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...

30 January 2007, 9:01 AM: 30 January 2007, 9:04 AM: And she still runs like a top!

I could see my breath in the air. The minivan didn't want to start (I had to move it) and even the trusty Subaru expressed reluctance. Itty-Bitty City glowed orange-gold in the early-early against the white-blue chill of the sky. On the walk from the shuttle lot my legs - bare under the skirt - froze bright red and tingly and the tips of my ears started to hurt. I even had to stick my hands in my pockets (alternately, the other being occupied with holding the coffee). It was 15 degrees. It was glorious.

All the research, these days, says that babies should not start on solid foods of any kind until they're 6 months old. Just breastmilk (or formula) until then. So far as I know, babies are definitely not supposed to eat anything even remotely pizza-ish. You just try and tell Ms. Baby that. I dare ya. No kidding. We went out to a pizza place Friday night. Ms. Baby could not be calmed. Her cereal did not appease her. Toys were no use. She fussed and fussed and fussed - and watched intently absolutely everything that went into my mouth, tried to grab most of it and kept on fussing until - in a desperate attempt to eat in peace - I finally gave her a pizza crust of her own. She was instantly content. She waved her crust around and tried to get it into her mouth (we made sure The Sucky Thing was firmly in place to prevent this) and was quite happy. Until she dropped it. On the floor. Then she commenced fussing again and we had to gave her another one. Now when Ms. Four was ...

OK, Sistergirl #2, a.k.a. the Queen, has a really cool post on recent craft endeavors and in the comments I mentioned a quilt block I made a while back. She requested that I post it, so here we are and here is my lovely quilt block: Tres beautiful, non? I'm very proud. I'm also never making another one. The block is called True Lover's Knot and I used the instructions from the Quilts from The Quiltmaker's Gift* book. The fabrics are leftovers from our wedding outfits with a green that reminds me of the sagebrush that grows all over the place Way Out West, including the spot where we got hitched. Sadly, as I said, I will never, ever, ever make this block again - at least, not with these particular fabrics. Why? Well, see the little light-colored squares in the middle of the "knots"? That's the fabric from the bodice of my wedding dress. The very expensive, beaded fabric from the bodice of my wedding dress. Which, it turns out, is just a flat-out...

Guess what I found today... TOOTH NUMBER TWO!!! Yep. That's me girls. 400% or nuthin' at all.

We may have a reasonable explanation for all this flailing and wailing we've had to endure lately: Ms. Baby has sprung a tooth! I'm thinking this may have something to do with the sleep thing... *headsmack*

You know you're lazy when instead of going out to the car to retrieve the CD you want, you download it from Napster. Just so you don't have to get up. Sad. Very sad. Bordering-on-pathetic sad. OK, OK. Just pathetic.

You take it for granted when you get six or eight (or *gasp* more ) hours of sleep on a somewhat regular basis. You know you do. And it's not until it's taken away from you for extended periods of time that you realize how important - indeed, how very vital - it is to your health and sanity. The Husband had a buddy when we lived Way Out West who joined the Navy and was attempting to become a Navy Seal. Part of the testing (trial?) process was sleep deprivation. They made them do all these tasks and didn't feed them or let them sleep more than a couple of hours at a time for, like, a whole week or something. At the time, I thought, wow, that's pretty tough. Now I know better. A week without sleep is for pussies. Sorry boys, but it's true. You go six frikkin' months without sleep and we'll talk about respect for that. So, yeah, Ms. Baby doesn't sleep worth a crap. Why do you ask? Seriously, I don't know how she does it. The handout we got fro...

What was this guy thinking? Man electrocuted by do-it-yourself mole-killer I mean, really. I understand that moles can be annoying -- a marauding band of them once ate $50 worth of tulip bulbs on me. But it's waaay more fun to try and drown them. And, apparently, waaay safer.

I'm so very happy. I finally figured out how to outsmart blogger and annotate my links. Hah! Miss Snark : A Literary Goddess in Stilettos. I have learned more about writing from the last Crap-o-meter, than from all the frikkin' writing books I own, combined. Dirt City Paranoia : In-yer-face, go-fuck-yerself political satire. Makes me homesick as all hell. I love it. Bitch Ph.D. : I aspire to this kind of honesty. 'Nuff said. 101 Reasons to Stop Writing : I like this one because the author is so cynically honest. Or brutally honest. Or just mean. Whatever. It's a welcome dose of reality in amongst all the warm, fuzzy, 'you-can-do-it', 'don't-ever-give-up-on-your-dreams' writing advice out there. Street Anatomy : Stumbled across this from a post on the AMWA Editing/Writing listserve and it is COOL . 'Nuff said, people. Check it out.

Event #1: Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. I just about cried listening to the story on NPR on the way home from work today. It's that fantabulous. And it's about fucking time. Event #2: The first Buddhist and Muslim Congressfolk were also sworn in today. Halle-freakin-lujah. Also about fucking time. (Sidenote to Event #2: Dirt City Paranoia has an especially excellent post related to this Event that I highly recommend.) It's a good day for the revolution...

Everyone seems to have them. Everyone but me. I'm just too damn tired for resolutions this year. And it isn't helping to be staggering under mountains of medical debt either. Yeah. Helmet appointment earlier this week: 7:30 AM - Dr. Craniofacial-Specialist examines Ms. Baby's head for a grand total of 45 seconds and scribbles with a magic marker on the outside of Monsieur Helmet. That'll be $280, please. 8:30 AM - Helmet-fabrication-people spend a grand total of 10 minutes following the magic-marker directions and sanding off some of Monsieur Helmet's foam liner. That'll be $100, please. Fuckin'. A. I know, I know. It could be worse. It could be way worse. And it fact, things looked up shortly after we arrived home: 9:30 AM - I check my paystub online. My last paycheck included a $400 Christmas/End-of-Year bonus from Fabulous Private University. Which is great, since it covers the medical bills for this week. And leaves me 20 bucks for expensive c...

The Dream: ************************ Ms. Baby is older - maybe 1-ish - and she has hair and can crawl and sit up by herself. She can't walk yet, so I'm carrying her. We're taking a test. It's an entrance exam for pre-school or something. An odd pre-school. Sample question posted above a bin of yellow squash and zucchini that we have to climb over if we answer the question correctly: The zucchini are £2,08 (why it's in £s, I have no idea) per pound. If the yellow squash are 1/3 that price per pound, how much is 4 pounds of yellow squash. Ms. Baby apparently answers correctly (not that she can speak, mind you, but somehow she does), because we clamber over the crate of yellow squash and zucchini and into a dimly lit stone room. We climb over other crates of other stuff, somehow answering equally impossible-for-a-1-year-old questions. We come to a small, square stone door on the opposite side of the room. It slides open. Ms. Baby goes to crawl through it. I grab...

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.