Laundry

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…exactly when the universe tends to decide to drop more Bright Shiny Objects into my life. Or Dark Spiky Objects, because it’s 2016, and I am beginning to think that as a planet we’ve hit a cloud of them like we haven’t seen since, oh, maybe 1968.

-from Points on a Woogedy Timeline.

As soon as I posted last week’s blog post, I learned that Gene Wilder died. Forget that I predicted anything outside my own little universe. And that universe? Yeah, it’s predictable, but only in its unpredictability.

I’m writing this blog post on Monday like I’d intended, longhand, in a notebook I have sitting on top of the dryer while I’m putting away laundry. Today’s exchange rate is ten pieces of put away laundry for each paragraph — and why am I not just putting away the laundry, then writing the blog post? Or writing the blog post, then putting away the laundry? Don’t I know that multitasking is the new Bad for You?

Of course I do.

I’m using laundry as cover. It’s a holiday, and everyone’s here, and the work project that kept me up until 1:00 AM each night since Thursday is done, and laundry needs to be done and this blog post doesn’t1, and I really don’t want to be even more antisocial-except-for-all-those-interruptions-that-kept-happening-until-everybody-else-went-to-bed, but I also kind of want to, because I’m crispy around the edges and more unhappy with the universe than I want to be, and if I’m noticing my own foul mood, I imagine it’s pretty bad, so it’s better I’m just not around people until it’s sorted.

Fortunately, there’s laundry. There’s always laundry.

Nobody here can argue that laundry doesn’t need to be done, because it always does. It’s not been suggested that the laundry should be someone else’s problem to deal with, because I’m not being paid enough to deal with laundry, and that my time is too valuable to waste doing it.

I don’t even suggest that to myself.

So, laundry makes good cover. Are you working again, Shai? No. I’m doing laundry.

And, yeah … also writing a blog post, because my brain is too fried to go work on that Coursera stuff I couldn’t touch this past week, in part due to a Dark Spiky Object that ate about twelve hours of otherwise uninterrupted time that I could have used for something else.  Not that work project, no, because that came up after the DSO incident.

1

You now NEED OnPage SEO.

-more #spamadvice from a mailbot whose owner doesn’t actually read this blog. My blog posts do not need to be fluffed, filled and promoted, because I don’t earn money from them. I just need to take them out of the dryer right away and hang them up, else they’ll be a pile of wrinkles and have to go back through the washer again, because ironing? Screw that. I don’t have that kind of time.

2This week was the first time I was hired for a gig that turned out to be a scam. The scammers executing it managed to keep their ugly covered until I was in Day #2 of a “training session”, and yeah, that did rattle me. Oh, sure, not enough to keep me quiet (even though I didn’t lose anything other than my time); I went directly to the fraud department of the legitimate corporation the scammers had been claiming to represent behind identities stolen from people who did in fact work for that corporation. It was … aggravating. I do have better things to do. Like laundry.

Freaking laundry.

Points on a Woogedy Timeline

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Woogedy (woo-geddy) was a word I grew up hearing1; [x] is woogedy or woogedy [x] translates to “[x] will progress or is progressing, but the progression will be/is neither in a direct nor predictable manner”, comme ça:

curvy-road-ahead-sign-01

Having woogedy in my vocabulary made it possible for me to understand one of my Most Favorite Short Stories Ever (Alfred Bester’s “Galatea Galante”) as soon as I accidentally read it as a young’n2, without needing to know what the heck a Drunkard’s Walk was.

So, this week?  Woogedy life is woogedy. I’ve made it to Week #3 of that Coursera course, yep, Week #3 and there’s only four. Only four, so I am so close to finishing it that I can almost taste it … which is exactly when the universe tends to decide to drop more Bright Shiny Objects into my life. Or Dark Spiky Objects, because it’s 2016, and I am beginning to think that as a planet we’ve hit a cloud of them like we haven’t seen since, oh, maybe 1968.

History books strongly suggest (to me, anyway) that year also sucked. I can’t say much of it was my fault, since I wasn’t born until that December. Nor can I take much credit for our going to the moon the following year, even though I’ve been told I was genuinely fascinated by all the news about space … as opposed to just staring into space so intently that I look blurry in almost all of my candid baby pictures.3

We did go to the moon in 1969, though. We also managed to get through the Cold War without blowing ourselves up, so we didn’t terminally screw things back then — and  though we’ve had as many setbacks as we’ve had successes, there are still signs that as a whole, we’re still growing and learning more about our universe, despite some of us being hellbent on keeping us locked in windowless dark basements listening to the mice chewing the insulation while telling ourselves they’re all Godzillas.

And I’m rambling … because I’m also woogedy. I sat down to bang this out in an hour, and while it’s probably been about an hour of writing on this, there have been many, many Do Now Objects between when I sat down and now, and probably there will be many more before I finish this.

Today is the Monster’s first day of Middle School. He got up, got dressed, ate most of his breakfast, then noticed that we hadn’t taken out the garbage and recycling yet, so he wandered away from his breakfast and took care of that before getting on the bus.  When I was eleven, I wouldn’t have wandered away from shoving breakfast in my face before school to take out the garbage, no matter how necessary it was to get done.

So, I got some sun in my eyes, and got all misty about The Monster’s not being where I expected him to be, but still growing and learning, and being exactly where he needs to be on his woogedy.4

We’ll be okay. The rest of 2016 will probably find new ways to suck, but we will be okay. Eventually. Overall, we are still better than we were.

Except for the laundry.

Freaking laundry.
—

1 I did some quick prepost research to see if woogedy was a genuine word, or just one lifted from (what is becoming increasingly apparent and a little uncomfortable making) my family’s invented dialect … which, yes, I’ve spread to my husband and son, and good grief, maybe that’s how language starts in the first place. Woogedy was apparently used in a kid’s cartoon series called Rocket Power starting back in the very late ’90s. I’ve never seen the series — as a semi-grown person then with not a lot of time I wanted to spend watching television, I was only following this obscure cult cartoon called The West Wing. I’m sure you’ve never heard of it. [INSERT APPROPRIATE EMOJI HERE]

2While I’d repeatedly read every science reference book I could get my hands on by that point5, I wasn’t introduced to science fiction until 1980, when Tara Thompson, one of my middle school classmates, got stuck with my name for the classroom gift exchange. She had no clue what to get me, but knew I liked books and I liked science, so she gave me Terry Carr’s The Best Science Fiction of the Year #9, which probably wasn’t appropriate reading for a just-turned-twelve year old but heck, since it wasn’t a romance novel6, my grandmother and mother didn’t mind, and that’s what mattered.

3The Monster inherited this trait.

4The Monster is more even-keeled than I was at eleven, and more cheerful than @bhoneydew was at the same age, and is still more of an athlete than both his parents will ever be, unless we snap and start doing Ironmans (which he’d want to do too, and be better at it than both of us, so vicious cycle).

5If I didn’t understand things then, I just kept reading them until I could make them make sense, and honestly, that hasn’t changed all that much now that I’m a little further along on the grownup trajectory. We do have Google now, which does make that process faster.

6I was reading those, too, just when they weren’t looking — especially the ones they’d thought they’d hidden under the dryer in the bathroom.

Working Through The End of Summer List

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Since July 12th, I’ve…

  • Made two week-long-away-from-home business trips. These are the first I’ve been on since The Monster was a year old.
  • Turned in multiple projects, including one co-written while on flights back home. Let me tell you, having wireless on an airplane is fantastic, both when it works and when it doesn’t (because if I hadn’t had that involuntary nap on connector flight #2, I would have never stayed awake long enough once I got home to finish the project).
  • Done a lot of laundry. There have been a number of times I’ve seriously reconsidered my life choices because of the amount of freaking laundry that’s been done and It Still Keeps Coming Back. Other times, I’ve just wanted to cry into the fresh clean clothes that I’d bought two washes ago, and they fit fine until after their second wash.  Just wanted to cry.  Those were The Monster’s clothes.  Had they been mine, I would have definitely been booing the hoo.
  • Managed to get in only one workout, and my eating wasn’t consistent enough to be called a habit. I gained ten pounds one week, dropped twelve the next, gained four back, lost ten … yes, just nuts.  I am genuinely looking forward to getting my butt kicked at the gym again — and all of that will resume once the Monster starts back to school.  Will the meal planning also resume?  Let’s hope.  Though I must say, I did manage two planned dinners so far this week, so I’m kind of excited.1
  • Signed up for my first charity walk. It’s a walk, not a run, but it’s for the same cause who had that charity run I freaked out about four years ago. I’m healthier than I was then, at least physically.  Mentally?  It’s okay, you can say “jury still seems to be out on that, Shai”.
  • Made it to Week #2 of another Coursera course.  Will I succeed in finishing this one? Tune in next month, after I start the on-line networking2 class that I’m taking to keep my enrollment current so I can get back into this spring’s on-campus PL/SQL course and finish my freaking data certificate.  Yes, while I’m going back to the gym, and working, and trying to figure out why it is Taking So Long to get the patio finished. Oh, and that bioscience Coursera course that I so wanted to take this spring?  It has another session in September, so, there’s that too…
  • In the quest to let more positive energy into my life…

…yes, I did just type that, I’m sorry. I couldn’t think of a less fluffy way to say it. I’ve been Twittering along with an author named Kathy Grubb (@10MinNovelist) for, oh, probably a few years now.  She’s a sunny person who has figured out a way to herd her cats and flatten her dragons while also making sure her goals stay important to her3, and as an extra bonus, achieving those goals in the process.  I admire the heck out of that, and since I’ve wound up wading in the Facebook, I decided to splash over and check out the pool where she and other similarly minded folks hang out.

To my delight, it’s been a wholly non-toxic experience.  The group’s also active enough to drown out a lot of the unhappy-making stuff that still manages to creep into my Facebook feed, despite my best efforts not to paint my own wall with troll poop.

The one downside?  The group encourages their members to share their blog posts, so you might be seeing more of these from me in future.  Notice that I’m saying might.

1I’m not kidding.  I do get excited over tiny things like that these days.
2Computer networking, not people networking. Yes. Even though I’ve worked in that field and taken classes in that … yes. Don’t get me started on how many credits I’ve lost in transfers because they were over ten years old.
3Emphasis wholly mine, because I’ve always found it easy to toss or change my goals and objectives in reaction to circumstances instead of sticking with them.

In The Muddle

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Excellent note, one of the best I have seen. The explanation is correct in every way.
-#SpamCommentary

It is taking me days to write this post. I found the SpamCommentary quote on May 24th, and I’m typing these words on May 30th, when I should be getting up and going to the store because even though I’d planned for all the food this weekend, I didn’t get the meal plan together for this week, and it’s Monday, and I’m not on the telephone, so I should be getting up and going to the store, though I could be working on the project that’s due on Wednesday, or the one that’s due in early September.

I’m getting up and going to the store.

—

It’s July 12th. I should be working on the project that’s due on Wednesday, or getting up and going to the store, or any of the easily a dozen other things that need to be done, but I stumbled across this old draft post that I’d forgotten about, and decided to finish it instead of just deleting it.

Yes, that is rare for me. I tend to stop more things than I ever finish, and often delete them when I stumble on them again — assuming I don’t get fed up with them or myself (it’s usually myself) and choose not to save them at all. I rarely suffer from anguish or guilt when I do this, which probably says there’s something deeply wrong with me, but, hey, it’s not like I’m kicking puppies, right?

Not much has changed since last week, other than the Monster’s coming down with chicken pox. Yes. He’s been vaccinated. He’s had both doses. He still has chicken pox, so his schedule for the week’s right out the window, which frankly bothers us more than it does him.

And that’s … yep. That’s about it. See, there’s utterly nothing exciting happening that’s been distracting me from blogging!

p.s. We’re not even playing Pokemon Go.

Staying Put

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Spring’s happened.

I feel better.

We achieved our fourth year in Northern Virginia.  Our boy’s starting a great middle school this fall.  We have no obvious plans to move. We’re celebrating by getting a stamped concrete patio/outdoor kitchen.

Yes, we do know how much the universe likes to screw with any plans we make to stay put.  We’re doing it anyway, so, nyah.

And that’s … yeah, that’s about it.  We have house guests staying with us until they get into their place in August, and that’s been fun.  It’s also come with an unexpected bonus:  @bhoneydew and I have gotten some date nights, which really hasn’t happened since we moved from PA.  We got to have dinners at Places That Did Not Serve French Fries and see both Captain America: Civil War and ID2 In A Theater As They Were Intended To Be Seen, which was awesome.  Between that and it being pleasantly (surprisingly non-humid) warm out on those nights, it was almost like we were back in California.1

I see you don’t monetize your website
I noticed that your On-Page SEO is is missing a few factors
-the most recent #SpamObservations

I’m beginning to suspect that the spam bots don’t actually read my blog.

1I miss that about California.  Not Bay Area home prices.  I also do not even want to think about the hoops we’d have to jump through to get the Monster into a good school situation out there.

Catching Up

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Appreciating the persistence you put into your site.

-the latest #spamcommentary

What I Am Saying:

Hahahahahahahaha.

So, February sucked.

March was a little better. I’m getting into the groove with the new full time gig (which appeared out of the middle of nowhere while I was fighting fires the week I got back from Mom’s funeral1): put two large projects to bed before I headed back to Arkansas to help my sister do triage on Mom’s stuff, and managed to take care of a small project while I was doing that triage. There are still lingering embers from the early February fires, but hopefully hopefully they’ll be burned out by some point in April. Of course, I said that to myself about the fires in December. And the ones in September. And the ones last April. And the ones in December 2014.

I dropped my PL/SQL refresher. I was doing well in it — in the interests of full disclosure, I’m only taking it because the PL/SQL class I had didn’t transfer — but life had decided not to cooperate with my wanting to take a class on Tuesday nights. On that note, I haven’t looked at a single lecture for the Coursera bio class I signed up for. Not. A. Single. One. Nope. I’ll get things figured out eventually, or at least enough to fake it.

What I Am Not Saying:

As a child, I did science
To contain and explain
Madness
I wanted to be more
Than flesh and bone,
Hormones and hysteria
I knew … like I knew everything
That logic could
Let me leap out of the mud
Allowing me to fly
Through even God’s fingers

It did.

In college, science didn’t want me
I was too mad to love
My logic all circumstantial,
Conditional,
Anecdotal
Poetry was a better fit
But I knew … like I still knew everything
That poetry could
Starve me so much
That my meat and its needs
Would betray me
Crushing me back into the dirt

I did not give it that chance.

In adulthood, I have said
I am not that
I was this instead
I do not do that
I said
I did this instead
And I will be
And I was someone else
And I will do
And I did something else
But in truth, I have just done
Only what a bee does
Fading flower to brighter flower to next flower
But dumping my cargo
So I won’t be forced to land

There is no more ground to fear now
And I am no longer as certain of the sky
Or that I know anything.

 

1Yeah, I did see it as a sign.

Signs and Portents

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You’re so cool!
This site is something that is needed on the web, someone with a bit of originality!
The latest #spamflattery (full marks for its being grammatically correct).

Quick update this week.

On the morning of February 1st, I wrote the first draft of a writing-related post. I had intended to tell you guys that I’d had a productive writing session the night before, and had not only figured out where to put the assassin, but had crafted the main storyline for the trilogy and more importantly (at least for me), figured out the damn names for each book.

Then breakfast had to happen, and the Monster needed to be herded toward school, and then my sister called (as @bhoneydew was walking toward his car, bag in hand, to head in to work) to tell me Mom was dead.

So, yeah, I didn’t get back to that post that week. Or last week. Or most of this week. Yeah, I have been crazy stressed (in a soak-up-others’-stress like a sponge one week, and deal-with-work-related-disasters the rest), and super busy, but I’m coming out from under that cloud.

We almost ran over a groundhog yesterday when we were taking the Monster to his horseback riding lessons. I’m afraid I might have laughed inappropriately. You see, that means Spring Is Coming!

“What do you want?”
Mr. Morden, “Signs and Portents”, Babylon 5, Season 1, Episode 13

I want spring, damn it.