Crazy like a fox

Too bushed to boogie these days. The idea of actually writing something is too exhausting. It is enough just trying to get through each day. Excited about the weather though. Gonna get the camper on the truck and get the heck out of Dodge. Maybe I will take my notebook and an idea will come to me on the road.

Being a writer is hard work. If you don't jot down a few thoughts when you get the chance they back up in your brain like a creative drain clog and pretty soon life just isn't flowing like it should. Writing is very important to good brain function and overall sanity.

I do so much editing at work, my English major brain is Swiss cheese by the time I get home. Need to work on those kid book ideas that are languishing. Gotta prove to my kids I can write down the goofy things I say and get paid for it. They think I'm just a crazy old lady. I have to show them that crazy can make you big bucks or at least be deeply satisfying.

Stay tuned.....

Whether we taste the sweet ambrosia of life
or the bitter pill of consequence
It is all done in little bits and bites

A soul lost
is done so one little bit at a time
nibbled to death by ducks.

April 22nd. Grass is growing. Flowers are growing. It is snowing. Yeah. Again.

Happy Snow Day!

Wow. Snow. In April. Yeah.

The Daily News

The sun is returning and with it some measure of the small scrap of sanity I once had. It has been a long and difficult winter. I feel like Laura Ingalls Wilder, a pioneer who once suffered seven months of a non-stop blizzard with no supply trains able to get through.

How do we replenish ourselves after the 30th school-related virus is brought home, and the electricity bill is late again, and work is at times rewarding and at times a struggle to get through the day with your brain intact?

There is a health club across the street from my house that I have yet to visit, even though I have an active membership.

I have a physical therapy routine to perform every day to increase the warranty on all the metal in my back that I keep postponing.

I have skis that have not touched snow once this winter.

Whaddup with that!?!?

This winter was a bust for me. One long hibernation of body and soul. I need to go fishing and camping and take a nice long vacation. That's how to refuel.

I don't think the supply train is going to make it here in time for winter, but it should pull into the station come springtime. I can hold out till then.

All that glitters is not good

As God is my witness, I forgot what glitter can do.

A late night project to produce 24 handmade valentines for my daughter's first grade class induced a sense of delusional creativity. I lost my mind and actually sent my husband to the store for supplies - including glitter.

I did not remember the Valentine's Day of 2008, or the Christmas of 2009, when other honest and loving attempts at handicrafts resulted in a sandstorm of glitter infiltrates that still end up in Sunday dinner and places on my body I won't even mention.

My theory is glitter is a nanite conspiracy. A clever alien plan to take over the world, one kitchen table at a time. We are mesmerized by the pretty colors and shiny snowfall of these minute creatures. With a bottle of Elmer's glue in one hand and glitter in the other, we are certain we can make something pretty enough to cause world peace.

But the opposite happens. It actually becomes a tracking device, a frustration, a bio-hazard. You suddenly know where everyone has been by following the glittering road. It ends up in the toothpaste, the sheets, the butter in the fridge. It's in the casserole, on your fork, in your hair; it gets into everything!

I was storming at my husband that night over some minor infraction and he broke out in laughter saying, "It's hard to take you seriously when you have glitter on your face."

The nanites are succeeding. They are driving us apart. Divide and conquer. Laugh and the nanites chortle about the success of their plan.

The children are in on it. They plead for the glitter, beg for it, promise to choose wisely in their use of it. But it is a diversion. They are double agents. The glitter bomb explodes.

I even know of a woman who mistook a bottle of glitter hairspray for a feminine hygiene product. Nervous about her doctor appointment, she freshened up. The gynecologist took one look and said with a nervous smile, "How festive!" She didn't understand what he meant until she was in the shower that night.

Beware the glitter. Beware.

Fish wrap

So I have been out of the loop for awhile. How ya been? No pithy observations today or wise words on lemurs or sleep disorders. The world is at sixes and sevens (have to look up what that means) and it is hard to focus on the lighter side. Although, the newspaper cartoons Zits, Dilbert, and Baby Blues help a lot.

But my newspaper did away with my other favorite comics. Seems like the paper just takes the comics from the lowest bidder. I am sure the new, cheap, use-only-to-wrap-fish cartoons are helping with the brutal bottom-line for newspaper managers, but it demonstrates the art of diminishing returns as readers become even further disenchanted with the paper and drift away.

I guess I am ready for an iPad and to go fully electronic with the Sunday funnies and the news it comes wrapped in. At least I can carry an iPad from room to room without having to balance a keyboard in the process. Nothing out there has had a screen big enough for me to read, so I welcome Steve Jobs' new creation. It has a niche in the market, at least for me. Hopefully for others as well, as I really need the price to come down before I can afford one.

Until then, I will continue to read what is left of the paper news and funnies and scan the headlines for something remotely relevant to my community and my life. Oh, and the newspaper has one superlative function that my (someday) new iPad doesn't: it can mop up my spilled coffee. Steve needs to think hard on that one. Maybe I can purchase an app or add-on for iPad that will serve the same purpose.

Kirk to Enterprise.....

So, now I can blog from my phone. What a hi-tech advancement. Now I can type 25 times more slowly, increase my error rate by 75%, and sound even more insane.....I like it!

Happy New Year?

Happy New Year to all, those far and near!
Best wishes for today and the rest of the year.

To Sleep Perchance To Drive

Here I am! Sorry I haven't been around for awhile. I got lost in my middle-aged confusion and have been tagging walls in risky neighborhoods all the while thinking I was typing away here at blog-central.

So, if you want to see any of my posts from the last 30 days you'll need to head to the corner of 94th and Devine. (or was it Baker Street & 112th?) to see what I have been up to. I seem to have ended up with some kind of tattoo from my street adventures. I think I have joined some new health club involving hand guns and running very fast.

Ah, well. My mind has taken to wandering without me. My doctor says it could be a form of narcolepsy called cataplexy. I asked him if he meant a multiplex of cats, as I have certainly been under that type of influence before. He is a very humorless man. I am lucky I got out of there with my driver's license intact.

Sleep disorders are a cruel joke. When you have sleep apnea or narcolepsy, you are very, very, very sleepy all the time. But sleeping at night is the worst way to resolve the issue.

I have found that a short doze while driving is much more stimulating than a straight eight hours could ever be. Those rear-end collisions will wake you right up in the morning! Hoo-ya!

All you want to do is go to sleep, but when you do everyone starts yelling and screaming. All of a sudden there are sirens, personal escorts in uniform, and tow trucks, oh my! How I am supposed to get any rest with all that going on.

So, when I do go to bed at night I am wide awake. Sleeping in bed does no good, so I read, and eat, and clean house until the sleeping pills kick in. Then I have another tossed salad kind of night and wake up sliced, diced, and completely unrested off to begin another day of slumber at work, I mean, in the world.

The auditory hallucinations are the best part. You hear your name called a lot. It can be nice and make you feel like a celebrity, but if the voices also say, "Put your hands on your head!", it is not a hallucination - trust me.

Ah, but I am the Queen of Hyperbole! Methinks she does exaggerate too much! But I swear, I feel like all of this will happen if I don't get at least one good night's sleep this month. My kids are not infants anymore, but my body is still on the every-three-hour standby mode.

Maybe menopause will cure me. Maybe I'll just get even crazier and finally write a best-seller. Now I bet I could sleep at night after THAT happens.

Half full...

My glasses are dirty, my back hurts, my blog guilt is high, my Mommy guilt is off the charts. I am worried about my husband, my kids, myself, the dog, and the rest of the world in that order. I don't sleep well. I don't eat right. And no one understands me. Life as a technical editor is one large slog of being misunderstood and underappreciated.

Technical editors and writers make others look good. We are the ghost writers of life, and as such walk the halls of clear communication unacknowledged and invisible. As a ghost writer the prose is crisp, the thoughts divine, and the credit...zilch.

I wonder how tough life is for William Shatner's ghost writer. Shatner has produced more books than any Trek celebrity ever; all from his own creative genius of course.

Oh, I like Bill. I am a big fan and always will be. But, my point is about the writers. We all go to the same metaphysical pub and cry into our virtual beer about how our author just doesn't understand us.

We never leave them (well, only upon point of death) because we like being ghosts. We like standing in the aisle at a book store with that self-satisfied smirk on our faces. "I know something you don't know," we whisper to the patron next to us.

We are the Kings and Queens of the bestseller and memoir world, but uncrowned, dethroned, and expelled from the Kingdom upon publication.

Ah, well. It could be worse. We could be the high profile authors who go to bed each night empty inside envying us. They envy the ghost writer who can say things so well. The author has lived the life, but we can give it immortality.

We are Gods.

The Beginning: a work in progress

The word The is a delicate upturn of the mind. A subtle brushstroke at the beginning of a thought that paints the opening colors of a conversation.

At the end, it ushers out the speaker on a final, gentle wisp of deliberation. A moment that suddenly rings true as the purest bell, and you are startled to realize you've been seduced into intelligent conversation.

Alice at the Palace (Merc Wars, pt 1)

Well, well. Look who decided to show up at her own blog. It's not my fault... really. The toxic pile of laundry became a federal superfund site, and the head wounds I suffered from storming the beach of creativity took awhile to heal. All the feds in HAZMAT suits required a lot of tending, and we lost a couple during the early attempts at laundry containment.

Ah, it is never dull around here. You know, Halloween is coming, and I could use a poltergeist or two. I have a drill sergeant voice when needed and I bet I could whip those ghosties into fairly good laundry minions and dishwashers. Oh, wait. That is what kids are for. Nevermind.

I don't remember EVER (really) EVER thinking I could get away without helping out around the house. For me, helping around the house meant feeding the chickens, the ducks, and myriad other feathered critters, plus the horses, dog, and cat. If I didn't do my chores, living creatures would die.

My girls think it is child slavery to take their dishes to the sink and they suddenly develop leg cramps of crippling intensity at the mere mention of "dishwasher" or "set the table".

Somehow, I fell into that modern parenting trap of indulgence and now am battling to retake the ground I surrendered to my children early on. Responsibility, accountability, and taking no for an answer build emotional competence. My husband and I, for honest and understandable reasons (a whole other story), ended up doing too much for our precious, fragile girls, and now Godzilla and Mothra are ruling the roost and doing epic battle every five minutes, leaving holes in the sheet rock.

We are staring at each other, Hubby and I, going, "When did our little Alice-in-Wonderlands turn into the toughest Mercs we ever saw?" We have realized we were duped by our own reluctance to ask enough of our children, and now we are trying our best to re-educate them, but gently of course.

Although, when they start flipping Kung Fu and Savat kicks at me (from training received at some undisclosed militant location), the hammer falls and those little warriors let loose with piercing, alien shrieks of imminent mortality and all of a sudden it is, "Yes Ma'am. No Ma'am!" pretty darn quick.

So, take heart fellow parents. It is never too late to take back your children from a life of entitlement, but the longer you wait, the bigger battle you have on your hands. And their training just gets better and better.

To Sleep, Perchance to Talk to Sara

Okay. Life is tough and the days are long (as a parent you always feel this way) but, I have a new friend in the Dreamworld that has given me pause. Not paws...pause...as in held me up a step, taken me aback....Aback? Well, that means...oh, nevermind. Let's just say I have a new visitor in my dreams and what the hell is Sara Palin doing in there anyway? Why am I suddenly seeing our former governor? It is like having a old boyfriend you dumped because he was a stalker and one day you hear he is getting married and you break down and blubber like a fool, grieving over some idiot you never liked in the first place.

I like Sara Palin. There, I admit it. I like that she tried to be someone other than a politico robot. She said things, she meant them, and the system ate her for breakfast, buried the remains, then dug her up and ate her all over again.

I like the idea of a kick-ass homecoming queen who dared to be ignorant and only got madder the more people picked on her.

But, like most Alaskans, I have become a bit disillusioned with her and her methods. I like people with confidence and moxie, even when I don't agree with them and even when I think they are making a host of wrong decisions.

But she dumped me. Sent me a press conference, which is worse than a text message, to tell me we were quits. I didn't agree with her politics and expressed concern over her ethics issues, so she didn't want to be my governor anymore. I secretly think she is dating another constituent demographic, but I can't be sure.

She said it wasn't me, it was her. She said she needed a break and that we could still get together, and "Just Be Friends". I knew we were having troubles, but I just wanted to give it time and see what developed. I thought if she could mature a little, we could make it work. I was willing to give a little and see the world from her point of view. I just wanted her to crack a book once in awhile and take an online college course in world history.

But no, I turn on the tv and there she is, telling the WHOLE WORLD that she and I are through. I didn't hear a thing from her after that. Nothing. No press, no interviews, not even a tweet!

So, now I am going around telling everyone that I dumped her first. And that I never really liked her in the first place. But at night, I dream; and in that sleep, what dreams may come. The dreams that do arrive have me in a seat in a huge auditorium as my governor is making her way toward me, shaking hands, expressing her sincere commitment to be there for us and forge ahead.

I am dreaming of my old governor and wishing she still was.

Well, I'll be darned... I must have liked her more than I thought.

Flown the coop

I am brilliant...whenever I am away from my blog. All these great ideas come to me when I am alone in my car or working away on a draft of something at work. I solve the world's problems, resolve my parenting dilemmas, and discover the best date idea for my hubby and me that I have had in weeks.

Then I get to the blog after bushwacking through the, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy" jungle, scaling the, "Screaming, Bleeding, Skinned Knee" mountains,and swinging on an extension cord looped around the ceiling fan to narrowly miss the migrating pile of toxic laundry climbing up out of the basement laundryroom.

By the time I get to my computer, I have suffered multiple head wounds, a broken sense of purpose, and am watching all inspiration bleed out from my body through a severed creative artery.

Oh, well. At least I tried.