Bethanie's Brain

In my backyard, Ms. Four, standing on the top of her slide and singing at the top of her voice: It's a grand old flag, It's a high-five-ing flag.... In my head, the title of my next NaNo: The Adventures of SUPER-boob and her ever-present sidekick, Lop-side (what? it was 4AM, i'd been up for 2 or 3 hours with Ms. Baby and her approaching teeth...)

So. Had a bit of a shock the other day when Ms. Four drew a picture on her Magna-Doodle (see below). Totally without thinking, I said, "Oh! Neat phones!" I got A Look, the disparaging sort of Look only a four-going-on-fourteen-year-old can administer. "They're not phones ," she said, disgusted. "They're people in houses ." Upon closer inspection, I realized that, indeed, the "phones" had arms, legs and eyes. "Well, yes, of course!" I said, trying to save my dignity. "I see! People in houses! Of course! How could I have missed it." More Look. It was clear Ms. Four was NOT seeing how I made this bizarre mental leap. I decided an explanation was in order. "It's just that from over there," I said gesturing vaguely towards the other end of the room, "they looked like phones." Yanno, like this: Ms. Four glanced at the cordless, push-button phone standing upright in its charger. More Look. ...

So here we are a week (or so) later, as promised, to report on what I accomplished with this editing/re-writing thing on the 2005 NaNo. Here's what I've got: -The timing of a couple of key events in the beginning were a little sloppy, so I fixed that and tightened things up. -And promptly discovered that I had fucked up the nether end of a plotline later on. Go me. -I took a look at the other parts of the story, i.e., The Middle and The End. Both were a stinking mess. I decided to work on fixing The End because a) it was a slightly smaller mess (due to the fact that it is infested with plot holes the size of Texas) and b) I figured it would be easier to fix The Middle if I knew where the bloody hell the story was headed. -I discovered that I have no idea what to do with The Middle. The plot lines are not so much tangled as ... well, frayed. Badly. -I discovered that a good way to keep myself from line editing, which the story is decidedly not ready for at this point, is to...

So no joke, the word verification for a yahoo email I just sent was: peeAT ??!???!!

This was my Google Quote of the Day: When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained. - Mark Twain I'm going to post it on the wall of my new cube at work. In very large type.

So after a very long hiatus of about a year, I've decided it's time to pick up the 2005 NaNo project and edit the sucker (yes, it's a vampire novel and yes, pun intended - ok, you can go retch now). I've gotten as far as I did the last time - outlining the plot with notecards (although this time I'm using my StoryLines software , not that it will help or anything, but it sure is fun to play with) - and I'm stumped again as to how to proceed. (Which is pretty ironic considering what I do for a living, yanno?) The problem is that it's Just Damn Hard to see what the story needs, even after letting it sit for a year. I mean, I have whole characters that I'm just not sure should even be there, but I'd hate to cut them, re-write the Whole Damn Book and then discover that they do, indeed, belong in the story and then have re-re-write the Whole Damn Book all over again. That would suck (yeah, vampire, pun, blah-blah-blah). What, oh, what is Writer Lady t...

You can do an extra large load of laundry that consists entirely of Things That Are Pink. You trip over Barbie dolls, Polly Pockets, tea sets and 700 Things That Are Pink before breakfast. You’re pretty sure they make colors other than pink, but you can’t remember what they’re called. You know how many Disney princesses there are and can identify each one on sight by her name, the movie she stars in, the name of her prince, and the color of her dress, hair and shoes. The smaller people in your house have more makeup and high heels than you do.

And you thought we were done with this. Well, so did I. In fact, I thought we were done with this until last Thursday when I went into the office to help Boss Lady pack for the Big Move and Accounting Lady dropped by to say: "Oh, um, they can't fix that weird date problem, so you'll have to Totally Redo the submission package". Totally Redo. As in Start From Scratch. As in Start Over. As in The Dreaded Blue Screen. As in Pardon Me, I Need To Step Outside and Start Screaming. I shall spare everyone the gory details, but GOOD GRIEF. My vacation, which was supposed to start Saturday, starts today, because the Unpacking from the Big Move and Redoing of the blasted submission package took most of Sunday and Monday (Boss Lady being gone on a cruise and all). And now I have to keep checking my email for a couple of days to make sure nothing else goes wrong. Pardon Me, I Need To Step Outside and Start Screaming...

It is finally fucking over. My life has been one, long, apparently-fucking- endless nightmare of Grant Hell for the last ... what, six weeks? eight weeks? Pitiful. I don't even fucking know. Anyways. It's over. Boss Lady's 5-year renewal has been delivered to Fabulous Private University's research office and will presumably be on its way to to the feds very soon. Halle-freakin-lujah. I think I did more work on this one than I have done on any other grant proposal in my life. I did budget stuff. I did subcontact budget stuff. I did biosketches. I did figures. I did tables. I did the bloody references . I edited the science. I edited the abstract. I edited the budget justifications. I re-edited the science. I re-did the bloody references. I did electronic submission package stuff. I re-re-did the bloody references. It was endless. I am exhausted. I am going to go collapse now.

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...