pjthompson | Entries tagged with cleaning

If you’ve ever had to clean out someone’s home, particularly an old person, you will encounter many strange things that have you wondering why that person hoarded what they did. I had a friend who cleaned out her mother’s house after she died and found cupboard after cupboard crammed with plastic bags, far more than any human being could possibly use in a lifetime. But, you see, that mother grew up in the Depression where you Just Did Not Waste Anything that might possibly, remotely be useful somewhere down the line. Once she’d started collecting those bags, I’d wager, she just kept saving them because that was What She Did. She may not even have remembered herself what her original motivation was, she just kept doing it, even after the stashing of them became somewhat oppressive.

Some things are a little less daffy than cupboards filled with plastic bags, but still make no sense to those tasked with the massive and exhausting clean up.

I had a Rosebud moment yesterday morning. Those of you who are classic film fans may get that reference but if you haven't seen Citizen Kane I won't spoil it by explaining. My personal moment came when I looked into the room where I've stored a lot of stuff and saw a broken three-legged stool.

When they come to clean out my house when I'm dead or in a home somewhere they will look at that stool and say, "Why the hell did she hold on to this?" Or maybe not. There will be a lot of those moments when they clean out my house so by the time they get to that stool they may be too exhausted to care and just chuck it onto the bonfire.

But, you see, I couldn't throw that stool away. I used to sit on it when I was small while I listened to my father tell stories. He was a great storyteller. Some of this tales about his personal adventures were even true. It didn't matter if they were literally true or only emotionally true. They were good stories and I loved listening to them.

So that stool stays and becomes just another piece of mysterious bric-a-brac from an old person's life to be wondered at and tossed away. It is a thing of memory, mine and no one else’s, and I can’t possibly hope they will understand or care when I am gone. Memory makes things precious beyond all thought of logic.

I have, however, tried to strip my house free of most of those saved plastic bags. (But I’ll bet there’s a stash of them hiding somewhere that even I don’t know about.)

What with being sick on and off for about three weeks, then trying to make up for a year and a half of household neglect in two weeks (impossible), I haven't done any creative work in over a month and it was really weighing on my psyche today. So I forced myself to open my Rev. Kirk file and DO something.

I only got about 500 words, but at least I'm crawling forward again. I think I can feel the road beneath my feet once more and know that it really, truly is still there.

Tomorrow my oldest friend is coming over and we will be doing crafts all day. I haven't seen her since February 2020. I cannot tell you how happy it will make me to see her.

Some ignoramus has posted a video on YouTube showing Frank Sinatra with Nat King Cole actually singing the song, “L.O.V.E.” This is the wonderful and classy Nat King Cole:

Watch on YouTube

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Two hours without WiFi and I was hyperventilating. Fortunately, it was a simple fix, but I may have an addiction problem.
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Tommy. His eyes were actually a soulful gray, not blue. He was in his forties and had done his soldiering during World War I. He became a special police officer during World War II so the younger men could go and fight.

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I found an old keepsake box buried amongst a lot of, well, junk. Some genuine keepsakes inside the box, but also some very old story rejection letters from some of the top magazines, stuff I sent out when I was probably barely out of high school. All form letters, of course. I decided my nostalgia did not stretch to holding on to those any longer. I Kondo'd their a*ses.
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That feeling when something seemingly minor turns dark and deep and symbolic…

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I WILL NOT JOIN FACEBERG, no matter how many paranormal and Outlander live events they host. I WILL NOT become part of the evil empire! I WILL NOT! (Although I did succumb a little bit and joined Instagram. Mostly as a lurker.)
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What to do with all these calendars that people gave me because they didn't know what else to give me? I only need one and that's the one with kitties that I bought myself.
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Sometimes I look at my house and pity the person who, when I die, will have to clean out and dispose of ALL THESE BOOKS. But mostly I pity the books.
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Zero results from the Iowa Caucus are just about right if you consider Iowa's relative importance to reflecting the diversity of the United States. They give such outsized importance to Iowa and New Hampshire. Nothing against either of those states but they're hardly representative of the rest of the country. Yet because somebody gets defeated in either Iowa or New Hampshire often they're eliminated from the race.
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I get nonsense phrases stuck in my head sometimes. When I was doing research for the WIP on Nazi occult matters recently, the nonsense phrase in my cranial echo chamber was, "Otto Rahn on the Autobahn." Research earworms. I have a weird brain. Fortunately, "Otto Rahn on the Autobahn" made me laugh.
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Ray Bradbury famously said about writing, "Jump off a cliff and build your wings on the way down." I'm at that stage of my current WIP where I'm wondering if I've jumped off the wrong goddamned cliff.
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I’ve been reading Last Mountain Dancer by Chuck Kinder on and off for about a month. It’s both an interesting and irritating book so I'm not sure I'd wholeheartedly recommend it. I keep reading because it's about West Virginia where Kinder was born and raised and when he talks about that place, the book sings. Then he goes off into the woods talking about his extramarital affairs and his bad boy ways and it gets boring. (I am so done with middle-aged male angst.)

But yeah, when he talks about what a remarkable and strange place West Virginia is on so many levels it’s worth the read. He goes into many legends, those arising from the tragedies of Matewan and the coal mine bosses, as well as Mothman and other less well-known oddities. It turns out his mother was born and raised in Point Pleasant, WV, home of Mothman, and that her maiden name was Parsons—which will have some meaning to those who follow Hellier.
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I was watching a show on Hadrian's Wall and Vindolanda where they've discovered lots of messages to and from soldiers. In one of them the soldier refers to the tribes they were trying to keep north of the wall as "Britunculi": "nasty little Britains.” My people!
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Hellier has made me way too map conscious. Every time I see something weird about a place I always have to find out where it is in relation to Point Pleasant or Somerset or Hellier or whatever. And it's kind of amazing how much weirdness connects up.

I say this knowing full well how much the human mind longs for linkages and synchronicities.
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Lewis Black: "Trump is good for comedy the way a stroke is good for a nap."
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Patrick Stewart was on Colbert the other week talking about when he was younger he and Ben Kingsley were here in LA doing Shakespeare, along with some other actors of the RSC. He said he and Ben went to Hollywood because they were excited to see the hand- and footprints at the Chinese theater (Sir Pat recently joined the famous hand- and footprints there). But the whole time he's talking I was remembering being a young undergraduate at UCLA where Sir Pat and Sir Ben were doing those Shakespeare performances. During the day when they were not rehearsing or going to Hollywood all of the actors from the RSC would come to classrooms where Shakespeare and theater were being taught, talk to the students, and give impromptu performances. I was lucky enough to be in two such classes. One was Shakespeare, the other on Modern Theatre. I snuck into a third class taught in the theater department and held in an auditorium, but the other two were small English department classrooms. I was lucky enough to sit no more than 6-10 feet away from Sir Pat and Sir Ben while they answered questions and did impromptu performances. Utterly thrilling, even though neither of them was famous at that time. They were just masterful actors doing amazing performances up close and personal. Sir Ben still had his hair back then. Sir Pat did not. But his voice was that rich dark chocolate even back then. PRESENCE, both of them, and I never forgot.
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There's hope, I think, even thought the GOP did not have the guts to do the right thing. During the impeachment trial I called my doctor's office and the answering service picked up. As she took my message I heard the impeachment trial playing in the background. America is listening. We won't forget. I hope they still remember next November.

I haven’t done one of these kinds of posts in a while, but this post by

sartorias has me thinking again about things in my room/house.

One of the good things about getting older is that you get less sentimental about things that you once thought were important. One of the bad things about getting older is that you get more sentimental about things you never thought were important.

In my own defense, I have managed to purge three large black bags of trash in the last couple of weeks, with another half bag waiting to be topped off. So, I am making progress. If you walked into my house you might not see that progress because most of the purging has been in two abomination rooms where I shoved junk to get it out of the way when company came. I am not proud of this behavior—and definitely paying the wages of that sin now—but I am moving on to it. Someday the decisions may be harder as I get away from pure clutter trash to somewhat more meaningful trash. I have gotten rid of some of that, too, either through donations or—gasp!—throwing away. Some of these decisions were made easier by the rat apocalypse that happened in this house the year after my mother died. I won’t say I’m grateful for the rat input, because I’m not, but some things were no longer redeemable. And the rats are finally gone after I did away with humane trapping and went medieval on them (after them destroying one appliance until it was unrepairable and having monthly visits of repair persons for about nine months straight).

In my trash sorting, I came across some patterns my mother had used to make countless craft aprons in the sixties and seventies, with the posh and retro lady shown above. On the aprons, she wore a tailored bodice, a skirt that flared out and could be lifted to show her matching underwear. The garter belt around her leg bore a sparkling rhinestone in the middle. Mom sold quite a few of them over the years through her work and friends of friends. They were exquisitely made—because my mother was a fine seamstress—and hand-painted with fabric paint. Cute, kitschy things. Maybe someone who is into retro might want to make them again. But not me. I am not the seamstress my mother was, for one. For another, this was my mother’s thing, not mine.

I thought I was strong. “I won’t ever use these patterns. I can throw them away for the sake of my sanity.” Not two hours later I fished them out of the trash bag. My mother drew these with her own hand, used them countless times. They had her imprint all over them. I just couldn’t do it. A friend suggested framing them and hanging them on the wall of my own crafting space. I thought that was an excellent compromise.

Here you see the pattern Mom used to cut out the material for the lady’s skirt, bodice, and knickers. These were redrawn in a kind of shorthand after the original patterns disintegrated. Mom had done so many of these she didn’t really need a pattern, but it was a security blanket for her, and if they weren’t precise, well, her artistry made them fit.

I didn’t even have the heart to throw out the old envelope they were in because it had my mother’s handwriting on it, “Donna’s apron pattern.” You can see on the lower edge where the rats chewed it. Miraculously, they didn’t manage to damage any of the patterns.

If only those old patterns were the problem. My mother painted, she did countless crafts. All that has to stay. Most of the paintings are good, I like them, they will stay on my walls. Some of the craft things may as well. Others will be carefully wrapped and put into one of the closets. Other things Mom handled I was sure I’d get rid of. Like this:

Me Virgo, she Aries. These graphics are so not my style, not what I want on my wall. But my mother put these puzzles together with her own hand, glued them to cardboard backing, and hung them on her wall. I cannot for the life of me consign them to the trash barrel. I can and will take them down from the wall, but they are also going into the closet. Let whoever gets this house and doesn’t understand the sentimental attachment get rid of them.

I will do my best to clean out as much trash as possible, but some trash isn’t real trash. At least not to me. Whoever winds up clearing out this property will just have to deal with that.

Random quote of the day:

“When you begin to sense that your imagination is the place where you are most divine, you feel called to clean out of your mind all the worn and shabby furniture of thought. You wish to refurbish yourself with living thought so you can begin to see.”

—John O’Donohue, “The Question Holds the Lantern,” www.johnodonohue.com/words/question

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

—John O’Donohue, “The Question Holds the Lantern,” www.johnodonohue.com/words/question

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

30 Oct
Get out your hankies. The 20 year old toddler: http://yhoo.it/16mrLa8

31 Oct
SHAME: We got home from the doctor late and I’m so exhausted I’m sitting in the house with the lights out hiding from the trick or treating kids. I usually love having them but it’s been a very stressful few weeks.

1 Nov
The Sears robot is still calling to say I need to reschedule the repair appointment for the dishwasher. I’ve called the Repair Desk several times. After complaining again to them that I don’t need repair I got yet another call from the repair scheduling robot and a tweet from SearsCares. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that SearsCares breaks down to Sear Scares. It’s been my experience with them lately.

2 Nov
Compassion fatigue.

3 Nov
The Amazon Prime goodie bag went into the dumpster along with a box of other clutter. The need to purge the Room of Doom is strong.

3 Nov
Having posted about my virtuous purging of junk I then opened a box of crap I ordered from American Science & Surplus: http://www.sciplus.com/ They’re sort of a depository for unwanted but interesting junk. Kind of like my house. Left hand, right hand.

6 Nov
Color outside the lines, but read between them.

6 Nov
I shall rename myself The Great Phlegmingo. I’d really like to stop coughing now, weeks after getting the cold.

11 Nov
Another epic starring Bird, this time whistling Blue Danube and imitating my mother and I coughing: http://bit.ly/1buZWwd

11 Nov
Every once in awhile, after not reading one of your novels for a long time, you surprise yourself with how much you like it. Mostly it’s cringing, though.

16 Nov
Why do people adopt children only to abuse them or “give them back” when things get challenging? It sickens me.

17 Nov
The only thing worse than watching jury orientation online is watching it at the court house.

17 Nov
Sears now claims they never got the plumbing invoices I sent October 29. I think sarcasm is in order, don’t you?

18 Nov
I postponed jury duty because my legs are not up to the hilly walking conditions in downtown L.A.

18 Nov
In other science news: You are what you eat may not be just another outmoded hippy slogan: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/11/18/244526773/gut-bacteria-might-guide-the-workings-of-our-minds …

19 Nov
You know what I don’t need? Someone who doesn’t know a thing about the day to day of my life giving me advice about what I “should” do.

19 Nov
I stayed home from work today because my knee was in such bad shape I needed to sit with ice on it for as many hours as I could stand. It’s somewhat better.

20 Nov
Some days Mom is victorious over the microwave. Other days it is beyond her and I get these phone calls asking me to diagnose over the phone. On those days, I wish to be shot in the head. But not really, Universe! I’ve got too much to do.

20 Nov
I just bought a mystery solely because the detective is named Pamela Thompson.

21 Nov
Well, I’ve had my Christmas miracle. My mother apologized to me.

21 Nov
The only thing certain in this world are death, taxes, and Kardashians.

22 Nov
Dear PJ: you cannot hide the similes by using “as if” instead of “like.” We can still see them.

23 Nov
Apparently I needed to be punished more. My knee was just starting to get better and I fell at Ralphs and wrenched it worse.

26 Nov
Mom went back in the hospital this morning. She either has an infection or a persistent virus. Either way she’s spending the night for tests and evaluation. Thanksgiving seems cursed as something happens every year. But she seemed better tonight. I hope that direction continues. (She came home November 27 and has been strong and doing well since.)

28 Nov
Hope y’all had a great Thanksgiving. Ours was great. Carl cooked the entire meal and brought it over. Delish–and a wonderful surprise. I have the best friends in the world.

29 Nov
Mom remembers her dad going for supplies by horse and buckboard wagon to Watson UT when she was a kid. It’s now a ghost town.

30 Nov
My fantasy of buying a small smart TV lasted all of 24 hours before I got real. Too much other important stuff to spend the money on and we don’t need fripperies. Got caught up in Black Friday madness without even shopping. But sometimes being a responsible grown up sucks.

2 Dec
The guy in the Pinocchio suit stares into the abyss of his existence and despairs. Disneyland, 1961: pic.twitter.com/yPVGRvSkH0

2 Dec
This article encapsulates the caregiver situation quite well: http://bit.ly/1avcAck

The loneliness of the long distance carer. May I just add, **** you Amy F. Grant and Katie F. Couric, and anyone else who talks about the “privilege” without understanding the facts of working class people having to deal with this.

4 Dec
RIP Willis Ware, brilliant engineer and lovely, lovely man.

5 Dec
The resolution to a plot point that has been hanging unsolved for years finally came to me in the shower this morning. Unfortunately, I was in the shower, couldn’t write it down, and I was so busy after the shower I forgot, and now I can’t remember what it was or even which novel.

5 Dec
Adorably awesome! Lea Salonga and Darren Criss sang A Whole New World together at a bar: http://bit.ly/1kfEmiB

6 Dec
RIP Irreplaceable Nelson Mandela.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/nelson-mandela-becomes-first-politician-to-be-miss,34755/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=Default:1:Default …

6 Dec
I put on an episode of Finding Bigfoot last night. Mom fell asleep just after it started and woke just as it finished.

Mom: What happened?
Me: They didn’t find him.
Mom: Oh, okay then.

8 Dec
I keep buying books I haven’t got time to read.

8 Dec
And after two years of living as if this is a temporary situation it’s finally setting in that this is probably a long haul. I’m okay with that, but it’s a necessary shift in perspective that may allow me to handle things better.

8 Dec
“It’s not the Calvary coming to save us, ” said the sportscaster. Which is a whole different save than Kobe returning to the Lakers.

8 Dec
I read so slowly these days that I can go from comfort read to comfort read. No more waiting for release days. *sigh*

9 Dec
People and ghosts in rooms talking. *sigh*

11 Dec
Hurray for heated mattress pads!! My poor mom has been freezing, but she’s snug now.

11 Dec
Is the big reveal ever worth playing the reader? Does that answer ever have a yes? Why is there air?

12 Dec
Baby Pygmy Marmosets pic.twitter.com/eODml0ov3H

And now for something completely different… The Marmoset Song: http://youtu.be/4oiLfTnrC40

12 Dec
When Mom gets really down she threatens to stop dialysis and I have to josh her out of it. Today would be one of those days.

13 Dec
I love it when people driving Smart cars make a really big dick traffic maneuvers. I originally said “really idiotic traffic maneuvers” but VRS decided to go with big dick and I left it that way.

13 Dec
Dear Sir: Most sentences should not be a paragraph long. Less is more. A tortured use of punctuation does not remedy this problem.

15 Dec
RIP to the great Peter O’ Toole.

16 Dec
Sears finally kept their promise. They’ve sent me a check to cover my plumbing costs for the Abominable Dishwasher Incident. Thanks, Sears.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.”

—attributed to P. J. O’Rourke

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

That about sums up the last four days. We had a great 90th birthday party for Mom. She loved her sweatshirts and is wearing one of them every time she goes out. The cake was awesome and the company stayed late and we had lots of fun.

I came down with the crud Sunday evening (fortunately after cleaning up from the party) and have been sleeping quite a lot. I feel more like a human being than I have in days, so hopefully that will continue. I’m going to take the rest of the day easy.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. I hope.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. I hope.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

No tweet puns in the immediate forecast.

I’m still awake, don’t know how. 25 Feb

On this date in 1808 Stendahl bragged in his diary about killing three hares, his “first quadrupeds.” 25 Feb

I was awake from 4:30 AM Fri to 12:30 AM Sat then slept ten hours. Torrential rain when I went to bed, bucolic sunshine upon waking. 26 Feb

I decided to celebrate the weather change with a massive sinus headache. Fun times. 26 Feb

Snow in the San Fernando Valley, first since the 1970s. More rain tonight and lows in 30s even here at the moderate beach. 26 Feb

I went to the garage to clear more boxes. Only got thru 2 before my nose and fingers froze. 26 Feb

Oh, now the weather guy tells me that wasn’t snow but graupel, small snow pellets in great quantity. 26 Feb

lilithsaintcrow True. RT @sblackmoore: If a character survives a book without losing something important you’re not trying hard enough. 28 Feb

Something to give some perspective. Beautiful progression: http://bit.ly/huotRo 28 Feb

pj_thompson @lilithsaintcrow re: characters losing something by the end of the book – Do you think that’s true of comedic novels as well? 28 Feb

When I was a kid I thought writers wrote the books in one shot all the way through and figured the plot out as they went along. 28 Feb

How did they know to plant clues and foreshadowing, I wondered? When I’m doing rewrites planting clues I remember that and laugh. 28 Feb

Of course, I was right about them making it up as they went along…At least for the pantsers like myself. 28 Feb

Spent a few days adding new material to WIP when should be cutting but that new stuff will allow me to cut other stuff in the saggy middle. 28 Feb

lilithsaintcrow Lilith Saintcrow @pj_thompson Yes. Definitely. 28 Feb

pj_thompson PJ Thompson @lilithsaintcrow So that’s what I got wrong. 28 Feb

lilithsaintcrow Lilith Saintcrow @pj_thompson Tragedy is easy. Comedy is much, much harder, because it skates that edge. 28 Feb

TrishaTelep Trisha Telep @lilithsaintcrow @pj_thompson That’s not funny! 28 Feb

lilithsaintcrow Lilith Saintcrow @TrishaTelep @pj_thompson *snork* 28 Feb

pj_thompson PJ Thompson @lilithsaintcrow @TrishaTelep Dying is easy, comedy is hard, but comedy don’t get no respect. 28 Feb

On the drive home I realized that the MCs in my comedic novel did lose something. Not body parts unless you count the holes in their hearts. 28 Feb

Yet if it hadn’t been for a good friend reading an early draft I would have skated over that exquisite pain. Thx, Kev. 28 Feb

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

It’s been a cleaning frenzy at our house. While I’ve been dealing with boxes and boxes of stuff in the garage, I finally was forced to the realization that I cannot do all that needs doing myself. It’s a strange combination of guilt and relief I’m feeling right now.

It’s 5:45 and we’re still waiting for the doctor. Last time I take a 4:45 appointment. [Note: We didn't leave his office until 6:30.] 17 Feb

On the way to work I listened to NPR and they had a little bit about astronauts going into hibernation sleep on long space voyages. 18 Feb

As I stopped at the sensor where my garage pass opens the door Keir Dullea said “Open the pod bay doors, HAL.” Hal: “I can’t do that, Dave.” 18 Feb

Fortunately, the pod bay doors opened, but I was laughing so hard by then. Sometimes life is a synchronistic delight. 18 Feb

So, read a good book and try to stay awake or kill mutants? Which of these? …The good book… 19 Feb

On this night in 1814 Byron was debating the existence of God in his diary. 18 Feb

There’s hope for us older gals after all… 18 Feb

Lightning. Thunder. Min went under the bed. 19 Feb

Torrential rain and wind at the moment. Sure glad not to be out in it but my dinner is going to get wet. Poor delivery guy. 19 Feb

I would’ve liked to stay in my jammies all day but the Box Unload Marathon cannot be denied. Woe! 20 Feb

I can’t believe no one has tweeted in the last 47 minutes. Not sure I trust you, Edwin Droid. 21 Feb

To do list: finish Drood, start The Mystery of Edwin Drood. 21 Feb

selfavowedgeek Berrien C. Henderson Retweeted by pj_thompson Signal Boost: Francesca Forrest’s story, “The Yew’s Embrace”–http://www.strangehorizons.com/2011/20110221/yew-f.shtml 21 Feb

For the 1st time in my life I paid someone to clean my house. I actually feel kind of ashamed. But I expect I’ll get over it. 21 Feb

With my bad knees and shoulder I couldn’t do the scrubbing needed and Mom sure couldn’t. 21 Feb

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

I'm asking for purely scientific reasons, of course.

[Poll #1561119]

What I did this weekend of the day: Cooked and cleaned and read.

What I cooked: Saturday I made some roasted root vegetables—some wee, darling little baby yellow potatoes, young carrots and parsnips, onion, dredged in EV olive oil, minced garlic, salt, pepper, and fresh thyme from the herb garden. To. Die. For. I also made a nice salad with baby butter lettuce (yes, I eat babies), feta, walnuts, green onion, and these wee, adorable little grape tomatoes from the vine in the back yard. Also. To. Die. For. Vegetarians don't read this bit: I served this with some lovely six ounce steaks grilled to perfection.

It was happy tummies all around.

Yesterday I did a stir fry with chicken. That was good, too, though no babies were consumed.

What I cleaned: My closet. I washed all my fat pants and stuffed them into a bag for the Goodwill, et al. I put some of my fat shirts/blouses in there, too, but not as many. It's possible to "make do" with blouses that are two sizes too big, but not so much with pants.

What I read: Part of a lovely pirate novel, and The Passion of Mary Magdalen by Elizabeth Cunningham, a pagan-feminist version of the Magdalen story which I'm thoroughly enjoying. But it's huge, like 700 pages with small print huge. And I don't read as fast as I used to, or don't have as much time as I used to, or something. It's taking me forever.

What I did not do this weekend of the day: Write.

There were several things I wanted to write, but time seemed quite elusive, as in everything I was doing took much longer than expected. There were some short stories I wanted to work on as a countermeasure to The Novel, but that didn't happen. My word count on The Novel is decent one week, lousy the next. Last week was not one of the decent weeks. I did 1000 words at lunch today, but realized that most of that, and what I'd done on chapter 27 last week was actually the real end of chapter 26.

I'll see if I can kill everybody off this week and have done with it. Kidding. I'm such a kidder.

What do you know of the day: Clearly, my Monday Pollers do not have Seinfeld episodes memorized.

Accomplishments of the day:

☛ I used some of my windfall money to finally buy my chair! Yippee!

[broken link] Ikea chair

It's corduroy and even with the delivery fee, it was still cheaper than any other decent-looking chair I found. And it looks good and it's comfortable. It'll be delivered tomorrow. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the old one. There's a guy at work I can maybe hire to haul it away. Any burly guy friend I know with a truck lives... Come to think of it, most of my guy friends drive Minis and such like. Some of them are burly, though. Anyway, lots of cleaning and rearranging will ensue this evening.

☛ [broken link] "Take the MIT Weblog Survey"

Current Mood: Chipper!

I've been so busy at work I've hardly had a spare thought to myself, and this weekend I had to do an enforced housecleaning. Allegedly, the manager has to do a "air conditioner inspection" today. Last month is was a "termite inspection." Frankly, I think the owner just wants him to do some snooping, but there's this pesky law that they can't enter apartments without 24-hour written notice. My apartment was still cleanish from last time, but I do have an amazing talent for cluttering a space in a short amount of time. And then there's the laundry. I swear it breeds on the floor of my bedroom. Er, I mean, in the hamper, of course. I would never pile laundry on the floor.

I'm woefully behind on my correspondence, so if I owe you an email, it's not because I'm being uppity, I'm just finding it hard to get everything done in the course of a day. I'm behind on crits to one person, but slightly ahead on everyone else, so at least that's not adding to the guilt pile.

I had a two-day stall starting chapter 16 last week. One part of me wanted to switch timelines to 1968 again; the other part wanted one more chapter in the 6th century. The thing is, it felt like a change was due right square in my middle where these things usually reside. So I was pretty sure a change was due. But I've got one more piece of significant business to take care of in the 6th c. when Caius is a certain age before advancing him on to the next age bracket. I let it go and concentrated on other things over the weekend (besides laundry). I apparently made some accommodation with myself because today when my writing session started, I went for a return to '68. I'll let Caius age in the next segment.

Who knows if it'll work out or stay that way in the rewrites but in the meantime switching accomplished what I most needed at this juncture: it got me unstalled.

Huzzah.

I dreamed last night that while I was in the bathroom (no more than 2 minutes) someone snuck into my apartment and stole my new computer. I came out of the bathroom (probably something deeply symbolic there) and looked over at the computer table and there was the Ancient Horror sitting off to the side so I could finish retrieving data from it, but the new one was gone! Arrrrrrrr!

Considering that I went heavily into debt to buy this computer (it's fancy) and I hadn't had a new computer at home in nine years (oh my!) and that I loooooooove my new computer, this is probably just your standard issue anxiety dream. Maybe a reminder to renew the wards at all doors and windows around the apartment, but probably just the standard issue anxiety dream.

Then it seems to have turned into a caper dream...I can't remember exactly how, but I somehow induced/coerced the thieves into returning my computer—maybe made it too hot for them to hold onto it, but I don't know how. So I cleverly hid in the closet while the thief picked his way through the mess of my apartment, trying hard not to trip. In the dream it was much messier, but maybe this was actually a "Now, Pam, don't you think it's time to do a little cleaning around here?" dream. (At any rate, I did get up this morning and immediately set about clearing up. I should have more dreams like this.)

So, back to the thief sneaking through my apartment...He returned the computer all right but instead of my nice shiny white iMac, I got this thing encased in black metal with hideous big bolts. The screen was encased in this metal, too—you could see the screen, but it was framed all around in black and it resembled a microwave more than a computer. Not only that, they'd wiped the hard drive because when I started to make things hot for them they'd been in the process of getting it ready to sell again on the black market (hmm, maybe that's what the black metal meant). Since I'm Ms. Obsessive Backup after a hard drive disaster several years back, that wasn't as catastrophic as it could have been. But it did mean I'd lost everything I'd worked on in the last four days. And since I'm heavily into The Rewrite now that meant I'd lost a lot.

Hmm. Maybe this was a "You haven't been as obsessive about your backups lately and you better be careful" dream.

Anyway, back in dreamland, out leaps me from the closet and pounces on this guy. He's a 20-something, buzz-cut, strapping fellow but I manage to wrestle him to the ground and subdue him. (A female empowerment dream?)

This could harken back to an incident in my youth when My Mother The Valkyrie heard a disturbance in the garage, ran out in her girlie nightgown, captured a teenager trying to steal a lawnmower and sat on him while I called the police. The police didn't believe this young whippersnapper (me) that my mother was sitting on a thief in the garage—perhaps I didn't express myself in quite the proper fashion and maybe I giggled back a little when the person I was reporting the crime to laughed at me. At any rate, it was a Saturday night, the cops were busy, they never showed up. But the thief's older brother did. He was about 18 or 20 and he wrestled his younger brother away from My Mother The Valkyrie, but not before she round-housed him and knocked him on his a!s.

Hmm. Maybe that's why I've never had much problem with the female empowerment thing. With a Valkyrie for a mother, female empowerment is a given. Hmm. Maybe that's why I'm still single. Hmm. It worked for mom, though. Hmm.

Anyway, back to the thief I was sitting on. In my dream. So there I am sitting on this guy and he's very reasonably asking me what the hell I'm doing and I say, "I'm capturing you to turn you over to the police."

"I returned your computer."

"But you wiped it clean and wrecked it. I want it restored to the way it was."

"Can't do that."

"Then I'm calling the police."

"My friends are coming to get me."

And I'd failed to have the phone with me before I sat on the guy. If I got off him, he'd bolt, and I couldn't reach it from where we were on the floor. And while we were down there I couldn't help noticing how cute he was, how well put together, how well spoken, what a rakish look in his big blue eyes... No, it didn't turn into one of those dreams, but I suppose it could have if I'd stayed asleep a bit longer.

I'm afraid there's no end to this story except the worst cop-out of all time: And then I woke up. Hey, it was a dream.

Freud would probably have a field day with this; Jung would undoubtedly find something to maunder on about. Me, I'm sticking with the standard issue anxiety dream and there's no way in hell you're getting me to stop sitting on that position.

Disclaimer: This dream was just a dream. It was not meant to represent any persons, living or dead, and was intended solely for the purposes of entertainment. And I would like to state for the record that I never in real life sat on any man. That's was My Mother The Valkyrie's department. Me, I always preferred to do other things with men. But that's another dream, and best left out of the pages of this journal.

Current Mood: Pesky
Current Music: "Jim Doesn't Ever Bring Me Flowers" by Etta Jones (no, not Etta James)

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Echoes in a Hollow Space

I'm here because I'm here because I'm here

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Rosebud redux

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