Monday, October 3, 2011

20-Yr-Old Dog Avoids Papparazzi


Delilah

So I just spent a three-day weekend babysitting two dogs. Delilah is 14 years old and Cuda is 20, and they are both quite fragile. They have very specific diets, needs for frequent walks and basic 24/7 on-call care.  They are, however, quite lovable, and since I live only two doors away, I didn’t exactly feel put out by the request from neighbors who have certainly done their all for my dog.
The first morning I woke up there, I opened an eye and there were two dark brown eyes, inches from face. It was Cuda, letting me know that it was dawn and they needed to go out. It was more like 7:30am, but when you’re a freelance writer, time is relative. So we got up and did the go outside thing. Then we made the involved breakfast concoctions, which included pulverizing different amounts of prescription Deramaxx for each dog for arthritis, and mixing it in with Iams specialized kibble, Iams specialized wet food and a little warm water. Seven in the morning not being my best time of the day, I amazed myself each time I was able to accomplish this task.

Mandy

Then I went upstairs to make the bed so I wouldn’t get back in and fall asleep all day. When I shook out the covers and blankets, to my surprise, a little gray cat named Mandy went flying out of the sheets and across the room. I felt horrible, but she looked at me like, “Oh, it happens all the time,” and went about grooming what fur she had, having had all but her head and the tip of her tail shaved for the hot summer months.
I brought my camera along so I could make a quick slideshow of what we did while Mom and Dad were away, but Cuda would have none of it. Every time I lifted the camera to snap a shot, Cuda would, literally, turn tail and run off.  So I have pictures of Deliah, a shot or two of the humorously shaven Mandy, all cuddled up in the new dog bed, and Cuda’s butt.

Cuda's butt

The big concern about the dogs was if they were going to have messy accidents in the house, but I was lucky. Not a one. Though there was the walk we took to my house where I ran upstairs for less than a minute to do something before we walked back. Sure enough, when I came downstairs, there was a nice little gift for me in the middle of the TV room floor. Both dogs looked up at me as if to say, “I didn’t do it.” C’est la vie.
Then there was the groggy-eyed morning when I got to the bottom of the stairs and stepped in it. Literally. So I cleaned myself up, cleaned the rug up, moved over a few inches and stepped in it. Again. It was one of those dark patterned rugs that are all the more confusing at 7am. Like I said before, luckily, there were no messy clean-ups.
On my final morning on duty, it was mid-morning and Delilah came to visit me while I sat on the couch. I petted her and then she headed for the front door. Like a shot I got there at the same time she did, but not before a small trail of “bread crumbs” had been left on the living room floor. At least most of it got outside that time.
And now it’s time for me to leave, which I find bittersweet. Realizing what it takes to keep these dogs going, I am afraid to leave for the three hours before the owners get home. And they’ve grown on me even more. Even that silly-looking cat, who is totally lovable. But I will gladly say good-bye to the poops on parade, and thank the newspaper guy for delivering the paper in a plastic bag.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

H-O-T Spells HOT, HOT, HOT!


Lately it has been hot. Really hot. Pukin’ hot. I don’t ever remember it being this hot. There have been health hazards issued in the past because of the heat, but this is the first time I ever thought they might actually apply to me. Just a mile away, an entire shopping plaza lost power due to all the extra power it was drawing by cranking up the air conditioning at all of its locations.

At our house, my husband claimed heat exhaustion and sequestered himself in the one air-conditioned room in our house for two days, emerging only to ferret out some food or take a quick trip to the bathroom. When I asked him to help me put in another air conditioner, he immediately cited the health hazards and ran back to the already air-conditioned room. I thought for a minute about the irony of the relief the second air conditioner would bring versus the 10 minutes of activity it would take to throw it in the window, and then I moved on. The edict had been issued - there would be no second air conditioner in the near future.

Then came the weather teaser. Two glorious, sunny low humidity days. One could actually function without a fan, or that still un-installed second air conditioner. No more spending money at random locations just to soak up their air conditioning. The sprinkler was actually being used for the garden. The pool was no fun though, because the water had gotten so hot from the prior scorching days that it wasn’t any relief to go swimming.

Boom! Boom! Boom! The following days brought lightning and thunderstorms, fierce at times, but fleeting. Then the sun would come out and it was if it had never rained at all. At least that muggy, post-storm air didn’t hang around to give everyone upper respiratory problems. I’m convinced the only reason it started raining was because I had decided to keep cool one day by hand washing my car with ice cold water and using my last water-ionizing filter to rinse off the car so it would dry spotless and I wouldn’t have to stand around in the scorching heat to dry it. It poured that night, and rained every day for three days afterwards. And now I’m out of ionized water filters.

So far, the only good to come out of this horrifically hot weather is that the dog got a bath. I stuck her in her doggie pool, and wet her down with the cold water from the hose and she didn’t move a muscle. I soaped her up and she didn’t shake it all over me, which is usually part of the ritual. And then I rinsed her off with the same cold water, and she let me. One little shake and that was it. I think if the pool weren’t filled with soap, she would have curled right up in the ice cold water. Now that told me how hot it really was.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Meet the Doldrums

What to do, what to do? I am wandering around the house today, unable to decide what I would like to do, or even what I don’t want to do that needs doing. But I am at a loss. It’s raining, so I decided to give myself permission to start a new book. I tried three and gave up on every one. There isn’t even anything on TV worth watching. And I have to be in the right mood to do nothing.

Anyone who has seen my house knows that virtually everything, inside and out, needs cleaning, decluttering or just putting away. I tried to tackle a particularly dusty task, but lost interest halfway, so now there are just piles of dusty things all over the floor. And sometime during the week, I picked up contact dermatitis from gardening, so now I’m afraid to go near my plants.

There is just this vacuous presence around me, keeping me from being interested in doing anything. Motivation seems to have left for the 4th of July weekend. But what’s this? In the act of flipping through the dictionary to make sure I was using the word “vacuous” properly, the book fell open to the word “watercolor,” and now I’m thinking of that bag of watercolor supplies, and special, expensive, paper I had for the watercolor classes I’d taken last year. The bag is on a hook in the hall closet, where it’s been hanging ever since my last watercolor class.

Maybe I’ll dig out my supplies and work on my technique. I painted two pieces that were worth framing, so I know it’s not a lost cause to keep going. Who knows? Maybe I’ll crank out another “suitable for framing” piece.

How about that? My old friend, the printed word, just flops down in front of me and solves the doldrums of my day. Well, I’d better get to it. I’m actually looking forward to this project.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Migraines - Can you say torture?

I have a migraine. This one has been raging for two days and I’m out of migraine medicine. It’s pure torture. I used to think people who called in sick to work because they had a migraine were lightweights. Now I feel their pain. It feels like someone has driven a railroad spike through my head, directly over my right eye. Every once in a while that same someone twists that railroad spike, just in case I’d become numb to the original pain.




I’ve taken five different kinds of headache medicine since yesterday. Some lessened the pain, temporarily, but none has been able to conquer it. If I walk into a room with lights on, I reach a new level of immediately searing pain, and grope for the light switch with that kind of vision you get when a camera flash goes off in your face. At least maybe I’ll drop a pound or so because I’m too nauseas to eat.

I’ve got to cut this one short. The glare from the computer screen is just too much to bear right now. Hopefully this insanity will end soon, but for now I have to crawl back into my dark, quiet cocoon. Thank God for Law & Order marathons.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

My All-Consuming Everything

I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve become totally consumed with a new project, to the neglect of my other projects, all of which have started to wither on the vine. I am slowly getting back on track, but not without that dreadful feeling of going back to the same ol’ same ol’. Yet these are the very projects that had that new car smell not long ago.

It happens to me all the time. I can’t seem to stay interested in anything for long. And when something new comes along, I’m all over it. I’m in it for the challenge. It’s like the proverbial “thrill is in the chase” for me. Once I have wrapped my brain around something and understand the logic behind it, my mind starts to wander.

I can’t be happy that I’ve mastered something and just go along being good at it. I’m constantly jumping to the next, more challenging, project, regardless of where I left off with the last. That’s probably why I currently have four writing gigs going at once, in three different genres. Shifting gears like that once or twice a week keeps me from losing interest in any one project. But with the acquisition of my latest job, which pays more than the other three put together, I’m thinking that maybe I should try to devote some time to getting good at just that, and staying that way. At least until the next thing comes along.

I’ve been writing hard for one source for nine months, but I just can’t make it pay. I think that the lack of reward vs. effort has been contributing to my reduction in submissions lately. And for two painful years, I’ve been writing short story after short story, with the best writing group I’ve ever been a part of, but feel like I’ve made marginal progress at best. Did I mention that if I can’t wrap my head around something, I get frustrated and lose interest, too?

Then there’s my blog. I like writing my blog, but feel it is a guilty pleasure - that the time I spend writing it takes away from time I could have been working on a paying gig. Hopefully, now that I’ve got a month’s worth of new writing under my belt, I’ll feel more inclined to give myself a break to get back to some of my other interests. As I said, I’m great at letting stuffy, and sometimes not so stuffy, projects fall by the wayside, but I always get back to the good ones.

Like my blog.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Start something, anything - you might finish it

 
I have three writing gigs going, and a house with six bedrooms, of which we use only one. Then there are five rooms downstairs, a laundry room and two big bathrooms. Not to mention the wrap-around porch. Oh, and the whole house is standing by a toothpick.

I know why the house is always in such a state of disarray, because sometimes it’s just too much. My husband helps where he can, but the lion’s share of keeping our lives together falls to me. Sometimes I decide I don’t feel like writing so I go to sort the wash. Then I realize I have nowhere to put all the fresh laundry because I still haven’t weeded out all the clothes that don’t fit or are out of style, because they might fit or come back into style one day. So I give up and decide to dust.

Big mistake. This house creates dust so fast that if I don’t dust every day, which I don’t, it gets out of control. Looking at this overwhelming task, even in just one room, I am immediately defeated and go look for something else to accomplish. I start to think about doing laundry, then remember the previous laundry dilemma and give up on that, too. And the vicious cycle continues.

I end up back at the computer to write, but my muse is nowhere to be found. Then I remember seeing a tweet the day before that said, “Write just one page, one paragraph, one sentence, one word…” So I dust off an old idea and try. It’s slow going. Very slow going. After 20 minutes I’ve written three sentences. They are three good sentences though. Pretty soon I realize that I’ve written that one word, that one sentence, that one paragraph and then some. I’m still not enthused about writing, but I keep going, thinking that now I can stop any time and not feel guilty.

Before I know it I’ve got a good start to my story and decide to keep at it. And I finish. It only needed to be two pages, but those two pages were nowhere to be found the last time I sat down to write. If only I could apply this theory to housecleaning - well, then I’d get no writing done because I’d be cleaning all the time.

So the house is going to stay in disarray. I still get paralyzed by writing sometimes, the way I get paralyzed when trying to figure out where to start the rest of my life, but at least each piece has a defined finish. Which makes it easier to start writing that first word. If only the house would stay clean after I finish, maybe I’d try folding that first t-shirt and then actually find a place to put it.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

What are you reading right now?


I have never been someone who could read multiple books at the same time. I need to read one book, then another, then another. I have a friend who always has two or three books going at the same time. How does she do this? I only have a limited amount of time in my day to read, if any, and I like to finish books quickly, for the sense of accomplishment, at the least. If I were reading three books at one time, I don’t think I’d ever finish any of them.

This same friend of mine says when she can’t think of anything to read, she goes for the thickest book she can find at the bookstore. I’m more your slim volume type. Then again, two of the last four books I’ve read this year have been more than 600 pages each. And the one I’m reading now has more than 750 pages. Even though I often enjoy a thick book, I frequently look at it as a chore, as something else to do.

You need to make time in your life to read. And reading a thick book takes time. I always hear mothers say they can’t remember the last time they had enough time to read a whole book, yet they always seem to be up on the bestsellers as well as anyone I know. How do these people find all this time to read? They must not be writing all day.

In the past two weeks I haven’t picked up a book, mostly because I was writing something substantial against a deadline. Now there is a teetering, tottering pile of books next to my bed that I’ve been meaning to read and I can’t make a commitment to any of them. They are, in no particular order:

  • The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown
  • Salem Falls, by Jodi Picoult
  • Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion
  • The latest Rand McNally Road Atlas
  • Let The Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
  • Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway, by Susan Jeffers
  • Real Time Marketing & PR, by David Meerman Scott
  • The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
  • The latest issue of Poets & Writers magazine

So what did I finally choose when I was done with my big writing project? None of the above. I went for Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer (I know, I know). Someone got me reading the series, and now I feel like I have to finish it - I only have this one book left to go. Otherwise it will feel like reading a really really long book and stopping three quarters of the way through. I have been hassled for reading this series the whole way through, but you know what? It’s easy reading. It’s comfortable. I can take on a 750-page book like that because in the limited amount of time I give myself to read each day, I can still finish this book in a week.

I’ve always taken umbrage with people who pass judgment on what others read. I’m happy that the person next to me on the beach is reading at all, regardless of the book’s intellectual level. Reading improves your vocabulary, your spelling and your general knowledge of the world. And if you read what you think you should be reading instead of what you enjoy, reading will become a chore and you will eventually stop doing it.

So I’ll get through that whole wobbly pile of books next to my bed, in time. But right now, I’m rewarding myself for a writing job well done - reading a book I know I’ll get through fast and will probably enjoy - no matter what anybody else thinks of it. After all, no matter what book it is:

Reading is fundamental!

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Finally sprung from the ER


Not a happy camper
 Mason is okay. Or will be. Close to 6 hours after my husband and I first left our home to go get him a quick check-up, we rolled back into our driveway with exactly the information we had deduced on our own before leaving. Mason has a broken rib. There is nothing he can do but wait for it to heal. Not a damn thing wrong with his head, which is what we told all these doctors that I mentioned in my previous post.

The doctors were all worried about head trauma and we spent hours waiting for tests and results based on what they thought they saw in Mason's eyes. What they probably saw were the googly eyes of a man who hadn't slept for more than 24 hours because of the pain in his ribs. At that point, they weren't letting us leave, and the fast track they started us on, had slowed to a crawl.

When we finally got the news that his head was okay, we were relieved, but also annoyed because we both knew he wasn't acting in any way like his marbles had come loose. Then Mason got dressed and we waited for the doctor to come back and release us. And waited. And waited. And waited a little longer. It was a good hour-and-a-half of sitting in the examination room waiting for the doctor to return with a prescription for pain pills so we could go home.

When we finally got the prescription and exit paperwork to check out of the hospital, we were more than ready to leave. Not much after we returned home, as I was walking the poor dog who had been locked up all day, I realized that, even with insurance, we had just paid more than $140 for a lousy 10 inexpensive, generic pain pills. After almost 6 hours of tension and stress and poking and prodding, the doctor provided enough pain pills to last 2-1/2 days for a broken bone that would take weeks to repair itself.

So we'll both just have to deal with his suffering as it comes - the American health care system at it finest.

Spendin' the day in the ER

So I'm sitting in the emergency room, waiting for my husband to get x-rays. Of course it's a beautiful, sunny day outside. When is it ever a crappy, rainy day when you have to spend it in the ER?

We had no intention of being here today, but my husband fell really hard last night, probably breaking a rib. He tried to tough it out because really, what can you do for a broken rib? Finally, the pain got to be too much. We tried to go to an urgent care facility today, just to get an x-ray and some pain meds, but now they're worried about what's going on in his head, so here we are.

My husband has been shipped off to CT/x-ray land somewhere and will probably not be back for a while. Having anticipated this scenario, I grabbed my netbook when we left the house to get some writing done. We've spent almost three hours in two medical facilities and we have yet to get a diagnosis. Looks like I'll have plenty of time to write.

Surprisingly, the ER has been pretty time-efficient. The urgent care facility was the time eater. I'm glad his need for care wasn't actually urgent when we went there. We were the only ones in the place besides the employees and it took for-EVER to see a doctor. Then, after five minutes in the examining room, the doctor decided they didn't have the capacity to treat him, so here we are. When the ER triage unit indicated head trauma, my husband got fast-tracked, but it turns out there are a lot of steps in the fast-track process. So I wait.

This just in - we have a broken rib. The doctor came looking for my husband, but he's not back yet. Where could he be? He left for an x-ray at least 45 minutes ago, and the results are already back! I found out that there is nothing they can do for him except to give him some pain meds. The urgent care place had an x-ray machine and the doctor had a prescription pad - what was it that they didn't have the capacity for? Well, we still have to find out if there is head trauma, so...

More later.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Spring Sprang Sprung Sproing!



Eggs can stand on one end during the Vernal Equinox.
 Howl at the magic moon? Done it. Standing eggs up on end? Done it. Leaving your convertible out in the snow, with the top down? Done it. Talking your car dealership into putting a new battery in your car for free? Done it. All in one weekend? Done it. It’s been an eventful few days for me.

I got an email on Friday, reminding me not to miss the full moon on Saturday night. It was the closest the moon had been to the earth since 1993, and all sorts of activities related to an increased gravitational pull were supposed to happen, like Los Angeles falling into the sea.

I saw the moon through a through a hazy forest, looking like something from a scary movie. It was gigantic and yellow and round, and seemed to be almost touching the ground. I howled at it, because I was raised to howl at full moons. I figured if there was ever a moon to howl at, this was the one. Then I went inside. Los Angeles never did fall into the sea, but at least I got to see the magic moon.

Sunday was the first day of spring, or the vernal equinox. And speaking of gravitational pull, it’s been said that at exactly the moment the vernal equinox takes place, you can stand a raw egg up on its end. I know this to be true because I’ve done it for many years. My mother looked it up and scientists say there is no basis in fact that this should be true. Yet, at 7:21pm on Sunday night in Upstate New York, I managed to line up three raw eggs, side by side, standing on their ends. My husband got it to work it in another part of the room, my mother did it in Pennsylvania, and a good friend got it to work in San Diego.

So scientists, shmientists, it works. I love stuff like that. And the eggs will stay standing, unless of course, as in my case, the cat comes along and thinks they are play balls and knocks them all over. Mom says to make an omelet out of the eggs the next day for good luck, though I’ve never been able to connect good luck with a vernal equinox egg omelet. The omelet is good though.

And the car. I put the top down on my convertible because it was such a beautiful day Saturday and I want to go for a ride in my sporty new ragtop. But then the car wouldn’t go. Since it was the weekend, the service dept at the dealership couldn’t help until Monday. My husband and I tried jumping it and that made it go dead entirely. So we did a damn good job of covering up the car with a tarp and bungee cords and went to bed.

Luckily it was a beautiful day on Sunday, too, so I didn’t worry too much about the car. I’d deal with it Monday. I woke up on Monday morning to a blizzard-like snowstorm and all I could think about was my poor little convertible, out there in the elements, with just a tarp to keep the snow out. After several calls and much angst, I got the dealer to come to the house with a magic box, which started the car in one try.

Now the car is working, the top is up and I was even able to turn the car off - and on again! Since I’d just purchased the car a month ago, the dealer offered to replace the battery for free! I thought I was going to have one of those “you drove it off the lot” arguments, but they were very accommodating.

So I don’t know if the earth’s unusual gravitational pull over the weekend had any effect on the trouble I had with my car, but let’s just hope the perfect storm of those three events doesn’t fall over three days in a row again.       

Monday morning

Monday afternoon
               
 

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

I lost a good friend today


My neighbors’ dog, Wrinkles, died today. I cried. And cried. And cried. One of those cries when you wonder if it will ever stop. This wasn’t even my dog! Oh, how I rue that day. But I saw Wrinkles and her two sisters all the time. They knew who I was when they saw me. I felt like we were at least related.

Wrinkles was just fine only two days ago. Yesterday, she came down with Shar Pei fever, and this morning we got the news.

She was 13, well past her 10-year life expectancy, but you would never know it to meet the vibrant, playful little Shar Pei mix. She would trot jauntily down the road, always checking to see if my chocolate lab was out. If so, they would race across long expanses of road and lawn to meet, acting like it hadn’t just been an hour ago that they’d last seen each other. It was adorable. Wrinkles’ owner likened it to a Kermit and Miss Piggy love scene.

The following came in an e-mail from her owner today:

…Wrinkles was a dog for everyone. She made so many people laugh just to see her. She really was a dog for the ages. I can hardly believe she’s gone—the day before yesterday she was playing her stick game…A crazy game that only she would have made up…


Wrinkles was so loveable that her owners had her trained as a therapy dog and she would visit Hospice patients to brighten their day. Her visits meant so much to these people that one time she was even mentioned in a patient’s obituary.

I am now progressing through the various stages of grief and have managed to stop crying, but how I will miss that silly little dog.

Beware, the Ides of March.
 

Friday, March 11, 2011

Remember the library?

I went to the library this week, and felt like I was visiting an old friend. I haven’t been to the library in some time, as I have more than enough books at home waiting to be read. This time, I was doing research for a chapter I’m writing for a book. In addition to the internet research I was able to print out from home, at the library I found three books, a DVD and a CD on my topic, vastly enriching my research, and the depth of my content. Now I have so much material, I don’t know what to write.

When I got to the library and settled down to work, I felt immediately comfortable. The smell of the books took me back to the children’s room at the library in the town where I grew up. My mother would deposit me there with my sister and a book or two, and go off into the bowels of the adult section to slink among the shelves. It felt safe to be in that room, just for kids, back when it was safe to leave your kids in a place like that. I could exercise my independence there. I could pick my own books off the shelves. Books that interested me. Books with pictures.

I remember getting my very first library card. I was five years old and in order to get the card I had to be able to write my own first name. I can still see that orange paper card, scrawled with my gigantic letters. I did it, and the card was mine. All mine. I could check out my own books with my own card. I remember the satisfaction I felt in having my very own library card. After all, with my mother being a bookish type, we spent a lot of time there; I had plenty of opportunities to check out books.

Fast forward to college. I loved my college library. Big as it was, I was totally comfortable there, like it was my own cocoon. I spent time there reading, studying, sleeping. Friends were everywhere. Once again I was in a place where I felt safe.

Going to the library this week was soothing. I realized that it was an escape from all the stimuli that bombards me, and everyone, everywhere. There is no music, no television, no computer screens (unless you want them), no telephones, no crinkling food packages being laboriously opened, no smells from the food that would be inside those packages and only calm, muted voices. Even the scanner used to check out books is silent.

It’s nice to know that when I need to get away from the world, my local library will always be a safe harbor. And never much farther than just around the corner.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Ambien, You Have Forsaken Me!

It's 4am as I write this. It's the best sleep I've had in days. Four-and-a-half uninterrupted hours of sleep. Uninterrupted is the key word. I bounced out of bed at 3:44 this morning, unable to sleep one more wink, having slept straight through my brief repose. If I slept nine or ten hours, but woke up several times in the night, I'd be exhausted and cranky, praying for the end of the day when I could go back to bed.

My best friend, Ambien, has let me down. Say what you will about it, but if I take one I'm out in 15 minutes and a marching band could go through our bedroom without my batting an eye. I don't know what's happened lately - maybe too many Girl Scout cookies too close to bedtime - but Ambien has not been there in the clutch. I tried chewing one last night, to speed up it's effect. Never try that. They taste terrible. Really terrible. And it doesn't help. I did fall asleep, eventually, but not with the clockwork precision I've come to count on from Ambien.

Over the past few nights, I've dozed for an hour or so, then woke up, then couldn't get back to sleep for hours. By 7pm the next day, I was a bear, eating dinner in a flash, then bolting upstairs to jump into bed, where I'd immediately kick into overdrive and stay awake, staring at the ceiling until 2am, praying for sleep. I'd read, I'd write, incoherently, I'd watch TV, I'd change beds. Eventually I'd fall asleep, just at the moment I was sure I'd heard a burglar trying to break into the house. I can scare myself to sleep, apparently.

I'm working on a three-day deficit of sleep here, yet feel awake and refreshed, enough so to be able to sit down and blog. I don't feel bad if I wake my husband up, because 1) he can sleep sitting up, literally, any time, anywhere, and 2) his snoring is often what keeps me awake. I tried in vain the other night to listen to a sleep CD, but it got drowned out by his snoring, so I gave up and went to the guest room, groggy and irritated, to try to catch some winks.

I have an irritating habit, I'm told, of announcing that "It's a brand new day!" every morning when I wake up. It usually means I'm getting up for the day. It can also mean, depending on the time and my energy level, that so are you. It was nice this today when, after my morning announcement, my husband got up shortly after I did and went down and made coffee for me. He'd been through my three-day sleep roller coaster with me, and knew that I wasn't going back to sleep. Sweet thing. Now he's downstairs, staring at the front door, cursing the paper boy for slacking off and not getting the paper here until 6am.

I've been an insomniac my whole life. I just never knew it until a doctor first prescribed Ambien for me. "You mean people sleep this long? Every night?" I asked. I was elated! My whole perspective on the world had changed. Don't get me wrong, I was still late for work every morning, that was a ritual based on procrastination. But during the day, I felt great! I could concentrate and focus, even after the coffee wore off. Eventually, I was banned at work from having more than one cup of coffee, because it made me too perky for everyone else to handle.

So thanks for nothin' lately, Ambien, but I know you'll come back to me. You always do. And my nights will once again be filled with blissful, restful, uninterrupted sleep.

But right now, it's time for more coffee.

Friday, March 4, 2011

All Hail the Thin Mint!

It’s Girl Scout cookie season. Mmmm… Not just cookies, Girl Scout cookies. My neighborhood Girl Scout delivered the goods yesterday, and they’re going so fast I swear those boxes are emptying themselves. Samoas, Tagalongs, Trefoils. And who can forget the queen of all Girl Scout cookies, the Thin Mint?
Regarding the Thin Mint, I learned an interesting fact this year. The tides are turning against it; one day soon, it may no longer be the best-selling Girl Scout cookie flavor. Could it happen this season?

I’ve felt guilty for years since my adulation for that thin, minty cookie has wavered in the wake of the increase in cookie flavors. I mean, what’s a Girl Scout cookie drive without the Thin Mint? It’s blasphemy to think of it! So I Googled “Girl Scout cookies,” just to make sure that those familiar green boxes are still being snapped up. Turns out they are, but other flavors are closing in.

The Thin Mint is still the number one-selling favorite of the masses, but only by a hair. In as many as four different rating scales, either for top-selling or best-tasting cookie, the Thin Mint was winning by only one percentage point, or less than a quarter of a star. The encroacher? The Samoa. Alas, it was with the advent of the Samoa cookie that I switched camps from the Thin Mint. That caramel-y, coconut-y chocolate-drizzled confection is a combination that is just too irresistible for me. I still buy a box of Thin Mints every year, but I usually get two boxes of Samoas. And some peanut butter Tagalongs, which come in a strong third in the race.

Even though I am among the turncoats who abandoned one of America’s best-loved cookies for a new love, I still respect the Thin Mint for all that it has done for the Girl Scouts, since the very first Girl Scout cookie sale in 1933.

Thin Mint, I salute you.

Monday, February 28, 2011

I Had a Really Good Day

The other day I had a really good day. It was a day like I hadn’t had in while. I got a story published online. I got my car out of the snow, which was kind of fun because it ended up spinning 180 degrees before it would go forward. My husband might not agree that it was fun, having pulled his back and shoulder muscles helping me get it out. But it was fun.

And after almost a year, I finally made some headway in marketing myself through Twitter. It was such a rush to finally start getting people, people I didn’t know, to respond to my messages, retweet my posts, and most importantly, pick up my stories to run on their own websites. I’m learning how to go viral!

On the very same day, I started to get nibbles on my blog. People were reading it, commenting on it, and even signing up to follow it! Granted I knew my blog readers, but they all started showing up on the same day. It was nice to see “You have a new comment on your blog” or "You have a new follower" show up all day long in my e-mail. I posted my good day on Facebook in a sentence or two. For two days, people kept adding to it, until I ended up with eleven comments and three likes. So far. That’s a pretty good return, I think.

I guess I felt like all the writing I had been sending out to the world over the Internet was just hanging there in cyberspace, a wasted effort on my part. Getting all of this response to my writing on the same day was some nice validation. Getting the car out of my snowy driveway without having to shovel it out by hand was a nice bounce, too.

It’s so easy to be negative, and so hard to be positive sometimes. I thought I would share one of those rare moments when it was easy for me to be positive.

Have you had a good day lately? Let’s hear about it!

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Writing Fiction - It's Hard

My writing group has met faithfully once or twice a month for two years, ever since we were all rejected for the same fiction writing workshop and decided instead to get together ourselves. From that rejection, we ended up with a group that long outlasted the 3-month workshop, and we were lucky enough to develop great relationships with each other.

It can be hard to find a group that’s as copacetic as ours. It can also be hard to take criticism from people you don’t even know. But it’s quite rewarding to have them all agree that a particular piece of yours is good stuff, and better than the last piece you wrote. Reading a piece by another group member that is that much better than his or her last one also brings a sense of accomplishment. I like to think we’re rooting for each other.

Since the group’s inception, some of us have applied for workshops similar to the one that first brought us together. Some have been accepted, some rejected and some have opted not to bother applying at all. Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I keep applying. I just received my third workshop rejection last week. My first reaction was that I was never going to write fiction again. I was starting to think that it would be easier to become a rock star than a novelist. Upon reflection, I gave myself some slack, remembering that only 10 out of 40 applicants were accepted, which means that 75 percent of us got the heave-ho.

I am a journalist by trade. I quickly found out that fiction writing is a completely different animal, and much harder to grasp than I first expected. While I can write a good solid news article with my eyes closed, I’ve been writing fiction consistently for two years now and still don’t feel I have the hang of it. Granted, I’ve been into journalism since grade school, which was much more than two years ago, and I have formal training in news writing. I just feel that, having the basics of writing pretty much down, that I should be able to wrap my head around fiction writing without too much difficulty. Not so.

The experts say that you should write what you know. That works, to a point, but I find myself getting too close to the characters, or becoming the characters themselves. Before I know it, the words “I” and “myself” start creeping into the piece, and I’m trying to cram exactly what I know happened into a story that doesn’t play out well on paper. So I’ve decided to try bucking the system by making up every single thing I write, fiction-wise, and hoping that maybe therein lies a better path for me.

Monday, February 21, 2011

The Books Are All Right

My world came tumbling down last night - my world of books. A six-foot tall bookcase with five shelves, holding 100 or more of my must-have, meticulously maintained books, leaned just a little too far to the left.  It had been wavering lately, as I piled book upon book onto its strained, sagging shelves. I had steadied it between the side of an open door on one side and a plastic water bottle wedged between the bookcase and a dresser on the other side of it. And as long as nobody closed that door, the bookcase stayed more less upright. And I piled on more books.

Last night, my husband was walking through that particular room and accidentally brushed up against it. The water bottle fell to the ground and then it happened. From the next room I heard a terrible crash as the bookcase fell, pushing the dresser, which was thankfully on wheels, a foot or two to the left, and the TV cart next to it, also on wheels, to the far left of the room. As the bookcase broke to pieces, and shelf after shelf fell to the ground, so went piles and piles and piles of books.

My husband was fine, the dresser was fine and the TV cart and TV were fine. When I ran into the room, knowing what had just happened, I saw them at my feet. There were my babies, all askew in one gigantic pile. I thought of the broken spines, the torn dust jackets and general damage to the pages of the once-pristine books that I was sure to find.

The bookcase was destroyed. But as I stacked up book after book, I found nary a broken spine, torn dust jacket or even bent pages. It was as if some invisible force had cushioned the fall of every single book. Even the box of my most precious books that I stored on top of the top shelf landed upright, flat on the floor and unopened. My husband’s life would be spared.

Something had been preventing the demise of that bookcase. It was going to go, it was just a matter of when. Less than a week ago I cleared a pile of change off one of the shelves and rolled it up to cash in at the bank. If that change had still been on the shelf last night, more than $80 worth of coins would have flown everywhere, causing a bigger mess than all the books that had actually cascaded from the shelves.

So now I have to get the broken pieces of the bookcase out of the room, and the house, and hope that the piles of books now littering the floor of my husband’s office will fit into two smaller, sturdier bookcases I have. Where to fit two bookcases instead of one is a puzzle I have yet to solve. And I’m pretty sure a third will need to be called into action. At least everyone is okay.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Cleaning should be a circle in hell

So my sister is stopping by for a visit while on a trip to show her teenaged sons a couple of colleges. I’m excited that they are coming, but it means that I have to clean! Cleaning is the bane of my existence. The only things I like less than cleaning are moving and looking for a job. I’ve managed to avoid those two for a while, but this cleaning thing never goes away!
When I was young, my mother always changed all the sheets and did all the wash, and cleaned up after all of us. She made all of our meals and cleaned up after those, too. She used to say “I’m doing this for you now because someday you’ll have to do it for your own kids.”

Her logic was flawed in two ways for me: 1) I never had any kids; 2) Now I don’t know how to clean. It never occurred to me that cleaning was skilled labor, but if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can clean all day only to end up with unsatisfying results. This is how I learned that I didn’t know squat about cleaning and why I hated it so much. For me, cleaning was just one big exercise in spinning my wheels.

I’ll never forget the day I read in
Real Simple magazine that you should stock two buckets with the same cleaners so that you can keep one upstairs and one downstairs, spending less time and energy running up and down stairs (or not) looking for what you need. Seems obvious, but it was an epiphany for me.

Then there were the days, ever so briefly, when I could afford a cleaning woman. One day she asked if I had a toothbrush so she could clean the detail on the radiators. I was flabbergasted. First, I would never even think of cleaning the detail on the radiators - I barely run the vacuum. Second, it never occurred to me to use a toothbrush to clean anything but my teeth. Now, a toothbrush in is the forefront of my arsenal of cleaning tools. I use it when I’m doing the laundry, the dishes, the bathroom, everywhere. I buy more toothbrushes for cleaning than I do for brushing my teeth!

These are the things, things that seem so obvious to me now, that I didn’t learn until I was an adult. I also learned that coffee filters will attract static-y animal hair that won’t wipe off a sink or tub or toilet with a regular cloth. Not such an obvious cleaning method, but very effective, and very useful when you have an animal, or like me, six of them.

So while I don’t clean as much as I should, certain things look a lot better than they used to, now that I have some new tricks in my bag. Sorry sis, Aunt Mary’s house will always be cleaner than mine, but at least you’ll have clean sheets and towels and there won’t be any, well, as many, stray animal hairs in the bathroom. I don’t think I’ll ever get around to cleaning the detail on the radiators, though.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Broke? Join the club - it's not that bad

Money can be a real drag, mostly when you don’t have any. But it’s amazing how you can get by when you think you’re broke.

I get paid once a month and it’s not always easy to parcel it out evenly over four weeks. There are always unexpected costs that invariably crop up, like the new tires you have to buy, right away, when your car fails inspection. Boom! There goes your walking around money for the next two months. Definitely no Starbucks for a while. Hopefully there is enough left over to make the minimum payments on your credit cards.

When you still need to put gas in the car, the one with the new tires, and might like to at least go see a movie, who wants to waste money buying food? It’s surprising what you can find to eat in your house when you’re low on cash. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all.

What used to look like an empty cupboard is now filled - with the box of Ritz crackers that has been in there forever - Everything sits on a Ritz! - the Ramen noodles that you brought home with you from college years ago, even the shredded mini-wheats you bought that week you were on a fiber kick. Way in the back, you can even see that old bag of coffee beans that you used before there was a Starbuck’s. How long ago was that? And of course there’s tuna fish. Whether you like tuna fish or not, for some reason, it’s always in the cupboard. As long as your almost empty fridge has at least some milk, eggs, cheese and a little mayo, you’ve got a smorgasbord!

For breakfast, it’s time to haul out the “unsweetened” mini-wheats. Hopefully there is some kind of sugar around to help out with that. Okay, so you can’t have Starbucks, but that’s what the coffee beans are for. Crank up the old coffee maker, add some milk and sugar to your coffee, shake it up and you’ve got a latte.

At lunch, it’s time to whip out the Ritz crackers and make a little plate of cheese and cracker sandwiches. Maybe you can find a tomato or cucumber from the fridge to slice up, and add a shmere of mayo on a couple of them for variety. Put them in the toaster oven and you’ve got mini grilled cheese sandwiches. Voila!

Dinner presents you with a choice - tuna fish or Ramen Noodles. You could just have tuna fish and mayo, or you could spice it up with all that jazz in the refrigerator door that you haven’t used in ages. Italian salad dressing instead of mayo is a calorie saver, and you can chop up some of that tomato or cucumber from lunch and toss it in. While you’re at it, why not get out those pearl onions that you bought during your short-lived martini, or rather Gibson, phase? A few of those chopped up in a tuna fish mix will give it a real zing. Who knew such bounties could be found in a seemingly foodless kitchen?

Don’t forget the Ramen noodles. Add the flavor packet, stir in an egg while it’s still boiling and then cover the finished product with shredded cheese. If there is any cucumber and tomato left, mix it with some of that salad dressing on the side and you have a balanced meal. Protein, dairy, vegetables, carbs and of course the indispensable flavor packet.

So when life causes you to pinch a few pennies, there are ways to handle it and not have to sacrifice everything. Who knows? You might even save enough to get your Starbucks!

Monday, February 14, 2011

Irritating Experiences

So I'm Just Jane. I'm starting a blog way later than just about everyone on the internet. This irritates me because I am a writer and should have been blogging long ago. Then again "they" say you should never dwell on what you should have, could have, would have done. Good advice, but hard to follow.

I'll be blogging about whatever topic strikes me on any particular day, topics to which everyone can hopefully relate. I invite comments and look forward to posting back and forth with anyone who wants to talk. Which brings me back to my topic for today, irritating experiences. It drives me crazy to see the English language butchered. I literally cringe. In the previous paragraph I wrote about should have, could have and would have. Did you know there are people out there who think it's correct to write "should of," "could of" and "would of?" I don't pretend to have a complete command of the English language, but this is just wrong! My skin crawls thinking about it.

I just got back from a particularly irritating trip to the grocery store. I was bringing in a bag of soda cans to recycle when a woman with a grocery cart full of cans eases me out to get to the recycling center first. So I wait. And I wait. And I wait. I finally get to the recycling machines and when I bring my deposit return vouchers to the customer service line to quickly redeem them, guess who is in front of me with a half full bag of off-brand bottles and cans that the machine wouldn't accept? This indicates that I will be waiting yet again for the same woman to make her case for the ineligible containers, and then count them out one-by-one for credit.

Before I could get totally irritated with her, I notice the woman in front of her is buying 50 or so gift cards and the store clerk has to ring up each of the cards and activate them individually. All this time my dog is in the car, because I thought I'd be in and out. My tolerance level is at zero now and after two or three people then backed up behind me, I gave up. Three dollars in recycling vouchers was not worth this level of frustration. And now that I'm carrying the vouchers around with me, they will undoubtedly get lost before I get a chance to redeem them. At least the dog was happy to see me, which always cheers me up.

Then there's the paper boy, or paper man. Depending on how our two cars are parked in the driveway he chooses to bring the paper to the door, or leave it at the far end of our long circular driveway in a snowbank. It is a cold walk in the morning walking to end of that driveway in pajamas. He says he's afraid he won't be able to turn around if our cars are parked a certain way. Did I mention that we have a "circular" driveway? He doesn't have to turn around. He can simply drive around the circle and get the paper within at least 10 feet of the front door. Irritating.

I could go on, but that's for another day.