Bethanie's Brain

The Training Grant Adventure from Hell is over. Fucking finally. I didn't think we were going to make it when I got to work on Friday at 6:30 AM. I didn't think we were going to make it at 12:00 PM when we were still missing 3 biosketches. I didn't think we were going to make it at 4:00 PM when we still didn't have the signature page. I didn't think we were going to make it at 5:00 PM when Boss Lady LEFT to go pick up her son and attend his piano concert. (Nope. She didn't come back.) And I really, really didn't think we were going to make it at 7:15 when we were still making copies and only had 15 minutes to get them assembled and downstairs to the FedEx drop-box. But we did and it's gone: signed, sealed, and will be delivered Monday morning by FedEx. And then I almost had to kill someone. Because after I had run downstairs to the FedEx box and dropped off the boxes with the proposal inside, I came back to my computer - at 7:30 PM, mind you - and fou...

Well. My bank failed this morning. Not a good way to start Grant Submission Hell-Day. Does not bode well. Not at all, really. Gah! Where IS my coffee and when can I have another one please?!?? .

Tomorrow is Doomsday.... er.... I mean, Grant Submission Day. Yeah... um, same thing. Anyway. I've been at it since 6 AM this morning and now we're approaching 11 PM and, even though I shockingly only had ONE coffee this morning, I am SO AMPED, I can already tell that I'm never going to get to sleep in time to get any kind of rest before the alarm goes off at 5 AM Friday and the race to beat the FedEx guy starts.... I'd use this time to do some fun fiction writing, but I've been typing for, like, 16 hours straight and my damn hands are about to fall off.... I suppose it's not helping matters I'm listening to death metal.... *collapses on floor in fits of giggles* Yeah. It's that fun. Don't you wish you could do this for a living, too? OK, I'm off to bed now. Really. *more giggles* .

So last week, Ms. Six's after school program had a Pirate Party on Friday afternoon. I signed up to make sandwiches, thinking I would surely find something clever and pirate-y online and not have to think too hard about being clever myself . Well, I seached. And I searched. And I searched. And Google failed me. Nothing! I found exactly nothing - nothing pirate ship-ish, nothing really all that pirate-y even. (OK, there was one "pirate sandwich" that involved bologna and olives, which caused it to be immediately vetoed, so it doesn't count.) So there I was - Thursday afternoon and desperate - wandering around the grocery store with NO IDEA what I was going to do. I had turkey in the cart. I had cheese in the cart. I had Ms. Baby in the cart starting to get cranky and very bored with her third trip through the bread aisle. I had just about given up on the whole Clever Idea thing and resigned myself to Wonder Bread (*gags*) --- when I saw them!! A bag of tiny, t...

Yes. I've lost it. In case you were wondering. But the Special Hell known as The Training Grant will soon be over. On Friday, we'll make 6 or 7 copies of all 350+ pages of that fucker and FedEx 5 plus the original off to Washington or Baltimore or wherever-it's-going and It. Will. Be. Over. And I can't wait. But in the meantime, I thought I'd share the pretty chart I made to keep track of all the people we needed to get stuff from and whether on not we'd asked for it, got it, initialized it, modified it, finalized it and obtained the hard copy. See the pretty chart? Ooooo.... Colors.... And yes, they all mean something. Friday has never seemed a sweeter word. .

I don't really want to do NaNo this year. Really, I don't. I have too much going on. Someone will get sick. An unplanned grant is sure to appear out of nowhere and be due in the middle of the month. My family is coming here for Turkey Day. Reasons against abound. But it's NaNo's 10th anniversary. Seems like a shame to miss it. And while I was washing dishes a bit ago, I got this totally wicked idea. A deadline would be a really good thing for it, right? Right? Dammit . .

Gas prices are shooting for the moon. Wall Street is crumbling into the sea. A hurricane has scoured whole towns off the map My freakin' mortgage company appears to be next. It's just rumors at this point, but um... just what are you supposed to DO if the bank holding your mortgage does the dead fish routine?? Do I keep paying them if they've filed for Chapter 11? Am I allowed to get irritated if they get bought out by somebody? Probably not, but it would be - literally - the FIFTH time my mortgage has been handed off to somebody else since we bought the house two years ago. I was just getting used to them! After they held onto to the note for a whole year, I finally broke down and got set up to pay them online. I actually trusted them that much! And they repay me like this ? Great. Fabulous. Figures. .

Rain pounds the rocks. They are slick, trecherous. The only moon in the sky this time of night is Hell, and even She and Her Hounds are hiding. A hand appears over the edge of the precipice. Stark white, waterlogged, it scrabbles for a hold on anything at all. Its owner doesn't seem to notice when it is cut to the bone by a bit of rock. Wheezing and panting with fear, a small, wretched form pulls up onto a tiny ledge. No telling whether it is man or woman, it makes for a crack in the cliff that rams into the ledge. There it huddles, gasping, shivering, praying for the storm to pass, the rain to cease, morning to come. This is how I feel right now. Beat to a pulp mentally and physically (even though I was chained here in front of my computer all day and hardly moved). I do not like Training Grants. I do not like them, Sam I Am. Seriously. Somebody just shoot me. Please. .

I just got back from a little jaunt around the Gorgeous Office Building (GOB) where my little department of FPU is located. I took my little jaunt in the interests of NOT taking part in the general obesity epidemic that appears to be sweeping much of the developed world - i.e., I got off my fat ass and got some exercise - and in the spirit of getting some exercise, I also took the stairs - up and down - instead of the elevator. Well. Lemme tell ya. GOB has some seriously uninspirational stairwells. They're narrow. They're kinda stuffy. Some walls are painted, some are not. There's carpet here, but not over there. There's graffiti in spots. Not the sort of place that makes you want to come back. Not that this is news to me - I take the stairs all the time (well, down, anyway...), so I'm pretty familiar with their uninviting nature. And really, how much can one expect from a stairwell? However, it occurred to me as I was out jaunting around GOB - which is so v...

Yup. Got a bee in my bonnet for homemade pizza. Homemade stuffed crust pizza. The girls had cheese: The Husband had pepperoni and mushroom: I had Everything: Yup. It don't get no better than that. .

And just when I thought things were going so well... I've got a pretty good handle on the grant thing by now. R01's? I can do 'em in my sleep. K series? A few extra details, but no big deal. DOD-BCRP? Details galore, so they're a pain in the ass, but I've done enough of them by now that I know how to head off the worst of their gremlins. And, really, I knew better than to believe Boss Lady when she told me in July that the endometrial cancer grant was the last one for the year. I did. And sure enough, we're submitting TWO this month. ( TWO!! ) But she managed to blindside me anyway. With a monstrous beast known as a Training Grant. It is colossal. It has fangs. It has teeth. It is due on the 29th. This means I will be eating, sleeping, dreaming, breathing Training Grant for the next 3 weeks. Oh, the happiness. Oh, the joy. Oh, the glory of offering myself up as a sacrifice to such beasts. Gah! .

Call me juvenile. Call me an adolescent throwback. Call me having a mid-life crisis. I don't care. I did it anyway. Yes, yes - I went to Manic Panic . I ordered Vampire Red hair dye. I just can't stand it anymore. There are too many rules here. Too much "clean your desk off, we have Important People visiting the office tomorrow". Too much wear the right clothes, wear the right shoes, drive the right car, toe the line, be on time, smile pretty, be polite and helpful and pleasant to everyone, especially the people who deserve it least. I've had enough. I must rebel. I must. .

I almost was one. I was this close: ||. But then I thought I should probably tell them that Ms. Baby is still breastfeeding (yes, she just turned two and yes, she's still breastfeeding and no, I don't plan to wean her until she's good and ready. so there. :D) and as it turns out, breastfeeding women do not make good endometrial tissue sample donors. Bummer. Bigtime, 'cuz they would have paid me $200/sample and I could have donated up to six samples, and that would have covered the launch of my freelance medical editing gig very nicely. With room to spare, probably. OK, I would have earned that $200 every single time, because I don't think endometrial tissue donation is, like, a really pleasant experience, involving as it does a speculum up your wa-zoo and dilation of your cervix... But hey - I survived two labors with no meds, so I think I probably could have hacked it. I mean, really, how long can it take? Not more than 10 minutes, 15 tops. Piece o' cake...

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...