Bethanie's Brain

It never fails to amaze me when I'm driving along in the car, minding my own business, Song of the Day cranked up as loud as I can take it, and suddenly BAM! I get fwapped on the head by the huge-est of epiphanies about a story I thought I knew inside out. It happened again this morning. Now just yesterday I had the huge-est of epiphanies that this particular Song of the Day ( Viva La Vida by Cold Play, of all bands...!) is NOT about the character I thought it was, but about someone else entirely and makes so much more sense that way. So I was not expecting another huge epiphany, not so soon after the other one. But there I was, squinting through the pre-dawn dark made even darker by the blessed rain that dear ol' Fay has delivered (it hasn't rained here in a month), Song of the Day cranked up really, really loud - like, loud enough that I could feel the drum bit reverberating in my chest. And as I'm sitting there, squinting and cursing my windshield wipers for not...

It's funny the way the brain works. Sometimes it's in Create Mode -- that's when I'm writing -- and sometimes, like now, it's in Sponge Mode. Sponge Mode is just what it sounds like -- the brain just wants to soak up everything it encounters. Eventually, it will get saturated and things will start to drip out. In other words, we'll be back to Create Mode. :D For the moment, though, I'm a thirsty sponge. So thirsty, in fact, that as I mentioned before, I signed up for a class at FPU, a class in Human Genetics, a graduate level class, come to that (eep!). I'll be in way over my head, no doubt, but that's OK. That's where I've been with almost every manuscript I've edited over the last 5 years. I'm used to it. But on top of that, I'm doing the homework for the statistics workshop I'll be taking in October and I'm peeking at the epidemiology textbook I have every once in a while and I'm still working my way through ...

Too busy to even think about having anything to say, but here's what's been shakin' the last few weeks: School started. My parents came to visit. Ms. Beautiful, her daughter and her still-in-utero twin sons visited. I signed up for a workshop and registered for this year's medical writers conference. I tried not to faint when I saw the charge for the conference on my credit card statement. All the visitors left. I signed up for a class (a class ! what am i thinking?) at FPU. OK, I'm auditing a class at FPU (which proves that I'm not totally crazy). We watched lots of Olympics. I mean, LOTS . Oh, and we cleaned the house yesterday (since it was starting to fester). And I have done zippo as far as writing. Boo, hiss. I had great plans and that synopsis was really starting to gel and then illness had a party with obligation and it got all set aside for 'some other time', preferably one when I wasn't exhausted, covered with vomit and/or supposed to ...

She turns two today (at 11:45 pm to be exact). I like two. They can talk enough to make themselves understood and 90% of what they say is just so damn cute you want to write it all down so it will be preserved for all eternity (but, of course, you can't because the minute you turn your back, they've emptied the supposedly child-proofed bathroom cabinet and started taste testing your soap collection...). We'll have cake and ice cream tomorrow, since everybody's too exhausted (and germy) from the last bout of Childhood Illness 101 to even open presents today (OK, yeah - or even to wrap presents today...), and being two, Ms. Baby won't really know the difference. But we did sing Happy Birthday to her and she thought that was pretty cool. Here's to many more, squirt! .

Holly Lisle's husband has a really excellent article up on The Escapist website about the Adventure Known as Parenting. It's really well written - clever and funny - so check it out (because I said so...). .

Apologies for that name in vain thing. Apologies for the four letter word thing. Apologies for nothing else. I. Am. Pissed. Ms. Six is sick. AGAIN. AGAIN! She puked all night and is now running a scary-high fever. I have calls in to all known RNs in the family. And I have calls in to all mothers and mothers-in-law. And I have calls in to her pediatrician. And... Wait just a fucking second. Didn't we JUST fucking go through this, like, two weeks ago??!??!!! Oh, yeah. Yeah, we did. Fucking. A. WHY does this keep happening? WHY are my kids CONSTANTLY sick? If this were happening to me, I'd be taking it as a sure sign that something in my life was out of balance and that I needed to change it. So am I being a horrible mother? A horrible housekeeper? Am I feeding them horribly wrong? Am I horrible person for working and not staying home so I can keep them out of daycare where every nasty fucking germ on the fucking planet seems to hang out? GGGrrrrrrarrrahhh! Who knows. Maybe...

I just spent an hour looking at photos from my high school's 20th reunion. I didn't go. And I think I'm glad. Well, sorta. It would have been neat seeing some of those people. But it would have been heartbreaking seeing others. (And, quite possibly, as annoying as it ever was to see the rest.) All in all, though, it was just really shocking. I mean, crikey - who WERE all those fat, old people??? (and somebody please, please, please tell me I'm not one of them...) *pants, clutches chest* OK, OK - I'm overreacting. I know I shouldn't be, but it was... disturbing... to go from this image I had of people - an image from 20 years ago - to these gray-haired, pot-bellied folk. I didn't even recognize most of them. A few here and there, I could come up with names for, but the rest melded into a sea of vaguely familiar faces. What stood out were the smiles. The smiles and the eyes. Those were the two things that went whizzing into the dark reaches of my br...

Poor Ms. Six is still sick, still puking, and still hasn't eaten anything since Tuesday. Ms. Baby, not surprising given her general take on life, has picked TODAY to rekindle her interest in potty training. So my morning has gone something like this: "Mama?!" calls a querelous voice from the couch. "My tummy doesn't feel good." This is the signal. I abandon the work-work I'm trying to do and dash over, grab the bowl and assume the position (holding the bowl before a crouching Ms. Six whilst attempting to keep her hair out if it). Ms. Six starts dry heaving (nothing in there to come up really). Ms. Baby, who in the meantime has hauled her potty out into the living room, decides this would be the perfect time to come show everybody that she has managed to remove her shorts and diaper all by herself so she can practice potty-sitting. As a bonus, she pulls up her shirt to show off her belly button. So there I am, torn - do I congratulate and encourage t...

Last Saturday, according to my receipt, I purchased a book of 'Forever' stamps at my local post office. I mailed two things that had been sitting around waiting for me to find the time to get to the post office and buy some stamps. Then I put the stamps in 'a safe place'. And now I can't find them. Which is driving me mad, because I have something else I need to mail. ...waaaaait a second... Yep. Just found 'em. Right where I had looked at least SIX TIMES. Frickin' stamp fairies. I tell ya... .

Well, it's about time for a post, non? OK, it's past time - kids are sick, work is nutso, etc. And coincidences are coming out of the woodwork. Event 1: Best college girl friend sent me a birthday card last week and we started emailing (after an embarassingly long hiatus). Turns out she's ended up doing much the same thing as I am -- editing for non-native English speakers (although she's in economics whoo-haa, rather than biomedical whoo-haa). Event 2: Not so much an event as the general atmosphere of disorganized bureaucratic clutter at FPU lately has been approaching the itchy side of intolerable. I'm getting fairly burnt out on it. Event 3: One task set out for the Impending Vacation is to write up the content for my freelance website. I did some of that today, since I was stuck at home mopping up vomit (again) and therefore found it difficult to concentrate on actual work stuff and decided: what the hell, I'll just take an effing sick day. Event 4:...

So we - well, I - don't get to escape The South this year. Again. The Husband has no appreciation for what I will suffer for this. At all. Never having been made to live someplace he despises, he can't seem to get his mind around it. Plus, he grew up here, so he can't see that the place has any faults. I, naturally, can see pretty much only the faults. Which sounds like I'm being overly negative, I suppose, but other than my job at FPU and the fact that I can justify a swimming pool, there just isn't much to recommend the place in my book. And I don't even want to think about all the things I'll have to wait another year before I can see/taste/feel again. *wails, dies* .

So, it's July, which means we're 6 months into this year's Big, Fun, Scary Adventure Challenge . It's time to check in and see how Bethanie is progressing. Or isn't progressing. As the case may be. Here's the list. And how I'm doing with it. Complete and submit one short story. This was on the list? Er... really? Heh-heh... Well, I do have a couple stories in the works. One I actually looked at last week. But it's not finished. And the other one is finished, but doesn't resemble a short story so much as it does a sumo wrestler in a string bikini... *sigh* I have such trouble writing short... So yeah, bit of work yet to do on this front. Learn to speak rudimentary but passable Chinese (Mandarin, I guess, even though everyone I work with is from Shanghai). Here I have actual progress to report! I've got a couple of co-workers teaching me words here and there, and Chik-fil-A was handing out language CDs a couple months ago. We (OK, Ms. Six) ...

The Flat-Iron This synopsis stuff is hard work. Not that I expected it to be easy, mind. But yes, I’m still at it. I did a bit of homework on what a ‘real’ (to be submitted to somebody) synopsis should be, and what I did last week is not nearly as done as I thought it was. But – shockingly – I think it’s actually going pretty well. It was a hectic weekend, so I wasn’t able to devote a lot of time to it – not as much as I wanted to by any means, but enough that I managed to have another Revelation. Er, no, the Axe did not get happy and whack another hapless character from the plot (lucky characters). It wasn’t really a Plot Revelation so much as it was a Process Revelation. See, I’m always struggling with the Big Picture. All my life, I’ve been climbing things – trees, mountains, cliffs, icefalls – in an attempt to gain some perspective. And my lack of perspective (or inability to gain any) when it comes to fiction is, I think, the main cause of the ginormous bowls of plot spaghe...

Synopsis. Since I still felt like shit last night, that was my Revision Hell project. Try to come up with a synopsis of the story. To help keep me on track, yanno, and give me The Big Picture so I wouldn't get all dazed and confused by the details. Plus, I needed something I could stick bits of the hacked out character into. (My, that sounds sort of gruesome, if you think about it...) Well. Three failed attempts later (I kept coming up with back-of-the-book blurbs - not helpful), I finally got... something. I don't know that I can call it a synopsis, because honestly, I haven't done my homework on how to write a decent synopsis, but I think it'll do what I need it to do for now. *sigh* At least, I'm feeling better today. That really IS something. .

Must keep it sharp, doncha know... So yesterday was something of a bust for Revision Hell, because - of course, story of my life whenever I start a writing project - I got sick. Again. By the time the kids were in bed, all I wanted to do was go to bed myself. I did manage to chop out the several chapters that were in the axed character's POV, so I got the manuscript down to 64K. Then I pasted in a couple of scenes for one of the characters who will be shouldering part of the story in his place, so I'm up to 65K. And then I called it a night, because my throat was sore, I had bodyaches, and my head was starting to feel distinctly balloon-like. I'm still not feeling that great, so it's good it's a work-at-home day. If I really start feeling bad, I can lay on the couch and I won't be infecting co-workers with whatever-the-fuck this is. :-p Anyway, the plan for this evening is to work out what other scenes I'm going to need to make up for the axed POV and, i...

Day One of Revision Hell went surprisingly well. I am shocked, in fact, at how well. Not only did I wield the Plot Spaghetti/Bullshit Pruning Axe with a ruthlessness I had no idea I possessed, but I had A Revelation. A sad revelation, but a revelation nonetheless. But let me start at the beginning. First, I discovered that I had already lopped off the last two-thirds of Novel #1 back in January when I had the original realization that the story was too big for one book. Yay! I was down to 86K already - yahoo! Then, as I was thinking about the story (whilst making spaghetti for supper - how ironic is that ?), some little bits of story drifted into some bits of things I've learned about writing in the last 6 months, there was a gentle collision and then BANG! - the Revelation exploded into my brain. A major character has to be cut. Ouch. Double ouch, 'cuz he's one of my favorites. One of my darlings, in fact. And now I'm embarrassed, because I can't remember who ...

Revision Hell, That Is So Joely's hosting Revision Hell between now and July 31st... well, not "hosting" per se... but... well... yanno, it was her idea! So I'm nominating her as Hell's Hostess. :-D Here are my personal Circles of Novel Hell: Polish ('til it shines like the top of the Chrysler Building...) Circle I Limbo Add Details, Emotion and Other Pretty Things Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind Villian Boot Camp Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow Cardboard Cut-Out Characters Circle IV Rolling Weights I'll-Finish-It-Later Scenes Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled River Styx Character Arcs That Don't Circle VI Buried for Eternity River Phlegyas Pruning Dead Limbs Circle VII Burning Sands Plot Spaghetti Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement Plot Holes Circle IX Frozen in Ice Design your own hell The Goal: Revise something. For me that'll be Novel #1. Why? Well, mostly because I can hardly make it worse. Eh-heh. OK, I know, I k...

So I'm reading this book: Genghis Kahn and the Making of the Modern World . It's fascinating, and somewhere in there is a discussion about the Mongol religion -- part of which involves a diety of sorts called the Eternal Blue Sky . Cool, thinks I. I mention to one of our postdocs, who happens to be from Mongolia, that I'm reading this book. We proceed to have this long discussion about the Mongol invasion and how everywhere she's worked over the years - Afganistan, Pakistan, Russia, Egypt - people still remember how their homeland was conquered by Genghis Kahn (or, as she says, Chingis Kahn). And then she goes back to her cube, and I finish submitting the paper she came to ask me about in the first place. Then I email her to let her know and she emails back and says something to the effect of 'now we just have to pray to the Blue Sky Father (or the God) that it gets accepted'. Now that may be a literal translation of the Christian 'God' or it may be ...

Fruit First, the fruit: check it out - I HAVE PLUMS!!!! There are a bunch more getting close on the tree and evidence on the ground under the tree that a bunch more got ripe recently (the squirrels beat us to 'em ... damn squirrels). Hopefully, the ones I picked will ripen a bit more by themselves, otherwise we might be having a pucker-fest instead of a snack... Fauna Second, the fauna: The South has no shortage of Bugs of Gigantic Proportion. Found this lovely early one morning - thankfully dead - on my doorstep. My ancient camera is not capable of the sort of close-up that would really give you nightmares, but you could see every last one of the thing's eyes. He/She had one HECK of an abdomen (or thorax or whatever that bulbous, brownish bit is...). I think it died because it came too close to the house -- an unintended consequence of having to spay the foundation for ants. This is why I don't like using pesticides. You never know what you're going to kill, and I...

I know. It's been an age in blog-time since I've put up a real post and I have a list - a long list - of obligations I have not fulfilled. But I have my reasons for blowing everybody off. I do! First, I had a birthday party to orchestrate. It was a smashing success, even if I did question my sanity (repeatedly) for have nine - NINE - 6-year-olds in my house at one time and then stuffing them full of sugar. I mean, there was a spontaneous robot parade, fercrissake. But. Nothing got broken, there weren't too many tears shed, and there were no (permanent) injuries. And it was fun (in its own special way)! Second, Ms. Baby insisted on bringing home more microscopic (and illness-causing) friends. So there was vomiting. And diarrhea. Oh, and then there was a case of sun poisoning (The Husband brought the sunscreen with him on the boat, but didn't use it - brilliant). Think subcutaneous blisters. It was fucking gross. 'Nuff said. Third, ... well, shit. I've f...