Category: Writing

Stank and Circumspection

Do I need a break?

Right this moment, yep. The dog has eaten enough snow in the past week to give himself an upset stomach. Fortunately for us, it’s not the vomity kind. Unfortunately for him, it’s the gassy kind. He is scared of his own farts, so as best we can tell, he genuinely tries to hold them in while he’s awake.

He loves napping in my home office when I’m sitting at my desk. I’m on a video call right now with some of my fellow Novelry peeps. We get together for virtual silent writing hours during the week. If I wasn’t on mute, they’d be able to hear him snoring.

THOSE AREN’T SNORES.

THEY ARE FOUL.

THICKLY, STICKILY FOUL.

They aren’t sharts; I’ve checked (not this morning, but definitely multiple times this week). The smell is just stank, and what doesn’t get vented winds up trapped in his fur, so now and again, when he’s awake and ambiently around in other rooms of the house1, it seeps out, and Alexa and Siri are convinced I just start crying randomly in private for no apparent reason because Neither One of Them Can Smell.

I know they are, because they AreJustTryingtoHelp by selling these data points to pharmaceutical companies that keep pushing me ads for medications to treat Pseudobulbar Effect. I do not have Pseudobulbar Effect, and here’s why: a) I would be able to cry in public, and b) when I do cry in private, it is Always Because Something Stinks. For example:

the dog,

my favorite writing tool’s getting hacked2,

the current political climate,

my son’s turning twenty-one in this current political climate,

my mother’s being dead for ten years,

…and that it took me six days to write this blog post, which looks nothing at all like the original I intended, or its re-write, or its re-re-write before I tossed it and stared at laundry for a while, No I Wasn’t Crying It Was What Can Happen When I Sneeze I Blow Snot Out of My Eyes So Totally Attractive, Right?

I’m in public right now, virtually speaking. I’m fighting tears, thank you, dog, and when I was asked what my goal for the writing session was, I decided, screw it, a blog post is happening this morning, and my overthinking penguins will just need to cope. I will not care if they’re still unhappy with me for expressing so much anger in my last post.

I logged into WordPress, saw this daily writing prompt (“Do you need a break?“), and now here we are. Done!

  1. Say, by the front door, staring at the neighbors through the side glass while being too close to the entryway vent, which blows warm air that wafts upstairs (and downstairs, if the door to the basement is open). Does bathing him help? No, because a bath won’t stop him from eating snow. ↩︎
  2. Notepad++, which I have used for everything for years now. Even when I use an IDE for work or school, a specialized fiction-writing tool, or an Office suite component, I rough out my systems, code, character maps, invented languages, emails, Frustrations With The Universe, lions, tigers, and bears, oh, my in Notepad++ first, in the same way I used to use vi and XEDIT (the IBM 3270 version, not the little-x version used for Bethesda game modding). I uninstalled it after I learned about the hack, and will install a newer version once the dust settles, assuming my husband doesn’t convince me to go back to using UNIX for everything, or I text him from the side of the road somewhere deeper into rural Virginia to share pictures of the chickens and the goats I just picked up for the farmette and chat about the source I’ve found for wine grapes, What?It’llBeFunHoney!

    I roughed out today’s blog post in the new version of Windows Notepad. It made me miss the old one, which I used heavily before I switched to Notepad++. ↩︎

Contingent upon Avoidance

So it’s December now. Today’s my personal New Year’s Eve. Tomorrow’s also the twelve-month anniversary of my finally acknowledging that the 2025 family math wasn’t going to work with both my husband and me having weekdaily 120 minute commutes (on good days).1 Fortunately, he’s still right about our being okay.

For now.

Continue reading “Contingent upon Avoidance” →

Avoiding The Subject

I’m deliberately avoiding talking about what I’m working on.

-“Underlining the Ephemeral“, August 5, 2025.

… but in my newly copious free time, in addition to spending more time not doing so well the things I wasn’t doing so well when I wasn’t on this unexpected sabbatical, I’m crawling through the second draft of that rural noir I’ve been hinting at. I also just started(ish) brainstorming(ish) a post-apocalyptic fantasy, because I decided to participate in The Novelry’s The Big Write.

Continue reading “Avoiding The Subject” →

Underlining the Ephemeral

Last week, my husband realized that I’d started blogging again. I thought I’d warned him last fall, but it’s just as likely that I warned his imago, or at least that’s what he’d claim if I suggested that he might have just forgotten, say … like for some completely random example, one of his work shirts stuffed into the couch cushions. It’s also just as likely that his imago would say that. It’s a thirty-year-old response model, and honestly, it’s freaking fantastic … even if my saying that in front of people might…

What?

Er, sorry. Never mind. Hi!

Continue reading “Underlining the Ephemeral” →

Looking Through The Back Glass

I was thinking about Mema last week more than I noticed until yesterday. Sometimes I do that with thoughts: I look them over, nod, and toss them onto the library cart for re-shelving. Better than ninety-five percent of the time, that works like it’s supposed to, despite my mental library’s being staffed by penguins.

That less than five percent, though, y’all? When the system breaks down, it can result in ideas I can’t shake for days, or worse, not until I translate the root disturbance into bad poetry to trap its troublesome ass so it no longer vexes me.

Yesterday’s system failure was not so dramatic. Or maybe I’m understating the drama, because it really doesn’t compare to the current drama going on with our septic system, but … that’s another pile of crap. Literally.

Continue reading “Looking Through The Back Glass” →

Spring Cleaning, Dementedly

There’s nothing wrong with your eyes: I did change the blog format. Actually, I messed around with it so much last week that I got disgusted and walked away without even writing a blog post. Trust me, you didn’t miss anything exciting. Chaotic? Unexpected? Not great? Also surprisingly good? Yep, all of these things did happen last week.

This week, I talked myself into attending a writers’ social. There were writers. They were social. Nobody ran away screaming, and I didn’t slip out the nearest exit at the first opportunity … okay, I didn’t actually get an opportunity to do that, but it was fine. Completely fine! Everything will be okay, except for the things that aren’t and won’t be.

The spring cleaning continues. I stumbled across a cache of old micro and flash fiction that I used to have posted here and various other places, and decided to put some of it back online. I’ll be doing that gradually over the next few weeks, as I continue to procrastinate about things to blog about my spring cleaning.

Spring Cleaning, Ontologicaldociousnessly

I didn’t hear from the potential employer this week, either. It’s fine. Everything’s crazed right now, so I honestly wasn’t expecting to. I spent most of the week spring cleaning. Correction, I spent part of the week planning how I was going to tackle spring cleaning, and the rest of the week accumulating schedule-cruft that’ll need to be factored into executing the spring cleaning plan.

Yes, I may put the ‘er … hi’ into overthinking.

Speaking of cleaning, I … augh. I should explain. I was one of those annoying teenagers who wrote poetry, but worse: I started when I was in my tweens.

I didn’t willingly call it poetry; grownups did, and I just quickly agreed with them so they felt right enough to change the subject before they could notice my discomfort, or worse, want to talk about what I was actually doing. I was lining up words and gleefully sharing them with the universe because I wanted to boot them and their gluey mood-baggage out of my skull. Out, git, scram, leave me alone, go find someone else to bother.

Since I wasn’t a poet and would never be one, I didn’t feel I had to follow any poetry rules, such as paying attention to syllables.1

In some ways, I have never grown up. Now and again, I accumulate stacks of words that need to be chucked onto the curb for bagged waste pickup.

Here’s the latest one:

To hide
I undress
To dissemble
I disassemble
To repent
I rebuild
To reveal
I redress

I’m sorry, and I would promise never to do it again, but I’m pretty sure I can’t. I did make a new page to stick all this stuff on, so at least it’ll be out of the way from here on out.

  1. Ms. Samford, if you ever stumble across this blog, please accept my apology for resisting learning haiku and cinquain. I did eventually make a begrudging peace with sonnets. ↩︎

Move Slow, Carry a Broom

Happy not-Monday, February, or pre-Super Bowl week, whichever you celebrate. If you’re celebrating, that is. If you’re not, that’s completely understandable, because…

Dang, I’m in this weird mental space1 of feeling like I dodged a bullet by leaving my last role and guilty that I didn’t stick it out to face the mess alongside the people I was working with, never mind how unreasonable doing that would have been. All the reasons I needed to walk are still just as valid as they were in December and as unrelated to the current Great Collapsing Hrung Dis … I mean kerfluffle.

Other than that, I don’t have a lot of things to say, interesting or otherwise2. I did succeed in killing another vacuum, a picture of which is on Instagram3. That’s been the third vacuum since we’ve gotten the dog. We should probably stick to using a broom on the carpet.

  1. Yeah, it’s equipped with inner Musak. I’ve had “Fortnight,” the chorus of “I Had Some Help” (most noticeably when I’m cleaning), and “Nosedive” stuck in an earworm loop for a few days now. I’m sure this will clear up once we’re out of endless February and I’ve clawed my way up past the rubble. ↩︎
  2. Writing’s happening. Professional Education … isn’t yet. My home office plants have perked up enough to stare at the back of my head and plot vengeance. I think. I’m a little afraid to turn around to look at them. ↩︎
  3. Oh, yes, I also succeeded in joining Instagram! It only took, uhm, a while. My username there (nine.penguins) is a throwback to my old LiveJournal, which I swear I took down a long time ago, but it’s still apparently online. At least the earlier posts of Modus Dementi have had the decency to stay in their box, seriously, y’all … I just can’t even. ↩︎

Chaotic Ambitious

Past sabbaticals on this side suggest I’ll have the daily domesticity under control within a month.
– “In Absentia, Refactor” 12/29/2024

The current “under control” daily domesticity trend line looks more like a chicken chase than I had anticipated last month, but it hasn’t stalled. Overdue maintenance has taken more of a priority than I expected, as well as juggling with weather-related schedule changes. All of the birthdays in my household are winter ones, so over time, all of our annual medical appointments have drifted to this quadrant of the calendar. Every year around this time, I spend an increasingly unpredictable amount of time trying and failing to move storm fronts with the power of my mind1.

But I’m still writing every day2, and I’ve convinced myself to start working on renewing one of my certifications. I have watered my sad home office plants, but I am still trying to figure out a better situation for them.

I’ll call January a personal success. Here’s to a Happy Lunar New Year and an okay February!

  1. While I’m descended from a grandmother who could (hypothetically) scare a tornado into swerving, it looks like this talent skipped my generation. ↩︎
  2. I added a “post to blog every Monday” goal to this, so you will see more inane natterings from me. Today’s entry was supposed to be about politics, but, eh, I couldn’t do it. Maybe at some point, but not today. ↩︎