Bethanie's Brain

Naturally, right when I thought it was over, The Sickness has come back. Not as big and bad as before (yet), but nonetheless, I am back to popping pain pills every few hours for my throat and running for the toilet every few minutes for what comes out the other end. It's just fucking joyous, lemmetellya.

I've been sick for weeks now. First, it was food poisoning. Then, a really bad strep infection. After that, side effects of the antibiotics. It's finally clearing up - an entire month later. It's the side effects that got to me worst, making me feel like I'll never be well again, never be healthy. Acute illness is easier to deal with. It's there. It's immediate. Then it's over with. Side effects are insidious. There, but not to be complained about because they are all part of "getting better", so you pop that pill KNOWING what it's going to do to you, knowing that's going to tear your insides out, make your guts gurgle, your stomach grind, your intestines writhe. You know you're going to be nauseated. You know your appetite is going to disappear. You know you're going to be pissing out your asshole. But you pop the pill anyway, because hey, when your tonsils are so swollen you can't swallow your own spit, what the h...

Because I am stumped on other current projects, I began a read-through of the 2006 NaNo. I'm about half-way through and I am finding it little more than a detailed outline of the story. The characters are paper-doll-ish. The plot resembles an ill-fitting, moth-eaten jacket. The world building is barely there. Exactly as expected, in other words. Which doesn't disappoint me really. It's something to work with and that's about all you can realistically expect from NaNo. With any luck, I'll get through it in the next couple of days, make some notes and let it sit another few months before I do any serious work on it. Perspective, that's the thing when editing...

So I realized a couple of days ago that the plot of Novel #1, that reeking pile of unpublishable tripe, is basically the plot of Cinderella. OK, so my Cinderella has mean step- brothers , instead of step-sisters, and my Prince Charming is a drug-addict. I've still got the absentee father and the evil step-mother who makes Cinderella's life miserable. I've even got a grand ball and a sorta fairy-godmother (well, she really Cinderella's martial arts master, but same difference). The only thing I'm missing is the goddamned glass slipper. I'm not sure whether to be horrified or amused by this.

An oldy, but goody: Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot. Yeah. 'Bout says it all.

But I feel like posting, so here I am. Grant Hell is winding down for this season. Ms Five is off at her grandma's house. Ms Baby is asleep. The Husband is parked in front of the TV. And I'm still chained to my desk, because my bloody wireless LAN is still messed up from when my dad was here is frikkin' April. (Or was it March?) Haven't had time to fix it (been a-granting, doncha know). Oh, I re-upped with Critters finally! Been meaning to for weeks now. I learn a lot from critting that I find useful - believe it or not - in my job. Shouldn't make any sense, I suppose, but clear writing is clear writing, and it doesn't matter whether it's about giants and dragons or genetic variants and diet, the rules are pretty much the same. Use active voice and active verbs. Don't spray and pray with your adverbs. Learn where the commas go dammit. Yeah, that said, I'll be off to my first crit in about a year. Woo-hoo!

Not a bumpah stickah. But it should be. My google quote of the day today: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye. -Miss Piggy I love the Muppets. My whole family watched the TV show religiously when I was a kid (yeah, yeah, I'm dating myself. Shut up.). It was great - Fozzie Bear, Pigs in Space, Gonzo and Camilla, Statler and Waldorf, and especially , Miss Piggy. For some strange reason it reminds me of where I work. Seriously, there are all these Very Original People from all sorts of different cultures and backgrounds all thrown together and trying to do Really Important Stuff, usually under a deadline (10 minutes to curtain!). And naturally, there's a lot of conflict and a lot of people in need of black eyes. Especially during this past episode of Grant Hell, when we could have used Miss Piggy and her, erm, special brand of tact. 'Cuz getting shit done in life comes down to ...

I found out a couple of days ago, that one of the little girls in Ms Five's pre-school class lost her mother to breast cancer last month. It breaks my heart in so many ways. First, of course, is this sweet little girl and her sisters who now have no mama. Then I wonder what must it have been like to be that mama and know that you are leaving, that won't see your little girls grow up. I'm not sure which is worse. She was only 37, this little girl's mama, and that hits close to home. Too close. That's how old I'll be next month. 37 years doesn't seem like nearly so long a time on Earth as it did a week ago. Finally, it isn't helping matters to know, thanks to the job I love so much, that this woman's death places a kind of curse on her daughters. To die so young from breast cancer means that very likely she carried a genetic susceptibility to the disease. Her daughters may carry it too, increasing the chances that they will get breast cancer th...

Right, so a few months back, you'll recall that Grant Hell went digital , which didn't really help much and quite possibly made things much worse (at least, for me). Naturally, I should have been really happy with that, because you know what happens when you wish for stuff and you're not careful? Yeah. You end up with Coeus. What the bloody, freaking hell is Coeus? Well, well, well, funny you should ask. Do let me explain. Coeus, in Greek mythology, was the Titan of Intelligence. Some witty individual (at MIT, which might explain a few things) thought it would be a cute name for a database. No joke. Consequently, Coeus, in grant-hell-ology, is the Titan of database-based grant submissions. Now, I love databases. I do. I really, really do. But not when they're smarter than I am and not when they're so complicated that 3 days of training barely gets you off the ground. I mean, it's really great, it is, and it's going to be really, really cool in ab...

OK, honest to god, I am not trying to be sexy (I'm way past that, and I know it), but I can't even believe I did this. You see the red spot on my leg? The perfectly round one with the strangely familiar lines in the middle? Yeah, that one. Believe it or not, that was caused by a penny left on the seat of my car. My car that was sitting in the sun on a very hot-ass day almost a week ago. I actually saw the penny on the car seat just before I sat down, but the pain was so sudden and so acute that I thought I had been stung by a bee. It just didn't register what was causing the pain because, seriously -- who expects pain from a penny? Un. Real. I mean, if you look closely enough, you can actually make out the fucking Lincoln memorial and the words "ONE CENT" below it. And you thought this kind of body art was just for 20-somethings. Actually, so did I. I mean, sure, I could claim to have done it on purpose, but really, can you think of a single cool reason to br...

So. You'll recall the Roadkill Turkey Breast . (How could you forget, right?) Well, that night we only ate half the meat from the Unfortunate Beastie. Tonight, we ate the rest. On sticks. With cardamom! No, really, it was great. So great, I must share the recipe (and record it for next time -- next time I have turkey , sheesh...). Here 'tiz: INGREDIENTS a bunch of cardamom seeds (how many is up to you - how many do you feel like unpeeling? yes, you have to use the real stuff that comes in a pod. that pre-ground junk is worse than useless) a sprinkling of fenugreek (i'm not really sure if these are seeds or what) a smaller sprinkling of mustard seeds a couple of bay leaves, crumpled a few good splooshes of olive oil a splash or three of some kind of vinegar a wee bit o' soy sauce Meat, tofu or other marinade-friendly munchie (no, it doesn't have to be roadkill) WHAT TO DO WITH THE INGREDIENTS Take the first three ingredients and grind them into powder with a m...

On the back of a tow truck: Hooked on Harry Not a bumpah stickah, really, but amusing enough to share.

OK, I've been wanting to catalog my books for a while. And I did something on the old blog like what you'll see on the right side of the screen if you scroll down - a book, an author and some comments about the book (no fancy pictures, though). So the other day I was happily surfing along, dropped by 101 Reasons to Stop Writing (to see if there were any more reasons - there weren't), and BOOM! There it was: a link to Library Thing . "Interesting," thought I, and surfed along to check it out. Turned out to be interesting enough that I actually signed up even though I was pretty sure that I didn't need one more thing to do and would probably NEVER have time to actually put any books in. 'Course, me being me, I immediately grabbed a stack of books because I had to put SOMETHING in (can't have a naked library, how embarassing) and started firing off ISBN numbers. Next thing I knew - and it wasn't but 30 minutes later or so - I had over 80 books ad...

No time to explain how I got here, but this is just.... well, totally, wicked cool. My Library

So I sat down at ye ol' keyboard last night to write a brilliant blog post that had something to do with the safety of the food supply. This isn't it. No, that post has gone the way of so many others in this sleep-deprived state I call my life. Here's what happened: It was a wonderful, thundery evening. Just the occasional flash, the occasional far-off rumble, and a soft, relaxing rain. Perfect! thought I, I shall write! After we put the kids to bed. Ms. Baby was tired. Too tired. When Ms. Baby is too tired, she refuses to sleep. I don't know why but she just fights it and fights it and wants to sit in my lap in the rocking chair and look out the window, occasionally looking back up over her shoulder to make sure I'm still there (which, of course, I am, because where the hell else am I going to go). And before anyone starts in with the sleep advice, don't bother. We've tried everything, nothing works, and that isn't the point of this post anyway. No,...

...you ate roadkill for dinner. And I just did. Go ahead, make gross retching sounds. OK, gat that outta yer system? Good job. Now you wanna hear the story? 'Course you do. First, wipe your brain clean of the images of possums and raccoons and whatever-the-fuck-that-was's that you automatically assumed I ate (you know you did, admit it). T'weren't no possums nor raccoons on my table. Nosirree, sir - we're talkin' turkey. No, really, it was turkey. Turkey as in wild turkey. Turkey as in big, frikkin' bird native to North American woodlands. Turkey as in what The Husband was out hunting last weekend and didn't get. No, no, instead, he found one flapping helplessly and in obvious distress on the side of some road (he claims he didn't actually hit it himself). Broken leg, broken wing - obvious coyote fodder. Unable to watch it suffer he and his buddies - and I quote - "put it out of its misery". Then they "dressed" it and br...

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 ??!???!!