Bethanie's Brain

Grant hell took on a new form today: electronic submission. You'd think that would be a good thing, right? Save a few trees, at least. Well, yeah, sure, it saves a few trees. I'm all for that. Except that it's costing me brain cells. I mean, my synapses are Burnt Out . Something I was familiar with is suddenly total foreign. Something I knew how to gauge is suddenly unfathomable. OK, I'm exaggerating. But this is the very first time in my personal grant submission history that we've MISSED THE DEADLINE. And not with just one. I'm not sure yet, but I think we missed it with 2 out of 4. Part of it was just bad luck. One of our PIs had a bunch of Appendices and they were scanned PDFs, and as anyone knows, scanned PDFs are HUGE . So when they attached the scanned PDFs to the "submission package" the package promptly went cross-eyed and crashed all over the computer screen with a resounding SPLAT . OK, I'm exaggerating. But the reconstruction o...

It was one of "those" days. You know the kind. The days when everything you do turns instantly to shit as soon as you touch it? Yeah. Those days. I got up at 6AM to do some work-work. I suppose that was my first mistake. And then I had a decaf coffee. Mistake No. 2. From there, things just sort of disintegrated. I dropped stuff (not Ms. Baby, lucky her). I broke stuff. I couldn't seem to talk straight. Work got weird. And then I tried to make lunch. And I burned pasta . Burned. Pasta. I didn't actually know that was even possible . And had I been paying attention, I would have taken that as a sign and NOT tried to go to the store to get milk (which we were - and still are - out of). It was a disaster and we never even left the driveway. Picture this: Kids in car. Kid paraphenalia in car. Mommy in car. Keys in house. House locked. House locked. Keys in house. And I mean ALL the keys - house keys, car keys, work keys, what-the-fuck-does-this-go-to key...

I love all these books and blogs about "The Writing Life" where the authors, who are usually members of the Lucky Few Full-Time Writer's Club, describe how they get up at 5AM or 11AM and proceed to write for 6 or 8 hours. Then they do some editing or blogging or correspondence or chit-chat with their agent or some-such. Then they read some Great Author before retiring for the evening. Sounds great, don't it? If only the rest of us were so lucky. Here's what my "writing life" is like: ************************ ************************ First of all, I have been unable to write anything at all due to sickness and interference from work-work for so many days I've lost count of how many exactly. Today, however, The Husband is gone for the day. Ms. Four, at her cousin's house for an overnight, is still gone for a few more hours. And Ms. Baby is down for her nap. Now is the time to write. *pause* I should really be working on the taxes. I should rea...