NaNo Finished & Stuff

This November, I’ve been a good little girl. I have NaNoWriMo’ed myself into shape. The 50K word mark was met on Saturday (two entire working days early) and I’m liking the story. It’s off-beat, whacky, a bit nonsensical but damn, it was fun writing it. It’s so out there, I’m thinking it’s my only hope to published stardom.

Now I need to keep the momentum going. I am the first to admit of my lazy, easily distracted personality.

As for other news, the kids did not come home. MiniD spent the holiday at Mr. Demonic Jr.’s house. They also did not ask for any money, which was a first. The older one is a bona fide adult, although I’m not sure how he’s making money. All I know is that he doesn’t ask for any and hasn’t dipped into the remainder of the college fund. Ms. MiniD, I believe – hope – pray, is learning to live within her means. She also found a team sport that keeps her out of trouble. (YAY! *doing happy dance*)

We spent a quiet Thanksgiving with our manager. Turkey, homemade pie, crab cakes for an appetizer. Yes, indeed. I have exploded into another pants size and it’s only been a few days.

I hurt my left thumb. I smacked it with a mallet during my jewelry class, but that’s not what’s wrong. I have De Quervain syndrome which is probably related to jewelry and the prolonged typing I’ve been doing lately. I have a brace, and plenty of drugs. Except for the pain, I am in bliss.

Business sucks, but that’s the breaks.

I will go into all of this in some detail at some future point. Right now, I want to remain in the NaNo zone and will write a few thousand words today. I will also visit blog friends who probably thought I dropped off the face of the earth.

A Return and Confusion

As one might guess, I’ve been conspicuously absent the last month or so.

I’ve been trying to finish my YA book, which is a little past the half-way point. However, then fall (winter) began to settle in. It sort of snuck up on me unawares. One day, my alarm went off at 5 a.m. and I noticed it was pitch black dark outside. I stayed in bed until 6 a.m., and the darkness didn’t change. It was still like night time.

As some might know, I suspect I have SAD (seasonal affective disorder). This means I get depressed in the winter time. Last year, I got a jump on it by taking my meds in early September. This year I forgot until that morning in the dark.

It takes a few weeks before the medicine kicks in. I found myself driving to the store and my heart began to sink for no reason at all and my eyes clouded up. I made an appointment with the doctor.

It’s hard to be light and breezy (as in writing YA) when you are feeling down in the dumps. So the book came to a slow but crushing halt. I want to finish it before the end of the year, so I have started working on it a little at a time. When faced with the prospects of writing or jumping into bed, I choose the bed more often than not, but I am trying to curb that bad habit.

On the positive news front, I am taking a class, wire wrapping jewelry. This is a very expensive hobby. We are provided copper in the class, but if you want to upgrade to silver or gold you’re on your own.  I’ve met some interesting women in the class. It’s on Tuesday mornings, so I have to make sure the office is covered, but the time away helps. Plus, I am making Christmas presents with my own two hands.

My daughter broke up with her once Mohawk boyfriend this weekend. She’s young and flighty but that doesn’t mean the guy deserved it. It’s too bad. I like all of Ms. MiniD’s boyfriends, usually more than she likes them. Parental approval is the kiss of death for these guys. I’m sure when she finds a no-good wife-beating serial killer that we disapprove of, she will latch on to him.

Other than that, we are hunkering down in the Tundra for another long winter. The first freeze was weeks ago. So much for global warming.

Euphoria and the Real World

As I was taking my shower today, I thought about a few things. (You must know I was taking my shower, because many times I sing and few times I think. There’s something about the scent of sandalwood that causes my mind to synapse.)

One thing I thought of was euphoria.

The event that came to mind was when my youngest, darling Ms. MiniD was born. I had spent twelve hours in labor and was really proud of myself for my counting abilities. Mr. D Jr. was born by emergency C-section meaning I was heavily drugged and missed the entire show. Mr. D also missed the birth of D Jr, because as he was getting ready and putting on his scrubs to go into the operating room all pristine and pure, he put the hat on his feet and his footie on his head. The doctor took one look and told him to wait outside.

Ms. MiniD’s birth, however, was splendid by comparison. I was counting to a song which vanished from my memory as soon as she squirted out. I was so involved in counting that I didn’t notice anything else, including my husband. The baby had crowned and the doctor, who had a cheesecake waiting for her in another room, admonished me to push. I wasn’t ready, so I held her in. Besides, I was going for midnight, when I would have two whole days in the hospital instead of one day. Insurance, you know.

Ms. MiniD ruined that for me by bursting forth eighteen minutes early. Mr. D placated my ire by bringing me steak and lobster take out the next day.

What does this have to do with euphoria? Well, euphoria kept me counting. Lamaze was going well.

Euphoria also caused my husband to say just moments after Ms. MiniD was placed on my stomach, “Let’s do this again!” Mind you, she was still covered in goo and slimy. The doctor took one look at him and then at me and shook her head.

Of course, he doesn’t remember saying that. He was in the rapture of the moment.

Love often makes one euphoric. For women, it causes them to remember. I can remember the day I met Mr. D. It was October 29, 1983. I also vividly remember our first date which was January 13, 1984. There’s something about a red rose hand delivered in a raging snowstorm that sticks in the memory banks.

I can see why some people fall in love with being in love. There’s something seductive and addicting to the euphoric state. It’s a lot like falling out of an airplane. I imagine it might be like shooting up heroin.

I’m imagining there’s a bit of euphoria in the Mr. D Jr house these days, he and the wife being married and all. (Boy, does that feel funny to call her “the wife.” That’s what my husband used to call me. Now he doesn’t call me anything. He doesn’t have to.) Mr. & Mrs. D Jr have always been a mushy pair.

I suppose Ms. MiniD is euphoric being back in SoCal. If I were in California, I’d be happy too. It would mean I somehow came into a pile of money and could afford to live there. I’m still stuck in the Tundra so it’s a pipe dream and my happiness level is a little low.

Come to think of it, when you get older, euphoria is not a waste a time but it’s just so unnecessary. I can’t remember the last time I felt that way. Well, yes I can.

Home Alone

Mr. Demonic and his “boy” (I call him the other “b” word most of the time) are over on the West Coast of the state on a mission. They are moving a classroom from one store location to another one in the same mall.

This calls for an overnight stay. This is because the West Coast is a long drive away. They could come home, but it would be after midnight by the time they get back into town.

I have no problem being home alone. In fact, I rather enjoy the unencumbrance.

For one thing, I can do what I want, when I want. Like eat junk food. I had junk food for dinner, and it was sinfully awful. I will not divulge which form of junk I consumed, just know that my cholesteral is probably peaking even as I type.

For another thing, I can lay out my craft work. Take over the entire living room. I did this, until my fingers got numb. My fingers don’t take long to be numbed.

I can play my etudes on the violin. If Mr. D is home, I can only play melodies. Etudes are studies and they are not supposed to sound harmonius. No, they are supposed to confound your brain and your fingers at the same time, contain more flats than sharps, and sound like the cries from Hell. In fact, they are hellish for the first couple of weeks until I figure out when to shift and what the notes are. In the meantime, it sounds like a cat in heat.

I took the opportunity of Mr. D’s absence at work to get caught up on some other projects. I worked on some computer designed brochures, business cards and the like that I had been putting off for weeks.

I worked out a little too. I work out very little, because working out is boring. I can only take fifteen minutes of it. I cannot work out when Mr. D is around because his workout machine is next to mine. He likes to watch golf or the news, and I like music. He also sweats like a pig. I work up a mild sweat. Sweating like a pig I save for mowing the lawn in 100% humidity.

When Mr. D is gone, I can work on my writing. Thus, my presence here in the dark tapping at the keys. I’m about one third of the way finished with my YA novel. I am working slowly compared to some, but compared to myself only a year ago, I’m on freakin’ fire!

I haven’t heard from Mr. D. I think he took his friend to the casino. Good for them.

I think I will get a glass of wine and go to bed early. I’m entirely wiped out from my loneliness.

My Memory Fails Me…

I have been seeing my memory slip down the memory meter for the last couple of years.

This is not a good thing.

My paternal grandmother had a severe case of Alzheimer’s syndrome at the end of her life. The last time I saw her, she didn’t even recognize me. She recognized my dad, but none of the other fifteen relatives that were there that day.

I am deathly afraid of Alzheimer’s. The only thing worse than cutting off my fingers would be to have my mind succumb to such a brain sucking illness.

I used to have a memory like the proverbial steel trap. I could remember lyrics after hearing a song only once. I would sit through college classes and not take a note. I somehow passed the test at the post office, which is 99% remembering numbers and letters and 1% correctly marking FOSDIC circles. I knew zip codes, phone numbers for not only my friends and family but for half my employees and my driver’s license number.

Now I can’t remember a movie I saw three weeks ago, Seven Pounds. I know Will Smith was in it but other than that, my mind’s a blank, a total empty white canvas. Either Will Smith or the movie was unforgettable or I’m going nuts.

Food, now, is another thing. I can remember memorable dishes and fine wines. The mediocre, no… but the good and the bad, yes.

My husband, Mr. Demonic is quite the note taker. Every day he sets up a list of things to do in handwriting that resembles chickens scratching at feed. He can read it, which is the most important thing. I used to think it was foolhardy, but now I know he’s just trying to keep it together.

So taking his lead, I have purchased a little notebook for putting down things I might like to remember. Like ideas I have for my book, or names I want to remember. Otherwise I wouldn’t remember a thing.

One of these days I’m going to have to use it to find my way home. I just know it.

Mr. Demonic Jr. Gets Married, and Other Earth Shattering Events

My son, the outrageously talented Mr. Demonic Junior, emailed me three weeks ago on a Friday afternoon and announced he was getting married the following Tuesday.

What was most curious about the email was that there was no cc: to his father.

Eventually he told his father. Like twelve hours before.

To bring some of you clueless about the Demonic household up to speed, Mr. D Jr. is recently turned 22 and has recently graduated from a chi-chi music conservatory (where he was the recipient of the President’s Scholarship and was also on the Dean’s List) with a degree in piano performance.

Mr. D Jr. has just enough left in his college fund for a year and a half of graduate study. However, the previous 17 years of education have left him with a bitter aftertaste when it comes to academics. He announced wanting to take a year off before making a move.

(Motherly input here: if anyone deserves a year off, that would be ME.)

In the ensuing months, Mr. D Jr. has been applying for positions. Unfortunately for him, he lives in San Francisco where every other person is a musician or artist. In the meantime, he’s been doing some gigs here and there.

Yesterday he played for a funeral.

If you knew Mr. D Jr., you’d know that he tends to gravitate toward funeral marches. His fascination with them began long ago, at age 7 when he discovered the Chopin funeral march. He likes the dark Russian pieces evocative of depression and angst.

When I told Mr. Demonic of his son’s funeral gig, he laughed and said Junior should print up business cards and hand them out to local funeral homes. People die in San Francisco, you know.

Back to the wedding… With such short notice, I was unable to attend. EVERYONE was unable to attend, which caused a furor among my family. You see, we like to party. (Mr. D’s side doesn’t party at all. They rarely speak to each other.) Mr. and Mrs. D Jr. tied the knot at the Courthouse in downtown San Francisco, a stunning building to be sure.

Basically, they did what his father and I did, but for different reasons. Mr. D says to me one day, “Let’s get married, but I don’t want a big wedding.” to which I reply, “I’ll go along with that, but only if a get a substantial diamond to make up for the lack of party.”

So yeah, it wasn’t exactly like that.

Mr. D Jr. had been dating the girl for two years. I like her. She’s rather quirky in some ways, but basically good to him. I’ve only witnessed one tiff between them and it was nasty as all tiffs can be. I’ve even used her as the basis for one of the characters in my first novel.

However…

I am not without motherly reservations. Junior is only 22. He doesn’t have steady, gainful employment. (She works part time at Victoria’s Secret, not exactly a money maker.) There’s also an immigration issue, which is why I think they speeded up the process to begin with. Her student visa extention was coming up shortly and she’d have to go back to Japan.

Don’t worry, my dear readers. Mr. & Mrs. D Jr. are NOT pregnant. Wouldn’t that be the icing on the cake?

However…

I cannot be the kind of mother-in-law my last one was. Come to think of it the first mother-in-law was rather a bitch too. I just can’t be that way. I remember many days crying over the tenuous relationship and at the end the lack of relationship. I had no mother of my own so I adopted my MIL. Bad deal. I expected as much from her as I was giving and it wasn’t going to happen.

So I’m being a good MIL, congratulatory whilst biting my tongue (again and again and again).

Oh, this is rather long. I’m going to have to put the other earth shattering events in another post.

A Couple of Things I Noticed

It is so hot in So Cal.

My online friend who I had dinner with last night, lost real life weight.

I write more when I’m out of town. I actually wrote an article and pumped out six pages of novel in less than two days. I wonder how I can transfer that energy for when I return to my boring, humdrum existence in the Tundra.

My daughter is a slob. Her car is a mess. She’s not much of a mechanic either. Oh, and let’s not forget the forgotten traffic tickets.

Futons are for children, not grown adults with bad backs like me.

It’s really far from La Jolla to where I’m staying. I think it was farther because it was 10 p.m.

There’s real life traffic here, not like where I’m from. The failing economy has eliminated our rush hours.

I had the best crab on the planet last night. It came from the Bering Sea.  I should feel guilty because I’m not eating local crab but I don’t.

If you noticed anything I missed, please let me know.

Mr. Demonic Gives Up the Ghost

Actually, Mr. Demonic’s car finally breathed its last, and it’s about freaking time.

When last we left Mr. D, he was nursing along a very old Malibu with over 250,000 miles on it. It’s a car that’s seen a lot of action, first with a multitude of teenagers who invariably aim straight for curbs.

At 80,000 miles, he coopted the car and started driving it himself. At that point, it was still a reasonably nice ride. Leather seats, nice stereo. Luckily he took off the stickers and the dual brake. Such items are a dead giveaway as to the perilous nature of the operator.

Fast forward a hundred thousand miles, four years and several pots of coffee later: the car is beginning to show its age. It shakes, it shimmies, and the worst part of all, it smells like rotting caffeine. Hint: you don’t want to set your purse on the floor.

Nonetheless, Mr. D decides to take it on numerous cross country journeys. He motors to the Twin Cities, to Kansas City, and to Nashville, in addition to driving it back and forth across our Rust Belt state several times a week. I held my breath every time he backed the car out of the driveway.

This was two years ago.

After that, it was a matter of principle. It was pride. It was a matter of tenacity. Plus, he’s a tightwad. Mix all of these wonderful characteristics together and you have a person taking his driving life into his own hands. He wasn’t going to get rid of the car until it died and he was darned ready to give up the car. He was going to see clear to the end of the relationship.

Three months ago, as the odometer edged nearer to the 250K mark, Mr. D’s Malibu began to run even rougher than before. It smelled of burning fluids. I was afraid to get in it to go for a quick run to the grocery store. Then he started to run out of gas on a regular basis. Like three or four times a week.

For those who know Mr. D, he has run out of gas with amazing regularity. He times it so that just as the last fumes are circulating through the engine, he rolls right up to a gas pump. It’s something of a joke. On those other unlucky occasions when he’s stranded, he calls other people to come and get him out of his fix. That’s because even though I’m the wife, I think it’s ridiculous in the modern age to run out of gas. Gas stations are like fast food joints, there’s one on every street corner.

I ran out of gas once. I was on southbound I-35 north of Minneapolis. I was 20. It was 1976.

For me, walking two miles to a gas station that one time cured me. My gas gauge never goes below 1/4.

Mr. D’s car appeared to suffer from a malfunctioning catalytic converter, which was replaced. Twice. However, he still continued to run out of gas. This is because the gas gauge hasn’t worked in six months, and with the catalytic converter gone awry, his miles per gallon fluctuated. Wildly. Most of the time he was getting right around ten miles to the gallon. Or less.

Cash for Clunkers came in the news, and I told Mr. D (no, I begged. I implored. I nagged.) please, oh please, could you maybe see fit to get a new car? Something with a working gas gauge maybe?

He was resistant to my idea. He still had hope. (!) He wanted to see the odometer hit 300K.

Last week, his car bit the proverbial dust. Mr. D called around and learned that since the car was titled in the business name, he couldn’t take advantage of the Cash for Clunkers program. (What? Businesses don’t have clunkers?)

But it’s over for good, so let’s get out a requiem, or a pitcher of margaritas. He cleaned out the car over the weekend. I’m embarrassed to say we’ve pulled up to valet parking at ritzy restaurants in that sad ride.

He’s not sure what the next car will be. It’s the end of summer and they all come back to roost, so he’ll choose one out of the fleet and probably drive it until it drops.

You Can Go Home But It Won’t Be The Same

Just returned from a quick trip to Colorado. More later… The basic premise is that you can go home again, it’s just not going to be the same as you left it.

OMG! I’ve been gone for over a month!

I just realized that I hadn’t visited WordPress for awhile, but I was amazed to find out after just logging in today that it’s been over a month!

What the hell?

There’s much news and no time to devote to sharing it. For those of you who wish to follow my escapades, send me a quick note at the end of this entry and I will send you an email with links to what I’ve been doing.

Let’s just say summer  has been busy.

The best thing is that I’ve been writing, usually for an hour or two every day. Yesterday I pumped out four pages of the novel which sprung from the loins of the novel I was working on. Tandem novels! Whee!

My garden is super, all in place. Except for the critters, things are going great. Now if the weather would cooperate. We haven’t had much for a summer this year. It’s mostly been cold, rainy, foggy and gray. Just like San Francisco but without the culture or the sushi.

I’ll try to come back this weekend…

Taking a Sabbatical from Garbage

The current political season has left me spent. Add to that our declining business, shaky economy and my girls-gone-wild 18 year old on the Left Coast, and I can honestly say there were times in the last month when I really and truly wanted to run away from home. You know, jump into the car and head south or west and drive until I hit an ocean. Before the Republican Convention, I had toyed with the idea of Alaska, but I’m now thinking that our last frontier is not far enough away. (It’s not Sarah Palin, really…)

Politics is starting to irk me. The barrage of television advertising in particular has gone from the Annoying Level to the Sickening Level. I can’t even find “Forensics Files” or “American Justice” without having to be subjected to continual mudslinging. I tried to find a weather forecast as Hurricane Ike’s eye ended up right over my house, but all I had to channel surf through commentaries. (For those who really want to know, Ike came, it rained like a monsoon for a day and a half.)

I write on another (couple of) forums, and petty political sniping is all I see there. What used to be interesting reading (I especially like reading others’ views) has become nothing less than a free-for-all. Emotions are running high.

People are now yelling at each other when they’re not trying to insert “gotcha” moments, you know, something like pigs in lipstick. What sows wear on their lips not important to me; for Petey’s sake, I seldom wear lipstick myself, and don’t recommend it for any mammal. Besides, there are far more serious issues than comparing people to animals in various forms of make up. For all of the fray, for all of the noise, no one is being heard. In the end, though, it’s all garbage.

Friday, I decided to take a “mostly” sabbatical from garbage. I say “mostly” because I managed to come here and rant about my daughter, and I managed to go over there and rant about the stupid level that the political process has now sunk to. I refused to get sucked into any ideological commenting, which was fine by me. I also refused to watch TV, and only looked briefly for hurricane reports.

So what did I do?

Here’s one thing I did:

I made jewelry. Lots of it. I just started experimenting with it a couple of weeks ago, and now find myself inexplicably drawn to bead shows and craft shops. I found these really cute little charms, and voila! the “Be Here Now” bracelet was born.

“Be Here Now.” I remember that mantra from the early ’70s. Even though there was a war going on, things seemed tranquil compared to today. There was plenty of excitement, but no sniping.

I also canned a lot of tomatoes and corn. Buying a pressure canner was the best investment I could have made. We can’t eat the tomatoes fast enough, and I’m going to love opening a jar in December.

This weekend, I also started Chapter 13 of my novel. Coincidentally, Chapter 13 is when my main character gets the worst of her bad news. Her life plummets from a pleasant complacency to the gates of Hell, before taking a turn toward normal. I toyed with the idea of skipping right over Chapter 13, you know like some hotels do with the 13th floor. But serendipity intervened, and I’m not arguing with that kind of Karma.

I knocked off a couple of restaurant reviews I had on the back burner as well. Remembering what I had to eat during my vacation put me back into a California kind of mood.

I also took some time to read. Yes, read a book. Although, I have to say I am reading books written by our major political candidates, but I figured doing so would enlighten me more than watching TV would.

And finally, I finished cleaning out Ms. MiniD’s room. I took all of the photos stuck onto the walls and boxed them up with her knickknacks and doo-dads and put everything in the attic. I plan on painting the room, in a color she will no doubt hate.  She had admonished me NOT to do that before she left, but seeing that her behavior has led to some consternation on my part, I found that I no longer gave a damn what she thought. It was somewhat freeing, even though I found evidence that in addition to drinking and having sex, she was also smoking weed.

*sigh*

There’s garbage everywhere, isn’t there?

By the way, if any of you see a gray Prius speeding south or west, please do not stop it.

Mr. Demonic’s “Blond” Hair

Hopefully, this will be a short post, but you never know. Sometimes, just as I do when I get together with good friends, I run on and on. When I chat so long that my butt gets a cramp, you know I’m having a good time.

Today, I would like to mention my other half, Mr. Demonic.

I met Mr. D at our place of employment, almost 25 years ago. I think I mentioned that in a previous blog post, but I’m way too lazy (and busy) today to look it up. (I’ve been on WP for almost a year, and my posts are many – almost unmanageable.) The first thing that struck me about my husband was that he was very good looking. No, really. He is extremely handsome. I imagined at the time that he was too handsome for me to catch, however, at the time I didn’t realize that he thought I was very good looking, too. Many people (my husband and my internet boyfriend among them) think I suffer from poor body image. I like to think I’m realistic.

Either way, I caught him, and I’m not throwing him back.

But back to Mr. D. He used to have a magnificent head of hair, dark brown, very thick, not wavy, but it would go where he told it to. Contrast that with my locks, thin, straight, and it’s unruly, much like my teenage daughter. It doesn’t matter how much “product” I put in mine, in thirty minutes time, it ends up straight. I used to go the permanent wave route. That was the only way I could obtain some semblance of body. I’m way too lazy (and cheap) these days to subject myself to routine chemical treatments to make my hair bouncy. Mr. D buys one small bottle of hair goo, and it lasts six months. He just puts a little in every morning, and still looks like a hunk by bed time.

Over time, though, Mr. D’s hair has changed. He’s aging. We all are. Mr. D’s head started sporting gray hairs at the tender age of 33. Ms. MiniD wasn’t even born yet. My father, who is 24 years older than the two of us, remarked at the time that Mr. D should go to the drug store and by some hair coloring for men. Grecian Formula. My father, who is now 76, didn’t have much gray then and still has very little gray hair.

Perhaps it is the stress of owning your own business that has contributed to Mr. D’s gray hair. It is something to ponder. His PhD college professor brother is six years older, and while the top of his head is thinning, he doesn’t really sport a lot of gray hair. Of course, he has a cushy job where he only teaches two days a week and has tenure and a retirement plan. Mr. D works seven days a week. Mr. D’s sister, who was a year older, was a blond Scandinavian with a full head of hair (well, until chemotherapy, that is) until she passed away last year.

Mr. D’s father ended up a bald guy. Since Mr. D favors his father in many ways, height, body style, they way they carry themselves, etc., I am most certain that in ten years or so, Mr. D will end up a bald man too. That’s quite all right with me.

However, aging and turning gray has not set well with my husband. For the last several years, Mr. D has proclaimed that his hair is turning “blond.” He is claiming that since his sister was a natural blond, the blond gene was surely going to rear its ugly head and claim him as a victim. It would only be a matter of time. So this is his theory.

At present time, Mr. D’s temples are beyond gray. They are decidedly silver. The rest of his head is more salt than pepper.

(Now, I should interject here that I used to color my own hair on a regular basis. It was not to cover gray hair, but was back when I liked being a red-head. However, I am part Asian, and no one has manufactured a hair dye that can change my hair to Lucille Ball’s shade of red. Or a certain Tigereye I know. I have since stopped coloring, and even though I am nine months older than Mr. D, have only a few strands of gray. It must make him very angry.)

The other day, Mr. D got his haircut, came into work and announced that his barber managed to cut all of his gray hair out and so now he is blond. Of course, this results in rolled eyes and stifled laughter among the office staff.

I imagine he will stop talking about being blond when he is completely bald.

Being Sensible Is Always Harder Than the Alternative

Thursday afternoon, I went out to lunch with my friend, ‘herechillin’ – she’s someone I met online – and, at this time both of our lives are anything but “chillin‘.” In fact, it’s been nothing but a stress-filled roller coaster ride for the last year or so, for both of us. I made the date with her just because I had to get out of my area. My craw was completely filled with garbage. A different point of view is a good thing, and we always have a good time at lunch. We don’t agree on everything, but we respect each other, which is refreshing. I sense that we compare our lives and come away thinking “Holy cow! I’m so glad I’m not her!” Well, maybe.

We talked about the recent global financial mess of this week, which now eclipses our own personal stories of precarious finances. You see, we live in a place where unemployment is almost to 9% and there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

My husband, the crazy, silver-haired Mr. Demonic, has foreseen the financial collapse of the banks. We’ve discussed this many times over the last three or four years. In fact, about six years ago, he informed the family that there might not be a business at all in the future, and to get used to the idea. He’s not an economist, just a sensible guy.

He’s a thrifty one, that Mr. D, and that’s a good thing, because I would have gone through the money a lot faster had he not been there to oversee the Demonic operations.

All of hoo-haw over the financial collapse could have been avoided by a strong dose of sensibleness. For one thing, there is no reason why CEOs of any company anywhere should make hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of six years, especially when the end result is a lousy job and your world bank or mortgage company fails. CEOs should suffer the same as the stockholders.

I can tell you that when Mr. D and I have a bad year (and we have now had three in a row), we don’t increase our salaries. In fact, even though the price of everything has gone up dramatically in the last year or so (gas especially, which we absolutely need to do business), we have not raised our prices at all. If we did raise prices, we wouldn’t be competitive. The end result means the CEO and his wife make a lot less, because times are bad.

When times are bad, you don’t go out and buy a lot of silly things that mean very little in the long run. I suppose that being the “CEO,” Mr. D could go out and buy himself a nice luxury car every couple of years. But no. Mr. D drives an old car with 150K miles on it. It looks like hell, because people have rear-ended him (several times), and the interior is worse, because he tends to spill coffee, every day of the year. In the 22 years we’ve been married, Mr. D has never taken an interest in coffee mugs with tops, and believe me, we have all tried to entice him with various samples. He dislikes them all, and would rather drink from a very old mug (his “favorite”) precariously perched on his dashboard. The point is, the car still runs, so he’s going to continue to drive it until it dies a quick death, and the mug is crackless (so far) so he will continue to drink from it.

Of course, it is far easier to see cash flow and want to empty your pockets. It’s also easier to think of the here and now instead of plan for the future.

Someone should have told those CEOs…

A Quick Update on Mr. D’s Lost Ponytail

This is really not an update, because I never informed anyone that my husband, the dear Mr. Demonic, had a ponytail, much less a lost one.

I only bring this up because a couple of posts ago, when I was mentioning Mr. D’s silver-topped head, I remembered that he had his ponytail (from his high school, hippie days) stashed somewhere in house. I thought I would look for it, photograph it and show it to all of you here in the cyberworld that he did indeed have very brown hair. In fact, Mr. D’s hair, upon graduation from high school, was much longer than my own upon my graduation from the very same institution in the same year but a thousand miles away.

The ponytail was (I thought) safely secured in my hope chest, the very same one that contains every letter we wrote to each other while dating (about 1500 total), as well as my original Earth Shoes of 1975, and the rose petals of every bouquet he gave me. Imagine my surprise to find it mysteriously vamoosed.

Perhaps I had taken it out and put it somewhere else? That has happened in the past. The Demonic household has managed to procure so much junk, it’s amazing. Even though I make it a special point to throw away “stuff” with regularity, we are still inundated. We have had several things turn up missing over the last couple of years. For example, my mother-in-law’s ashes, a half dozen old swords – collectible, but not worth much, money, one of my paintings from college. Some of the missing we have attributed to Ms. MiniD’s friends, some we just don’t know.

Alas, but after overturning the entire house, I have failed to locate Mr. D’s ponytail. Mr. D doesn’t seem very worried about it. We still have the photographs to prove that his hair was long and brown.

The Search for Employees

The Amazing Woman Posing as a Fisher Price Toy has been hitting the streets recently looking for employment. Lucky for her, she lives in an area of the country where the unemployment rate is less than 8.9%, which is what it is here in the Frozen Rust Belt Tundra. Her chances are good for finding a job are somewhat better than a snowball’s chance in hell – what it would be here.

Her anecdotes are always fun to read, but of course then I started thinking about my own adventures in interviewing. These days, I’m on the other side, as the interviewer of office help. It’s a thankless job, one that I took over from Mr. Demonic. He still interviews our teachers, which is fine. That in itself is a major pain in the posterior. The other thing is that he is very rarely in the office at all, so he is somewhat clueless as to the workings on this end of the building. His office is located at the opposite end of the hall, and he’s often on the road. It just made sense for me to do office staff interviews.

Mr. D used to be enamored of using newspaper classified ads for jobs, but that was in the dark ages, before the Internet. He would spend three days trapped in his office, while a parade of totally inappropriate people would come in and fill out an application. Our office is small, and there would be no place to put all of these hopefuls in the lobby. It was a very inefficient way to find a replacement.

Later on, I started using our State’s free employment web site. It’s basic allure was that it was FREE, which is what attracted me to it right away. Plus, I could download the resumes and pick and choose who I wanted to come in. This is much better than to have 400 people show up for a barely above minimum wage part time job and tie up all my time. This worked well for a time, until I realized that most of these people are on unemployment, and they were coming in for interviews as part of the requirement to keep receiving unemployment benefits. They didn’t read the requirements of the position, or would phone when clearly the ad said to submit resumes by email. It didn’t matter. Most of them didn’t really want a job, making that manner of personnel culling rather an exercise in futility.

About six months ago, I decided to post my Help Wanted ad in Craigslist. Craigslist is also free, but I find that the people who respond to Craigslist ads are serious about finding work. Again, I would download the resumes and choose ten or so best resumes (from the hundreds of responses) to come in for an in-depth interview.

It’s not a difficult job, and requires very little in the way of skills. It’s helpful if you can use a computer, but no one on my staff works elaborate spreadsheets with formulas that would make your head spin. Well, besides me. This is a point and click operation. There’s an IT guy on call for the big server meltdowns or routing problems. We have a postage meter so simple in design that a poodle could operate it. The big machine that takes some getting used to is our copier, which takes up an entire room and cost more than my Prius. It’s a production machine that does it all; scans, collates, punches holes, staples, and can take paper from any of seven bins. Now if it could bake bread, do my laundry and make coffee, I’d be in heaven.

The bulk of our business is phone work, and with that being so important a component, how a person sounds on the phone during my initial call is of vital importance. Sometimes the resume is stellar, but the voice sounds like Chewbakka. In that case, the applicant’s resume is quickly buried, even if they do manage to come in for an interview. The last thing I need in this office is someone who sounds like a weird, psycho serial killer to incoming customers.

In other cases, the resume is painfully thin, but the voice is strong and professional. The person may be friendly in all other ways. In that case, I’ll take the plunge and go with my gut. I hired a very nice guy that way about three years ago. He had been out of work for four years because he was taking care of his elderly grandmother. A huge hole like that in the work experience is usually a red flag. He practically begged me for the job, emailing me several times to impress upon me how I should give him a chance. My husband, Mr. D, was concerned about where he lived (far away, other side of Funkytown). We like to have employees that are close, if only so that it is easier for them to come into work on snowy days. I prevailed, and Mr. T ended up being a great employee, and now teaches for us.

The other raw talent I hired was the high school girl after Elastigirl (the other high school girl) quit without notice. We call her A2, because there is already an A1, and it’s confusing enough here as it is. A2 is not yet 16, but she’s bright and has a happy phone personality. From having Ms. MiniD in the office, I can tell you that young, attractive, female phone voices are a plus with the high school males who call here looking for information. They are almost giddy with the attention. Using sex to make the sale, even if it is a minor child chirping enthusiastically on the telephone to some high school horn dog, is not above me. Money is money.

Although this is A2′s first job and I was taking a huge chance, I’ll hire relative newcomers for one reason: they are impressionable and have no bad habits to break. I can mold them like Playdough.

Hmm…

Reminiscing about the interview process makes me wish I had a position to fill.

Silly Employee Musings

For some reason, our line of work attracts the weirdest people.

Most of our employees are teachers who are doing this parttime to make extra money. During my long exposure to those in academia, I have found several traits common among most of them.

For one thing, teachers often give birth to teachers. They also marry teachers. This makes sense, since that’s their world. They probably meet members of the opposite (or same, what do I know?) sex at work, date and then marry.

However, it’s really confusing for me, especially around payroll time. We have two Boones, two Gilberts, two Gregorys, two Stouts, two Smiths. And of course, at one point we had four Demonics.

We have also attracted an assortment of other characters.

My favorite weird employee is Mr. Tang. That’s his real name. He’s Chinese, and he’s crazy Chinese. He yells in English as I would imagine him yelling to his wife in Chinese. When I get on the phone with him, I yell back, with an accent. “MEEEESTER TAAAAANG!” Mr. Tang brings us donuts every so often, but I just smell them and let the rest of the office eat them.

A2 is another case. She’s still 15, but looks older. There was something about her when I hired her, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Last week, I found out why she looks familiar. She is half Japanese, but you wouldn’t know it since she has a punk haircut and she’s blond. Her Facebook page sports several strange photos of her and her girlfriend posing inside of a front-loading dryer.

We also employ several people who have no business teaching anyone how to do anything. They are mean, short tempered and lack customer service and care. However, I’m pretty sure those people could also not get a job elsewhere. The ability to teach well is precisely why I don’t teach. I’m a screamer, and I know it. I’m thinking Mr. D feels a kinship with some of these people, or they have other somewhat redeeming qualities, like showing up to work on time. I don’t know. If it were my dynasty, I would have ordered the heads off those guys long ago.

There are also several employees who must think we are stupid. These are the ones who run away with money and think we won’t notice, or short the kids from time and think no one will complain. It’s hard to find an honest person in this day and age. In fact, I often make the rounds and visit class rooms unannounced to see what the hell is going on. That’s the fun part of my job, reconnaissance missions. Most of my employees have never met me, so it’s easy to do.

A lot of our employees have no inkling of proper manners. Case in point, last Christmas, we had an open house with food and drink. One guy, known for his stash of snacks, came in and slurped down several shrimp in a matter of seconds, hanging them high above his head before inhaling them whole. After that, I couldn’t eat a thing.

Of course, I’m not exempt from stereotype either. Many employees, having only spoken to me over the phone, think I am blond and a lot taller than I really am. I must exude a certain amount of silliness and a tad bit of airheadedness myself. I know some of them think I’m a bitch.

Then they meet me and see a short, partially Asian woman.

It must drive them nuts!

Gone Golfing

I’m going to be gone this weekend.

Golfing. It’s supposed to be restful.

I stink at golf. I am prepared to be most frustrated.

Oh, well. Someone has to be in the bunker…

I’m Back

I have had many adventures, but right now I am reading my favorite people. I’ll post something new tomorrow. I swear, it will be worth the wait.

An Escape of the Narrowest Means

Last Friday, Mr. Demonic and I decided to meet some friends of ours for a golf weekend. Since we live in the upper Midwest and they live in the South, we mutually agreed to hook up midway. For last weekend, the halfway point was Indianapolis.

I had only been through Indiana on my way to somewhere else. If you’ve never been there, you haven’t missed much. If you have been there (or God forbid, are currently living there), my deepest condolences. My own area is no prizewinner, but Indiana… sheesh.

We decided to take my car instead of the dear Mr. Demonic’s. My car is a Toyota Prius. My car is roomy, and you can’t beat the gas mileage with a stick. It’s also clean; I keep it that way. On the other hand, Mr. Demonic drives a used training car. It has over 180,000 miles on it, and has been rear-ended several times. (He tends to fall asleep at stop lights.) Mr. D does not have a briefcase. Instead, he uses the tops of paper cases and carries his stuff around in cardboard boxes. That’s a handy reuse of cardboard, but as soon as he makes a sharp turn, everything tumbles out, and so the entire car is covered in scraps of paper.

In addition, Mr. D spills his coffee on a daily basis. The passenger side is stained and smells of stale cups of Joe.

Mr. D didn’t like that I was driving, but heck, when have I ever done anything where he actually liked it? And in return, he does plenty to piss me off, but I won’t go there in this post.

We set off into a bright and sunny Friday, missing all of the morning rush hour. This was a good thing, because I tend to drive like a snail. I haven’t gotten a speeding ticket in years, and I certainly wasn’t going to get one last week. (Come to think of it, the last ticket I got was a direct result of Mr. D urging me to drive faster so he wouldn’t miss the Buick Open on TV.)

When we arrived in northeastern Indiana, I found I had the need to fill up the gas tank. That doesn’t happen often. It was also nearing noon, and Mr. D was getting hungry. (Me, I can take food or leave it, especially at noon.) If you have been to that part of Indiana, you’d know that the pickin’s are pretty slim when it comes to food choices. It’s not Napa Valley, where you can get a damned good, nearly gourmet sandwich from the gas station. My choices were fast food and more fast food. I would have preferred a homey country diner, but no such luck.

I don’t do fast food. Well, I will amend that. I will eat it, but only sparingly. Our choices that day were McDonald’s (NO), Burger King (DOUBLE NO), Subway (maybe… but they’re so big!), or Arby’s. I chose Arby’s, because they offer a petite roast beef sandwich (which tastes nothing like roast beef), but since at the time I was craving mustard, I thought would be good to relieve that craving. Arby’s personnel usually crinkle their noses at the request of mustard packets, but that’s half the fun of going there.

After getting our food, we set out on the road again. Unbeknownst to me, Mr. D had picked up a local real estate guide from the lobby at the Arby’s. While I drove, he serenaded me with real estate listings.

“Holy cow. A three bedroom house for $92K? They’re practically giving them away here…”

“Uh huh…” I was driving, so I tried to ignore him.

“Look at this one!” he would shout, shoving the book under my nose. “Four bedrooms, two baths, three car garage, lakefront. $325K! That’s practically a steal!”

I tried to keep the car on the interstate as I glanced over. “Yeah, nice.” I was noncommittal.

A few minutes later… “Look here! Forty acre hobby farm, old farmhouse completely redone with granite kitchen, pole barn, and a river runs through it. $200K. Are they nuts?”

“Why are you looking at that? We already have more houses than we can handle.” That’s true. In fact, the condo up north is up for sale, and so is the lot in Colorado. The other little house, we’re keeping because we have a reliable renter, otherwise that would be on the chopping block too. We’d sell our own house, but in this market, I doubt we could get anything for it.

“Look at this one. It’s commercial property. RV park with home. 500K. We could run an RV place!”

“Why are you looking at that? We already have a place to live and a business.”

“I’m thinking I could be a farmer.”

That was ridiculous. He doesn’t even mow the grass, I do. “You hate vegetables, remember?”

“Yeah, but we could live here. I could live here, especially if I had a nice house with a river running through it. Just think, I could go fishing!”

“You hate fishing!” It’s true. When the kids were little, they wanted to go and he never took them.

“I’d like fishing if there was a river right next to me. Besides, you said you’d move anywhere.”

I considered it. I really hate where we are now. It’s depressing and cold. I looked at the scenery. Indiana is not unlike southern Illinois or Kansas or Iowa. It was flat, miles and miles of spent corn and dry, brown soybeans cooking in the sun. There were miles and miles between exits and even more between houses. While the houses were cheap, I couldn’t imagine myself living there.

“I don’t think so. No, I couldn’t live here. Think of somewhere else.”

Thank God the skyline of Indianapolis came into view. Mr. D threw the real estate guide into the back seat where it lay until just now, when I took it out to throw it away.

Admonished to Quit My Boring Job

I just opened my Gmail account (something I might do once in a blue moon). I only have it for this blog, as I have other accounts as myself, the real person behind Pandemonic.

Gmail is great, because it normally stops SPAM cold. I spend most of my day with my real email just deleting junk. Gmail was so good, that I had not received any letters from Nigerian businessmen begging for checks and, especially nice, no come-ons to make my penis bigger. Thank goodness for the latter, because I don’t have a penis and if I did, I would be trying to hide it, not make it bigger.

I was happy and spamless. Until today.

A glaring email that stuck out amid all of my WordPress notifications said “Quit Your Boring Job! Work for Google!”

I’d love to quit my boring job (actually, it’s not boring, anything but, but I’ve had a snoot full over the last ten years or so), but I don’t think that Google is going to save me.

If it were that easy, I would have sent them a resume years ago.

Golf at the Indianapolis 500

It’s called the Brickyard, and it’s super cool. You start out somewhere outside the race track, and in the middle, several holes are right inside the center of the track. It’s a popular place, and it was busy that day.

The course is really nice. Lush grass, well tended. The carts had GPS. It’s a tough course too, but Mr. Demonic’s friend is a good golfer, who likes nice, tough courses. Me, I could putz around on a city course, and I’d be just as happy.

I was amazed at how big the place was. The track seems to go on forever, and there are plenty of boxes lined along the way. Likewise, the inside of the track is massive. I’m not much for racing, so I wasn’t aware.

Friday, there were several cars racing. Why, I don’t know. I always thought they only raced the 500, but obviously they use the track all year long. When we crossed over to the inside of the track, we could watch them as they sped around.

Now, for updates on my golf game:

1. The weather was very nice, so I couldn’t use that as an excuse.

2. My back wasn’t hurting, so I couldn’t use that excuse.

3. I have a great set of golf clubs (Lady Callaways), so I couldn’t use that excuse.

4. I had Arby’s for lunch, so I couldn’t use the excuse that I was hungry. It was a junior sandwich, so I couldn’t use the excuse that I was overfull.

5. I had plenty of drugs (Benadryl and Motrin), so I couldn’t use that excuse.

Let’s just say that I hit some good shots, but I hit more bad ones than good. I always feel guilty when I golf on a nice course with thick grass, such as the Brickyard. That is because I tend to hack up the course.

Perhaps I should get out on the course more than once every two months.

Doggy Visit

The Demonics have been toying with the idea of adopting a dog. Well, that would be THIS Demonic.

I don’t want a big dog, or one that that needs a lot of attention. In reality, I’m a cat person, but Mr. Demonic has stolen my cat! Well… Maxx wasn’t really my cat, he was my daughter’s. Now he likes Mr. D the best.

My thought is that we need some more fur in the house. Plus, another animal would keep the cat entertained. He needs something to do during the day, because right now he sleeps all day and keeps us up all night.

It’s also important to find good homes for homeless animals. Maxx was a shelter cat, and I rescued him. And look at him now… Fat and sassy, living the high life. My brother-in-law runs a shelter for German shorthair pointers in LA. Their house always has a full contingent of foster dogs. I like that rescues try to find suitable homes for throwaway animals. It’s hard to believe, but a lot of people think of their pets as interchangeable as a pair of shoes. A lot of rescue animals came from puppy mills, discarded after their years as a breeder were over.

My sister has two Boston terriers. I like how her dogs are well behaved, friendly, and don’t bark or shed a lot. They’re also compact and don’t take much space. So I did some research, starting back about six months ago. I went on the web site and filled out an application, and waited.

The Boston terrier people are fanatical about their dogs. I had to go through an application process, where I listed all of my references. They asked me how I felt about fencing and crating, discipline and training. They then would decide whether or not I was good enough to be a Boston parent.

This week, I made an appointment for a home visit. This is where one of the rescue workers comes over to check out my house and make sure I wasn’t going to use the dog to fight professionally or pull my sled in the winter.

Yesterday, a very nice dog came for a visit, along with his foster mom. His name is Henry. You can see what he looks like here. He’s really a handsome little dog.

Maxx was non-committal, but Henry wanted to play with him. Then Henry found Maxx’s big fleece ball and started playing with that. Maxx was a little upset. Mr. Demonic was non-committal too, but he was doing the dishes, and heaven help us if I interrupt that.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about Henry ever since.

I wonder what that means…

New Guilty Pleasure (Hobby)

Something happened to me a month ago.

I picked up some beads, and after that my entire world changed.

Some people have crack habits, others smoke cigarettes or drink. Me, I go to Michael’s and my eyes glaze over in the bead section.

Last weekend, I went to another bead show. It was that fiendish bead show at the beginning of September that caused all the problems for me. If you’ve never been to an auditorium filled with colorful rocks from all over the globe, I’m warning you now. Don’t go. You’ll be sucked into the vortex like a hapless space traveler.

Last weekend’s show concentrated on actual beadwork. You know, beaded handbags and such. I’m still in the jewelry making mode, and the intricate designs looked daunting. There were charming handmade clay beads, and cha cha bracelets that looked too fun. I was actually looking for sterling silver and semi-precious stones like tiger eye and turquoise, but somehow found myself buying hearts of many types. (My designs tend to gravitate towards hearts and crosses right now.)

During NaNoWriMo (in November, not far off), I plan on putting my Pandemonic blog on the back burner. I think I’ll be putting my beads back there too, along with house cleaning, Christmas shopping, learning Japanese and playing Scramble on Facebook. When I’m able, I’ll just post photos of my beads.

So if you don’t hear from me, I’ll be in one of two places. Hopefully, not in Michael’s again…

Nesting for the Poor House

I’m not even going to remind people where the world has been in the last week. It’s just too depressing. However, I knew things were bad when Mr. Demonic came in from work last night and told me HE was depressed.

Mr. Demonic is never depressed about anything. If he has a fault at all (well, I guess he has a few) it is that he tends to look on the cheery and positive side. Me, I’m a cynic. My kids had trouble in school. I had a feeling they were learning disabled. He thought they would grow out of it. We buy a business in Funkytown. I think we’re going to be stuck in a morass of corruption in a poor area of town. He sees a business opportunity.

In fact, he’s extremely optimistic when it comes to business. It could be because he’s had an uncanny knack for success. On the other hand, I’m always looking for Plan B because I’m not sure when the bottom is going to fall out. I grew up poor and started out my adult life that way. I know what it is to have nothing.

Perhaps I’m a Gloomy Gus, or it could be cynicism honed from years of let down.

So when he came in and started kicking himself over not selling our portfolio earlier (or at least paring it down), I was alarmed. It’s my job to be the Weather Girl and proclaim when skies are sunny or not, not his. I found myself in the weird position of telling him not to panic. Talk about role reversals.

Ever since the kids went to college, we’ve been nesting for the poor house. I’ve said this elsewhere, but my husband is a very smart man. He foresaw all of this financial mayhem long ago. I think he first started telling me about it just after the turn of the century. I thought he was nuts. Back in the Dot Com days, we were millionaires on paper, but when it turned sour and we were middle class again on paper, he started doing research and found it was going to get worse. Still, we’ve managed to live a fairly comfortable, yet frugal life.

We don’t go out to eat a lot. Part of it is that I’m a really good cook and I can barely stomach fast food. I can do restaurant food, but I’m fussy. If I can make it at home, it’s probably better. Plus, it’s so much cheaper.

We don’t have outrageous spending habits either. We both pay our charges in full at the end of the month, although I’m not sure how long that’s going to last given the current situation. We never took out a home equity, sub-prime loan to splurge on additions or remodeling, instead waiting until we had the cash to do it. We own a lot of worthless property, but only have two mortgages, thank the Lord. I’m the master of getting stuff for 50% off or more, especially if it comes to clothes.

When the babies were born, we started saving for college. Both the kids have college funds, although this week they’re probably not worth much. My son, Mr. D. Jr., is a spendthrift like his dad. He’s lived in one of the most expensive cities in the world for the last three and a half years, and for the most part all we foot is the rent money. He knows where to find adequate Chinese food for less than $5 including drink, and can make it last for two days. Now the other one, she’s another case. The hard reality of penny pinching is about to bite her in the rear end.

I’ve been eBaying. I told my close friend who used to clean my house every two weeks to only come every six. (I feel badly for her too. She’s a new grandma, and a lot of her clients are scaling back. She needs the money.) I mowed my own lawn this year, as well as the gardening. I grow my own fruits and vegetables. I learned how to can the vegetables and soup for use later. I’ll probably drive my car until it falls apart. I know we’ll have to live here because the house isn’t worth anything anymore. And I know I’ll probably have to work until I die, which will unfortunately be until I’m 110.

In another way, I know I’m lucky. I have a great family, and lots of good friends, both in the flesh and online. I have my health. I have some minor talents and things I can do that give me pleasure. I give back when I can, but it’s getting tighter and harder to do so.

We can’t put the world back together. I’m not sure what the government is doing will help at all. All I know is that I have to keep my own house in order, and not spend more than I make and take care not to waste a thing.

Ten Things That Are Wrong With Me

Taking a page from Mr. Random’s book, I have decided to list ten things that are wrong with me. There are likely scores more things that are wrong with me, but I’m just wasting some time right now while I wait for a lady to call me to finish up a catalog I’m doing. So I don’t have time to list the other 90, not yet, anyway.

1. I really like to spend money. This is a bad thing, especially with the current economic meltdown looming over us like a huge toxic cloud. I don’t spend money on extravagant things though. Here’s a sub-list of the things I like to spend money on:

• Good food. I’d rather eat good food than substandard food, and I don’t mind paying for it.
• Friends. If someone is in need, then I am a friend indeed. Ask anyone who knows me.
• My kids. Yeah, they are hardly worth it, but I’m a typical mother. I’ll do without if it means they will have something worthwhile, but that doesn’t mean I’ll give anything up for stupid stuff. (Ask them.) I’ll spend anything, as long as it deals with their education.

2. I am a hot head. Yes, this little package (getting bigger all the time) will usually lose the top of her head at least three times a week. Usually, it has to do with employees. Occasionally, it has to do with my daughter, Ms. MiniD. Sometimes, my son catches my ire. Very rarely, my husband. Mr. Demonic knows better than to cross this lady.

3. I am lazy. That’s right, I’m lazy. There are days when I just lie in my bed and look at the ceiling fan spinning round and round, when I know I should be pulling weeds out in the garden, or adding a couple thousand words to my novel, or doing the wash. I blame this on a comfortable bedroom. Sometimes, I lie in bed and look out the window to the sky and think, “I love my bedroom!”

4. I am not musically inclined. Sure, I wish I was musically inclined. I even play the violin, although I do so quite badly. I practice, and I try to read notes, but I struggle. Music doesn’t come to me in an instant flash like it does with Mr. D Jr., and I sometimes am frustrated and pissed off about it.

5. I am not artistically inclined. See #4. This was bad, especially since I was an art major. After the second year, when I ran out of money, I came to realize that I am not especially talented when it came to painting or drawing. Or clay or intaglio. Or sculpture. So I took up other things, like sewing and jewelry. I’m not especially talented there either. Hmm…

6. I am a food snob. Yes. I am. I can’t eat at pot luck dinners, because I would have to respectfully decline food that is ill prepared, or shows little or no imagination, or is high with processed ingredients and low in freshness. I only shop at certain stores because of my food snobbishness. I know I should give those other places a try, but I find I can’t lower my standards or my expectations.

7. I am generous to a fault. I find it very peculiar that as a person (not even counting Mr. Demonic) I have donated more money, time and goods to charity than has our Democratic Vice Presidential pick, Senator Joe Biden. I know Good Time Joe makes a ton more money than the Demonic clan, too. Perhaps I should use his standard as my own. (Nah…)

8. I’m fat. A direct result of #3.

9. I probably have ADHD. Where else would Ms. MiniD get it from? (Mr. D is ADD, because he’s hyperactive all the time.) This would explain my laziness and inability to get anything done. This might also explain my inclination to NOT be artistic or musically inclined.

10. I have a rapier tongue. I didn’t say that, Mr. Demonic said that. I just think I have a razor sharp sense of humor. Actually, before him, my mother said that when I was in high school. I wrote for the school paper and had some of my editorials published in the local newspaper and in national magazines. My mother always chided me about it. “Why do you have to write where you make people mad?” If I hadn’t been that way, I couldn’t have used it for #10.

A Disturbing Dream

Last night, I had a rather disturbing dream.

I dreamt I was pregnant.

Not just a little pregnant, I was about six months along and as big as a house. The weird thing about the dream is that I had been hiding my pregnancy from Mr. Demonic. He had just started to notice me getting a bit pudgy around the middle.

It was such a disturbing dream that I immediately woke up in a cold sweat.

**A late disclaimer: Mr. D had his plumbing snipped about ten years ago, and I’m (*YEAH! YEAH!*) just a pinky length beyond menopause. This woman is not birthin’ any babies.

The Last of the Tomatoes

We’ve had a really nice, long growing season this year. It’s October 17, and I still have tomatoes. My house plants are still on the deck.

I know it’s not going to last long, but I’m going to take it. There have been many years when we were covered in snow by October 16. As some might know, I do not like winter. In fact, I despise it. One of these days, when I hit the lottery or the economy comes back (which is much like hitting the lottery), I hope to move somewhere where the sun shines more than half the year. Somewhere reasonably warm all the time. If I never see snow again, it will be too soon for me.

When the season draws to a close, the garden looks a little ratty. The tomatoes are smaller and thicker, and they ripen faster on the window sill. The basil is leggy and overgrown. The oregano suffers from some sort of bug eating it. Even the chives look a bit droopy. I have some sort of squash growing, but I’m not sure if it’s an eating squash or a gourd. It’s very peculiar looking. The brussels sprouts are starting to bulk up. Even in the Tundra, we don’t pick them until December.

The good thing about fall is that the squirrels have a bounty of acorns on the ground, so they are leaving the veggies alone. I still wish there was some sort of squirrel birth control…

I don’t like the fall. Oh, sure, the trees are pretty when the colors turn, but the air is a bit brisk. Fall is the prelude to winter, the season I really dread. It could be my age, but I don’t think so. I’ve never caught on to the Winterwonderland school of thought, even though I’ve lived in the Tundra for 20 years and in the Deep Tundra for 11 years before that. Unlike some who embrace frigid temperatures, cold and snow, I recoil from it all. If I could get away with sleeping from the end of November to late March, I would.

Last year, my physician and I did an assessment. I had always suspected, but wasn’t sure, that I had Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). In looking over my history, we found that I was only depressed during the winter. This knowledge is helpful. Instead of waiting until I’m in a sad and lethargic coma, I get my medicine in advance of the days growing shorter and colder.

It’s not retirement in a sunny, temperate climate, but it’ll do in the meantime.

My Pledge is in the Mail

Mr. Random Name is hosting a  Scheharazade Pledge for cyber world’s famous David Rochester. So far, an unofficial poll of pledges finds that the people are embracing the David Rochester situation with open arms.

I’m a good guy, and I like to donate to just causes whenever possible. That is why, after cooking the books and going over my expenses, I have decided to jump on the Pledge bandwagon. David, my contribution is in today’s mail. To prove it, I have included photographic evidence.

I know that it’s Sunday, but you should be receiving this envelope by Wednesday at the latest. I have used a business envelop (being cheap) so Mr. R, please don’t think that this is junk mail and throw it away. As you can see, this is a tidy sum. I’m hoping that it will at least keep you in kitty litter for a couple of months. Or cat food. Or your favorite coffee. Or, God forbid, if someone should happen to catch your eye and you decide to take her to a movie (please choose the matinee so you have some money leftover for popcorn).

Now, on the off chance that Mr. Rochester really doesn’t want to accept my “pledge” because maybe he has a problem with actually being a charity, I will offer this alternative. Mr. R can edit my novel, at least offer $25 worth of editing. Is that fair? Otherwise, consider this a gift.

I am proud to be part of the Scheharazade Pledge. I only wish I could give you more.

My Trip to San Francisco, or the Travails of Travel

I’ve just arrived, but it’s been the longest several hours of my life. I’m waiting for my son to call me once he gets out of class, and then go to dinner, because I’m starving!

First of all, after dodging mega-construction projects all over the metro area (when you live in the Tundra, those last few weeks of fall are full of last minute projects before the permafrost sets in), I arrived at the airport with scant minutes to spare. While checking my bag, I was informed that my one piece of luggage would cost an additional $15. Why they couldn’t have mentioned it at the time of reservation, or even yesterday as I checked in online, I don’t know. Luckily, I had the money.

Since I had only seconds to spare, I didn’t get a chance to go to my favorite Japanese restaurant in the airport. This made me quite cranky. I knew that the pickin’s on the plane would be slim and grossly overpriced. I couldn’t see paying $5 for a snack box that I could assemble at home for $1.50. Besides, I wanted sushi, damn it! And miso soup that would warm anyone’s heart. (That’s the other thing – it was cold out today!)

Of course, my seat assignment was the second to last row of a very crowded airplane. I don’t know how anyone gets the first couple of seats next to the door; I never do. I didn’t mind, as I knew where I was going once I got there and didn’t have to make any connections. All went well at first, as I settled in to read Steven King’s “On Writing.” (I had a shamelessly fluffy romance novel should I be quick enough to finish the King book. I was.) I prefer to get a window seat, and like to look at the landscape below me, clouds permitting. I’ve flown back and forth so many times now, I can pick up the major cities and rivers, mountain ranges and high desert. I know when we are over Lake Tahoe, it’s time to pack up my personal belongings and raise my tray table to its full and upright locked position.

Today’s flight was less than blissful. During the flyover of the Rocky Mountains, the turbulence was so strong that I actually held onto the arm rests with both hands and prayed. As it turns out, it was a good thing I didn’t eat, because I have a feeling my lunch would have ended up as chunky finger paint over my seat mates.

During the flight, there was a medical emergency back in my section, the last two rows. The flight attendant went on the intercom asking for any doctors or nurses to turn on their overhead lights. Right away, four different lights went on in our section of the plane. It was comforting to know that if we were going to crash due to turbulence, there were so many doctors in the house.

The plane was just a little late because of the strong headwinds (thus causing the turbulence), and so it took a while to disembark. The flight attendant had taken my bag and put it in a Super Secret Spot since the overhead bins were all full. She had forgotten all about it, until I, as the last person on the plane, asked her for my bag.

On the way to the rental car building, travelers must take the AirTrain. This is quite the handy mode of transportation. However, to take the train, you have to get to the platform, which involves going up two sets of escalators. On my second set of escalator, my suitcase (which was packed full of motherly treats like freshly canned tomatoes and weighed at least as much as a Yugo) got caught in a step. On my other arm was my computer bag, which is also heavy, and my other hand was carrying a bag full of freshly picked super steak tomatoes. (Hey. I might as well have picked them before the real frost.) The combined weight of all these bags in concert with centrifugal force sent me tumbling backward. That’s right, I fell backward on the escalator with my bags dragging me down.

I know some might think this is really embarrassing. (Or funny.) I didn’t care about that; I just didn’t want to die. Lucky for me, I landed on top of a very thin Japanese businessman. However, since I was outweighed by my luggage 2 to 1, I couldn’t right myself and there was nothing I could do but scream. It was fortunate that the Japanese businessman had a friend who was a couple of steps above me. He ran down and extricated me from my predicament.

Of course, I apologized profusely. In English. I am learning Japanese, but didn’t know the right way to say “I’m sorry.”

Finally, I made it to my rental car. Of course, being me, I walked over 300 stalls in the wrong direction before I realized that Stall #7 wasn’t going to be next to Stall #386. As luck would have it, I backtracked and there was my little Chevy Cobalt, only steps from the original door I had departed from.

There were some bright spots in my hectic day. Usually, I make the wrong turn when leaving the airport and end up on the 101 heading right for downtown. I don’t want to go there, as my motel of choice is by the ocean, the exact opposite side of town. I can’t tell you how many times I took the wrong exit in the past, even though I know this place just as it were my own home. This time, miraculously, I took the 380 to 280, which is the right way to go. However, I missed the Super Secret Shortcut from Highway 1, and ended up taking the long way over to the Sunset. For some reason, even though it was rush hour, the long way didn’t seem so long.

After unpacking my quart jars and wrestling the rest of my belongings up two flights of stairs (remember, I said “motel” not “hotel”) I am taking a brief rest before I go outside and look at the ocean. After surveying my body, I see I have escaped with scrapes over my left hand, a badly skinned left knee, and I think what is going to be a very bad bruise on my behind. Oh, well… It’s all worth it.

Oh, yes. It’s glorious here. Hot, bright, sunny, very typically NOT San Francisco. My son says October is the hottest time of the year here, and he is right.

The sky is so clear. You can almost see Asia if you look hard enough.

San Francisco Heat Wave

Just a footnote to any of you who gives a damn: the hottest month of the year in San Francisco is not June, July or August. The hottest month is October.

Yes, while I was picking greenish tomatoes with gloved hands and a scarf around my neck the other day in advance of the first hard frost, people in San Francisco were stripping down to their bare skin and camisoles and donning flip flops and Bermuda shorts.

It was 80 degrees here today.

Like my son, Mr. Demonic Jr., I rather like the temperate climate of San Francisco. In his case, he loves the fog, and he has taught me to appreciate the fog as well. My adoration of this place (besides the obvious, that it’s the coolest city in the world) is based largely on the micro-climate found here. Because of the combination of Pacific winds, the mountains, the Bay and God knows what else, it’s usually quite temperate. The average day time high temperature is about 63. The average low temperature is about 51.

Even the beach today was Baywatch-LA hot, instead of the usual windswept and chilly. I actually broke a sweat during my morning walk, and it wasn’t even 8:30.

I believe that the climate and the hilly conditions are two reasons why there are so many people here over the age of 100.

While the tourists are loving this heat wave, my son and I are sweltering. I brought mainly cotton sweaters, but in next to 80 degree temperatures, a person can still sweat in cotton. I could always strip down to my under-t-shirt, but with my jelly roll stomach, I don’t want to give the natives a stomach ache. I could maybe go shopping, but I don’t want to buy more stuff. I’m getting to the point now where I’d just as soon have less stuff.

Meanwhile, the forecast for tomorrow calls for more of the same.

Damned Squirrels

I went to the Strybing Arboretum yesterday and a pack of damned squirrels followed me around.

They’re absolutely fearless. They come right up to your pant legs and start pulling on them. The beggars.

You can’t feed them (supposedly, there are signs warning against it) and I didn’t have any food on me at all, not even a stick of chewing gum. I don’t know why they followed me. They should have taken the hint that I hate squirrels.

I guess they’re not well-versed in telepathy.

I Know He Says He’s Working On It…

I know he says he’s working on it, but I can’t wait to for the news to come hot off the press. I have a busy day scheduled and only so much time allotted for playing on the internet.

Therefore, I will dive right in and give you all the Reader’s Digest condensed version of How I Met My Husband, even though I might have blogged about it before. I’m way too lazy to search through and find it. So here goes…

How I Met My Husband… by Pandemonic

It was late one night toward the end of fall. October 29, 1983, to be exact. I was working the late shift at a federal agency.

All of a sudden, a bunch of new recruits came on the workroom floor, perhaps ten or twelve. I gave them the once-over. As I spent most of my time at work, the dating pool was very shallow and drying up by the minute.

A couple of younger guys looked like possible prospects. One was attractive and blond. I try to stay away from blond men (I don’t know why, so don’t ask). He wasn’t very tall, but still, rather good looking. The other was tall, dark and handsome. Roman nose. Nice features. Beautiful dark brown hair. And he was TALL. (Since I am short, I tend to go for tall guys. Go figure.)

A supervisor told the two guys to work with me. HOT DIGGEDITY DOG! The blond guy was aloof. He looked forlorn being up at 11 p.m. at night, and terribly out of place. The tall guy was talking to the short blond dude. That’s what happened in this particular facility. People who started working together tended to band together, and there was no clique jumping.

Of course, I didn’t believe in enforcement of the classes, especially when it came to the dating pool. I was known to clique-jump whenever. So I started talking to Tall, Dark and Handsome. Not just there, but in the break room too. (Horrors! That was really in bad form!)

It took about a month, but I asked Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome (Mr. Demonic) out to dinner at my place. And, as they say, the rest is history.

**Wait a minute. I do think I posted this before… Perhaps I should blog about how I got him to ask me to marry him…

How I Proposed to My Husband (or Got Him to Propose to Me)

Although it seems rather gauche, women have been proposing to men since the beginning of time, and I don’t see any change in the situation. My son’s girlfriend proposed to him. I’m a little leery of a couple of twenty-somethings getting married before either has a college degree. If one or both had a full time job, that might sway me. However, I’ve been a daughter-in-law before, and I can tell you from experience that the man’s mother should not say a word. So I’m not talking.

The girlfriend’s mother is here in San Francisco. She flew all the way from Japan to meet my son and see his recital. The girlfriend’s mother doesn’t speak much English, but I got a lot of information out of her anyway. She thinks the marriage is a bad idea. She wants her daughter to go home after graduation. I doubt that’s going to happen.

I started thinking about how Mr. Demonic and I got together. I asked him out in the beginning. I insinuated myself into his life soon after. (Not unlike Mr. D Jr.’s girlfriend.) The difference was that after the first month of dating, Mr. Demonic moved 750 miles away from me. Despite the distance problem, we managed to maintain a long distance relationship for two and a half years. I’m not saying it was easy; there were times where I thought we might not make it, but in the end, love prevailed.

At first, we would take turns flying to the other’s city. He was a big shot, I was making good money at the federal agency, and plane tickets were under $160 round trip back then.

After a year of this, I decided to make a move. It was obvious that he never was going to do it. I didn’t pop the question, per se. Instead, I took the roundabout approach. During each visit to his Rust Belt city, I would make appointments for interviews with the local offices of my federal agency. I was looking for a transfer.

Transferring wasn’t going to happen. My ex-federal agency was hard to transfer around in. You’d think that they’d want to keep the natives happy, but it was a matter of the union. Going on job interviews gave me something to do when he was working. Mr. Demonic didn’t know this. He thought I was serious. (I was only partially serious.)

This caused the first major rift in our budding relationship. He told me not to make plans to move. I was adamant. He told me I’d have to find my own place. I said fine. I wasn’t fine though. I was pissed off.

After that, there was a cooling of ardor. I decided to concentrate on my own life in my own section of the Tundra, and took a couple of steps back. My new life consisted of going to parties and hanging out with friends, male and female. Oh, I still deeply loved Mr. Demonic, but I was done with the pursuit.

I applied for airline positions. I decided to enroll in a travel agent class. (HA! That would have been a bad move. Now everyone is their own travel agent!) I quit my federal agency job and got one working for the university. One cold January day, I was running late for work. There was an ice storm and my alarm didn’t go off because we had a power outage. I disembarked from the university bus, and began to run in the crosswalk toward my building.

I never made it. I was wearing clogs (a bad choice for winter in the Tundra) and fell down in the street. (Yes, I’m very uncoordinated.) I couldn’t get up. Students were passing me by, and I couldn’t get up. Eventually, after a few light cycles, a police car pulled up and threw me into the back seat. They took me to the hospital where I learned I had broken my leg.

Mr. Demonic found out, and had me discharged and sent for me. Thus began the long plane trip with my broken leg in a cast up to my hip. He wanted to take care of me. I thought, “Isn’t that sweet?” but also thought it was nuts to go 750 miles to be taken care of.

Sometime after I had arrived and was safely dispatched to his apartment, loaded down painkillers, he told me we were going to get married.

And we did. About six months later.

New Motherly Worries

As I have alluded to in a previous post, I have recently been to San Francisco to visit my son. Of course, in visiting my son, I also had to visit his girlfriend. And then, her mother was in town too. That, my friends, is a lot of potential family to digest in one visit.

I happen to like the choice of girlfriend my son has decided to make. The way I see it, he could have done much worse. Of course, it is slightly unnerving to hear her refer to herself as a “fiance.” (So far, I have not heard the words coming from my son.) They are very young. He just turned 21 and she is 25. I personally think they should wait at least five years before tying any knots, but you cannot tell young people what to do. If you try to tell them what to do, they usually do the exact opposite.

The Girlfriend has a few problems. These are mental. (No, I mean it.) She is, I believe, bipolar. She can go from cheery to morose faster than one can blink an eye. Because of her condition, she sleeps very little. Or perhaps because she sleeps so little, it contributes to her condition. Both she and my son are slobs, and they live with a sloppy ex-hippie, so the three of them are as happy as pigs in a poke. The roommate has said that he likes them so much, he would like them to continue living there even after they graduate.

The Girlfriend is also spoiled. I think her family in Japan has far more money than we do. In this economy, many people in the US are not exactly middle class any more. I think we are one of them. They provide her with a credit card, and while she does not pay rent, she contributes by buying food and clothing.

The mother of the Girlfriend is not happy with the situation. Oh, she likes my son, but she would like to see her daughter return to Japan after she gets her diploma. I tried to explain this to my son last year. At the time, the Girlfriend and the mother got into a tiff, resulting in the mother cutting off the money supply. This was when the Girlfriend moved in with my son. I asked my son at the time if the rift were because of him. (In polite Japanese society, the parents like the children to marry nice Japanese men and have nice Japanese babies. Moving to another country, even if it is America, is not an option.)

After all, the same thing happened to my mother. She bucked conventional thinking and ran after my father, an Army private. She chased him all over Asia, before snagging him and moving to the US. Her parents were so angry, they didn’t speak to her for 15 years. My son assured me that it wasn’t the case. They don’t do that anymore, he said. That was after the war.

Well, since you can’t tell adult children what to do or what your opinion is, what was I to say?

I was a daughter-in-law once, and I saw how destructive it is when the concerned mother says too much. The other thing is that I’m really fairly laid back. I’d like to believe that all will work itself out in the end. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway.

My first worry was to see my son move across the country. After that, it was wondering if he would graduate. Then it was worrying whether or not the kid would get a job.

Now my motherly worries include wondering if I can keep biting my tongue.

How to Be a Bad Mother-in-Law

My recent trip to San Francisco to visit my son had me thinking about motherhood and mother-in-law-hood. Actually, something else had me thinking of mother-in-law-hood, and it was something that happened a week before. I related the entire thing to my Internet Boyfriend/Friend, because I was quite upset. It’s nice to have friends to bounce stuff off of. He was very comforting, in that he provided some calm insights.

A couple of weeks ago, I started cleaning out my office here at the office. It’s where I do my work that is not associated with our business, but instead with business I started doing out of my home several years ago. I don’t make much money from that business, but it involves using the computer to design things. When I had my office at home, it was rather messy. When we moved to our current home, my husband said it was too nice of a place for me to have a home office which tended to be messy. (At the time, the nature of design was somewhat cut and paste. That’s why it could be very messy. Nowadays, everything is digital. No mess.) My husband decided to give me office space in our building, which is how I got a private office.

Anyway, I started throwing things away, and at a bottom of a box of very old cell phones, I found an envelope I had not seen before. It was addressed to Mr. Demonic, and in it was a copy of a letter I had written to his mother back in 1998.

My mother-in-law wasn’t a bad person, but she didn’t like me. My own mother died not long after I got married, and I needed a mother figure. She was exceptionally nice to both my children, her only grandchildren. The purpose of my letter was to express my opinion, as I am apt to do. Perhaps I should not have written it at all, except at the time I was up to my eyeballs in personal crap, and my children were very young (8 and 11). Life was coming at me from a hundred directions. It was a very stressful time.

My mother-in-law used to send my children gifts for the major holidays. She lived in another Tundra city about 700 miles away. She would wrap up the gifts and send them individually. My children, being small and extremely competitive, often wondered why one package would arrive, and the other would take sometimes days to get here. They, being of small minds, thought she was doing this on purpose. If I saw any small packages coming, I would secrete one if the other hadn’t arrived.

One day she called and my daughter answered the phone. They had a long conversation, which I didn’t mind. When my daughter hung up, she asked me where her package was. (?) I didn’t feign ignorance, because I knew nothing of a package. My son’s package hadn’t even arrived yet. Then she said, “Grandma said you have my package and won’t give it to me.” Then she went on to tell me I missed her aunt’s birthday and she was sad.

I was not amused. After all, why didn’t my mother-in-law say your father has the package and won’t give it to you? Why didn’t her father (Mr. Demonic) remember his own sister’s birthday? At the time, I could barely remember six hours into the past. I felt that I was being made the bad guy, when I was the one who regularly sent cards and photos and did all the Christmas shopping for both sides of the family.

In my anger and frustration, I penned a note to my mother-in-law. It began “I love you like a mother, but…” Because I did love her like a mother, and I couldn’t believe that she would try to make me look evil in front of my own daughter. In the note, I explained that I had no idea what my sister-in-law’s birthday was. I said that I was so busy, I had not yet sent my own two sisters their birthday cards (one being two months before, and the other a month before) and that they were still sitting on my desk. I said that side of the family didn’t send me birthday cards, nor would I expect them to. Then I admonished her to speak with her son about such things, especially about parenting if she didn’t like the way I did mine. I also told her that it was ME-the Mother and Wife- who made the plans to visit them. Mr. Demonic did not like going “home” as he didn’t see it as his home anymore.

Though I was angry, I thought my note was reasonable and concise. I didn’t refer to her in any hostile tones, I certainly didn’t call her names (and I wanted to), and closed by asking her to be considerate of my feelings.

She rarely spoke to me after that. And obviously sent a copy to Mr. D, who never once mentioned it to me. Perhaps wisely.

Though I was hurt, I got over it. Eventually, my mother-in-law passed away, and then my sister-in-law.

Seeing the note recently as I did jolted me into the same panic-stricken mode of ten years ago. It’s funny how many things lie just below the surface.

After I discussed this with MIB, I felt much better. I couldn’t change the way my mother-in-law was, and probably was looking for her love and approval when I should not have expected her to provide it. After all, I took away her baby. In the end, the only person I could change is myself.

That’s why I’m not going to be a bad mother-in-law.

Preparing for NaNoWriMo

This will be my last real post for a month. That’s because starting tomorrow I’m going to participate in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.

I’m also suspending my work on other blogs and in other forums. I want to concentrate on my novel this time.

This time meaning this YEAR, as opposed to last year, when I made a half-hearted attempt at one of my works in progress. That one is now almost finished, but I need a boffo ending and I’m not sure how to put that particular character out of her misery. There are almost 40K words in that novella, but the heroine seems to get into mishaps that blossom into other mishaps. I had to put that book away, because my brain was getting rather worn out from trying to keep her adventures wild and wacky.

I find that if I tell myself I’m not visiting certain places, I can keep my concentration going for longer than five or ten minutes. Last year, I was engrossed in a certain social networking web site that was time sucking to the nth degree. I committed suicide on that site on January 1 and have found that I suddenly have more time to devote to my serious work.

However, I will be coming back here to read my favorite people. I’ll be doing this during my regular work day hours, although I am going to cut back on my regular work day hours to write. I’m also cutting back on other things, like sleep, food and exercise.

I really want to round the corner to the final few chapters by Thanksgiving.

So, I will be back December 1st. Wish me luck.

NaNoWriMo Update Day 7

Over 12,000 words so far!

I’m not really a machine, but I’m trying to get the bulk of the writing done before Mr. Demonic comes back to town tomorrow night. Then it will be payroll, holiday, limited Christmas shopping and playing with the new dog. (I forgot to tell you, I got a dog! Will post photos next week!)

Here’s another photo in the meantime. It’s Maxx. I’m reading all y’all, just not commenting all the time.

Introducing Grace the Dog

I recently adopted a Boston Terrier from their rescue. Here is Grace, the Dog:

She’s really a sweetheart. Maxx the cat is not impressed, but then again, I didn’t expect him to be.

OK, I’m going to the hospital, then back to the writing mines. See you in a few.

Time Sucking Headache and Other Stuff

I don’t know if I can work on my novel today.

Yesterday, I reached the over 26K mark for November, just slightly over halfway for NaNoWriMo. In the total novel-picture, I’m sliding down past halfway. The end is in sight. Of course, it took me a year and a half to get to this point, but I’m hoping that I have learned a valuable lesson in time management this month. Either that, or I’ll return to my procrastinating ways and won’t be finished for another year and a half.

I would be working on my book today, but I have a killer headache. I’ve been treating it with advil because I also have a killer neck ache from sleeping like a pretzel last night. That is because Maxx the cat bed-hogged my side of the bed and I couldn’t turn over. Mr. Demonic claimed that as a result, I was bed-hogging his side of the bed. No way, Jose. I was contorted and couldn’t move.

There are other time sucking problems. Our manager at work ended up in the hospital a week ago last Monday. He’s 60 and an only child. Mr. D tried to call his mother over on the Left Coast of the state, and that took three days. She’s 87, and what happened was Mr. D had someone pick her up from her city and bring her to ours. The sick man wanted her to stay in his apartment, but we ended up having her stay with us. That’s because the sick (and hopefully soon to be permanently disabled) man was living in filth and squalor. No really. Think “garbage house” and multiply that by 1000.

Now before someone starts yelling at me about being the Man and putting my employees down, not paying them a decent wage, blah, blah, blah… the sick man actually gets paid pretty damn well. Too well. He’s spent the last six months sleeping six hours each day on the job. The girls and I would wake him on a regular basis. My husband, the boss and the infamous Mr. D, was largely unimpressed. In fact, he was getting madder and madder by the day, and had planned on speaking with the sick man the week the guy ended up in the hospital. Obviously, he had to put that plan on the back burner.

The sick man is a terrible smoker. He’s also an alcoholic. No, really. I mean, severely alcoholic. We had an indication when we have had the opportunity to be in social situations with the guy. If left to make his own drink, it would consist of 99% alcohol and 1% mix. He’s also done some very annoying and embarrassing things while drunk. It is more than likely that his grave condition was due to smoking and drinking. The mother has no clue. Her ex-husband (the sick man’s father) recently died. He was a big smoker and drinker. (Duh.)

Yesterday, the sick man was finally released from the hospital. I bid a teary farewell to the mother. I have a feeling she is going to be waging an uphill battle with the sick guy. She might be older than dirt, but she’s a nice woman, and deserves a better son than the one she has. His mood to her of late has been testy and mean, and that pisses me off. She’s so sweet. She knows about my novel and is very supportive. In fact, instead of talking, she let me go off for a few hours and write, while she watched TV. We exchanged phone numbers and addresses, and I told her if she needed anything at all to call me.

The sick man must have oxygen for the next six months. He hasn’t said what is wrong with him, although he did reveal that his blood has no oxygen and his red blood cell count is high. When I went to the hospital to visit him, his legs were completely black from the knees down, and the skin was like an elephant’s. It was totally gross. If someone knows what condition that is, I’d appreciate a head’s up.

It’s also been snowing the past couple of days. Grace, the dog, does not like to go outside to do her business in this cold weather. I’m not so happy about it either. She sometimes #2s in the house, but that’s not a problem, unless someone steps in it. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened much.

And of course, times are getting tougher. I don’t think there’ll be much for Christmas. That’s okay. The holiday has lost its meaning if you ask me. I might even go to church, although not the one affiliated with my kids’ school. I need a place where there’s not a lot of singing. My head and all, you know.

Anyway, today I have a headache.

That is all.

NaNo Update

Just passing by to let everyone and anyone who wants to know: 41K words +! Woo hoo! That means I’m about two chapters away from the goal.

The other good news is that I’m turning into the downhill portion of the book, meaning the end is in sight! I’m thinking of typing the words “The End” right about the end of December, especially if I keep going at this rate.

There IS a god! and it’s a writing god, too!

PS Blogging will resume on Monday. Have a nice holiday!

November in a Nutshell Part I

I’ve had to chop this up, since November was such a huge month. So expect my life in nutshell installments over the next couple of days.

NaNoWriMo = a success. I told myself that I was going to use the month of November to get the lead out of my shorts and write a substantial amount of words for the novel that has been gathering dust in my brain. It took me a year and a half to write 70K words. It took me 29 days to write 50K. Yes, I am lazy. But that’s progress. If you’re a fledgling author, I would highly recommend the NaNo route for you next year. If you are highly motivated, as I was, you will automatically reserve a certain amount of time each day to write. I am hoping to continue with the regimen, but it’s hard to say. I have some personal issues that I must address shortly. (More on that later.) Plus, I’m lazy.

I used my real work time to play, so that I wouldn’t have to play once I started writing. This means I was on Facebook during the morning playing Scramble. For those who don’t know, Scramble is very addicting. If you like words, don’t go there; it will be hard to extricate yourself. Depending on the day, I would either leave the office at 1 p.m. or 3 p.m. and go home and write. Silence works best for me. Weekends, I wrote in the morning. Most of the sessions were at least three hours long, but I did have a few days where I marathoned about six hours.

The thing about NaNo-ing is that you have a lot of cheerleaders in your corner. Not only did I have trusted friends online urging me on to victory (like the Little Fluffy Cat, Rochester, Dr. B, Corina and others), I also had some real people giving me some good advice. I reached out and did some research, which got the people I spoke to excited for me. They actually want to read the story now, even though my novel is quite chicky and these are old guys. (Well, a little older than I am.) I needed to know how much a guy like this would make if he had an office and agency of a certain size, and they were very helpful. These two guys were actually very funny. I told them that my protagonist had a son who went to school in San Francisco. I told them about the no-good husband, and warned that he wasn’t my real husband, the dear Mr. Demonic. Then they asked me where the family lived, and I said “in my house.” They thought that was hilarious. Research is a good thing, especially if you’re clueless like me. Well, I knew about the story lines, the emotions. Being a mom, being a daughter. But the technical jazz, yes, I needed help. The NaNo people also send you emails to cheer you on. This was beneficial.

I think I have about ten chapters to go before I can wrap this puppy up. Yeah! My character is making a cross-country trek to California. She’s in Colorado now. She must go deep inside herself to find herself, after trauma. It turns out her son has to do the same thing. All ends well in San Francisco, which is where all should end well.

While thinking about the mom-son relationship, I got to thinking about the mom-daughter relationship. So, guess what? As soon as this book is put to bed (and the crazy novella I’ve been working on that just needs an ending), I’m starting another book. It will have a grandma, mom and teenage daughter, set in my northern Tundra town.

Oh. I’m so excited about that.

November in a Nutshell Part Deux

A funny thing happened on the way from October to December.

November.

(I always wanted to write something like that. )

As many might remember the dim recollection of the US presidential campaign coming to a screeching halt around November 4, so do I. By November 1st, I was way past my tolerance for any more news coverage on Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, and purposefully tuned in to Turner Classic Movies to avoid the news. (Let’s face it, the race was all about them, not the other two guys. Who are they now?)

Election Day turned out a nice day, warm and sunny. In fact, later that week, I picked the last of my tomatoes, and the last one is finally red on my windowsill today. On Election Day, I had to drive my husband, the Dear Mr. Demonic, to the airport at 5:30 a.m. (He did the absentee ballot thing, a very smart move.) He was outbound on a plane to Las Vegas for his annual convention. By the time I returned to my little, soon-to-be frozen city, it was a quarter to seven, and the polls opened at 7. I thought to myself, who the hell would be up this early? And, I’m up and about anyway, might as well vote.

The polls for our precinct is located in a nearby community college. It’s the same college we threatened to send our daughter to, because she could walk to it and it’s a lot cheaper than the private, Catholic college in California that she is attending. The college is basically a courtyard building, where the hallways make a large square and in the middle is some greenery. The hallways are connected. When I entered the building, there looked to be about 25 people in line, which seemed promising. In and out, that’s what I wanted. Still, I knew a record turnout was expected, so I brought the book “How to Get a Literary Agent” by Michael Larsen. (Excellent reference, by the way. I strongly urge all writers to read it.)

My estimate as to the line was wrong. Way wrong. The people in front of me were the first 25, who had already been cleared and were waiting for ballots. Behind them was the rest of my precinct. No joke. I wandered down the first hallway of a hundred or so people, hoping to find the end of the line. When I made the turn to the second hallway, there were another hundred or so people lined up. At the end of that hall, I made another turn, and there was another line, then turned into the final hall, where I finally found the end. There had to be 500 people in line ahead of me.

I settled down to reading my book (standing up) and waited as we slowly proceeded. It took about an hour before I got to the short line, but that was okay, because I managed to almost finish the book. Then it took another fifteen minutes before I got to vote. My ballot was at first rejected by the counting machine, and I had to go back and clean it up. It wasn’t messy. In fact, I am a master at FOSDIC circles, and being a former art major, can color within in the lines with my eyes closed. (Well, at least with my glasses off.) I think that perhaps the machine did not like my choices, so it spit my ballot out. Nevertheless, I returned to my little stand and darkened the circles as prominently as I could. They were so black that they glistened like onyx jewels.

Then I went home and turned off the TV. I avoided newsstands, and refused to talk to anyone. It was obvious who was going to win, and I hadn’t voted for him. (If you must know, I voted my conscience.) If you know me, you know I hate news anyway. Journalism has taken the mucky path down sensationalism and is of the yellow kind these days. Luckily, with my husband off for a week in Vegas, I used the opportunity to make a huge dent in my NaNo efforts. In fact, that week is where I made the most progress.

Hmm… I wonder what that means???

November in a Nutshell, Continued

You can tell when Christmas (and the other religious holidays — I’m not knocking Jews or Africans) is coming up. That is because as soon as the blush on the Halloween pumpkin starts to pale, everyone comes out of the woodwork trying to sell you something.

(I should insert here what I did for Halloween. “Nothing.” We had tickets to the symphony where we heard Leon Fleisher play with TWO hands. Our box seat performance thus freed me from the obligation of buying candy and giving it to mostly drunken teenagers who drove into my neighborhood just for the occasion. Fleisher was wonderful, of course.)

Business is slow, and we are in the type of business where you don’t actually run after your customers and lay the heavy sales pitch on them. They call us asking for information, and then we are friendly and hopefully they will choose us. As of November 1st, however, the calls coming into the office from telemarketers has increased ten fold. They’re selling everything from health insurance to office products. The really annoying ones are those who claim to call from schools wanting us to put “advertising” into their sports flyers. We have the word “school” as part of the business name, so these people want to get chummy with what little money I have left.

Now, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday. I have kids, and they remarkably came out of the high school experience relatively unscathed. Both were part of the athletic department in some form or another. I know that in all my years as a parent, I’ve never seen the promotional materials these telemarketers mention that I can buy. Which is strange, because the kids’ school was one of the champ-een raisers of money that I’ve ever seen. You’d think that if they could make money with flyers, they would have tried it by now.

No, really these shills are telemarketers, calling me from beautiful southern states that are basking in sunlit ecstacy. They are not calling from the school on the other side of the state that is already experiencing lake effect snow. (No snow here yet, thank the Lord.) How can I tell? Well, it could be that sugary southern drawl that gives it away. Or the noise of 50 other people calling other schmucks in the same room.

I also love the telemarketers who are obviously calling from India, and the first thing out of their mouth is “Hi, my name is Steve…” (or Mary or Susan or Anthony) in an accent so thick that I can barely make out what is being said. The best way around telemarketers is to ask if they would like to leave a message. Of course, they don’t want to leave a message. If I ask for a copy of one of these flyers, they take my name and address. I have yet to see a sample, and I’ve been sitting here for years.

Another sign of impending holidays is the rapid accumulation of catalogs in my mail. I receive six or seven inches worth every day. Why, I don’t know, because I rarely buy anything these days, and I’m certainly not going to buy anything for Christmas, I’ve already warned my family. I’ve tried to have them stopped, but the last time I called, I received double the amount from the same store. I think they are multiplying like rabbits. My husband accuses me of the deforestation of the planet and the thinning of the ozone, but what can I do?

Ditto with the email barrage. Instead of personal messages, I get a hundred or so emails from stores that want my business. In fact, it’s so hot and heavy, these email are crowding out my usual messages about enlarging my penis and helping some Nigerian in London get his 50 million dollars. I sort of miss those stupid mailings.

I’m not a religious person, per se, but I feel like I’m a spiritual one anyway. I’m a fallen Catholic, so I’m not supposed to have the sacraments, which is kind of odd. How does the church know if I’ve fallen or not? Anyway, the entire Christmas experience has morphed into a consumer free-for-all, and it’s worse now than it’s ever been. Doesn’t anyone want my love???

So we made a decision. We aren’t going to participate anymore. At least not the indiscriminate spending. Besides, we can’t afford to.

Because of this, Christmas chaos has not come to the Demonic Family, thus insuring a stress free November and December.

More Nuts in the Shell That Was November

The entire world’s been kind of crazy and I’ve spent the last month or so waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or maybe it’s waiting for the axe to fall. Either way, things were kind of swirly for a month, just like the leaves that Mr. Demonic raked up (28 bags full and counting), but were replaced by more the next day. Funny thing about leaves, they never go where you want them to, and they never stay in one place for a long time.

Hmm… Much like children.

Ms. MiniD managed to flunk out of chemistry last month. I warned against taking a chem class that was scheduled at 8 a.m. on Fridays, but she wouldn’t listen to me, would she? I guess she thought that her roommates might wake her up in time. Or that maybe now that she is 18, she would magically wake up and be ready so early, instead of lying in bed until I threw something at her.

My daughter sleeps like the proverbial log, and she’s been a late sleeper since her early teens. It was murder getting her out of bed when she was in junior high. When her brother was still here and a senior in high school, he did the lobbing of hard objects at her. He was her ride. Of course, he had to go to California for college, thus leaving me with trying to waken her.

I thought things might improve when she got her driver’s license, but instead it got even worse. She was marked tardy so many times, she had detention on a regular basis. Her remedy was to sleep on the couch instead of in her bedroom. That way, she could hear us as we were getting coffee and struggle to wake up.

But I can tell you, it didn’t help much. She’s had so many conversations with me when she was sleeping (and I thought she was awake) that I can’t even count them all. As soon as I left, she would go right back to sleep. We had this same problem with her work schedule. There were a couple of times where I ran back home to shake her tired behind awake.

So after this long protracted period of playing alarm clock, I held out no hope for her. However, it was time for her to figure it out on her own. So I sat there and allowed the counselor to sign her up for an 8 am class. Oh, and I purchased a $30 alarm clock guaranteed to shake the deepest of sleepers. But she still managed to sleep right through, even with all of the aids. She missed so much class, she was falling behind, and thus came the withdrawal.

Let’s just call this a $5,000 F, that’s what Mr. Demonic calls it.

(On the positive side, she re-enrolled into another English class, so she will still get one credit. So let’s just say the F was approximately $3,000.)

Some might remember the brief story about our manager. That, my friends, needs an entire post or two to describe what was going on. However, I will say one thing. Since he’s been gone, the rest of the staff has been far happier. He wants to come back to work, but Mr. D is praying he will get a disability. Although they had been good friends in the past, Mr. D can’t stand the sight of him now. Plus, we pay him too much. We can’t afford it anymore. This may be the year where he actually makes more money than does the Demonic family, and friends, when your husband works 12 hours a day five days a week, and six hours a day the other two, the rewards had better be the hell worth it. At this point, we’re coming dangerously close to it NOT being worth it.

Well, back to work. Tomorrow I think I will discuss this year’s Thanksgiving dinner. Here’s a preview: It wasn’t good.

The November Nutshell That Was Once a Turkey Still Is a Turkey

Now with the nest all emptied out, my culinary experiences have gone hog wild. This is because the youngest, Ms. MiniD, always complained about my cooking. She said that I made “weird” foods, and normally turned her nose up to my offerings. Then she would enlist her boyfriend to go to Taco Bell and eat fake Mexican cuisine.

(As a side note, my son also felt the same way when he left the house, until he endured four months of eating nothing but ramen noodles and turkey sandwiches. Now he lurves my cooking.)

Now that I’m free from that white noise, I’ve been going nuts. It’s just my husband, Mr. Demonic, and me, but we are a couple of food snobs, and I mean that in the worst way. I’ve been busy whipping up pasta from home grown tomatoes, preparing veal piccata, fish dishes, osso buco, veal chops, steak drenched in a bleu cheese sauce, grilled quail, slow roasted pulled pork sandwiches, well, you get the picture. Our one and only goal is to experience the best food before the end draws near. Which may be death, or when the world collapses in a massive depression. (I’m thinking the latter has a better chance of occurring.)

While the Sick Man’s mother stayed with us, I regaled her with my outstanding cooking. I’m sure she left, teary eyed, wondering why her son hadn’t ended up with me for a wife. The week before Thanksgiving, I decided to get the turkey and all the accompanying accoutrements, and have our Thanksgiving dinner then. My plan was to go out for Thanksgiving dinner and be served, for once. I couldn’t see making a turkey (even a small one such as the one I got – a little bigger than a chicken) for just two people. Even a baby bird weighing only ten pounds is about three pounds more turkey than I’d like to have, especially without company.

My turkey dinner ROCKED! It was great, we had garlic smashed potatoes, and a lot of juice came out of the bird, thus ensuring plenty of gravy. We also had the jellied cranberry sauce (I’ll eat the other kind too, but this is so out of my childhood memories, that I always serve it), roasted brussels sprouts with crimini mushrooms, and roasted yams. The stuffing turned out great (I make mine using the gizzards), and we had pie for dessert.

After that, I enlisted Mr. D to make dinner reservations for the real Thanksgiving Day. He kept putting it off and putting it off, until it was the day before. I wanted something nice, good food and not too fancy. He chose our favorite restaurant, Lily’s, a seafood grill which is right downtown and within walking distance. Their menu consisted of deep fried turkey and all of the fixings.

I was excited. This place, while not in California, is always experimenting with preparations. We’ve rarely had a bad meal there, maybe two in the last ten years. Thanksgiving was one of the two. I should have known by how crowded the place was, that this was not going to be a fun experience. Even though we had reservations, we were relegated to the bar. Both of us Demonics are allergic to cigarette smoke, and it’s precarious sitting on a high bar stool with a narrow table.

There was more bad news. After being seated in the very crowded bar area, we waited for a good fifteen minutes before a server came by. Luckily, the program included all you can drink mimosas that night, so we went straight for that. Once situated with our own bottle of champagne and jug of orange juice, we were left to ourselves for another half hour. This is really bad news. I’ve been known to charge hostess stands if left alone with with an unlimited supply of alcohol and no service. (I should write about that. I nearly beat up a hostess at an Outback Steak House, and another similar joint when someone stole our reservation right from under us.)

The delay was because our server was also the only bartender. Mr. D wanted very much to leave and go home to eat leftovers. I told him to wait five minutes before doing so.

The bartender-slash-server must have telepathically realized our dismay. He came right out with salads. Then we were left alone for another fifteen minutes. Mr. D was ready to shoot someone, but we had invested too much time to bail now. Finally the server came out with the rest of the dinner, served family style. Our narrow bar table could barely hold our plates, much less anything else. There was deep fried turkey (too fried, it was dry and crusty), mashed potatoes (passable, not like home made), a cranberry relish (very good), stuffing supposedly made with oysters (tasted like Stove Top, too salty, and if an oyster was in there, I didn’t see it). There was also an appetizer (served with dinner, a no-no) but for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was. We also had pumpkin pie, but again, the gold standard is my home made pie, with fresh-out-of-the-garden pumpkins.

We walked home, full but slightly dissatisfied. Our regular date night at the restaurant was the next day, but Mr. D didn’t feel like going.

My word of advice from this experience: do NOT under any circumstances go to a seafood restaurant for a Thanksgiving dinner. Their expertise, after all, is in the fishy foods. I would have preferred a fishy food Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe next year.

A Diversion from the November Nutshell: Charging the Hostess Stand

Many people know me as a fine, upstanding citizen, someone who is basically laid back and mellow. Oh, sure, I used to have quite a temper in my younger days. I would like to think that was the result of my genes, you know, crazy Greek meets similarly crazy Asian. Age and wisdom have diluted my temper, thank God. However, put an obstacle between me and my food, and you might as well declare war.

I love good food, fine wine and new experiences in the gastro-sexual. Yes, I liken my love affair with outstanding cuisine as very close to orgasmic. When Mr. Demonic and I have chats, it’s usually regarding the memorable lunches and dinners we had. There have been many. We oooh and ahhh over the lunches in Napa, French dining in Chicago, big honking steaks in Colorado. Mmm…

Those who know my real last name will know that there aren’t many on the planet with the same last name. We are all related by blood and marriage, my husband’s family coming from a Bohemian background in what is now western Czechoslovakia. Many decendants are still in the other Tundra city, and some in Chicago and northern Indiana. (Those are from my huband’s great-great-uncle who supposedly killed a man.) Some of those Chicago-ites moved to Palm Beach and the Left Coast, so now there are contingents in Florida and California.

There were two times where standing in line waiting for a table got to me. One was at an Outback Steakhouse about fifteen years ago. They were trendy and few and far between, so we took a trek into another city to try it. The other was a local steak house, one that was southwestern in theme and made the best margaritas I have ever had the pleasure of inhaling.

Both times, we sat at the bar and waited for well over two hours. This is because both places refused to take reservations. If you as restaurant owner keep serving me margaritas for two hours (I ingested three), then you get what you deserve. Back then, there were no paging devices, and the hostess would call your name, and not always over the loudspeaker.

Like I said, I’m normally mellow, but I can get pretty cranky when I’m buzzed. Both times I charged the hostess stand and asked “what the hell?” while Mr. D cowered in the dim barlight and hoped no one noticed we were together. Both times, someone answered to the call of our last name.

Yes, we were ripped off!

Now, I would never think to do that to anyone, but why someone would acknowledge being the owner of our last name, I don’t know. Oh yes. To line jump into a better position.

In one case, while I was giving the hostess a piece of my mind, another patron half in the bag walked up and asked where he was in the line, to which I said, “Back off, Dude. We’re next. We’ve been sitting here three hours!”

To which we were next.

For my size, I can be pretty scary.

That’s why I like the local seafood grill. (Just don’t go there for Thanksgiving.) It’s small, cozy, and not many people eat seafood. More people prefer steak. They will also save the same booth for us every Friday night, and always seat us on the same side of the booth. (After all, it is date night.)

Thinking about having our reservation scammed twice is making me ornery. And fiesty. I haven’t been in a minor scrap in a long time.

Maybe tonight we should go to a crowded steakhouse and see if some idiot scams our place in line.

The November Nutshell Ends in Vomit and Drama

This should be the last of my November nutshells. When you are a nut yourself, you have a lot of material.

After ingesting our so-so Thanksgiving meal, my husband and I walked back home. It was still pleasant weather a week ago. Today it’s 15 friggin’ degrees outside, and even the dog doesn’t want to do her business with her butt in the snow.

Back to the story… well, we watched a movie and retired to bed early. That’s because we were open for business the next day, and both of us had to get to work. (No four day weekends for these Demonics. That’s one of the downsides to owning your own business.)

I had put the feather bed on, and baby, is it comfy under there. I need such comfort, because Mr. D is cheap (I mean, thrifty) and keeps the night time temperature to about 58. I was completely out of it and didn’t wake up all night.

Mr. D on the other hand, for some reason, could not stay asleep. As is his usual modus operandi, if he can’t sleep, he will get up and go to work. It’s not so bad. Our building is about five minutes away from the house. Working in the middle of the night is best for him. He’s on the phone constantly during business hours and cannot concentrate on cleaning his office between putting out fires. His office looks like a tornado went through it, a couple of times. I’ve often said that if something happens to him, I wouldn’t know where anything is. As it is, he’s alive and doesn’t know where anything is.

I didn’t know he was gone. He was smart and didn’t wake me. About 4 a.m., my cell phone rang. It was across the room charging, so it took a while before I got up to answer. By the time I did, it had gone to voice mail.

I noticed that the area code was 415, meaning San Francisco, but the number was not familiar. Could it be my son’s roommate? Is something wrong, I thought? When I retrieved the message, I was still fairly calm. After all, it was only 1 a.m. on the Left Coast, and maybe I was being drunk called.

No, it was worse than that.

My daughter’s boyfriend’s mother was the one who called. She called to inform me that they had taken my daughter to the ER at Marin General, and that she thought Ms. MiniD had alcohol poisoning. She then told me that she had arrived from my son’s house in that condition. That was scary, in that my son lives in the City, and my daughter’s boyfriend lives across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin.

I immediately called her back, but got a message that her voice mailbox was full. I called my son, and my son’s girlfriend – no answer. (They were in bed sleeping.) Then I called Mr. D, and couldn’t get an answer. (He was on the phone with the BF’s mother.)

Needless to say, there were many tense moments in the next couple of hours. But the doctors ended up not pumping her stomach and not admitting her. She did not have alcohol poisoning but was instead really drunk. My husband spoke to both the mom and the BF, and thanked them. They told him they would call him later. They did not.

Later on, many conflicting stories came out of this situation. Of course, we called my son and yelled at him for a while. In our business, you just don’t drive while under the influence, and he does not. My son says Ms. MiniD came to Thanksgiving dinner at his house with her own bottle of wine. (BF’s mother said no at first, then admitted later that she had given it to her. She also admitted later that she knew her son had a fake ID.) Ms. MiniD stayed at my son’s house for six hours, during which she drank the bottle of wine, had dinner, and plenty of coffee before she left. My son said she was fine when she left, and if she wasn’t he would have told her to stay with them.

So she made the 14 mile trip back to Marin, with no problem. Ms. MiniD says that back at the BF’s house, they had dessert, and the BF’s mother served her another three glasses of wine (at least). She doesn’t remember anything after that. After retiring in the BF’s bed, she began to get sick. The mother freaked out and called the ambulance.

Later that same day, the BF’s mother called me. At first, she was cordial. About three minutes into the call, however, she began to berate me about my parenting skills, saying at one point that didn’t I care about my daughter. I told her I had been concerned about her ever since mid-September when she first started dating her son. I noticed Ms. MiniD had posted photos of herself and the BF obviously drinking on her Facebook page. I was so concerned, I had even contacted the school, but after speaking to the Dean, she said that the grades were okay and that this was probably minor teenage rebellion.

But the mother didn’t want to listen to me. In no time at all, she became shrill and abusive, blaming her son’s falling by the wayside on my daughter. It was obvious to me that she didn’t like Ms. MiniD much, and didn’t think she was good enough for her son. It was also obvious that her son had covered his own ass and told a conflicting story to her. I told BF’s mom that I was hanging up now, and I did. There was no reason to continue the conversation.

Ten minutes later, she called back. Again, I said thanks for your concern, but you don’t know me, my daughter or my family, and I hung up again. About three minutes later, her neighbor called to give me the same condescending work over, and told me she had a number to a rehab place in Malibu. I also told her I wasn’t going to listen (not that I didn’t think my daughter needed intervention – she might, but because I didn’t need a couple of self-righteous rich bitches telling me what to do) and promptly hung up. This continued for another fifteen minutes. I was so upset, I text messaged my daughter and told her to tell her BF to tell his mother to give it up.

As my readers might know, I have given my daughter alcohol on occasion. However, I did so when I knew she wasn’t going to drive. I would never give any of her friends alcohol. A person could get into a lot of trouble doing that.

The end result was that the BF flew back to LA (mom didn’t want him in the car with my daughter), my daughter drove her car back alone (and almost ran out of gas) and supposedly they are broken up. However, they are broken up only on Facebook, and so they are not really broken up.

Mr. D wants to send the BF’s mother the medical bills. After all, she gave Ms. MiniD the alcohol to begin with. He agrees with the Dean’s assessment of the drunkenness, in that this is temporary. He also wants Ms. MiniD to come home. However, he’s not going to force the situation.

I really didn’t need this. I just wanted her to go to school where she would be happiest.

Drama like this is why I enjoy my emptied nest.

It’s the End of the World (As We Know It)

I hate to sound like a real downer, but with the world scene of the last six months or so, I am thinking it’s the End of the World (as we know it).

I’m not alone. Mr. Demonic, who is infinitely wiser than I when it comes to this kind of stuff (but knows nothing about picking correct paint colors for our lobby waiting room, and also doesn’t know jack about gardening), is preparing for Armageddon. He recently took a firearms class and applied for his concealed weapons permit. He hasn’t bought a hand gun yet, but he’s waiting for the after-Christmas sale at the local K-Mart. Mr. D thinks when the threads of civilization finally unravel, he will be ready to defend the homestead. As for me, I’m thinking I might have to shoot my own dinner. Squirrel fricassee, anyone?

You know me, I’m a master stasher of foodstuffs. When the world economy collapses and there’s no money or credit to buy a Big Mac, I will have a pantry lined in canned tomatoes, pickles and corn.

My latest “oops! we did it again” moment came when I turned on the news (to get the weather forecast–I hate the news–actually, I hated the weather forecast this morning too, freezing rain and a drop in temperatures) and learned that the governor of Illinois was arrested for trying to sell our future president’s soon to be vacated senate seat.

Now I don’t live in Illinois, but we have had plenty of corruption here in my rust belt city. They say the only way you can get someone in city government to look at your sewer or for a building or fire inspector to come in and okay a structure is to approach the person in charge with a hundred dollar bill and a bottle of Jack Daniels.

I’m thinking that’s how Rome fell; just a little corruption that grew into something bigger.

Corruption is not limited to the state of Illinois, although I must say, they set the gold standard. I’m not a dinosaur, but I remember learning about Tammany Hall in junior high school. One of my uncles palled around with Al Capone, and was always one step ahead of the G-guys. Things have not changed for the better but have only gotten worse.

And now, with the economy taking a nosedive into the abyss, all of this bad behavior comes to the fore. This kind of “news” coverage gives creedence and great ideas to people who are only sitting on the fence of impropriety. Knowing that one doesn’t need much chutzpah to bribe a [insert title here] is just the sort of impetus that certain wind blowers need.

Add to all this hoo-hah those Third World countries with one finger on the nuclear trigger, the depletion of natural resources, the disintegration of the family, I’m thinking that our civilization is going to implode at any moment now.

That’s why I’m lining my crawlspace with down pillows and putting my penny collection in the safe.

Update on the November Nutshell Vomit and Drama Episode

1. I haven’t yet received the medical bills. But Mr. Demonic will send them to the BF’s mom, as soon as…

2. My daughter writes her an apology letter. She’s still working on it.

3. The two are still together. They are only apart on Facebook.

4. My husband refers to him as “Doofus” very likely thinking of  “That ’70s Show” when Jackie’s father called Kelso the same. I sort of like that term of endearment.

5. BF is driving Ms. MiniD up to San Francisco on Saturday. This is because the cheapest airfare I could get back to this Frozen Tundra (and believe me, it IS NOW) was for her to leave from San Francisco instead of LA. Don’t ask me, I manipulated the dates on four different browsers before I was satisfied with a plane ticket that wasn’t going to cost us an arm and a leg. (She’s a darling girl, but hardly worth an arm and a leg.)

6. Ms. MiniD recently went through alcohol counseling at school. You may remember that I emailed the Dean. Well, she talked to the Dean and several counselors. They discussed how alcohol works in her system and the steps she should take to lessen the effects. She said they thought she had a high tolerance, and therefore didn’t feel buzzed until it was too late. (I don’t know about this, I’m just reporting what she told me. Sounds crazy.) Ms. MiniD wasn’t at all mad that I ratted her out. Using the safe drinking tips (!) given by the school, she was able to party last weekend at the beach and not throw up! I would say progress has been made, but that would be nuts.

7. Ms. MiniD arrives home Sunday morning. I put her on a red-eye, and she has to be able to catch the connecting flight in Minneapolis. Hopefully, she won’t sleep through the boarding call.

8. Ms. MiniD has prepared a menu of possible dinner items. This is all stuff I normally make, but back then in her high school hey-day, she thought my food was “weird” and so she never ate any of it. Oh, how a semester away changes a person…

9. I’m not looking forward to the partial filling of my empty nest. (The other one has a temporary JOB! Yes! and a wedding to attend to next month.)

Laziness Squared and Other Stuff

I do not know why, but this last week, I have felt incredibly lazy. I feel like the entire world has passed me by completely.

Could it be writing jet lag from NaNoing last month? Accomplishing the goal was rather impressive, if I do say so myself. Could it be that with the onslaught of winter, I am doing some mental hibernating? I don’t know… I just feel like doing absolutely nothing.

This does not mean that I feel sleepy. No, I’m not sleepy. In fact, I find it very hard to get a good night’s sleep, because Mr. Demonic keeps the furnace set at 68, which means in our room (farthest from the furnace) it is a bone-chilling 57 degrees. He also hogs the cat, which is my major heat source. (Grace is not allowed to sleep with us, which is fine. I don’t need a fight on the bed. The two critters are already jealous of each other.)

In trying to break from the laziness, last night we went to the symphony, where we were treated to a new, very illustrious conductor, recently snagged from a Washington. (I’m not saying which one, to make it hard for some people to figure it out who it was.) Mr. D usually sleeps through part of the performance, which is embarrassing because we have box seats right next to the stage. Everyone and their second cousin can see us. Last night was no different. During the performance of Carmina Burana, instead of being situated on the stage (which was jam packed), the tenor sang from the box next to ours. Doing so meant that all eyes were on the man, and therefore many saw my husband being roused out of sleep by a thunderous voice. (I literally could have touched the vocalist.)

I would like to think my husband’s constant slumber was due to laziness. He likes to think he is concentrating intently.

The other thing we finally did this week was to talk to an attorney about our estate. The last time that was done was ten years ago. We have been procrastinating this chore for at least three years. Our children are now grown and life is more complicated. The pot is also smaller, but that is due to our recent economic woes. Our former executors and trustees are now deceased. It was time. Dragging the old guy (Mr. D.) to the attorney’s office was like getting him to go to the dentist or the optometrist — it’s murder, man!

Restructuring the trust meant I also had to renew the life insurance policy on my husband. Every time I mention the word “life insurance,” Mr. D has a conniption. He thinks I am looking to off him like some of the black widows on Forensics Files, when in actuality, he is worth more to me alive than dead. Besides, when I found out how much we owe in total on our various mortgages, my breath was sucked from my lungs. This policy isn’t even going to pay the bank.

My New Year’s resolution is to end my laziness. I don’t know how I’m going to do that, but perhaps if I keep looking behind my shoulder, I will at last find a reason to do so.

Throwing Off the Monkey on the Laziness Back

There must be something wrong with me.

Every so often, I get into something and it takes over my entire life. You will probably recall my foray into the world of beads. For a long time, I could be found in the “bead room” aka my son’s old room (he’s never coming back, so I figured, why waste the space?), playing with wire and glass. I began to frequent the local Michaels and Joann Fabrics looking for pieces. I’d walk in searching for a clasp and walk out with $50 worth of glitter. I also went to every bead show within 50 miles of home. Even some of my WordPress “friends” turned me onto more places where I could buy beads. This is much like giving an alcoholic a fine wine “just for a taste.”

My fascination with creating jewelry went on for weeks. My trip to California back in October ended my bead craze. I had purchased some interesting beads from a little store in the Castro, and when I came back to the bead room and deposited them into my little trays, they beckoned me, all shiny and glimmering in the late afternoon sun. However, my muse had mysteriously vanished and I had no idea what to do with all the glass hearts I had purchased.  So now I am stuck with many hundreds of dollars worth of beads and no muse.

Next came NaNoWriMo, and I’m glad that obsession overtook me, because now I am more than 2/3 finished with the novel. Of course, once I achieved the magic goal of 50K words, my muse again left me all alone with Mr. Laziness, damn her. I’ve worked on the book only sporadically since the first of December.

People who know me here probably know me from a different web site located in the far reaches of the internet. I spent a lot of time in that place, and it wasn’t just for the bonanza of gift cards that I received just for being there. (Although I must say, that was a nice bonus.) I really liked the people there. There was a lot of witty repartee going on, some drama, and some of the most interesting writing from some of the most twisted minds around. I found My Internet Boyfriend there, and we’ve been friends ever since. But the place was uber addicting, a huge time-sucking venture. I found that I had to log in, even when times were tough and some people were acting troll-like and mean.

When I cut myself off from that place, I had to do it with a complicated suicide event that spanned several months. Even after I said my final goodbye and signed off, I signed back in a couple of times as one of my alters, just to read my favorite peeps. However, I’ve been good since then and not signed on as anyone since last March or so.

And now I move on to the current addiction-du-jour. I hate to admit it, but it’s Facebook.

Once used solely as an instrument in stalking my children, Facebook has, in the past several weeks, been enormously fun and addicting. This is likely because several of the peeps from the original web site have discovered Facebook and came out from the cold. It’s nice to see my old friends again. I’ve missed a certain craziness from that “other” place. It was humorous, and I needed some fun injections into an otherwise dreary life.

If you aren’t on Facebook, you should be warned that there are several game applications that you can add to your profile. I discovered a couple of word games on Facebook that are so addicting, I find it hard to tear myself away. (When I was younger, you could give me a dictionary or a volume of encyclopedia and I’d be in heaven for hours. I like words.) I couldn’t really play some of the games on there that MIB or other friends liked, such as Knighthood and the like. I just couldn’t get it. Playing with my imaginary cat also lost its appeal after a week or so. (I believe my cyber kitty Matty is now dead, or close to it. I haven’t checked on him in weeks. He’s got to be both hungry and thirsty.) Kanji Box is helpful, because I’m attempting to learn Japanese, so I’m looking at that game as an educational tool.

No. That’s just an excuse.

The Little Cat says I spend too much time there, and I have to agree, albeit sheepishly. Granted, the time spent on the dreaded FB is the same as during my work hours at my real job, but still, I could be doing something productive, instead of chasing my tail around trying to beat Kathleen‘s high score in Scramble. (Damn her, she’s a freaking machine!)

So anyway, this week, I’m not signing into Facebook.

That’s the only way I can get that damnedable monkey off my back.

Oh, My God. This is My Book?

Thank you to BibioMom. Now I know the truth.

You’re Lolita!
by Vladimir Nabokov
Considered by most to be depraved and immoral, you are obsessed with
sex. What really tantalizes you is that which deviates from societal standards in every
way, though you admit that this probably isn’t the best and you’re not sure what causes
this desire. Nonetheless, you’ve done some pretty nefarious things in your life, and
probably gotten caught for them. The names have been changed, but the problems are real.
Please stay away from children.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

My Book

Ah… Peace and Quiet

Both of my birdies have flown the coop, and some people have asked me if I am sorry my nest is now empty. I can say with all truthfulness that, no, I rather like being one of two mature adults in a large four-bedroom home. We keep it tidy, and have the bonus of having sex right out in the open whenever we want.

Ah, but that was not to last for long.

Ms. MiniD came home from the Left Coast on Sunday. I don’t know why. She hates it here, and has alienated most of her high school friends with her high jinx regarding her ex-boy du jour. (That’s because her best friend is now with ex-BDJ. It appears the two were commiserating during my daughter’s dumpage of the boyfriend, and ended up together. I say, bully for you! And yes, my daughter is mad at me too, for thinking that.) She has a Left Coast boyfriend, but his mother doesn’t like her. I’m thinking the shelf life on that relationship is coming due soon.

I wanted to make something nice for dinner Sunday, something benign that everyone likes, so I chose a half of pork loin. It’s the new white meat, and I can make gravy, which all Demonics love. (Except for me. That’s because I’m Asian, and they are Bohemian. Bohunks lurve the gravy. They crave it. They bitch when they can’t have any. Me, I can take it or leave it.) I made some of my fresh Brussels sprouts newly picked from the garden and sauteed them with garlic. It was a dish meant for royalty.

Ms. MiniD turned up her nose and said, “I don’t eat pork anymore.” When that happened, I don’t know. She did inform me that she now consumes guacamole. I pointed her to the avocados and told her to have at it. She left with her friend before dinner was ready, and didn’t come back until after I went to sleep.

The next day, Ms. MiniD slept in until noon. She left sometime in the afternoon with her friend, and returned later that night. My husband, the dear Mr. Demonic, could not sleep that night, so he woke up at 2 a.m. to go to the office. (If you saw his office, you would know that he needs many, many 2 a.m. wake up calls to clean up that disaster.) He informed me when he returned at a more decent hour of the morning that Ms. MiniD had male company, and “who was that guy?”

If you know me, you know that I am clueless, particularly when it comes to Ms. MiniD. The other child tells me everything, and this one lies like a rug. Mr. D said the two were awake but under a furry throw, implying that some adolescent hanky was being pankied. I said, “Didn’t you ask her who it was? Didn’t you ask what they were doing?” To which, he replied, “NO!” Mr. D plays the Denial Game to its fullest potential.

Ms. MiniD and her friend have been after my husband to take them snowboarding at the condo. My husband doesn’t snowboard (or ski, or snowmobile) but Ms. MiniD is Daddy’s Little Girl. (Yes, even though she is over 18.) And of course, you know me. I despise our Tundra winter with a passion that could illuminate several Christmas trees, and don’t like to go outside at all until the crocuses pop up.

The upside to all this is that Mr. D, Ms. MiniD, and her friend are now 200 miles away. Last night, I was able to work on my novel for five, uninterrupted, peaceful, gloriously quiet hours. Well, except for Grace the dog snoring at my feet.

The Demonics will be gone until Friday. I’d better take advantage of the peace and quiet and work quickly.

Notice: For Little Fluffy Cats Who Love to Nag

Due to a shortage of personnel (the Sick Man likely gone for good, my Number 2 in maternity leave, and my Number 3 on vacation), yesterday I worked 12 hours straight. I wasn’t totally alone, though. Ms. MiniD’s ex-BDJ (aka boy du jour) who used to work here, came back from college for Christmas break. He  was looking for something to do, hours, money, and lucky for me, he fell into my lap.

I didn’t realize that I would be here that long until about 12 noon, when I looked up and thought, “Oh, hell! I’m going to be here another seven and a half hours,” at which point I hastily left to make a pit stop at the Post Office and back home. I retrieved my laptop and brought it back to work with me.

This notice is for the Little Fluffy Cat who loves to nag: Last night, I pounded out a chapter and a half and 5,000 words while waiting for the phone to ring. (Obviously, it didn’t, or I wouldn’t have had the time to accomplish so much.)

The Cat is one of my biggest cheerleaders, and she also has a strong streak of momliness in her too. Lately, the momliness is more apparent than the cheerleader, but I don’t mind her continual chipping away at my bad habit of procrastination. This is because I know I’m being bad, and I need something nipping at my ankles, now more than ever.

Thank you Little Fluffy Cat. If you see me on Facebook, I know you’ll yell. Just remember, all work and no play makes the Pandemonic a sad literary figure.

One Word…

Blizzard…

Lower Tundra Weather Update

It’s friggin’ freezing outside! No, it’s Super-Friggin’ cold!

Well, let me amend that. It’s 15 degrees and dropping. The wind is blowing gusts of 45 mph, meaning I don’t care how well your house is built, it feels like you’re outside if you’re unlucky enough to sit by a window. I am thusly unlucky, since most of my house is window. With the wind gusts, it’s about 0 degrees counting windchill. Needless to say, my wind chimes are rocking.

The dog went out, peed quickly, and came back inside. She wouldn’t do #2 outside, and instead picked a nice spot right by the door. (I can’t blame her, not on a day like today.) The cat poked his head out for less than a second and thought better of the game of having Mr. Demonic chase him around the yard. Besides, there’s about a foot of snow, making small animals going into the yard look like they are drowning in snow drifts.

Mr. D went out to plow the lots. Not with the plow, mind you, because we don’t have a plow. With a snowblower and snow shovel. One lot is about 10,000 square feet, almost an acre. With the wind blowing as it is, I am thinking it is an exercise in futility, but you can’t tell him anything.

I hear that even my southern neighbors are getting a nice dose of winterly blast. So much for global warming.

It’s only 11 a.m., but I’m going to get myself a hot toddy.

Coming Soon…

Mr. Demonic takes a bubble bath in the bubble tub. There are photographs. However, it will have to wait until tomorrow, since I forgot my camera. Don’t worry. Rated G.

The Amazing Bubble Machine

Right around this time last year, I enlisted the dear Mr. Demonic to allow me to remodel the bathroom in the older part of the house. It was an eyesore, painted completely peacock blue. Tres ugly. In order to sway his thinking, I had to work on him for a couple of years, because as we all know, Mr. D is cheap, um…  “thrifty.” Instead of stomping my feet, which I have been known to do in my youth, I used my feminine wiles by offering early morning seduction in the office. Before you think I’m that good, I’m not. What really clinched the deal was that my son was coming home last Christmas with his girlfriend. We needed a decent bathroom, especially with two more bodies in the house.

Our house was built in 1927. The front part of it is the old part. The previous owners, a romance novelist and her attorney (now ex-) husband added the back part on about ten years ago, so our family room, master bedroom and bath, along with the kitchen is new and wonderful. The old part is old and charming and wonderful in a different way.

When we first moved in four years ago, I wanted a new garage. This is because the garage was original to the house, meaning it’s very narrow and small. In addition, the windows are leaky, the roof and walls had holes in them, thus allowing for critter invasion, and there was no way to lock it. The garage also sits adjacent to our deck, also put in by the previous owners, and should be located a few feet away so as not to hit your head on the eaves. This has happened so many times to so many people, I put hanging baskets, bird houses and wind chimes in the general area so people won’t wander over and bean themselves in the head. There is also no automatic garage door opener, so in the winter when I park in there, I have to wrestle the door up and down to get my car out.

Needless to say, Mr. D did not want a new garage. I was quite pissed off too. I wanted a decent home for my car, then a Monte Carlo. He thought it a waste of money, but he doesn’t park in the garage. When you drive a car with 185,000 miles on it, there is no need to shelter it from anything. (I’m praying for something to happen just so he can get an upgrade.) Mr. D also foresaw the recent financial collapse back in 2005 at the time I was lobbying for a garage, so I guess the end result is that I’m happy he ruled with his iron (gloved) fist that day.

Fast forward to the bathroom. It was the only fugly spot in the house. I longed for years to demolish the thick peacock blue walls. If Mr. D Jr.’s impending homecoming was the impetus for change, I was all for it. However, I insisted on the bathroom of my dreams.

Although the space is small (1927 bathrooms are very tiny, it’s probably no more than 6 x 6), I wanted nice granite, oak cabinet, artistically tiled walls and floor, and a Jacuzzi tub. This is because in our master bath, we do not have a Jacuzzi tub, and people, when you are my age, there are sometimes days in a row when one needs it. I didn’t need to get a genuine Jacuzzi, but the bubble tub of my dreams would have to have sufficient jet action to alleviate minor aches and pains.

Off to the plumbing supply store I went. I had them fill several tubs and tested the water pressure. There are tubs that bubble like simmering pots of water. These are stupid. If you want to sit in a simmering pot of water, place a large can outside and set a nice healthy fire under it. I finally settled on a Kohler which was small enough to fit into my teeny tiny bathroom yet powerful enough for my occasional kinks.

There were many obstacles to the completion of said bathroom, and it took until the end of January to finish it. Let’s just say that Murphy’s Law played a big part in the delay. That’s another blog post altogether. Finally it was complete, but I was not to enjoy my tub until the summer, after Ms. MiniD was out of the house. That’s because she took it over and cluttered it up with her miscellaneous crap.

Once she was gone, I invited Mr. D to a soak, and we jumped in. Finally, even Mr. D discovered the joys of my tub. We use it all the time.

This past weekend, we were subjected to several days’ blast of icy winter. Mr. D, being a tightwad, um thrifty, decided to do most of the snow removal himself, with shovel and snowblower. Fourteen inches of snow is a lot of snow. By Sunday night, he was pooped.

I unfortunately put a little too much bubble bath in the water. Here is a photo of Mr. D. It’s after I had gotten out of the tub. (There has never been a published photo of Mr. D in WordPress, so this is a World Premier.) Imagine a thick trail of bubbles spilling over the floor and into the hallway. There were bubbles everywhere, but we laughed about it. Actually, it was more like squealing. Ms. MiniD thought we were nuts.

You don’t know how much I love that tub.

Here, Kitty, Kitty…

I lost my kitty. Has anyone seen her?

Here’s Hoping 2009 Will Be Better Than This Year

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, and I’m raising a glass to my friends today because I’ll be conspicuously absent tomorrow. I still can’t believe how quickly this year has flown by. It seems like only yesterday I was writing the word “January” in the space where I date my checks.

This year I’ve seen my nest emptied and partially refilled. I’ve seen my retirement go down in flames. I’ve seen business take a nasty turn for the worse. I’ve seen my house lose approximately 60% of its value since 2005.

I don’t like to think I am negative, but that I’m a realist. I can’t see where things will get better, not yet, anyway. That’s because I really don’t think we’ve hit bottom yet. When that happens, it will be a life altering event. I’ve seen lives mildly changed but none altered. We’re like the well to do yet clueless voyagers on the Titanic, still drinking and dancing while the ship sinks.

It’s hard to keep my mind on anything positive, but I’m doing my level best. Still, 2009 looms large, like a thunderhead cloud ready to spill downward into a class 5 tornado. All I can do is hang on for the ride. That’s why I will uncork a couple of bottles of Mumm tomorrow night and toast the passage of time and drown my sorrows in the same swig.

Oh, well. There’s one more thing I can do.

There’s always praying for the lottery.

Conspicuously Absent

I’m not posting much here these days, but I’m not sorry. The Little Cat would be proud to know that I’ve been typing my fingers to the bone, working on my novel. I have given myself a deadline of my birthday (coming up fast) to finish this epic tome. I plan on shipping it to several people 1. to read to gauge the enjoyment factor, and 2. for editing purposes as soon as it’s complete.

At over 435 pages and growing (double spaced), I have the end in sight. I know how it’s going to end and am giving myself seven, maybe eight chapters to get there. Hallelujia and pass the friggin’ pitcher of margaritas. Well, maybe not yet. Maybe for my birthday. Yeah, I know that 10% will likely be edited out.

I am seriously trying to overcome my deficiency when it comes to time management, procrastination and general laziness. These are lifelong character flaws that I am finding difficult to correct. However, this is not to say that I’m rolling over and dying in the goopy soup that is my character. I may be old, but you can always teach an old dog new tricks.

Hmm… maybe not my old dog, Grace. She appears to be set in her ways.

Other news from the tundra? Well, the prodigal daughter is still here. Three more weeks. I’m not sure I can stand it. Yes, I love her, but she drives me nutty, as I am sure I am doing to her too. Plus, she tries to read over my shoulder. She knows I’m writing a book and wants to know if she’s in it. (No. That will be the next book. Bwaaahhh wahhh wahh…) Normally, I can’t work under that kind of pressure, but I’m trying.

So, I’m absent. Here, but not here.

See you later.

Strange Airplane Dreams

As the Little Fluffy Cat knows, my plate is overflowing right now, but I thought I would post a couple disturbing dreams I’ve had just in the last couple of days. Hopefully, these aren’t psychic in nature and are just the result of the madness going on around me (and in me). So in the interest of getting a second opinion, I’ll let you be the judge.

Dream 1: My husband and I are on a big airplane, probably a 757. I have the middle seat, and he has the aisle. This is because Mr. Demonic is incredibly tall and I am a midget and can fit anywhere, including the backseat of an AMC Hornet and inside my high school locker. We are leaving our Tundra town. If you knew where I lived and were familiar with the airport, you would know that planes have to taxi practically to the next state to take off. Anyway, we are driving along, Mr. D furiously scribbling notes on a pad, and me paying attention to the flight attendant. (This is because as a one-time flight attendant wannabe, I know that their jobs are vital to the safety of passengers. I want to know where my closest exit is.)

At last, it is our turn to depart. The plane takes off slowly. It doesn’t feel right. Sure, it’s a big plane, and it’s practically magic how something so huge can get off the ground to begin with. We are hovering what seems to be only fifty feet from the tarmac. All of a sudden the plane shoots straight up with a tremendous burst of speed. When I mean straight up, I mean perpendicular to the ground. Mr. D and I are facing the heaven, our backs glued to the seats. I grab him and say “This is the end” or something stupid like that.

My next sensation is that the plane does a somersault. I’m pretty sure we are toast.

Then I wake up in a sweat.

Dream #2: The entire Demonic family is taking a trip by plane. It’s a 747, you know, the one with upstairs and downstairs. We’re going to London, don’t ask me why. I have never been and have no desire to go there. It’s not our usual carrier of choice, but an upstart.

Mr. D has secured for us the back of the plane. If you are familiar with train travel, you know that to travel comfortably across country, the best route is to get a sleeping car. We’ve done this on many occasions, especially when my daughter was a baby, my son was a little boy and he was in love with trains. We’ve had the family suite, and it’s great with little kids. Anyway, in the dream, this air carrier had what looked to be a sleeping area. For $150 per person extra, we had our own enclosed space with pull down beds. The airline said we could stay in the sleeping area for our entire stay in London. There were two of these areas, and another family occupied the other one.

When we took off, we were unencumbered by seat belts, and while it was scary, we survived. We laughed, we drank champagne, we ate chocolate. When we arrived in London, everyone else departed, and it was  just us and this other family. The flight attendants tried to get us to deplane as well. They were surly and rude in fact, and were shooing us off. Both Mr. D and the father of the other family were up in arms. They protested with shouts of “but we paid $150 each to stay here!”  We had no other lodging in London and for some reason couldn’t get anything else. The head flight attendant said that the extra charge was just for the trip across the pond. If we didn’t get off, we would be going to Egypt with the rest of the flight. (!)

I woke up again in a sweat.

I don’t think I’m going to sleep anymore.

Living in the Tundra

I have often hinted that my location is in the “Tundra.” Not to offend any caribou or polar bears in the so-called real tundra, I have to admit that, no, I’m not quite that far north. Some days it feels like it. Other times we are blessed with rain instead of snow and strangely warm weather instead of cold. This coming week will not be of the tropic variety.

Preparing for a week-long onslaught of high temperatures in the single digits, low temperatures below zero and wind chills way, way below zero takes a bit of planning. I personally hate grocery shopping in frigid temperatures, so I plan accordingly. When there’s snow on the ground, there are less parking spaces in the lot. That’s because the snow plow guys build a great big mountain of snow in one corner. It’s also hell to push your cart  across a snow-packed parking lot. I remarked to one check out clerk that the carts should have skis. She was not impressed.

I have different pieces of outerwear for varying temperatures. I started doing this when I lived in the Twin Cities, where it can be brutally cold in the winter, and for a very long time. Over 40 degrees, and I can get by with leather. A nice wool coat does fine between 30 and 40 degrees. I have a parka for the 20 to 30 degree range. Anything below 20 degrees, and I get out the fur.

I’m sure the animal lovers and PETA cringe at the mere mention of fur. I’m unashamedly a carnivore, so why wouldn’t I make use of the rest of an animal’s body? After all, I’m not making coats from dog or kitty, or hamsters. Having had different coats in my life, the consensus is that the warmest outerwear is made from fur, then down. My one fur is Mongolian lamb, a kicky little coat I purchased from eBay because it reminded me of a coat I had in Minnesota that was subsequently destroyed in a housefire. The other one is something I can’t even pronounce. I can proudly say that no American animals were harmed in the production of either garment. One came from Mongolia, the other from Canada.

The other pre-zero Tundra preparation is to make sure the hats are located and the gloves and mittens have mates. I don’t know about anyone else, but my household loses more gloves and mittens than socks in the dryer. I don’t understand it, because I keep all of them in baskets above my china cabinet. Every winter, I take the baskets down and for some reason am usually missing one or more glove(s).

This year, I have also had to consider Grace, the dog. She’s a Boston terrier, and when it’s colder than 20 degrees and there is more than a couple of inches of snow on the ground, she doesn’t like to go outside. I have attempted to allay her fears and her chills by getting her a coat to wear and by shoveling a clear spot to do her business only a few feet from the deck. We had another blizzard last night, so I was out shoveling my grass. I’m sure it’s comical to see, but it’s a necessary precaution to avoid in the house accidents.

When it’s this cold, I also have to refill the humidifier in the music room about four times a day. That’s four gallons a day! If I didn’t, my violin would go quickly out of tune. I also have to make sure my flannel lined khakis are washed and available, and that I have plenty of wool socks.

I only have 24 hours before the temperatures take a nose dive, so I will be off. Anyone who complains of their supposedly “cold” weather and I find out it’s above zero will get no sympathy from me.

Another Weird Airplane Dream

Perhaps I shouldn’t eat chili dogs, but every once in a while, I get a craving for a hot dog slathered in hot mustard, chili with beans, onions and cheese. That’s what we had for dinner last night, and it could explain my latest weird airplane dream.

Last night, I dreamt that Mr. D and I were again on an airplane. It was a big one, bigger than a 757. I would call it a 787 or a 797, it was that big. As usual, we were seated in the rear of the plane, which was so large that it was ten or 15 seats across.  Not only was it huge, but the seats were tiny. In fact, one fellow traveler pointed out that some seats were much tinier than others. (Think of a concert hall or movie theater where they use smaller seats to give the illusion of a flow down to the stage.)

We were in Colorado and flying home. We weren’t just in Colorado, however; we were on top of Pikes Peak. Pikes Peak is the third highest mountain in Colorado, over 14 thousand feet high. If you’ve ever been there, you would know that the top of Pikes Peak is rocky, strewn with lots of big boulders. You couldn’t land a single engine glider on that summit, much less a jumbo jetliner.

Most of the dream had to do with wrestling our personal effects to the back of the plane. Plane etiquette requires that you use the storage around your seat, although I’ve seldom seen plane etiquette carried forth. By the time we got to the back of the plane, there was little room to put my purse, much less anything larger.

The plane was filled to the brim with all sorts of humanity. It reminded me of those movies you see about third world countries where villagers travel in buses with their chickens and baby goats in little cages.

The back door of the plane was open, and Mr. D all of a sudden sees that we are on the mountaintop. Why it didn’t occur to him before is anyone’s guess. Someone had fashioned a makeshift runway and it wasn’t flat.

Mr. D asked the pilot, “Do you have enough room to lift off?”

To which the pilot answered, “Not really for a plane this size, but if I get going fast enough, we can lift off as soon as we clear the top of the mountain.”

We wanted to jump off after that, but the ground was so far away. Besides, where would we go? (Of course, I knew we could walk down or take the tram that goes down to Manitou. But I didn’t think of that in my dream.) We decided to take our chances and get home on the plane.

Pretty soon, the plane was packed and the pilot taxied, but he was taxiing around the mountain. It was strange.

As soon as he got enough speed to take off, I woke up.

Perhaps I should eat something bland tonight, like a broiled chicken breast and some green beans.

Another Weird Dream, No Airplane, Just Prius

Preface: Last night, we went to our daughter’s favorite Italian restaurant, because their lasagna is to die for.  I didn’t get the lasagna, I instead ordered the veal piccata, which wasn’t bad but also wasn’t as good as mine.

Yes, people, I was blessed with another weird dream. Thankfully, no jumbo jets were involved. Instead, the star of my dream was my car, which is a Toyota Prius.

For some reason, there was a family with a small child staying with us. It could have been my own children’s child, or it could have been my sisters’ (although my sisters all have older children) but I wasn’t concentrating on the parental faces. All I knew was that the mother had to be somewhere, and I had to be somewhere, and the child had to go to school.

I decided to find a mommy’s helper online at Craigslist. This was a bad idea, but I was rushed for time. I needed someone with a driver’s license, and would let the person use my car.

The guy who showed up was what most people would consider to be, well… scary. He had a huge purple birthmark over half of his face, he was skinny to the point of being malnourished or a suspected drug addict, his arms were lined with colorful tattoos, and he was wearing old and smelly clothing, a ripped tee shirt and jeans that hadn’t been washed in God knows how long.

I should have backed out of the deal, but there was too much running around to do in the house. I don’t know what his name was, but I asked him, “Do you know how to drive a Prius?” to which he replied, “Of course!”

For those of you out of the loop, a Prius is a push-button car. You don’t even need to put the key into the ignition, all you have to do is have it in close proximity to the dash, like in your purse or pocket. The gearshift is on the dash next to where you can put the key if you so choose to be that antiquated.

Baby-sitting dude jumps in and instantly I know he doesn’t know how to drive my car. The young girl who needs to go to school looks at the two of us like we’re nuts. The guy smells like he hasn’t had a bath in weeks, and she’s rolling her eyes. He may not even know how to drive at all. I get in with him, and show him how to turn it on, and how to back up. Then I get out.

He doesn’t even make it out of the driveway. Close to the garage, we have a picket fence that is gated. It’s quite narrow, only one car width in length, and on the other side is the house. I’ve hit the fence with the back end of my Monte Carlo, and Mr. D has hit the house with his Tahoe, it’s that narrow.

Finally, I tell him to leave, but then he gets violent. He still wants his money. I throw a 20 dollar bill at him, and then wake up.

I wonder what I’ll dream tonight. I’m making pasta with mild Italian sausage.

Sick

Yes, I am.

I won’t go into gory details, but let’s just say whatever it is happens to be flu-like in nature. I barely got my people paid today, then went home at noon and hid under the covers. It felt good to sleep for four hours in the middle of the afternoon, but once I got up to check a few online things, I regretted leaving my cozy covers.

So I am going back. Now.

See ya.

I Take Thee, House, Back into Possession

I just came back from dropping Ms. MiniD off at the airport, and I am giddy with excitement. Please sing after me: She’s going back to college! She’s going back to college!

Now I don’t dislike my daughter, but let’s face it, she’s high maintenance, moody, negative, and a slob. She’s the perfect model for one of the characters in my next book. I won’ t even have to fluff anything up, because the real Ms. MiniD is quite the character and seems to have quite the adventures.

Did we cry at the airport? She didn’t, but I could have when I paid for her checked luggage. $165! And for three bags that weren’t particularly heavy. Airlines are getting rather adept at nickel and diming a person out of their money. You’re lucky if you get free soft drinks these days. I can remember past trips on other carriers where a hot lunch or honest to goodness Subway sandwiches were served. Alcoholic beverages were actually worthwhile. Now they cost as much as the ones in the airport bar. Me, I’d rather sit in the airport bar and get tanked in comfort, rather than drink a $6 glass of wine on a crowded plane.

I’ve yet to go back to the house, because I’m supposed to be working all weekend. (Don’t worry, Little Cat, I’m not visiting the dreaded monster time-sucking Facebook.) I’ll have to clean out the bedroom she was using, and that should take a couple of days. Thank goodness it wasn’t her old bedroom, because Mr. D has that room completed gutted for his long-term painting and wood moulding project. No, we put Ms. MiniD in the microscopic bedroom slash sewing room, where her mess could be contained.

I’m not looking forward to cleaning her bathroom, but I am looking forward to soaking in the bubble tub.

In the meantime, I’m trying to steer Ms. MiniD toward a path of staying on the Left Coast for summer break. That’s because I will likely kill her if she comes back here. You don’t know how close I came in the last week. I love Ms. MiniD dearly, but I told her if she decides to come back, we would be laying down some ground rules first. Like, one, you can’t sleep until 1 p.m. every day. And two, you have to load the dishwasher and clean up the kitchen after you make two boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese.

It’s funny, but I don’t feel like a bad mom for taking my house back. I feel like a conquering warrior. I feel like Cortez, the explorer. I feel like the peace and quiet and lack of drama will be curiously Utopian.

More Oddly Missing Items

After Ms. MiniD went back to college, we decided to resume our regular schedule of crazy living. My husband went about refilling his “wine cellar” (since he’s finished painting it and putting in new moulding). The “cellar” is not a room, per se. It’s actually the closet under the stairs. However, it’s now a very nice closet under the stairs.

For the last year, the bottles have been stacked in a haphazard fashion right at the cellar door. This is because our basement flooded from above (toilet that kept running, and ran for two hours before anyone noticed it) and we moved everything out. This was when Mr. D. got the bright idea of urban renewal for the wine cellar.

We keep the really good stuff in the “cellar.” Sunday, Mr. D began to put the bottles back. He’s actually been working on it for the last few weekends. He’s very particular. He has a computer program and a scanner where he logs the bottles in, and also a notebook where he writes the new bottles in and crosses off any we decide to drink.

He came upstairs later in the day asking me had I taken any bottles out? Hell no. We have plenty of house wine upstairs. Not that I would open a bottle myself. I rarely drink alone, and if he’s out of town, I might have a glass if the bottle is open.

I asked Mr. D why. “I think I’m missing 20 bottles of wine!” he says.

20 bottles! That’s a lot.

We thought it might be our daughter, but no, Ms. MiniD’s alcohol of choice is the hard stuff, and that’s upstairs. Anyway, she wouldn’t know how to use a corkscrew if her life depended on it. She can’t even hide her dirty shot glasses without getting caught.

This morning, he decided to come to work a little later and play the piano for a few minutes. When he got to work, he asked me, did I do anything with his music books? No… I have my own music books, for violin. I ask why. He says, “My two Neil Young books are gone!”

Who would take those? My son made off with all of the Beethoven books, and also Chopin, but he can’t stand Neil Young.

As some might remember, my mother-in-law’s ashes have mysteriously disappeared, as have one of my paintings and my husband’s old sword collection.

We have a lot of keys out, to cleaners, exterminators. One exterminator left his employ with our key, but we were told that everything was just hunky dory. The contractor who remodeled our bathroom had a key. We’ve sometimes let workmen in and left, trusting them to lock up and not rob us blind. I even let the piano tuner tune by himself, but not any more.

I hate to think anyone I know and have known for ten years or more would be guilty of the five-finger discount, but these items didn’t walk out of the house on their own.

I decided to get all of the locks changed, and I did. From now on, with my diligence, we should not be missing anything of consequence (or not).

I’m keeping my fingers crossed anyway.

Some Violin Stuff, and My Ear

Now that I have journeyed through five Maia Bang theory books, my violin teacher is giving me a break of sorts. She told me to pick up a copy of some Junior Festival pieces (ordinarily played by five year olds) and we will now be concentrating on style.

I have to admit, my style is still stilted and stiff. I am not one with my instrument. This week marks the fourth year I’ve been attempting to play, and I still cannot vibrate. It’s the classic case of not being able to do several things at once, at least, not on the violin. Ask me to answer the phone, drive a stick shift and drink a cup of coffee while cruising FM radio and I can do that. Vibrate and play the correct notes while doing so – um, no.

The other thing she wants me to concentrate on is dynamics, or getting different sounds out of the instrument. I’m a weak player. My idea of dynamics is pianissimo and more pianissimo. (This means very quietly in music lingo) No matter what I do, I cannot play loud. I also cannot distinguish when I’m playing softly and more softly.

I think my problem stems from having a violin right next to my left ear. All of my noises sound the same. This might be why I can barely make out when I am playing sharp. I always play sharp, I never play flat. Unlike my son, the talented Mr. Demonic Jr., I am not blessed with perfect pitch. I can sing out the first couple of notes of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March and know that it’s G-G and C, but beyond that, I’m clueless. My electronic tuner gets a bigger work out than the violin does.

Since this is my four year anniversary, I’m trying to re-evaluate my goal. At first, it was to play with my family and others. My family dislikes playing with me (at least Mr. D does); and when I play with my son, he’s constantly correcting my sharps and counting. My teacher doesn’t think I’m ready to play with other people.

I might quit, but don’t think I will. My teacher is making plans. Her husband is older than just about anyone I know (she was a former student, and a child bride) and currently in a nursing home. When he is gone (which might be ten years from now when he’s 102), she is going to sell everything and move to Maine, where the rest of her family is. When she moves, I’ll look for a different teacher.

In the meantime, I will take one small step forward and slide back two steps. That’s how it is with me and violin.

The Chicken Begins Running With Her Head Off

In eight days, I will be in San Francisco, in advance of a writers’ conference I signed up for last year.

I had good intentions. I paid for the conference back in March. I paid for my plane ticket back in September. I have lined up a rental car using gift certificates, so that’s taken care of. I even have my son dropping me off at the hotel location, because it’s in a very congested and chi-chi area of downtown and parking is $80 a day.

I have toiled at my novel full steam since the first of November. I’ve somehow managed to add an additional 100,000 words since then. There are three, maybe four more chapters to go. I’ve been good, even though I’ve done other things, like work, eat, play the violin, make jewelry, etc. There was the holiday and the extended stay of Ms. MiniD, always a disruptive influence. I’ve even had time to be sick.

Now comes crunch time, and I feel like a chicken with her head cut off.

I have been working with an online business card company that specializes in authors. I had trouble sending in my photograph (actually, the real trouble came finding one that doesn’t make me look like a serial killer) and my emails kept bouncing back. It’s been ten days, and so far no word. In a panic, I emailed again on Saturday. Nothing.

I still need to get with an attorney so I can wrap up the novel. That’s because an attorney plays a prominent part in the ending. I have emailed our business attorney, hoping for some free input. The guy is nice, but he’s one of those super-slick shyster dudes, and his office, in a very trendy neighborhood, likely has a high lease. However, I feel comfortable with him, so I even promised to pay. Hopefully, he’ll be like my other advisors and will take a mention in the beginning of the book instead.

Finally, I have new clothes and have been exercising like a fiend to fit into my old ones. Some writer who sends me newsletters suggested I get a smokin’ hot red dress. I don’t want to look like a hooker, so I bought some red cashmere sweaters instead. After my daughter returned to school (that was the longest six weeks of my life), I found out she raided my bathroom and all my cosmetics are GONE. (I might slap on some make up once in a blue friggin’ moon, so I expect it all to be there when I need it.)

I hope I don’t look like a boob. There’s always the possibility I might laugh too hard, look needy, or become unexpectedly mute.

GAH!

Happy Belated Birthday to Me

I’ve been busy, but yesterday I noticed this post by Mr. Random, patting himself on the back for surviving yet another birthday.

I thought that peculiar, because as luck would have it, last week it was my birthday too. I only think it peculiar, because I share some sort of affinity with Mr. Random. This is not the same bond I share with my Internet-Boyfriend-Now-Friend. I think Mr. Random and I are brother and sister separated at birth.

I’m not going to tell you which day was the dreaded day. I like to completely avoid acknowledging the fact that I still have birthdays. I can tell you that I spend it the same way every year: I do nothing.

I don’t come into work, and I usually amuse myself somehow. In past years, I have trekked to San Francisco (or Alabama) for my birthday. This is because my family is so mean to me, I would much rather spend the day being somewhere I love.

Sidebar: I don’t really love Alabama, but my friend moved there, and she is very nice. She threw me a huge birthday party with her friends, even though they didn’t know me from a random guy at the Publix. I brought my violin and played with her cello friends.  She invited me this year too, but since I’m leaving for out of town next week, I declined.

My husband is nine months younger than me, and for three months out of the year, we are the same age. The other nine months, he is razzing me about me being so much older than he is, even though we graduated from high school in the same year. My daughter, Ms. MiniD, hopped on that bandwagon long ago. To hear the two of them, you’d think I was ready for a wheelchair and the nursing home.

This year, I wrote a chapter and a half and a piece for another forum I write for. Then we went out to dinner at a very chi-chi French place. It’s the kind of rich food that you must savor over the period of at least three hours, accompanied by wine and champagne. (Their housemade truffles are to die for.)

Something else also happened that day. (If you are of manly persuasion, you may want to fold up this post right now and move on.)

It was the return of The Curse.

Damn it, but I had been reveling in menopause for the last year! I practically told everyone I knew (including co-workers) because I was so happy to 1. not have that monthly thing going on and 2.  was finally warm enough at night that I didn’t need to hog the blankets. Of course, with over a year’s enjoyment of no need for feminine protection, I was caught with my pants down and no help. I even scoured Ms. MiniD’s bathroom, but to no avail.

I know if I go to Sam’s Club and buy the economy, jumbo box of tampons, my uterus will dry up completely next month, and there I will be. Of course, if I choose the other route and only buy as much as I need, I will have a great, big need for the jumbo box next month. (And the next, and the next.)

I was depressed before over the fact that I am again wintering in the Tundra. (In January, there were only three days – THREE - count ‘em, that reached the 30 degree mark. That’s cold, people.) Now I am truly despondent. Here I am, 53 – friggin’ – years old and still not over it yet!

Well, that’s it for my birthday.

Happy Birthday to Me.

Chaotic Updates

1. The lady from the business card place finally emailed. She was called out of the country for a week, but has promised that my order is placed and will be forwarded posthaste to my son in San Francisco. She also implied there would be a little token enclosed for my tearing my hair out. I hope it’s a wig.

2. I finally hooked up with my attorney. He was in LA, then he was backed up with work when he arrived here on Monday. A vigorous volley of phone tag then ensued. Finally, I called his cell this morning, and he answered it! We had a nice chat, and he was quite helpful about my legal loose ends regarding the end of my book. As luck would have it, his firm has an entertainment lawyer. One of his clients is Elmore Leonard. He offered to read my chicky-book. I asked him “how much” and he said complimentary. I asked, are you sure? It’s a chick book, and he said yes.

3. Cosmetics. A boatload of them came in the mail today. Hallelujah. I hope I remember how to use them.

4. The ending. It’s drawing near. I think I’m a chapter and a half away. This means I should be typing those magic words “The End” by dusk on Sunday.

5. My cheerleaders have been busy cheering and urging (egging?) me on. I am grateful for it, because there were times I might have jumped under the covers and said “screw this noise” – actually, there were a couple of dozen times I’ve felt that way in the last 72 hours alone. So, keep nagging, cajoling, goading, pushing, harassing, bullying, coaxing, hounding, needling, badgering, bothering, spurring, hassling, heckling, riding, nudging, pleading, provoking and poking me along. (Can you tell my Thesaurus and I are close friends?) I need it.

Anyway, things are falling into place.

There is a God, and she is great…

Finally, Finished :-)

Yup. I have typed those magic words “The End” at the end of my epic chick-lit novel.

The final tally is 175,621 words and 550 pages. I realize I will now need to edit, according to some, about 10% out.

But, I finished! I finished! I can’t believe it!

Now to celebrate with a quick trip to the mall and later, a glass of bubbly…

Oh, my God, I can’t believe I’m finished! *dances*

Not Really Finished…

As the Little Fluffy Cat knows, after the blush and triumph of finally finishing my book wore off, Monday morning I received an email of the upcoming activities at the Writers’ Conference. It’s action packed from morning until late night with presentations, food (! a plus, I thought I was on my own there…) and a hotel more full of agents, editors and publishing houses than I could imagine in my lifetime.

My business cards arrived at my son’s house, addressed to him, so he opened the package. They’re beautiful! All that worrying and hair-pulling (we know I don’t have much hair) for nothing.

Then, of course, came the bad news. Well, more bad news. My fear level is at an all time high. When Friday comes, I hope I can remember my name. That’s bad news number one.

Now I learn in order to participate in the “speed-dating” event, I must have a synopsis of my novel.

Synopsis? Gah… I thought my “job” was finished and it was on to the editing. I was looking forward to red marks and streamlining my baby from a chubby blob to something sleek and muscular. Whodathunk that I’d have to have a synopsis, too? The word hasn’t been in my vocabulary since college. What the hell was a synopsis, no, what was a good one?

I sent out word to Little Kitty, who emailed me more information than I could possible absorb. I printed every email out, and every link to every page. (My eyes can’t handle a lot of words on a computer screen.)

I find I work best under pressure, which is why deadlines are no problem for me. In the yearbook biz, you set a deadline for your schools that is about a week before the actual deadline for you. It’s called a cushion, and although I was supposed to be finished with the book by December 31, completing the task on February 9 at 1:05 p.m. was actually not bad for me. However, a few things happened on Monday which made for concentration to be a commodity in short supply. Writing that day was crazy.

My #2 girl came in to inform me she had an abscessed wisdom tooth. Why did she wait until the day before my trip to go to the dentist? And on a Monday, the busiest day of the week? She lasted three hours and left. Then a call came in from Ms. MiniD, who reminded me I needed to put her ADD medicine in the box I was sending her. I hadn’t taken her prescription to the pharmacy yet. I also had to finish the laundry and pack, and with the conference, I had laid out just about everything I owned and nothing seemed right.  (Except for those new pumps I bought. Black, stylish, and tres comfortable.)

The day was long and hectic. I was practically chained to my desk until 6 p.m., and people, when you get there at  8 and don’t get up but once to use the facilities, that is a long, long day. I can sometimes write during my day job, but with all the stress and the phones ringing, my attempt at crafting my synopsis was lame-o.

Tuesday morning, before going to the airport, I had to pick up my own cholesterol prescription, mail the box to Ms. MiniD, and get the rest of the junk off my desk by 10. I also had to email a corrected yearbook proof to a school, because they were going on winter break at the end of the week.

My husband was being pokey, as per usual. When he wants to go somewhere, he is waiting in the car with a pained expression on his face. When I want to go somewhere, he has to go to the bathroom, grab a cup of coffee and lose his car keys. These are the keys to the brand new Hyundai which he lost the afternoon the car was delivered back in September. It appears there was only one key since it was a repo, and to get another one took several hundred dollars and a lot of legwork, which is why the car sat all winter under two feet of snow.

If you saw his office, you would know why he loses things. If he were to die tomorrow, I swear, it would take three or four years to wade through the junk. It’s not just papers, under those papers are tons of pens and pencils, personal letters and at least a hundred keys, most of which he doesn’t know where they belong too. I also happen think my husband and I are both pre-Alzheimer-y now that we are in our 50s.

Anyway, he finally located the keys, but he was lackadaisical about getting to the airport. That’s because he took two phone calls and he tends to weave while on the phone. Somehow I made it to the airport in just enough time to get on the plane. Now I am sitting in my hotel room, where I hope to get a decent synopsis finished before Friday.

Thank goodness for that cushion.

Elevator Riding

Novel: check.

Synopsis: check.

Elevator intro: not quite.

After a flurry of email regarding the Godzilla synopsis problem, I managed to condense 500+ pages into two reasonably informational pages, double-spaced. I’m prize-winning when it comes to blowing up a story and adding 100K extra words to it, in fact, that’s easy, but whittling has never been my strong suit.

It’s not that I have a vested interest in my words as they are, because I’m not that kind of writer. When criticized, I tend to view it as a learning experience and not as an assault on my character. I’ve been truly assaulted before, and I know the difference.

My problem yesterday was coming up with an “elevator introduction” — something of a couple minutes length to explain my novel to (hopefully) some publishing Joe I have hopelessly trapped in an elevator ride between the 2nd and 5th floors.

I’d heard the term before, but I thought it was a quaint little metaphor, not an actual spiel I’d have to have in order to launch an attack on said captive book publisher. I mean, really. Who hangs in an elevator when there’s a writing conference going on right downstairs?

Turns out, it’s an actual thing one does.

Oh, the naivete of this poor little bumpkin! This job was to take my synopsis and turn it into three or four quick yet enthusiastic sentences. And don’t let me forget that other magic ingredient, turning on the charm.

Both tasks are impossible for me. Let’s see, I’m the kind who runs off at the keyboard. The reason I do that is because I’ve never been comfortable with talking to real people. My lack of self-worth might have been the result of my looks, my teeth, my size, my troubled upbringing, who knows? Writing has been the easy release, made more simple through my sheer love of words.

The other obstacle is my disdain of glad-handing. You can call it that, or brown-nosing, or greasing the palm. It’s the main reason I’m leery of politicians and used car salesmen. I want people to like me for me, not to like me for my charm.

Oh, well. After another flurry of email back and forth to my mentor and cheerleader, I think I’ve come up with something for my proposed trip in the elevator.

I just hope I remember my name.

All Jazzed Up: A Postscript

It’s been a couple of days since I returned home from the writers’ conference, with my head all jazzed up with new strategies and ideas.

Monday was a dead day. Not only did I miss my return flight (they changed the time without telling me), the subsequent red-eye I was scheduled on was two hours late getting to San Francisco. I used the time to write the first chapter of my next book, and this one promises to be less of a downer than the first one. Instead of getting home before 6, the plane landed at about a quarter to 7. However, since I was chock full of enthusiasm, I actually went straight back to my day job and went to work.

Around 2, I started to fade quickly. Back in the day when I was young, staying up all night was a no-brainer. These days, this lady can’t take it. She is old. I barely made it back home before the peepers shut down completely.

Of course, it was just a nap. I had to wake up at 5:30 to go grocery shopping. That’s because the dear Mr. Demonic eats out when I am away.

It was tough to get out of bed, but I did it.

Now… for the news: I participated in the “speed-dating” of agents. I got to talk to two. One said my novel wasn’t interesting enough. I pitched my coming of age novel to the next woman, and she said I could send her a query letter! I do have a slight problem in that the novella doesn’t have an ending, and it wasn’t the book I was hoping to sell in the first place.

I learned that my epic woman’s literature (chick-lit is not the correct genre for the piece, since there’s no hook up at the end) will need to be trimmed by, oh, let’s say one-third? It’s massively huge. I knew there were plot and movement problems, and to have someone tell me it wasn’t interesting is lighting a fire under me. I’m going to let that one sit for a week or two before I attack it again.

I learned a lot of other things too, which I will divulge in later posts. Right now, I have to get some people paid.

It’s good to be back!

Diversionary Bird-Dom

This post is dedicated to my friend, Mimi. I’m sure she would have screamed louder than I did.

Our office building is nothing fancy. In fact, it’s made out of cinderblock, so it’s damned cold in the winter and sweltering hot in the summer. It has a flat roof, so every few years we have to retar the thing. My husband, the dear Mr. Demonic, is on an austerity kick due to two kids in private college and an economy that’s going south faster than a flock of geese, and we have foregone the usual maintenance, like roof, painting and new furniture.

As a result, the roof leaks and our drop ceiling tiles are all spotted and ugly. The paint is peeling on the outside of the building due to the massive icicle that formed on the side of the building. I took a picture of it, because it looked like it was edging toward the door and was going to devour us whole.

The other problem is the toilet. Oh, Lord. Not only is it old, but it doesn’t flush well. I’m thinking something is stuck in the escape pipe.

Our office bathroom fan is home to an army of sparrows. I don’t mind birds, in fact I have a cranky lovebird in my house. However, when they take up residence in the vent leading to the outside, that’s when I have to object.

Sparrows have to be one intelligence quotient above a chicken. They seem to prefer feathering their nests in vents rather than in bird houses. We had this problem in my house and I bought an assortment of bird dwellings to get them to lay off the vent. No luck. I solved the problem by shoving a bright yellow tennis ball in the vent, and voila! no more birds.

I can’t reach the vent at the office, it’s at second floor level. The birds come and go, and in the spring you can hear the baby birds cheeping away like they owned the place.

Last night, my Number 2 thought she heard a bird, but she claimed it was inside the building. Mr. Demonic pooh-poohed the idea, thinking how the hell would a bird get inside a building. (Let’s see… hole in roof? hole in vent?)

It turns out Number 2 was right. A sparrow decended out of our false ceiling and began to buzz her. Mr. D grabbed a box and cornered it in the copy room. He thought he had eliminated the bird problem, but noooo….

This morning I’m sitting at my desk minding my own business when a sparrow dive-bombs me, narrowly missing my head. He bounced off a window, and I screamed. (What? It could have been a bat.) The screaming caused him to fly to the other side of the office, where he flew into another window, obviously not hard enough, because he escaped. He flew back and forth for a time before hiding in a far corner.

The noise rousted Mr. D from his comfy office down the hall. He began to open all of the windows (there are eight big ones) to release our little avian visitor. It’s freaking 18 degrees outside, and a cinder block building doesn’t retain any heat whatsoever. We were reduced to Creamsicles in mere seconds. Mr. D took a huge piece of cardboard and shepherded the bird out of the window.

It’s now two hours later, and I’m just starting to warm up.

We should have left the bird inside. You know the thing is just going to find his way back in.

Writes, Rites and Re-Writes

I haven’t been here much, because as some know, I went to the writers’ conference in San Francisco, and that pumped me up but good. My head is full of ideas and strategies, and I’m as juiced up as Ms. MiniD on her ADD meds. When I’m not working the day job, I’m writing.

In fact, I’m writing so much, I’m beginning to neglect the house.  I used to clean our bathroom and the dog’s area every couple of weeks, but it’s now been three weeks and neither has been done. Gracie’s bed is starting to smell like dog, and although I took out the rugs and swept the bath, I haven’t done much else.

The other thing suffering is my exercise routine and my violin practice. The middle of me is getting back to post-holiday spread, so I suppose I’d better make time for that. As for violin, thankfully the teacher has given me a break and I’m doing easy pieces, plus scales.

Thank goodness it’s not nice out yet, or my yard would be knee length in grass.

Why exercise, clean or play the violin when you can write?

The blame goes to NaNoWriMo. Thanks to November writing month, I have established a routine, which is quite amazing when you consider what kind of world-class procrastinator I am. Without fail, I go home in the afternoon and pound out a couple thousand words on my new book. It’s a relief in a way, because this one is light and hopefully humorous, whereas the first one was dark. There’s a happy ending in the first one, but no hook up. There’s a happy ending in the second one, and a hook up.

I know I have to go back to the first one and rewrite, but I’m letting that one marinate for a while, at least another week or two. I have an online friend looking at it first, then I’ll go in, then send it on for the “real” editing. My first baby is going to have to undergo massive surgery, and I’m not quite up for the challenge yet. But, I know I will be, once I get the bones going on the second one.

So, if anyone wants to volunteer to come and clean my house, I’m game. I’m sorry I can’t pay with money, but I can always whip up a good meal.

Scary Times

Sorry if this post is a downer, but I believe we are heading into scary times.

I don’t know if the culture is out of whack, or just the politicians. I’m fairly certain the politicians are on a destructive course of action. Because they’re all millionaires or better, they’re so out of touch with the Real World, it’s unfathomable. The culture, I’m not so sure. Every now and then, I’ll find pockets of sensibility, but for the most part, I think the world at large is selfish and consuming.

Everyone is throwing money around as if you could grow a field of it and harvest it next September. Of course, no one is throwing money at me, not that I would want that anyway. There’s a certain satisfaction in working hard to reap your rewards, and I’m not afraid of working. I guess you have to have friends in high places in order to get a lucky freebie catch.

I won’t even go into how crazy this is making Mr. Demonic. Even though we are losing a child deduction and expense come May 23rd when said adult person is graduating from college, it’s not going to make life any easier. I believe he’s gotten more gray and wrinkly in the last two months.

I am ashamed and afraid to say this, but I foresee a world where no one except the select few have anything, and those people will have everything. The rest of us will be like cattle or sheep, living off the crumbs of the rich. It won’t just be the value of the dollar shrinking, the value of anything good and right will drop to nothing. This includes creativity and freedom. I already see where the arts in my area are losing funding. No one has the money to donate.

I fear the future world that I have no say so in my own decisions.

My In-House Nostradamus

This post was rather a downer. Sorry.

It could be because Mr. Demonic and I spent the time hashing out the current state of affairs. We don’t stay long on the Demonic household, because our state of affairs, while wobbly, is better than many others. What Mr. D is concerned about is the general state of affairs, in our rust-bucketed Tundra state and in the country and world.

I used to laugh at Mr. D’s predictions. Partly because some of the things he thinks about are really out there. But he’s been right more times than he’s been wrong, so now I am a convert. Besides, it’s nice to have an in-house Nostradamus as a barometer in these difficult times.

Lest you think I’m making stuff up (true, on occasion I make stuff up), I will list some of the things he got right:

1. The fall of the stock market. He’s known that for a couple of years. I didn’t believe him, but then again, I don’t study the market as much as he does. He believes in cyclical natures of economy.

2. The fall of the housing market. Not long after we purchased our house for a big vat of money, Mr. D told me that the market was dropping and that in a few years we would not be able to get one-half what we paid for it. True, we bought the thing right at the peak of the boom. Some of you might remember a post I made on another social networking site about two years ago.  He predicted then that after a time, our house would be worthless.

He’s not quite right, but we were just barely able to refinance it last month.

His next predictions? Here they are:

1. Our children will be saddled with incredible debt, resulting in their standard of living being less than what they’re used to.

2. The government will end up owning everything. (I can expand on that later, but I really don’t want to think about it.)

3. We’ll have to work until we die.

4. At some point there will be martial law. (I’m really hoping that one does NOT come true.)

5. Before martial law, there’ll be civil unrest. The truly disadvantaged are going to commit crimes to survive. There’s already some of that going on here.

Hmm… sometimes I wish he’d have visions of lollypops and rainbows. It would make sleeping at night a whole lot easier.

And Now For Something Silly…

Okay, I know I’ve been entirely too morose lately. Blame it on economics, SAD and an extended winter.

My next novel is already cranking. It’s a bona fide chick-lit piece, and I’m trying to use all of the concepts I learned during the recent writers’ conference I attended. It’s light, it’s funny (I hope), and it’s a diversion that I am counting on changing my mood.

So I will share with you today the first couple of paragraphs.

Chapter 1

If you think I wanted to come back to the imagined warm embrace of the family home, you don’t know me at all. To return as a grown adult, contrite and groveling, tail between my legs, and hat in hand looking for a soft place to land? Oh, no, no, no. That’s not the life for me. I left this burg fifteen years ago for the sole purpose of avoiding my mother’s utterance of those death knell words “I told you so.” Making my escape from the confines of small-town living in Royal Oak and turning my back on its soul-sucking heartache was my life’s crowning achievement. The operative word is ‘was.’ My unblemished record of success now sports the big, fat ugly zit of failure.

My mother, the infamous Diana Ventimiglia, took an uncanny skill for inflicting guilt and formed a lifelong career out of “I told you so.” The “I told you so” business is so lucrative, it’s afforded her a fat retirement account. I’m sure she even gives herself periodic bonuses for outstanding performance in “I told you so.” If she ever retires as Jewish mama wannabe, which will be now… let’s see, never? perhaps I’ll find peace in my heart. By that time, there’ll be a colony on Mars, the budget will be balanced with plenty of zeros in the black and thousands of years of Middle Eastern conflict will be but an unpleasant afterthought, too. Oh, yes. And don’t forget; donkeys will fly.

I think I will go and do something creative now.

I Saw a Chipmunk Today

The critter was drinking water out of my fish pond. The pond was heated all winter by a small floating thing. I think we have fish in there, but you never know. Something ate our fish two years ago. I doubt a chipmunk was the culprit.

You know what this means?

This means it’s warm enough for animals to come out of hibernation!

Maybe spring is almost ready to be sprung.

Competitive Depression

Hand it to Random Name to give me a smile at least once every couple of weeks. He did it again today.

At the end of this New Permanent First Post of Blog for 2009, he responded to a comment I made, where he coined the term “competitive depression.”

Well, okay, maybe he didn’t say it exactly, but I knew what he meant.

I was comparing my dire circumstances (which aren’t really that dire) to those of our dear David Rochester, who for some reason seems to have the worst luck in the world. At times. Other times, I find Mr. Rochester’s posts to be amusing glimpses into his life. (Honestly, David. I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing with you.)

As many of you might know, I suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). I came by the diagnosis quite late in life. It was only a couple of years ago when I was talking to my doctor about something unrelated that she pointed out all my depressive episodes occurred in winter. There was a light bulb moment and a hastily scrawled prescription. (Nowadays, they just send the script to the pharmacy online. No need for paper or the World MD/English Dictionary to translate messy MD writing.

January was a particularly brutal month for me, as we had only three days of temperatures over 30 degrees (Farenheit, not Celcius), and the sun did little shining. As I look at our sales figures for that month, we were 25% down from the same month last year, which was 23% down from 2007. There were other upsets as well, but there always seems to be more of them at the beginning of the year.

The glory days are over, and I for one am scrambling for a Plan B. Mr. Demonic, I believe, thinks he will die of a heart attack or some other malaise before he’s 60, only because his people have a long history of early demise. When he said it again last weekend, I replied, “Oh, sure. Die and leave me all alone to deal with this mess.” It would be a mess too, not counting the clutter in Mr. D’s office.

I once worked at a federal agency where we were ruled by tyrannical sadists who liked to browbeat their workers. That is a true story. It was the kind of federal agency that was well known for having employees turn on their coworkers and gun them down in fits of rage because of the inequity of it all. As a former government worker, I can tell you that working for the government is no cakewalk.

But I digress… We employees would get together (working) and hash out the latest botched plan of one of the supervisors. Of course, we weren’t supposed to be talking to each other, that was a no-no. I was amazed at how negativity breeds negativity. By the end of our ten hour shift, we were all so beaten down, we headed straight for the bar. Thank God, the bar opened at 7 a.m.

Sure, being drunk by 10 a.m. wasn’t the optimal solution, but it was the only one I had at the time.

Let me say now that I’m not competing with anyone for the prize of Most Depressed. I like to think I’m a good-natured and basically happy cynic. If Rochester wants the coveted prize, he can have it.

Mr. Demonic Buys a Craftsman Circular Saw

One thing that is going on in our house is urban renewal. We cannot sell our house, because in our Tundra town and in this financial environment, a buyer would turn their nose up at our house and snap up a foreclosed 6-bedroom mansion for less than $250,000. No joke. We are among the unfortunate empty nesters who have a four-bedroom house for two people and no way to unload it to downsize.

There’s nothing wrong with this scenario, of course. I happen to love our house. Every night when I go to bed, I look out through our wall of windows to oak trees and stars. My bedroom is like a hotel room, and my bathroom is to die for.

Before the economy really headed south last year (and that is literally as well as figuratively), Mr. Demonic started upon a plan of home improvements. At the time we were flush, so we spent a summer of enduring painters and carpenters. Last winter, we completed the gutting of the bathroom in the old, 1927 part of the house, complete with Jacuzzi tub and granite. It was probably overkill in a room that’s only 6′x6′ (or maybe smaller) but hey, at least now it’s not peacock blue from floor to ceiling.

This year is a different story. This year, we barely have enough money to make the mortgage. True, Mr. D put us on an aggressive mortgage schedule, 15 years, and he pays extra on the months when he can. We could have cushioned ourselves with a 30-year, but Mr. D thinks we won’t be around in 30 years. (He’s right.)

Around Christmas time, we decided to redo Ms. MiniD’s old room. She had pasted all sorts of memorabilia on the walls, which were an unsavory green. Think frog poop. She also spilled fingernail polish remover on the hardwood floors we had redone before moving in. It was a mess.

I picked a more calming sage green, and Mr. D set about painting. He was also going to put in crown moulding to match the rest of the house.

A little back story: Mr. D is a fuss budget when it comes to home repair. If it’s not 100% perfect, he’s not happy. When my oldest was just a fetus, Mr. D set about to redo a room and make it a nursery. I kid you not when I say that the room and the baby came at about the same time. Mr. D was redoing wood trim, and every time something came out less than perfect, he chopped up the wood, threw it in the fireplace and took a trip to Home Depot for more. It took two whole months to wallpaper one wall.

Mr. D is handy, but not really. He’s self-schooled and tries very hard, but if he can afford it, would rather pay a professional. That’s because they can complete the task in less time.

Last week, Mr. D went to Sears. People who know us know he’s in the store all the time. He returned with a huge box. It was a circular saw. A HUGE circular saw. He informed me it was to cut the crown moulding, because his tiny little miter box couldn’t do the intricate angle.

Today, I helped Mr. D hold long strips of wood while he cut them, right in the bedroom. My first impression: Mr. D isn’t very safety conscious. He works with his mug of coffee right on the saw and with no goggles or gloves. My second impression: a circular saw makes a lot of noise and sawdust, sawdust that gets tracked throughout the house by people, cats and dogs.

He had to cut each piece three or four times. That’s because it had to be perfect.

I prayed Mr. D wouldn’t slip and cut himself. I don’t do blood very well.

All is well. We both emerged from the room unscathed.

The Demonics Host an Unwanted Visitor

Last night, the Demonic family hosted a most unwanted visitor:

A squirrel.

People who know me know I hate squirrels with a passion. I don’t want them in my neighborhood, much less in my house. I see them as glorified rodents, rats with big fluffy tails. I don’t like rats in the house either, which is why when Mr. D became enamored of them a few years ago, I told him they had to stay in the office, not in my house.

Anyway, said creature slid down the chimney. (Damn those roofers who forgot to put up the critter barrier!) He landed on our gas logs and decided he didn’t like the look of the arrangement, so he threw a couple of them around, thus ensuring his escape from behind the glass doors.

Behind our fireplace is the sunroom, where I keep my cranky love bird and all of my orchids. The bird eats seeds; squirrels eat seeds. Squirrels like green things; orchids are green things. Ergo, the squirrel went for the sunroom.

I had heard some crashing about when I was upstairs, but figured it was just the cat and dog in some spirited play. They tend to chase each other around the house. I yelled downstairs and the noise stopped so I figured that was the source.

An hour later, Mr. D comes home and we prepare dinner. Mr. D hears an unusual noise coming from the direction of the living room, which is a misnomer because we never use the room. “What’s that?” he says.

“It’s just the bird.”

“Doesn’t sound like the bird.”

We go about our business, and the noise becomes louder. Mr. D goes to investigate and confronts a very fat squirrel. He manages to corral the critter in the sunroom, which is no easy task. Trying to herd a squirrel is much like trying to herd a cat.

The cat follows, but at a reasonably safe distance, the coward. The dog retreats to her crate upstairs.  She’s not stupid. The bird is going nuts, hopping from one side of the cage to the other. Cranky lovebird is trapped in the sunroom.

Mr. D grabs a broom and attempts to broom it into a corner. No luck. The squirrel is almost as big as the cat, and is bleeding profusely. There’s squirrel blood on the doors and windows.

Our sunroom is full of windows. Eleven to be exact, and they extend from ceiling to near the floor. Being an old house, there’s considerable framework around the windows. Our unwanted visitor parks his butt at the top of the windows, and traverses them to get around the room.

We lay out a critter trap which we have saved from when we lived in a northern suburb and used to trap baby skunks from under our deck. You would think peanut butter covered almonds would entice a battered squirrel, but no.

After dinner, we go back and attempt to round up the squirrel. Mr. D gives up when the squirrel dive bombs him from across the room. Flying squirrel? My friends, all squirrels fly. He secured the room, and we went upstairs and did the same before going to sleep.

This morning, Mr. D opened one of the windows, which hasn’t been open for at least 40 years. (No screens. I was going to have some made, but it cost too much.) It was still dark outside, but the squirrel wasn’t budging. In fact, he sat on the windowsill of the open window but refused to go. I told Mr. D to take his broom and shoo him out. When he attempted this, the squirrel lunged at him again.

It’s 20 freaking degrees outside and we had to go to work. It took an enormous amount of sneakiness to get the birdcage out of the room. Mr. D again secured the room and we left.

I emailed the roofer and let him know he should get a critter catcher on our chimney TODAY. Not tomorrow, not next week, but this morning.  I’m keeping the number of our local critter control company handy in case our house guest refuses to vacate by noon.

I’m not going back in until that thing is gone.

More Weekend Screaming “&%#*&!”

Now that the squirrel has vacated, it’s time for the weekend.

Spring is just around the corner, and it’s nice out today. Sunny, bright, warm. All the climatic occurrences that I love best.

We went outside and straightened out the yard and the window awnings that were blown down from the last windstorm. Some little green things are poking themselves out of the ground.

Then Mr. D went back to tackle Ms. MiniD’s room.

As you might recall, we had a little bit of trouble getting the crown moulding up. One wall went up fine, but the other fell down, making a mess everywhere. Mr. D went to Home Depot and procured more wood.

This morning, I helped him put up the other two walls. There was much screaming, since I was on the step ladder, and while Mr. D is very tall, he wasn’t tall enough. Then he found out his nails weren’t long enough. Well, I pointed out that his nails weren’t long enough, so he left in a huff while I was still holding a piece of wood to the ceiling.

The dog and cat were scared to death. I’m still not sure where either are at the moment.

Several expletives and general yelling then ensued. This is how the conversation went:

Mr. D: %$#! *&^*&! !@&&*^!

Me: What? What?

Mr. D: *&^%!

Me: I’m holding it up like you said!

Mr. D: *&^&! **^%$!

Me: Your nails are too little. You need longer nails. Get sharper ones, too.

Mr. D: This looks like shit. *%^#!

Me: It looks good. If you can’t see the flaw from arm’s length, no one will notice!

Mr. D decided that opening our 7 day a week business this morning was better than continuing the urban renewal.

He just emailed me to say he was going to Home Depot again. Did I want anything?

A Pain in the Neck

I have a referral for the physical therapist, because I have a pain in my neck.

Said pain developed after going to the writers’ conference. For three days, I schlepped my bag around, which contained a computer, business cards, phone, credit card, pens and plenty of synopsis (synopses?) of my book. My bag weighed about 15 pounds.

I have a recurring neck problem, and I’m not supposed to carry anything bigger than a small wallet. This was hard to do when first ordered by my doctor. In the good old days of good necks (and other younger things), I used to carry a purse the size of a small suitcase. My cell phone was one of those enormous monster flip phones, and I had to have snacks, ready change, napkins, sunglasses, etc. My kids were younger, so it doubled as a diaper bag. This way I would only have one bag and not two.

My current choice for purse is one of those small organizer things that looks like a wallet with a long shoulder strap. I have a closet full of those. For most days, I just need a license, a credit card, my checkbook and a pen. Oh, and my cell phone, but I’ve taken to putting that in my pocket, now that I don’t have a Blackberry.

I came back from the conference a month ago, but I’ve been putting off the doctor visit until this week. That’s because 1. I don’t like going and 2. our insurance sucks. But on Friday, I had to make an appointment. That’s because I couldn’t turn my head to the right. Being so crippled makes it difficult to drive. It’s also painful.

So now I have to go to the physical therapist, because massive doses of drugs and muscle relaxers aren’t doing anything. Oh, and the heating pad makes it feel better, but not for long.

I knew a psychologist who explained that when people complain of aches and pains, it related directly to their life and may not be so much to their body.  If your shoulders ache, it may be because you feel like you have the world’s problems on your shoulders. Therefore a “pain in the neck” really means that something in my life is figuratively a pain in the neck.

I can think of a thousand things that are “paining” me in the neck right now, but I doubt the physical therapist will help me with that.

Lost in Translation and a Few Other Places Chapter 1

When I last left WordPress, I was suffering from a terrible neck pain. My subsequent visit to the doctor pumped me full of muscle relaxers and pain medication. This did NOT work, much to my dismay. My appointment with the physical therapist isn’t until next week.

I spent a week in torture, and then more torture occurred. I was felled by a cold, a really bad one. My #2 contracted one from her boyfriend, and seeing that she was sniffling and sneezing for three weeks straight, there was no way to avoid her germs. There’s nothing worse than having a head full of boogers whilst one cannot turn said head to the right.

As a result of my assembled maladies, I became lazy beyond belief.  No, really, I am not exaggerating. I haven’t looked at my now-completed novel in a month. Instead of writing, I played on Twitter and Facebook. I think I am even “getting” Twitter now.  However, it wasn’t really playing… I logged on in bed and then promptly fell asleep. That’s what a combination of Nyquil and Flexoril will do for you.

All of this uncomfortableness caused me to seek another trip to the doctor this week. She sent me for X-rays, and a couple of days later I learned that I have developed minor arthritis in my vertebrae not far from where my neck is located.

I knew I was getting old, but to be slapped in the face with arthritis is the wakeup call. I restarted my stalled exercise of Malibu Pilates, purchased a huge bottle of glucosamine chondroitin from Sam’s Club and started taking the dog for afternoon strolls.

I thought long and hard about dying, which is something I do on a regular basis anyway. When you’re over the hill and coasting downward, you want to get in everything before the final farewell.

So, I am now reformed and on my way to productivity and creativity.

In the meantime, there has been a little drama going on with the Drunk Manager, which I will get to as soon as I send a care package off to Ms. MiniD. All it takes is one email titled “Moooommmmmyyyyyy!!!” and I’m there.

The Drunk Man Saga

Our ex-manager no longer works for us. It’s because he ended up in the hospital back in November. We’re still not sure what was wrong with him. He couldn’t breathe, fell down in his filthy apartment, and was lacking oxygen. He spent a week in the hospital, and was released no longer able to work. He won’t tell us what is wrong, but we’re thinking emphysema, among other things.

I am referring to him as the Drunk Man, because he most likely is. Being a heavy drinker is probably what caused his problem. He thought we didn’t know, but we were all well aware of what was going on. He had one of those beet red noses, and made a mad dash for home each day at 5 p.m. to get his fix. Oh, and he was a heavy smoker as well, which came to a screeching halt after the hospital incident. That’s because I hear that oxygen is highly flammable.

Since November, we paid him twice, but when it appeared he was never coming back, we terminated him. Mr. D gave TDM a car, and continues to pay his health insurance, at least until the disability kicks in. He was grossly overpaid anyway. For the amount of money he was making, he should have done more than sleep five hours a day at his desk.

TDM now uses my husband’s “bitch” as his own. This little twerp of a man is 70 years old but can’t retire because his life is in a shambles. So he acts as a go-fer for Mr. D. Now he has become the paid go-fer for TDM.

We learned that Go-Fer has been providing TDM with groceries each week. In those groceries is three liters of vodka. I couldn’t drink three liters of vodka in three years, but I’ve seen TDM drink. I’m thinking the Go-Fer is TDM’s pusher, and I told him so. However, TDM pays well, so he’s not going to offer up his advice.

TDM now lives with his elderly mother, who liquidated her entire life on the West Coast of the state to move here. The mother stayed with us while TDM was in the hospital, and we like her a lot. TDM used to complain about his mother, but it’s true that people usually complain about their own mothers. Mr. D and I no longer have living mothers, and TDM’s mother was very nice.

Since she moved here, we have been trying to have her over for dinner. She refuses to leave TDM alone. I don’t know if she realizes he has a serious drinking problem or not. TDM takes his alcohol into his room, according to Go-Fer.

In the meantime, we promoted a guy (one that I originally hired for the office, above the objections of everyone) from instructor to TDM’s position. I was hoping this would happen. New Manager is personable, knows the office, has been teaching for over a year and I like him. Plus he smells good, which is always handy.

The drama comes in because New Manager really has the least amount of seniority. Of course, when Mr. D initially hired TDM, he had only been working as an instructor for a month. Talk about low man on the totem pole.

There’s a lot of rumblings within the ranks, and New Manager doesn’t like it, because he want everyone to like him. I told him to get a tougher skin. When you’re at the top of the food chain, lots of people aren’t going to like you. In fact, many people don’t like me, and I know it. However, the buck stops here, and that’s why I’m such a hard ass.

Preparing for My First Recital

My violin teacher has decided to include me in her June recital.

This is momentous! For the last four years, she has tried to tamp down my enthusiasm for playing with others. True, I’m a slow study, but the ambition is there.

I plan on playing some Bartok dances. My husband might accompany me, even though he cannot stand Bartok. Most Bartok doesn’t bother me; in fact, I studied it when I took piano many years ago.

The weird thing is that I’m getting a little nervous. It’s not that the piece is hard; it’s easy. It’s not like I’m playing in front of a hall full of people; we will be entertaining at a nursing home about two blocks from my house. It’s where my teacher’s husband currently resides. He’s 92 years old, fell down a while back and is unable to move himself.

I’ve played nursing homes before. In fact, my church group in high school used to go every Saturday and play guitar. When Ms. MiniD was still here playing flute, she did the same.

Nursing home audiences are grateful for the break in the usual schedule. Sometimes you wonder if they are cognizant of what’s going on around them.

This is a perfect group to practice my chops on. Most of them can’t chase us out of the building, and that’s good.

Slash and Burn

Okay, I’ve spent the last three days mulling over the first three chapters of my epic women’s book.

It has to be pared down from 175K words to somewhere around 100K.

The easy part was getting rid of the adverbs. LY words are appearing everywhere I look. They are the obvious sore thumbs.

Chapter 3 bit the dust completely. No one understand dream sequences anyway, and I can reinsert some of them at the appropriate times later on.

At the time I started writing, which was two years and two months ago, I had only a vague idea as to what my message was going to be. I was also into flowery prose and 300 word sentences. (Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but thanks to my friends like LFC, I have learned the finer points of using my words wisely.

I can see my confusion from back then glowing in the dark. This made it somewhat easy to chop, slash and burn away.

Even so, I’ve only reduced the word count by 5K. Of course, I still have 32 more chapters to go, and if I continue on the same path, that means I will have weeded out 40K words. (I’m hoping more than that, but who knows?)

On the flip side, I’ve been neglecting WordPress and it shows. My stats stink. But, consider this, I am on a mission (from God?) and I want to have my rewrite complete to ship off to Rochester by the end of May. I’m sure he is looking forward to the income, and perhaps the entertainment.

Gah! Tearing My Hair Out!

For those of you bemoaning my lack of presence here (or not) it’s not that I don’t like you (or love you), because I really do. I’m up to my eyeballs in work, and trying to get those damnedable first four or five chapters re-written.

I spent Monday and Tuesday of last week poring over the sentences, barely able to take anything out but adverbs. That’s because my protagonist is an intelligent person, but her brains have been reduced to ditziness after 20 odd years of marriage. It’s hard to convey those abstract qualities in few words.

Wednesday I came to my senses. Though I had eliminated 5K worth of adverbs and “thats” 170K words is about 50K too many. I took to the knife and wacked out entire chunks, paragraphs falling to the wayside willy and nilly.

Re-reading my weeding, I couldn’t make any sense of it.

I took a step back on Friday and Saturday due to nice weather. Since a week’s worth of rain was in the forecast, I had to get in grape vine pruning and raking during the two good days I had available.

By Saturday night, I was feeling quite irritated with the whole thing.  I really want to get my portion of the re-write completed by the end of May, and that’s going to be tough since 1. I’m a world class procrastinator and 2. I’m lazy. “Daunting” is not a strong enough adjective to describe this task.

In addition, there’s some truth to be said for the fact that writers are often weary of their work, especially during the re-write process. Then Saturday night, I had a dream about my book, which is good. I woke up at 3 a.m. and began to think.

Such a revelation means only one thing: I’m going to have to re-write the entire first 13 chapters from scratch, taking bits and pieces from the 50K or more words I have written to describe the first part of this journey.

So, if you’re wondering where I am, I’ll be up to my eyeballs in angst.

SAD No More, But Still a Procrastinator

Many of you have considered me missing in action. I admit, I have been.

If you think that the past few weeks were full of progress and hard work, you’d be dead wrong.

My name is Pandemonic, and I am a slacker. Show me a 12-step program, please.

At least I had a good time! (I believe this was the argument I gave myself in my 20s when I was enjoying the late 1970s by partying a bit hard.)

The most wondrous thing that happened was when the sun came up about two weeks ago and with the exception of a few rainy days, has been glorious out ever since.

Hip, hip, hooray! My SAD has disappeared!

Of course, with the advent of pleasant weather and sunshine, comes the overdoing. It’s been a long, tough winter here in the Tundra, folks. On the first day over 40 degrees, the local restaurants were carving out space on the sidewalks and getting the market umbrellas out of storage. Such actions proved premature, especially since the temps dipped back into the low 30s that night.

Still, the People of the Tundra embrace spring and summer. We’re glad for whatever sunshine comes our way. I’ve been out in the yard trying to figure out the extension of my Asian garden, pulling weeds, wrestling with grapevines, raking, you get the picture.

On rainy days, when I’ve not been glued to the Scramble board on Facebook or tweeting on Twitter, I’ve been busy making jewelry. In fact, I’ll probably catalog and Etsy my creations, because 1. I don’t have that many friends where I need this stuff to gift as presents and 2. I enjoy making it, so I am probably not going to stop in the near future. Being an artsy-craftsy type person is part of my being. Working with my hands is relaxing.

All of this outside-inside activity speaks for one thing: I am still a world-class procrastinator when it comes to my editing and writing.

But, there is some book/writing news. After eliminating all of the -LY adverbs from my book — which took much longer than I had anticipated –  and taking out a chapter and a half, I’m still left with over 167K words. I tried to refashion the first few chapters, but gave up. Slashing is not the answer here. A major transplant is in order.

I have begun to rewrite the entire first third of the book.

This is starting from scratch. My finished novel is dark and sad. It’s hard to write dark, sad, depressing stories when one is reveling in the splendor of Spring. I have to get in the proper mood, so to find my way there, I wrote a short story of dark and depressing circumstances.

This helped, but that damned sunlight beckoned.

In the meantime, I had a dream about a third book. Uh, oh, you might be thinking. Can’t she finish one project before starting another?

Well, I finished the first epic tome, so YES, I can. However, it took a lot of berating from my writing friend cheerleaders, a commitment to NaNoWriMo, and self-inflicted flogging to get to those magic words “The End.”

However, after my third novel dream, I began to worry. I do want to finish all of these projects. And I’m no spring chicken, much as spring is my season.

I’m going to have to get off my lazy butt and start working.

So if you see even less of me here, that’s the reason why.

Musings of a Motherless Mother on Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day has come and gone, another Hallmark holiday meant to guilt-trip the neglectful – perhaps spoken like a person whose mother (and mother-in-law) is long gone. It’s nice to be recognized throughout the year, not just on major or minor holidays. Do we really need sappy commercials to remind us that somewhere, sometime, someone was there to push the slimy being you once were out into the brave new world?

I’m sometimes annoyed when I hear people talking about their mothers in disparaging terms. They may have their problems, be eccentric, weird, dysfunctional, heartless, or abusive. They may wear miniskirts and push-up bras when you might wish they would choose something more demure. God forbid, they might like your bands, your sports, and your movies. They may drone on and on and on, repeating the same stories you’ve heard forever until you think the muscles in your face could cringe no more. They may be physically unwell or emotionally crippling.

Or they could be like mine, taking up space under a shady tree in a Fountain, Colorado cemetery. Or like my mother-in-law, whose ashes are on a shelf in my basement.

Though I have no mothers left in my life, I happen to be one, blessed with two children of my own. While they would describe me as a “mean” mom (or clueless, embarrassing, stupid, or hopelessly out of date, among other descriptors), they won’t know the depth of my feelings toward them until they become parents themselves.

That’s how it was for me.

Mothers aren’t perfect humans, although many of them strive to be. My own mother was the least perfect person I knew. If my husband’s mother had known her, she would have thought her to be incredibly selfish and mentally unbalanced. Her life was hers, and never once did it revolve around her children. My mother-in-law was the exact opposite; she lived and breathed through her children and mine. She bent over backward in the opposite direction in an attempt to be the perfect mother and grandmother.

I had hoped to find a happy medium, but it’s easy to get swept into the lives of your spawn. After all, it’s through them that you witness a new germination of hopes and dreams, dreams you were either too busy or too lazy to see to fruition for yourself. There were dance recitals, sports, music competitions, cheerleading, scouts, gymnastics, scholastic achievements, art classes, and more. Motherly pride got quite a workout in those days. Perhaps I felt a need to make up for all the parent-teacher conferences my own mother never attended.

As it happens all too often, somewhere along the way it became un-cool to have such an attentive mother. It’s sometimes un-cool to have any mother at all. So like many mothers, I faded to the background of my children’s lives, only to emerge for culinary or monetary emergencies. Besides, they’re adults now.

My favorite book growing up was Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, and my favorite passage was “On Children.”

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

This passage carried me through my turbulent teen years and a strained relationship with my own mother. When I was 16, I read this to her in an attempt to get her to look at my perspective. She thought it was the most onerous thing ever written. Like a lot of mothers of her era, she believed in the exact opposite. Children were your property and responsibility to be molded and beaten into shape, not given opportunities for discovery.

Mothers are the building blocks for life, not the entire foundation. They hold an important role, one that deserves respect, but at some point the child has to take a step up and away. I know many people who blame their mothers for the life they have today. Children should be able to learn from the missteps of their parents as well as from their success. You can only levy so much of your circumstance on your mother; the rest is up to you.

On this motherless Mother’s Day, I didn’t wait for phone calls or presents from my faraway kids. My day was already planned from dawn to dusk with things I wanted to do.

I’m too far away to have visited my mother’s grave last Sunday (coincidentally her birthday), but I think I’ll get my mother-in-law a new urn.

And I’ll open up The Prophet and have a cup of tea.

Busy with Business and Other Things

The past few weeks have been horrendously busy.

First I was busy with business, which is always fun. (NOT!) Our business had to endure a state audit. State auditors are notorious for having a lack of a sense of humor, but I’ve had a state audit with this woman before and she’s rather nice. So we talked and joked in between getting serious. There were a few failings, but nothing of consequence. Mr. Demonic was responsible for losing two very important pieces of paper that should have been in the files. (I made copies, but entrusting Mr. D to shuttle these two pieces of paper back to the other location was my bad. I’ll never do that again!) Ms. State Auditor let it slide, since last year at this time I drove to a far western suburb to hand her the originals. We are not so old as to forget something like that. She has a copy, even if we do not.

The sun has been out, it’s not been too hot, so I’ve spent every dry moment outside firming up the garden. So far the color bowls are finished and the tomatoes are in the ground. I moved rocks from one side to the other, but feel a need to move them again. It just doesn’t feel right to me.

The Zen garden is coming along. I’m at a loss as to the type of gravel to get. Sand is too light and will blow away in the wind, and slag is too ugly. Pea gravel is too big. This all has to be complete before Tuesday, because that’s the day I’m going to San Francisco for my son’s graduation (YEAH!), and after that, I’m thinking the temperatures will rise and the humidity will be deadly. By that time, I’ll want to sit on my deck and enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Good news! The two koi we thought had perished in the severe Tundra winter actually survived! I guess that electricity we spent on the pond heater helped. We didn’t realize it until after I’d purchased three replacement fish. Now all five are happy as pigs in a poke.

The cat is spoiled, the dog is too, thanks to Mr. D. Now if I could get him to warm up to the cranky lovebird… Ms. MiniD is returning home for the summer and it was a mad rush to finish her room, which is now spic and span, sporting a new paint job, crown moulding and adult furnishings.

My first novel has been shuttered, but I’ve been poking at the second one and plotting out a third. Also playing around with a short story or two, which I’m not very good at.

Now, if I could only find the time.

Loss of an Albatross

I’ve been in San Francisco for a week, then came home to a big mess. So I have lots of stories, just no time to write. This is in no chronological order, just as how I think of them.

It was a week ago Friday that my son, the dear Mr. Demonic Junior, graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

So ends the saga of parent taking care of child. At almost 22, he is far from being a child anyway. When I was 22, I was engaged for the third time and had years of living alone under my belt but that was another time in a completely different universe.

I had to park under the Civic Center complex which is a good five blocks away. This is because there is no parking near the Conservatory. This lot is underground, so it took a while to find my way to street level and a return of orientation. Thank goodness there’s City Hall. Who could get lost with that as a landmark? I then had to run the five blocks in dressy clothes and high heels against a fairly strong wind coming in from the ocean. But, I made it.

The graduation was exciting! Just as it was getting underway, with a processional provided by a quartet of trombones and horns, a man behind us fell to the floor.

Mr. D overreacted. He kept whispering, “That man is dead! Why don’t they stop the graduation?”

True, he hit the floor with an astounding wallop, but there were at least two doctors in the house, who propped up his head and legs before the paramedics came to wheel him away. I am thinking he suffered from a heart attack of the non-deadly variety.

The ceremony continued. The commencement speaker was Peter Oundjian, who is the conductor for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. I love that guy! He’s been the guest conductor at our TSO (Tundra Symphony Orchestra) and he gives the best speeches. I wanted to meet him after the ceremony, but he was whisked away.

When it came time for Mr. D Junior to receive his diploma, he looked inside to make sure his name was on it. Good idea. At last year’s graduation at Ms. MiniD’s high school, several “graduates” received folders and no sheepskin. That’s because they had requirements to fill.

It would have been bad news to receive an empty graduation folder.

Afterward, there was a reception at the school, where sushi, spring rolls and meatballs and cheese were served. My son hovered over the meatball tray and scarfed down approximately one month’s tuition worth of meatballs. (Yay, Mr. D Jr.!) It was very crowded, and by the time the masses parted, all that was left was spring rolls. I had one. Very tasty.

At the reception, I met up with two of my internet buddies. One was from the Orange Hell Hole at the other side of the world wide web. Those of you who are familiar with the place know of the place I speak. The other was a person I’ve known online since 1997. We are in a “loop” that sprung from a Beanie Baby chatroom. This was the first time I met my friend, but it was like we’ve known each other forever. That’s because we’ve spent the last 12 years trading personal information, Christmas cards and stuff like that.

Later in the day, Mr. D Junior’s girlfriend graduated. Hers was at San Francisco State University, and she has a degree in International Relations. Her graduation was for international students only. It was a different scene, lots of rowdy students and parents crowding the stage. It also didn’t last as long, and refreshments were limited to cake and punch. The Girlfriend’s mother came from Japan.

It was a happy day for the graduates, but a happier day for the parents.

Mohawk Boyfriend

This weekend we were treated to a visit from my daughter’s current Boy Du Jour.

Now Ms. MiniD has had countless BDJs in the last year. I’ve run out of fingers and am working on the toes for my abacus. This is because Ms. MiniD is quite attractive. She’s also flighty, ADD, loud and seemingly self-absorbed. The ADD could be the reason why she tires of them quickly and then moves on.

BDJ showed up at the house on Thursday. He had taken the train from Chicago. He lives in California with his family, his mom, a successful character actress of small and large screen (if you saw her, you’d know who she is) and step-dad, a director. They were visiting the older brother and his girlfriend in the Windy City.

My daughter had only been home three days when BDJ came over for a visit. It wasn’t even enough time to let the dust settle on her suitcase.

BDJ endured a five hour train trip, but arrived with plenty of enthusiasm. It is at this point that I’m going to refer to him by his new name, The Mohawk Boyfriend.

That’s because just before he left California, he decided to get a Mohawk haircut. And he doesn’t just have hair, he has red, curly hair.

Lest you think this kid is Goth or some sort of aberrant creep, I will reassure you that he’s far from it. In fact, Mohawk BF is quite personable. He matches my daughter in verbal decibels which is a good thing. Her first two boyfriends were soft-spoken.

He also seems to be quite intelligent, even though his speech is peppered with California-isms like “gnarly.”

He ate everything I put before him, including brussels sprouts, roasted sweet potatoes and asparagus.

The Mohawk BF stayed in my daughter’s room. This was quite upsetting to my husband. Mr. Demonic tends to view his youngest child as a child, when in actuality she is almost 19.

I like the Mohawk BF and told him so. I also warned that my approval is the kiss of death for the relationship, to which he laughed it off.  This is true. My daughter once loved Beanie Babies, but as soon as I expressed an interest, hers cooled. When she got a bird, I found I liked it a lot. Then she decided she didn’t like birds. I liked the first boyfriend and the second boyfriend, but she didn’t like that we liked them so much. I think that’s why she dumped them.

I Wish I Could Still Fit into My Bikini…

‘Nuff said.

Biscuit Poisoning

Thanks to a bona fide doctor in the house, I have discovered the source for my belly fat.

That’s right, I’ve been biscuit poisoned. And not by any biscuit, the kind that come in cans.

Dr. B is from the south, where most genteel women (and men) know how to make a biscuit or two. When we lived in Arkansas, even my mother, an Asian military bride, got into the fine art of biscuit making. She also made cornbread and grits but that’s another gastronomical story.

Me, I don’t really care for breads of any kind. It took me two decades to eat dinner rolls at restaurants. Before I started eating dinner rolls in restaurants, they would just sit there in handsome baskets, making lovely props while I picked at my food. (One eats like a bird while dating, but makes up for it after the nuptials.) I’ve just recently started to like dinner rolls, especially the flavored chi-chi ones, which may also be a small part of why the belly fat.

When we do have biscuits at the Demonic house, I opt for the canned variety. However, canned biscuits are not without their inherent dangers.

I was scared by an exploding can of biscuits once. It was early in our marriage. To free the biscuits, one must place the end of a spoon on the edge of the can and press, but the ensuing blast is sometimes jarring. This is a hazard associated with biscuits past their expiration date.

Since the biscuit explosion (where I almost lost an eye), whenever we have biscuits (usually with soup or stew), I must enlist Mr. D’s help to open the can. Similarly, I cannot open a bottle of champagne. I was knocked to near unconsciousness by an errant cork.

He thinks this is silly. Of course, Mr. D must also open jars for me. Carpal tunnel. I can barely open the car door.

Come to think of it, I can barely open a bag of kettle corn.

When Mr. D is gone — meaning dead because he’s not ditching me now — I’ll probably lose weight because I won’t be able to free food from its containers.

Thank goodness for summer. The likelihood of biscuit ingestion goes way down with warm weather. I should use this time to thin down for winter’s upcoming biscuit poisoning.

The New Food Addiction: Molten Lava Cakes

Leave it to Sam’s Club to come up with tasty desserts.

The big box warehouse club is famous for such yummies as angel food cake, quart boxes of strawberries, damned good carrot cake, baklava (during the fall) and other fattening wonders has come up with a new dessert.

Molten Lava Cakes.

Four come to a box, and each is big enough to split. There are two chocolate and two apple/caramel. Forty-five seconds in the microwave, a dollop of ice cream, and folks, it’s as close to heaven as a person can get on earth. Imagine chocolaty goodness with a warm center.

The advent of molten lava cakes is laying waste my plans on slimming down. I wasn’t hoping for swimsuit material, but I at least wanted to fit into my skinny clothes. Right now, I’m in my fat clothes and two and a half pounds away from having to buy a new wardrobe.

I wish I had more willpower, but sadly I must admit to having less than none. In my line of work, and because it’s a mile away, I’m at my local Sam’s Club at least three days a week. That’s because for less than $5 one can buy a rotisserie chicken that makes a meal for a couple of days. The croissants are to die for, and sample weekend is enough so that I don’t have to make lunch on Saturdays.

Since the molten lava cakes are a seasonal item, I can only pray for the season to come to a close.

Soon.

A Guilty Pleasure

Hello, all, I have been away.

Not that anyone cares…

Life is full of things to do, especially this time of year. My husband got the bright idea to pressure the home office into putting up a web site for us, since because of the name we cannot do it ourselves. Actually, he’s been nagging them for about five years. This week, it finally became operational.

It’s still in its infancy, which means I have to do a lot of back and forth work. My husband has been driving all over the state and is unable to work on the bugs, but he’s not too adept at bugging, so it’s a good thing he’s out of the office.

It’s hot here, summer came up and over us in about two days time. Really, it’s not too hot,  but the humidity is horrible. Going from the house to the car to the office is excruciating. I don’t know what people did before air conditioning.

This morning I woke up at 6 and started mowing the front lawn. (Don’t worry, I have an electric lawnmower that makes less noise than my vacuum.) Even though it was very early and not yet hot, by the time I finished 45 minutes later, I was dripping in sweat.

I received a huge bead shipment and it has taken me a few weeks to sort through it. In fact, I’m still not finished, but I have all winter for that.

My one guilty pleasure came when I went to my favorite discount store, Nordstrom Rack. Nordstrom the real store is nice, but very pricey. I feel like I’m hitting the lottery when I shop at the Rack. Last week, I had a coupon. I didn’t need anything in particular, but I’m getting to the age where I don’t need much these days.

I happened upon a pair of marked down shoes. These weren’t just regular marked down shoes, these were Ferragamo slides. Originally sold for $500, now less than a hundred and with a $20 coupon, I couldn’t let them go to someone else’s feet.

Before I continue, people who don’t know me must realize that I have a thing for shoes. I sometimes buy shoes just because they are architecturally superior and sometimes because they are works of art. I also collect vintage shoes, especially those produced during the disco era. The clothes sucked then, but the shoes were to die for.

I would never pay $500 for a pair of shoes, but I can see why people do. The Ferragamos are the most comfortable, softest sandals I’ve ever worn. The leather is soft like cool butter, and even though there is a bit of a heel involved, it’s not hard to stay atop them. Shoes that are poorly envisioned are easy to teeter off of.

If you must know, I’m not wearing them yet. It’s because it’s too darn hot and I don’t want my sweat to ruin them. I’ll wait for a cold spell before I take those puppies out for a stroll.