgrrl: This week in Toosday Toons: House, MD! (apologies to @oliviawilde) bit.ly/bjE9Zm #

14:01 RT @taskwrangler: Blogged: 7 Free Resources For Growing Your Online Business - clicky.me/siM #

14:20 did pilates today for the first time in forever. Go Team Me! #

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Croutons

2010-07-12T16:02:00.001-05:00

Notes from the Twitterverse to spice up this blog salad...

17:23 Wrote an article intended for the blog, but I think I might polish it up and send it out to the paying markets and see what happens. #

17:27 Getting ready for church now, and it's about time. We haven't been in about a month. #

17:30 Just ripped out a hangnail, and it hurt like something I can't say at church. #

22:10 Wrote another 500 words on the new thing that might be a novel. #

14:43 Told the latest Divx player update not to install Norton, and it installed it anyway. rassinfrassingrumblegrump #

15:20 This is SO my life, right here: bit.ly/dcMVzr (via @amandapalmer) #

15:27 Today I blogged: Getting Real bit.ly/9d7NWN #

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Getting Real

2010-07-12T09:00:00.001-05:00

So on Saturday, I wrote a beginning for something that's been brewing for a few days. I've got a vague outline in my head for a semi-semi-autobiographical something about a young woman who has busted her butt for years to prove wrong everyone who ever accused her of being a lazy underachiever, only to have everything fall apart and end up finding love, happiness and success in the kind of unconventional, supposedly underachieving work and lifestyle everyone always warned her to avoid. Here's a little snippet of what I've got so far:

I knew I should have stayed in bed this morning before I even made it to the office. How did I know this so early in the day? Well, if the lost keys, the spilled coffee, the speeding ticket (thanks to my lost keys making me late for work) and the broken purse strap that caused the entire contents of my purse to spill onto the parking lot weren’t any indication, then it was probably the pratfall I took about a block from the building that clued me in.

The most embarrassing part was that I didn’t trip on anything. And there were no icy patches or slick spots to make me slip, either. Half way through the intersection, in the middle of a crosswalk where I was surrounded by at least twenty other people who knew how to walk just fine, my ankle just gave out, and I went down hard, slamming both my knees and my palms onto the pavement, spilling my purse again in the process.

Here’s the thing: it’s funny when people fall. Of course I don’t mean the elderly or people who have mobility problems, and it’s definitely not funny when people get hurt. I’m talking about grown people, in their healthy prime, who normally have no trouble at all getting from point A to point B on their own two feet. I mean, there’s a reason the pratfall forms the basis of slapstick comedy. It’s a funny visual. So whenever I take a spill like this -- which happens more often than I’d like to admit; maybe that’s my karma for thinking it’s so funny in the first place -- no matter how much pain and humiliation I’m suffering, I always picture how it must have looked to the people around me, and I bust up laughing.

So there I was, in the middle of Second and Boston, sprawled on all fours with pain shooting up my arms and spreading out from my knees, laughing hysterically. The expressions on the faces of those who stopped to help me went from concerned to confused to weirded out in pretty short order. A guy wearing the standard casual-office uniform of Polo and Dockers paused in the middle of picking up my purse to stare at me in horror, which made me laugh even harder. I’m not sure how long this went on, but tears were streaming down my face by the time by the time I felt hands on my shoulders and heard a voice asking, “Penny, are you okay?”

...the part about laughing uncontrollably whenever I trip and fall is completely true.

***

The other day, while cleaning my office and moving all of my writing books to the windowsill, I came across one I'd completely forgotten about: Writing Articles From the Heart: How to Write & Sell Your Life Experiences by Marjorie Holmes. I bought this book at least 15 years ago, and my edition was published in 1993, years before the advent of blogging. I started reading it today, and I'm curious about whether more recent editions have been updated to include blogs as a platform for this type of writing.

At any rate, I'm glad I re-discovered it. As previously noted, I've been thinking about this type of writing lately, and this book is answering a lot of the questions I have about it, primarily regarding finding an angle, figuring out where to focus, and how to organize a narrative and not just ramble like I'm doing now. And I'm thinking I might use this blog as a practice forum for this type of writing, to see how well I take to it.

I'll tell you why I think I'm drawn to a more realist, literary branch of writing these days. I'm not abandoning my love of genre fiction by any means; but lately, I've been feeling disconnected from my own writing. This is part of a larger disconnect I've been dealing with lately, ever since all the baby drama. In a lot of ways, I just feel numb. I can still enjoy things, laugh at funny things and cry at sad things and get angry at things that piss me off, but more complex emotions seem a little beyond my grasp right now. It's hard to feel excited about anything. And when I think about romantic pairings in my own stories, I don't get the giddy thrill that I used to. I don't get much of anything, really.

It occurs to me that this might be something I need professional help to remedy, but until I get good insurance, my only recourse is to pray it out, talk it out and write it out. I'm wondering if getting more real with my writing will help me reconnect with my emotional life. I hope it does, because right now everything I write feels flat and lifeless and forced -- which is pretty much how I feel more often than not these days.

Croutons

2010-07-11T16:02:00.001-05:00

Notes from the Twitterverse to spice up this blog salad...

16:27 Blog, for anybody who's late to the double rainbow game -Weekend Lulz: Double Rainbow Edition ... bit.ly/amVz6s #

18:08 Today I wrote over 1,000 words on something that might be a new novel, and then wrote and scheduled some blog posts for the coming week. #

18:10 Now: gonna go read some stuff before diving into S2 of my Lost re-watch, about which I have one thing to say: Desmond! #

20:43 I've been singing the Double Rainbow song to myself all day. #

20:56 Keep hearing things that sound less like last week's fir ecrackers and more like the usual nearby gunshots. :/ #

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Weekend Lulz: Double Rainbow Edition

2010-07-10T16:24:00.000-05:00

Presented without comment... this:

And this:

So intense!

Croutons

2010-07-10T16:02:00.001-05:00

Notes from the Twitterverse to spice up this blog salad...

18:16 Photo: Growing my plant collection with this Christmas cactus my mom sent home with me. And in a gorgeous... tumblr.com/x9md33657 #

22:43 LOL @sunbrae! #

22:46 Glad you enjoyed the conference! RT @steviepuckett: Professional Conference bit.ly/aECn11 From my blog. #

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Croutons

2010-07-09T16:01:00.001-05:00

Notes from the Twitterverse to spice up this blog salad...

17:42 Finished! I almost forgot what it's like to have a clean office. twitpic.com/23kt44 #

17:57 Still not my idea of Jaime, but, cool: Awesome fan made GoT wallpaper: Lannister twins via @chronarda_ru bit.ly/aX2hck (via @WiCnet) #

18:10 RT @kpwerker: Photo: Doctor Who is proven to be the center of all sci-fi (DIAGRAM) | SCI FI Wire tumblr.com/xdqd0g8th #

19:06 Husband's about to get experimental in the kitchen and whip up some steak tartare for dinner. A first for both of us. #

19:09 RT @jchutchins: This owl is awesome. bit.ly/9KEvJS #

20:08 Blog: Rainy Day Cleaning Spree (with a "before" office pic, if you're curious) ... bit.ly/aGX9iT #

21:54 Steak tartare was a success. Texture was a little weird, but it tasted good, like bunless, squishy hamburger w/ all the fixin's. #

23:07 Time to call it a night. Going to see my mama at her house tomorrow. Later, 'taters! #

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Rainy Day Cleaning Spree

2010-07-08T20:06:00.000-05:00

I cleaned my office today. Over on the left is the before pic of my work area, which is not really "before" so much as "twenty minutes in," after I took down and re-hung the sari-serving-as-curtain that was previously held up crookedly with binder clips. You'll just have to trust me that it looks much better now. You'll also have to trust me when I say that my desk isn't usually quite that messy -- my cat had knocked over a pile of mail and I didn't bother to pick it up before I snapped this pic.

I've been meaning to clean it up for a while now, in the hopes that I might work a little more efficiently if I'm not constantly having to clear a space for my laptop every time I sit down. What motivated me to finally do it today was a sudden desire to bring plants into my office, and to not have them be eaten by the cats once I do.

I don't actually have any plants ready to bring in yet, but I've started to propagate some cuttings from other plants in the house. They're currently hanging out in the little windowsill garden we've got happening in the kitchen.

Those plants are, from left: jade, cilantro, African violet, English ivy, and sweet basil. The ivy is what's being prepped for my office - it's my first experiment in trying to get cuttings to grow roots in water. If this attempt is a success, I'll try it with the violet and a begonia my Big Sis sent home with me yesterday (not pictured).

I'd like to eventually duplicate the windowsill garden in my office window. The only trouble with that is, all of those plants are toxic when eaten, and my office is a hangout for plant-eating cats. To that end, I've rearranged some things to start training them that the windowsill is off-limits. Which breaks my heart a little, because they love to perch up there and bird-watch. But seeing as how they knock over something on my desk every single time they get up there without fail, I'm cool with taking away their windowsill privileges.

And so, for now I've filled the sill with so much stuff that they can't get up there. I moved my writing & editing reference books up there, putting them within easier reach, which also freed up some shelf space for my growing paperback collection. Hopefully, the rest of the tchotchkes lining the sill can be traded out for plants once the cats are used to the window being off-limits. As for my desk, it's organized and clutter-free, and there's plenty of room for the cats to lounge while they're pouting about being barred from the windowsill.

Croutons

2010-07-08T16:02:00.001-05:00

Notes from the Twitterverse to spice up this blog salad...

16:42 Ran into my niece-in-law at Target and got some baby snuggles from my grandnephew. #

17:57 RT @TaskWrangler: In case you missed it... Blogged: Comparing Free Blogging Platforms: WordPress.com vs. Blogger - bit.ly/90Zx3U #

17:58 I'm v. v. jealous of @neilhimself's office gazebo. #

12:12 RT @TomatoNation: Hey Nation: a dog and a pup need your help. Please RT. tinyurl.com/3xb4sa4 #

13:15 RT @TaskWrangler: Blogged: How Not To Be Annoying On Twitter - clicky.me/rFy #

13:23 Thanks! :D RT @sunbrae: @jmbauhaus The Fail Whale? Cute. #

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Croutons

2010-07-07T16:02:00.001-05:00

Notes from the Twitterverse to spice up this blog salad...

17:30 Blog: What Do Batman and Chinese Food Have In Common? bit.ly/bKUXEW #

17:51 RT @thedailywhat The Double Rainbow Connection bit.ly/aKOyyw #

18:59 No cable means I have to wait for new Warehouse 13 to post to Hulu. Boo. #

19:03 On the other hand, thank God for Hulu, which keeps me from having to pay for cable. Yay! #

20:41 The Task Wrangler finally has its very own Facebook page! bit.ly/avUUhI #

20:48 RT @grubreport: My BlogHer interview with author and derby girl, @pamelaribon. bit.ly/csF83d #

20:49 Going to heat up left-over Chinese for dinner and settle in to watch a few more eps of S1 Lost. #

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What Do Batman and Chinese Food Have In Common?

2010-07-06T17:30:00.000-05:00

I don't know about you guys, but I had a good, if relatively low-key, 4th of July. My mom-in-law came over in the afternoon for deeee-lishus gourmet hot dogs (lovingly prepared by Matt on the kitchen stove, who opted to leave the patio grill unlit because of threatened rain that never showed up). After lunch, we settled in to watch Batman Begins, because MIL had never seen it (nor any other Batman movie, ever; prior to Sunday, her knowledge of the Caped Crusader began and ended with the 1960s TV series), and because I have a personal tradition of watching superhero movies on the 4th, especially if I don't get to see fireworks. And since we didn't have any plans for fireworks viewing, I was pretty eager for some superhero action.

Later that evening, after MIL called it a day and went home (with a whole new outlook on Batman in tow), Matt and I ordered Chinese, because seriously, what in the world is more American than greasy Chinese takeout? And as we noshed on our mu-shoo and egg foo yung and garlic chicken, lo and behold, we could see some pretty spectacular neighborhood fireworks right through our patio window. Awesome. Batman, fancy hot dogs, Chinese food and fireworks all in the same day? Once it was all over, I went to bed a happy camper, believe you me.

How was your 4th? Did you see any fireworks? Go to any parties? Are superhero movies and Independence Day as tied together in your mind as they are in mine? Tell us all about it in the comments.

Croutons

2010-07-06T16:01:00.001-05:00

Notes from the Twitterverse to spice up this blog salad...

17:30 Getting nothing done, & having a weird ADD/maybe-Aspie thing where I can't stop messing with my teeth. Think it's time to declare a day off. #

17:35 Going outside to knit & try not to think about my teeth. #

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Croutons

2010-07-05T16:01:00.001-05:00

Notes from the Twitterverse to spice up this blog salad...

10:53 It's a rainy Monday. At least the rain held off last night and I got to see some fireworks. #

10:54 By the by, home-grade fireworks have sure gotten a lot more impressive since I was a kid. #

11:07 Just had an epic battle w/ my chihuahua over a chicken bone. I won. Now he gets to chill in the time-out crate. #

12:57 RT @nishanjoomun: Beginner's Guide to SEO bit.ly/cEpmx0 #

12:58 TweetDeck sent that last RT from the wrong account even though I definitely set it to the right one first. >:( #

13:34 The day's starting to get away from me. Time to grab hold of the reigns. #

13:49 Something just crawled across my foot and made me scream. Don't know what it was or where it went. #

15:18 Just slammed my knee's funny bone equivalent into the corner of my desk. I kinda want to cry now. #

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