Bethanie's Brain

So today, to get out of the house before I went bonkers trying to appease Ms. Baby, who has decided - after 6 days - that Monsieur Helmet is not so much fun after all and spent the day whimpering pathetically and making big eyes at me (she's smart for 4 months old, lemmetellya), then refusing to nurse unless I removed Monsieur Helmet from... Where the hell was I? Oh, right. Getting out of the house. So today, to get out of the house, Ms. Baby and I made An Expedition to the nearest bookstore in search of a cookbook. I was fairly certain that this particular cookbook would be easily located, since it's by a popular cookbook author and was published fairly recently. Not only that, but I was headed to a Large, Chain Bookstore, whose selection - I assumed - would far outpace any locally owned bookstore's selection. Guess what. Not. There. As in, they didn't fucking have it. As in, I packed Ms. Baby, Monsieur Helmet et al., into the car with all her paraphernalia in the...

A thousand words a day sounds like a good idea. In close proximity to NaNo, it even sounds reasonable. And if I didn't have a job, this mommy thing, a house to clean, meals to cook, and Christmas to put on, it might even be reasonable. But reality has set in. As you can see from my self-fabricated ticker, I started off well. And then sleep deprivation, doctor's appointments, work-work, and well, LIFE, happened and 500 words a day started sounding like some pie-in-the-sky pipe dream. I can still hit 1,000 on a good day and usually weekend days I hit 1,000 no problem. However, I have decided to revise my daily goal a bit. The new, unbreakable rule is: I have write SOMETHING every day. Even if it's no more than my current low of 190 words, I still have to write SOMETHING. If I do that every day, it will get me to the end of the novel. It may be painfully slow and I may be arguing with teenagers before that happens, but whatever. It will happen. Then I can start on Ope...

Or Quick and Cheesy, If You Prefer THE BASICS A package of chicken (boneless breasts or boneless thighs are my fav) A can of diced tomatoes ARRANGE the chicken in a PAN. POUR the tomatoes over the chicken. ADD TO THAT A can of diced green chilies, if you want to go Mexican OR Some Italian seasonings, if you want to, er, go Italian TOSS (not literally) into the oven at 350-375 if you have an hour and 15 or an hour and a half or at 425 if you really can't wait that long. ADD some cheese towards the end of cooking time. EAT!!

Yesterday was Helmet Day, here in Exile, and Ms. Baby is now - willing or otherwise - proudly sporting pretty pink head gear. Below, her initial reaction: Yup. I'm a Mean Mama. You see how I torture my young'uns... Seriously, the whole thing appears, thus far, to be a whole lot less traumatic than I was fearing. We'll see what the next few days (weeks, months) hold, but ill effects have been limited to a few funny looks from people we don't know. So far.

I have two things to say about the following news report: Breastmilk Likely Saved Girls Lives in Frozen Wilderness, Experts Say Number 1: I hope they find the girls' daddy soon and alive. Number 2: Go, boobs. I'm gonna re-read this story every time I get sick of breastfeeding from now until Ms. Baby decides she's done. No matter how sick of it I get. If she's done at 1 year, fine. If she hangs on and hangs on until she's almost 3 like her big sister, fine.

1. Finishing in Not-So-Record Time . Every time I write 50,000 words in 30 days it takes me longer. The first time it was 23 days, last year it was 27 days, this year it was 28 days. I vaguely wonder why that is. 2. The End . This NaNo represents the first time I have not reached The End, as in The End of The Story. The other two NaNos were dragged kicking and screaming to their respective ends. In the case of the first NaNo, this meant condensing about six chapters into four sentences. In the case of the second NaNo, this meant rushing through a vampire fight scene that ended up including a muskrat. Yes, really. I'm much happier having blown off that particular No Plot, No Problem advice this time. 3. Hijackers . Normally, my plot hijackers have names that start with L. So this time I deliberately avoided L names for my characters. Not only did that not do me any good - I still ended up with a hijacker named Luther (in chapter 1, no less) - but I also ended up with ...

There always is one, isn't there? Even inside the darkest of clouds. The shiny lining inside the dark cloud of last evening's loss of wordage came in the form of a plot bunny that jumped me during Ms. Baby's 5AM feeding. (Why a plot bunny at 5AM? I don't know. You'd have to ask Dorothy (the muse). That's when she tends to pop in for her little chats.) Where was I... Oh yes, dear Dotty showed up to tell me that I had that scene all wrong, so it didn't much matter that it went up in cyber-smoke, since I would have had to rewrite it all anyway. Which I did. This morning. When I should have been folding laundry. (Which was fine, really, because who the hell wants to fold laundry?) Anyways. I'm back to where I was last night. And I triple-frikkin'-checked that I had the right file this time.

I just spent the better part of two hours writing a thousand words. They are now gone because I am stupid. I FUCKING KNOW BETTER than to click on the Recent Files list in Word. I know better. But I fucking did it anyway. I fucking did it anyway and wrote my thousand fucking words in the fucking backup file that Documents To Go uses to sync the fucking laptop version to my fucking PDA. And then I fucking synced the files. And lost my thousand fucking words. I am so FUCKING PISSED I can't see straight.

This headline was reported the other day by several online news agencies (go ahead, read it, it's short): Ancient astronomical device thrills scholars Synopsis (for those in a real hurry): Basically, somebody has studied an ancient Greek device, reconstructed it and found out that it does amazing and very sophistocated and advanced things. Scientists are astonished that an ancient civilization could produce anything quite so amazing, sophistocated and/or advanced. Stories like this always leave me shaking my head at the scientists. Well, not at the scientists, but at their reaction to how complicated ancient civilizations were. I mean, why is it so amazing that ancient peoples could create complicated things? This shouldn't amaze us. It's not like they were Australopithecus or Homo erectus or something. They were us , Homo sapiens sapiens . We create complicated things all the time. Why shouldn't the ancient Greeks have been able create things just as complicat...

Wind shrieks through frantic trees Windows rattle Wind chime, a constant clangor, slowing, never stopping Leaves scurry, in droves, in circles, in corners There is no place to hide

So I won NaNo, but haven't actually reached the end of the story. Which means now I have a novel to finish. Here's the plan: 1,000 words a day. Until it's done. Which will be anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 more words, if I'm gonna be honest. Hmmmm... maybe they should call it National Novel Starting Month...

You'll notice the new layout. Two reasons: 1) I wanted to be able to have a list of my categories ("labels" in blogger-speak) and going to blogger-beta was the only way to do it. 2) I suppose I could have chosen the old layout/template-thingy and done this. But the aging eyes just couldn't take the light-on-dark text anymore. *sighs* Sucks getting old.

I did it! I made it to 50K!! Woot! The story's not done. More to write. Much more. Un-Woot.

Normally, I leave political rants to my betters (please see dirt city paranoia ), but this has me grinding my teeth and it ain't even 8AM yet: Bush: Iraq Violence Part of al-Qaida Plot I mean, COME ON. How fucking stoopid do they think we are ?? Do they really think anybody is going to believe them? Did the results of the last election tell them nothing? This new line of utter bullshit is clearly the work of the Iraq "Study" Group, the latest attempt by King George and his Evil Henchmen to make it look like they give a shit about the clusterfucked quagmire they've created in the Middle East. "Study", my ass. They should just be honest for once and call themselves His Majesty's Spin Doctors and be fucking done with it. Graah! They make me SICK.

It isn't fair. And it shouldn't be this fucking hard. I'm a girl, after all. So you would think that writing girl characters would be easy. Well, easier than writing boys. You would think writing girls would come naturally. You would think trying to imagine life from the inside of a boy brain would be a truly astonishing feat for me, a girl. You would think. And you would, apparently, be wrong. I blame being eight years old, because that's when it started, I think: my first taste of boy envy. See, eight years old is when I discovered that boys can pee standing up. Laugh all you like, but I was insanely jealous. I mean, c'mon, let's face it -- unzipping your fly and whipping out your weiner is a whole lot more a) convenient, b) quicker and c) sanitary than pulling down your drawers, exposing your buns and 'drip-drying'. Anyways, that's where it started. Ever since then, despite a Barbie doll phase and the occasional long-fingernail phase, I...

OK, I'm liking the NaNo widget thingy: I didn't get it at first (I'm slow, what can I say), but I'm finding that getting rid of the red is very motivational. Makes me hit quota since I started using it (note lack of red after a certain point) and thus forces the story forward (whether it feels like cooperating that day or not). Wonder if I could get one for off-season (non-NaNo) use?

Miss Snark posted a joke on her very snarky blog the other day. I've heard it before once upon a time, and as an almost-Unitarian, I felt I had to share: You know why Unitarians are such poor hymn singers? Cause they are always reading ahead to see if they agree with the text. Ba-hah!

Check it out! Do keep in mind that it's still very much a draft... so, yeah, the guys in kilts pretty much show up out of nowhere...

So the other night we're riding in the car. Ms. Baby - for once - is not screaming bloody murder (although I am sitting in the backseat to provide assistance, just in case). Since it is unusually quiet due to the lack of screaming, Ms. Four and I are having A Conversation. "A hexagon ," she says matter-of-factly, "has six sides." "That's right," I chime in, ever ready with the reinforcement. "And an octagon has... how many sides?" she asks. I know she knows the answer, but she doesn't like to guess wrong. "Eight!" I say. "Just like an octopus has eight legs," The Husband adds from the front of the car (where he gets to sit because he's driving). "See 'oct' means 'eight'," I say, resisting the very strong urge to tell her it's Latin. There's a thoughtful pause. "So what does 'puss' mean?" askes Ms. Four. "Well, 'puss' is another word for 'ca...

…you can eat a steak dinner with one hand while standing up, singing lullabies and swaying back and forth. … the sound of a howling infant doesn’t even make you flinch. In fact, you don’t even notice it until somebody else points it out. … the definition of colic, “unexplained crying for three hours a day, three or more days a week”, actually sounds like a vast improvement. … you have never, EVER sat down with your baby awake. … you don’t believe people who say they have. … you have trouble dressing your baby because she/he won’t bend . … you can balance your baby on one hand when it is angry. Kind of like a board. … your baby is sitting and quietly staring into space and you call the pediatrician in a panic thinking something is terribly wrong.

Well, I did it. Despite grant deadlines that took up most of my damn weekend and babies that won't sleep and a house that insists I clean it and a family that insists I feed it and friends that insist on visiting, I passed 25K today. That means that I am technically still on schedule to complete NaNo on the 30th. Technically. 'Course me being me, I am so used to being ahead of schedule and finishing early that I feel like I'm behind. (What can I say? I'm a freak.) I also have this unshakable feeling that I'm actually a day behind and don't know it... but that's probably just the chronic lack of sleep talking. Hard to say. Anyway. As usual, I'm halfway to 50K and only about 1/3 the way through the actual story. If that. At least, I'm doing better at keeping my characters under control and not letting them run off with the plot quite so blatantly as they did last year. (Damn vampires. See if I ever write another vamp novel again, you ungrateful ...

1) NaNo, NaNo, on the wall.. . Right, um, I've kept up with the Word Count Gypsy until today. Haven't made quota today. Yet. Long way to go, too, but I'll get there. Hopefully. 2) Ms. Baby's Head Saw the doc this morning and the verdict is: NO SURGERY!! Boo-yah!!! Mama is a happy camper! Mama also has No Excuse for not carrying on with NaNo... Here are some nifty shots of Ms. Baby's funny head -- from the inside ! If you know what you're looking for (which I mostly don't), you can sorta tell that none of the sutures are actually fused (they shouldn't be), which is why she gets to wear a handy-dandy helmet instead of having bits of her skull removed so there's room for her brain. It's a happy day...

In order of use. 1) It's an outline. A very elaborate outline. 2) I'll fix it later. I'll fix it later. I'll fix it later. 3) Just let it suck. Just let it suck. Just let it suck.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with anything. But my brain is now in NaNo mode and won't shut up or shut off --- SO: The Fifth Element is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's great - funny, adventurous, great characters. One of my favorite parts is when they're on the cruise ship and Bruce Willis' character is in some stand-off with the bad-guy aliens and offers to 'negotiate'. He steps out from behind a wall or something, shoots the bad guy dead and says, "Anybody else want to negotiate?" Nobody does. Ba-hah! Kills me. Every time.

Today's Mantra: Let it Suck. C'mon, say it with me now, letitsuckletitsuckletitsuck... Yeah, I feel better now. But it's damn hard to get used to again. Today's Tune(s): Lithium , by Evanescence (something like that. I have no idea who they are, but Napster had an album available to download, so I did.) Other Comments: Scene 1 is almost done . It's sort of having trouble ending. Story of my (writing) life. I had it all planned out and BAM! an extra character shows up and starts commandeering things. This guy is important, but only because he gets executed. Off camera. Well, he was supposed to be ALL off camera. I refuse to name him. But I'll bet whatever his name is, it begins with "L".

Less than 4 hours til NaNo officially starts in my time zone!!! I'm so excited, I can't stand it!!!

I just have to say this to get it out of my system and then I'll shut up about it: I fucking hate the whole daylight savings thing!! I just wish they'd leave it one way or the other, because the "Big Switcheroo" always messes with me. It's like having fucking jet lag without having gotten to go anywhere. Bah! Humbug! OK. I feel better now.

I was going to post my NaNo plot summary, such as it is, but ended up posting this Plot Summary Metamorphosis on a NaNo forum this morning and thought it did a better job: I started out with a Nice Young (Viking) Girl, who gets transported to another world, meets a Nice Young Boy and has a bunch of Adventures in the process of trying to find her Dad. Enter My Muse (Dorothy). Now the Nice Young Girl has a Twin Brother who follows her and gets abducted by the Evil Empire, a Radical Religious Sect is bent on dismantling the Nice Young Girl's brain, a bunch of Bad Guys in Kilts are bent on dismantling the rest of her, a Random Malevolent Creature is bent on dismantling Everyone Else and a Herd of Mythological Beasts are wandering around and have not yet adequately explained their presence... Yeah. That's about how it goes for me.

OK, I'm experimenting with colors here, trying to make El Blogo easier to read. Didn't like the purple , wasn't an improvement, I don't think. This is some form of yellow whose hex code is FFFF99. Thoughts?

As stated in a previous post , time is of the essence for this November’s NaNo adventure. That is, I will have very little of it. With that in mind, I am collecting methods of conserving time by being more efficient with what I’ve got so I can have enough to pound out those 1,667 words every day. (Other suggestions would be most welcome.) And My Muse Will Have the Merlot 1. Caffeine . I drink lattes, since straight-up coffee messes too much with my stomach. Lattes take time to prepare – time I’m not willing to give up. Therefore, I plan to make a Small Vat of Espresso on a Sunday or whatever and keep it in the fridge. Then, when I wake up at 4AM and decide to get some writing done (instead of some sleeping), I can quickly and quietly (latte preparation is also rather noisy) pop a cuppa in the microwave and be on my way. 2. Supper . Ideally, I would have been preparing and freezing stuff for most of October. Unfortunately, my freezer is still stuffed with last year’s deer mea...

I didn't have a computer capable of doing this last year, so I never made a cover for that NaNo-novel. This year, however... Credit for the background pic goes to Lynnette Cook . The other images are a photo I took in Nepal in 1994 and my very poor attempt at sketching a natural land formation in my fantasy story's world. The proportions aren't really right for a cover, but I figure I'll just say it's a "wrap-around" type cover... yeah, that's it... heh.

So. I started putting together a list of what I’ll have to work around in November in order to do the Great Novel-Writing Adventure thing that is NaNoWriMo. Just so I could be prepared, ya know? I’ve succeeded in sorta freakin’ myself out. Here’s what I know about at the moment: Nov 1: The usual grant deadline. This one is less of big deal, since – because I’m still working from home – the major work I’ll do on the proposals should be prior to November 1. When I’m trying to iron out my plot wrinkles. Oh well. Nov 2: Ms. Baby's head scan. I suspect this will take up most of the morning by the time we’re done. (She has to have her head scanned because there’s a funny bump on the back on her skull. See photo.) Nov 8: Appointment with the plastic surgeon. About Ms. Baby’s funny bump. At 7:30 in the morning. In the middle of the city. This will necessitate getting up at an ungodly hour and driving through the city’s rush hour traffic. With Ms. Baby screaming her discont...

OK - so this is your typical pre-NaNo 'Oh, crap' moment: So one of the characters - Eirik - has this boat. He and the main character are supposed to escape her execution on it. It's a special ship, probably been in the family for generations, handed down from father to son, yada,yada, yada... In my mind, it's a Viking longship. Complete with dragon-headed prow. So last evening, in a bid to constructively procrastinate instead of work on the outline for the story, I decide: I might as well do some reading up on longships just so's I know what the hell I'm talking about. I mosey, ever so languidly, over to Wikipedia. Longship, I type. Here's a bit of what I find: lapstrake construction, fastened with iron rivets, oar-driven, center mast, prow carries a dragon carving. So far, so good. And then, the kicker: they were BIG. Most longships were 60 to 75 feet long or longer (bet that's why they called 'em ... oh, nevermind...). Not only that, they...

I love my job. I really, really, really love my job. I'm not being facetious. I'm not even being sarcastic. I really do love my job. But sometimes, the people I work for, they're enough to kill me. Like today, for instance. I sat down to edit this manuscript. I've edited it before. It got submitted to a journal. It got rejected by the journal. As part of being rejected by the journal, it underwent peer review. I believe there were three different reviewers and you know what? Each and every one of them said that the manuscript had - and I quote - 'many grammatical errors'. Many. Grammatical. Errors. You know what my job is? Correcting grammatical errors. You know what I did to that manuscript before it was submitted? I corrected the grammatical errors. You know what the first author on that paper did? He ignored my corrections of the grammatical errors. And submitted the paper with them. You know what I think of that? Well, to quote Hermione's...

[a NaNo rant ] Knowing it to be an exercise in futility, I wasn't going to outline this year. I mean, I learned my lesson last year . I know how hard my characters will laugh at any outline I come up with when I start referring them to it. I was going to save myself the trouble. Unfortunately, as soon as my imagination gets wind of a new project in the works, it gets all these illusions of grandeur and epic tales begin to blossom in my mind. Sort of like the mushroom cloud from an A-bomb. Next thing I know, I'm frantic to find a pencil or pen or crayon or SOMETHING to keep all these wonderful ideas from disappating into thin air and BOOM! An outline starts taking shape under my fingers. Pretty soon, I'm starting to organize it into chapters. Then I get all in a tizzy about the ending. Then I start obesessing about details large and small. I've got Character Bios started and now I'm trying to decide if I'm going to have more than one POV character. Gah! So...

OK, this one wins my prize for Bizarre Headline of the Week: Teen Faces Litter Charge for Bra Antenna The first time I read it I was envisioning the faces of teenagers leaving trash all over powered antennas attached to bras... the real story is only slightly less bizarre (thankfully no one was killed).

Yeah. I can't help myself. I'm gonna do it again. Wanna join me? C'mon. I dare ya! NaNoWriMo

Or: Sometimes life really sucks when your kids are smarter than you are So Ms. Four had a minor hissy fit over something I told her she couldn't do this morning and threw her scissors. She is not allowed to throw things. Things that she throws get taken away for the remainder of the day and put out of her reach until the following morning. So I promptly removed the scissors from her possession and placed them out of her reach. And spent the rest of the day cutting things out FOR her. DOH!

OK, the Poor Little Agnostic Brain has now seen everything . ATM for God Apparently, churches are finding this an attractive alternative to the traditional offering basket, since people don't carry cash or checkbooks around anymore. This way, even if all you have on you is your debit card (does it TAKE credit cards - that'd be interesting), you can still give your god your money if the spirit moves ya. Well. Hallelujah.

Yep. I get the Dumbass of the Day award today: It's 8AM. I'm starving. I decide I want eggs. It's a nice day. The doors and windows are open. Ms. Baby is sitting in her Bouncy Seat growing progressively irate. I butter the pan. I run over to the Bouncy Seat to rearrange the blanket, snuggle bunny and Sucky Thing. I run back to the kitchen and crack my eggs. I run back to the Bouncy Seat to rearrange the blanket, snuggle bunny and Sucky Thing. I run back to the kitchen to find my eggs rapidly overcooking. I flip them. I run back to the Bouncy Seat to rearrange the blanket, snuggle bunny and Sucky Thing. Back to the kitchen. Yeah, eggs are gonna be over hard today. I put the english muffins in the toaster and run back to the Bouncy Seat to rearrange the blanket, snuggle bunny and Sucky Thing. Too late. Ms. Baby has gone from irate to ballistically pissed without passing Go and without collecting so much as a nickel. I pick her up and throw her onto my shoulder. I ...

Right, so Ms. Baby slept FOREVER last night - like two, count 'em, TWO four-hour episodes In A Row - so I'm feelin' pretty together this morning. She's down for her morning nap. I decide to make coffee. Furthermore, having slept an Almost Normal Amount, I'm feeling all kinds of ambitious. I decide before making coffee, that I'm going to descale the espresso machine. It's been about a year since the last descaling, so it's about time. So I go out to the garage and get the gallon jug of vinegar that I keep on hand for that purpose (vinegar doesn't go bad, I'm pretty sure). I then search the house for the steam stopper-thingy, eventually find it and run a bunch of vinegar through the espresso half of my wonderful coffee machine. That finished, I prepare to de-vinegar it by running a bunch of water through the espresso half of my wonderful coffee machine. Now. If you've ever seen an espresso machine, you know it's under pressure and the...

Word count: 100 or so Wikipedia consultations: 1 (Viking ships) Tune-age: None I was editing, see, instead of writing. Somehow that justifies not cranking out quite so much. Actually, I was hoping to CUT 500 words. Didn't do so good there. Oh, well.

Right, so I just spent the better part of an hour labeling most of my past posts. Yes, I just went through the whole goddamn list and opened every post I've posted since I started posting and thought up a bunch of snappy-sounding labels for them. I'm ridiculous, I know, but I've been itching to do this for over a year. Now I feel better. So organized. So clean . So refreshed! So envigorated! OK, yeah, that could very well be the caffiene talking.

Word Count: 552 Forays into Wikipedia: 0 (Eh?!!?) Other Peripheral Distractions: Multiple checks of email leading to the discovery that Blogger FINALLY has fucking categories! Woo-hoo! Had to sign up. Tune-age: Hand That Feeds (NIN) (yes, over and over and over...) OK, this 500-word goal thing is working. I churned out all this crap and suddenly found my chapter swirling at light speed to a (sorta) cliffhanger ending I hadn't seen coming. Not only is that cool, it also made clear the solutions to all the other problems with this chapter AND means I might just squeeze out that deadline on Sunday. !!

Word count: 619 Forays into Wikipedia: 5 (Chinese surnames, 100 most common Chinese surnames, Chinese Nobility, Han Dynasty, Warrant Officer) Tune-age: The Hand That Feeds (NIN) That actually wasn't so bad. Today. 'Course I got to sleep for 4 hours in a row last night. THAT probably won't happen again for a week.

So I was reading this thing about increasing your "writing productivity" today and one of the tips is to set yourself daily goals. They can, thankfully, be small goals, but all the same, it apparently helps you to crank out the wordage. I'm thinking about trying it. Partly I want to try it because I'm one of those people who's so annoyingly goal-oriented that I can't function properly without a damn To Do list even when I'm on vacation. I also need SOMETHING to get my ass in gear with this book. I want it finished. I want the fucking thing out of my head so I can move on to something else. I also need something else to think about besides whether or not I should brave changing the baby's diaper (there's always a chance she's not quite done) or how to get Ms. Four to do something else besides chop scrap paper into teensy, tiny pieces (yes, I'm the friggin' idiot who bought her the scissors, and yes, my living room floor looks distin...

I am not a shopper. Well, let me rephrase that. Slightly. I am a shopper, but only for certain items. That is to say, I do not like to just “go shopping” in the conventional sense where one spends hours joyously wandering around some mall with one’s girlfriends spending gobs of money on god-knows-what just for the sheer pleasure of it while one’s significant other sits mournfully but patiently on a bench somewhere with other significant others. I know I am betraying my gender, but unless it involves books, textiles or shoes, I am not that kind of shopper. I’m not sure why exactly. Probably a combination of things. I don’t like crowds of people. I don’t like looking at every single, stinkin’ thing in the store. I prefer to get in, get what I need and get the hell out before the crowds of people get me, which is probably why I don’t like stores that aren’t properly organized (TJ Maxx and its ilk are a nightmare). In addition, I don’t like buying things I don’t really need (unles...

It’s my first day back at work after maternity leave. Somewhat sleep deprived, I arrive at my office just before 9AM. I sit down in my swivel chair and turn on my computer, then go get some coffee from the kitchen. I check my email first. Nothing new. Not too many people know I’m back yet. I get started on my first project. Then suddenly, it hits me: I’m still in my pajamas. Not only that, Ms. Four is watching Sesame Street just behind me and Ms. Baby is sleeping in her bouncy seat about four feet away. I’m at home. I’m working. I love my job.

It will never be cold enough here for me, but last night I got to wear pajamas. It got down below 50. We left the windows open. We threw another quilt on the bed. I'm not sure we needed the second quilt (not with the pajamas on anyway), but there's just something about the weight of that extra layer. It was positively delicious.

So I am happy to report that we have not one but two resident arachnids at the new house. I am also happy to report that neither one has taken up residence in any of our windows. Both have located their webs in rather more conventional spots. Well, at least one has. At right and below are front and side-view shots of the larger one, which I'm betting, based on her size, is a female. She has affectionately been dubbed by Ms. Four as "the new Jack" and has a very nice web set up between our garage and the path into the backyard. The location, as far as people are concerned, may not be ideal, since one must walk past it in order to visit the backyard. If one is not overly fond of spiders, the proximity could be distressing. In addition, I suppose there is also the possibility that the new Jack could relocate her web across the path into the backyard. However, based on last year's observations of the old Jack, I think we're safe - the old Jack had her web in ...

I went blog surfing for the first time today. Not sure what I was looking for. Not sure I found anything. But lots of people are writing about The Anniversary, so I thought I ought to contribute, if for no other reason than to record what I remember. (And let me forewarn you by saying that I found out I was pregnant two days after September 11, 2001, so everything about that day is colored for me by a hormonal haze. What does that mean? Well...) The smell of bagels. I was at some meeting that morning, a meeting with breakfasty snacks, and the odor of fresh bagels about knocked me out. Shaking. I was living in the Mountain time zone and hadn't listened to NPR on my way in to my office, so I had no idea what was happening until my boss called me. I turned the radio on and just sat there shaking so hard my teeth chattered and I couldn't seem to stop. No planes in the sky. We lived out West where the sky is really, really big and you can see lots and lots of it all at o...

So they've got a lot of bugs here south of the M-DL* and they grow 'em BIG. If you're a regular reader (um, yeah, like all two o' ya), you'll recall last fall's Spider Chronicles (Episodes I , II & III ), which featured Jack, the great, big, yellow-and-black arachnid who had taken up residence in our living room window and who I was, bravely and against every natural instinct that I have , using as a science lesson for Ms. Four. Now Jack was large as spiders go – she definitely warranted classification as a Big Bug. But Jack had nothing on some of the too-many-leggeds we've come across since moving to our new abode. Most of them have warranted classification as Downright Monstrous. Example # 1: Cave Crickets. Don’t they sound cute? They’re not. Nothing that gigantic is cute. I'm sure they have a scientific name (I don't know it), but I’m not sure why anyone would think to call them crickets, because from my perspective, there’s nothing...

I'm a fairly smart person. I should be able to figure this out myself. But alas, I think my age is showing. I want to buy a song. One song. I don't want the whole damn album. I just want the one song off it that I know I like. HOW THE HELL DO YOU DO THAT? (Arrgh!)

The milk startles me when in drips onto my arm. I don't know why. I felt it let down, after all. I grab a cloth diaper from where I keep it on the back of the couch and stuff it inside my shirt so to catch the rest of the drips. Then I save the chapter I'm working on and listen. Sure enough, within a minute or two, I hear Ms. Baby stirring. How my body knows she was about to wake up and need her 'nummies', I have no idea. I turn the monitor down and walk to the other end of the house to find Herself, eyes still closed, waving her arms in the air and nursing her blanket. I pick her up, latch her on and watch as my body fills her tummy. She does her usual - five very intense minutes, followed by five minutes of 'don't take this thing out of my mouth yet' token sucking. Then I put her on my shoulder and make what I know will be a fruitless attempt to burp her. My theory is that people just don't burp in their sleep (she has yet to bother opening her...

(or: Doh!) I hate when I'm struggling with some piece of writing, and I'm hemming and hawing and dilly-dallying, instead of actually writing, because I KNOW something's "wrong" with whatever it is, but I can't quite figure it out so the chapter or story or whatever is going nowhere fast and then suddenly I SEE it and it turns out the answer has been there all along - as in, had I bothered to READ my own writing, I would have seen all the clues to where the chapter or story or whatever was "supposed" to be going and saved myself a butt-load of beating my head against the wall, false-starts, procrastinatory activities and a whole slew of Angry Letters to my characters, muse, and assorted other scapegoats, not to mention TIME. Sheesh. (God, I love run-on sentences.)

My belly button went back to being an inny today. Ms. Baby has gained over a pound since we left the hospital two weeks ago. (I make milk. What's your superpower?) I've lost 20 pounds since Ms. Baby was born. (Only 25 more to go. Heh. Ugh.) Chapter 2 of the novel is actually being written. By my very own brain. I can drive my car myself (since I fit behind the steering wheel again). I can bend over and reach my toes. I wear a C cup. Woo-hoo! Life is good!

It's back. The brain, I mean. Not that it went anywhere physically, but the placenta has been doing 95% of my thinking (if you can call it that) for the last 9 months of my life. It happened almost immediately upon the departure of said placenta from my body. I could tell because I remembered all my nurses' names in the hospital. (I still do.) And progress continues because I want to write again. Granted, I haven't done much, just a little editing on the novel, but I can't even tell you how happy I am about it. I haven't even wanted to do that for the last two months. The placenta just wasn't interested in my little make-believe world or its characters or their problems, and I was terribly worried that breastfeeding was going to result in the same lack of motivation. However, prolactin doesn't seem to have the same deleterious effects on the imagination as whatever hormonal cocktail the placenta churns out. As I said, I am ever so happy about it. It...

I always knew she'd be born in August. There was never any doubt in my mind about that. She'd be late and she'd be a Leo - no water babies for the water mama. But I couldn't have guessed she'd be born under a full moon. That almost makes up for the long wait. (Almost.) I suppose I should have seen it coming that day. I mean, I did make her a birthday cake that morning. Not only that, the husband bought his celebratory cigar that day. Still. I was scheduled for induction at 6AM the next morning (how obnoxiously early is THAT?) and I had resigned myself to it. So I was more than a little surprised when my water broke in the hot tub (have I mentioned how much I love my hot tub??). I didn't know what it was at first, so I sat there for a minute weightlessly wondering. Then decided to get out because I had to pee - and found the bottoms of my tankini full of water I couldn't seem to drain off. So I went inside and used the facilities. When I stood up, ...

So. After two days of contractions every 20 minutes, guess what I've got to show for it. Go ahead, guess! Jack, that's what. Last week, I was 50% effaced and 2 cm dilated. This week, I'm 70% effaced and 2 cm dilated. All that effort for a measly 20% of effacement. Woop. I am so Not Incredibly Impressed. I don't suppose it helped that the uterus, inexplicably, decided to take the day off yesterday either. What's up with THAT? I mean, let's get it the fuck on with it already. It's also not helping that my mother titters every time I come around a corner and my belly precedes me by - she claims - 3 steps. She can't be right. Can she? It really isn't that funny dammit. Oh, fuck you, don't talk to me. I'm going to soak in the hot tub now.

/*begin rant*/ My feet hurt. My hands hurt. My left hip is getting pulled (pushed?) out of its socket, i.e., dislocated, i.e., it really fucking hurts. I've had contractions every 20 to 40 minutes for the last day and a half. Most of them are the serious kind. Well, they don't hurt (not like the hip thing, which either doubles me over or drops me to the floor depending on whether there's something handy for grabbing or not). So I know it's not labor, but I pretty much zone out during them and don't hear what anyone says to me. (Except Ms. Four, but she's special.) So I know things are happening. We're effacing. We're dilating ever so slowly. Progress is being made. I still have no baby. I mean, she's still there . On the inside. I want her to come out and play. Hell, everybody wants her to come out and play. But no one more than me. I can't take another day of waddling. I can't take another day of everyone rushing around trying...

So I was planning on posting another litany of complaints (complaints new and different from those on the last litany-of-complaints post) this evening. But I can't remember what they are. Why? Two words: Hot Tub. As in, the house we bought last month came with one and we finally got it drained, scrubbed, refilled, pH-balanced and had a sit in the fucker tonight after Ms. Four went to bed. It was fucking great. No. It was SUPER fucking great. I mean, you have no idea what great is until you're 9 months fucking pregnant and suddenly find yourself weightless. With massage. I couldn't stop giggling and didn't even care. It was absolutely fan-fucking-tabulous. The hip pain disappeared (it's been with us since April). The lower back pain melted away. The aching feet thing dissapated. Even the finger joint pain (a result of the relentless edema as I understand) took a hike for a bit. Oh yeah, and whatever it was I was going to gripe about took off, too. Now m...

1. How much longer do you have? Too long. Whether it's one more hour, one more day, one more week or three more weeks, it's going to be too goddamn long. The only person who can ask me this and not piss me off is the girl at Starbucks and that only because she gave me the "Mommy Discount" and I got my decaf tall mocha for free one day a couple of weeks ago because I was having a bad-mommy morning. The rest of you need to shut up. 2. Do you have a name yet? No. Actually, yes. We have a list. As I've explained nine dozen times, I cannot and will not name someone I have never seen. It just seems wrong. When we see her, we'll name her. Please stop asking. 3. Can I get that for you? This is the hardest one for people to understand. Especially, bless his heart, The Husband. He's only trying to help and make these last few (*cringe*) weeks easier for me. But, really. I can get a glass of water by myself (sort of) and I hate needing help with stuff. Therefore, hav...

Spotted stuck to the back of a shiny red Dodge Ram pickup: What would Homer do? It made my commute and I grinned all the way home. Hah!

So when Ms. Four turned four a month-ish ago, it was princesses all around. Right down to the birthday cake, which this Mama-Lady managed, by some sort of honest-to-gahd, frikkin' miracle, to pull off by herself. Check it out: No, I didn't get this from a store, and no, I didn't really intend for the dress to be quite so Pepto-Bismal, neon pink. And yes, that really is a gen-u-ine Barbie wearing that contraption. A Barbie that I bought of my very own volition with my very own money. Me. The very same Mama-Lady that, for just over three years now, has been actively forbidding all forms of grandmother to purchase Ms. Four any form of Barbie. Why, you ask? Well, duh. Present femi-nazi dogma states that allowing little girls to play with Barbie with warp their poor little innocent brains into thinking they need to be six foot tall, blond, big-boobed, tiny-waisted, unnaturally curvy hipped bimbos. Right? Well, maybe. Unfortunately, the femi-nazis forgot one very importan...

You think barbecue is a verb meaning 'to cook outside'. You think Heinz Ketchup is SPICY. You don't know what a moon pie is. You don't know anyone with two first names (i.e. Jo Bob, Billy Bob). You've never, ever eaten Okra. You eat fried chicken with a knife and fork. You have no idea what a polecat is. Instead of referring to two or more people as 'y'all', you call them 'you guys', even if both of them are women. None of your fur coats are homemade. I clipped the foregoing out of a New England newspaper many, many years ago (I post it here only because it is so yellowed with age I'm afraid I'm going to lose it in the move to the new house because it may disintegrate at any moment). I clipped it because I thought it was funny. I had been in The South once or twice and thought I knew why: I THOUGHT it was making fun of Southerners. Now I'm not so sure. Take the barbecue one, for instance. I didn't know until I moved here three...

Things I’ll miss Playing guess the body part while watching my belly distort itself into configurations that even in my wildest nightmares I could not have thought up. Hiccups. (Hers not mine.) Taking my time crossing the street at the Medical Center where everybody is in a hurry. Everybody but the Pregnant Lady. Nobody dares rush her. The don’t-mess-with-the-Pregnant-Lady-if-you-value-your-life aura I seem to exude. People just do what I tell them. They don’t fuss. They don’t argue. They just do it. The Husband’s occasional participation in kitchen cleaning duties. Without being asked. (Minor miracle, that.) The extra scoop of Spicy Tofu that the ladies in the hospital cafeteria give me after eyeing the belly. The fact that the cafeteria's older cashier gentleman who wears a hairnet and always has a hand-written quotation taped to his register never charges me extra for the extra scoop of Spicy Tofu. Things I won’t miss Waddling and the constant pain that goes with it. G...