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”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”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”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”When I read that prompt, seven different things reenacted the Oklahoma Land Run with my mind.
Continue reading “First Person Cloture”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.
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.
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.
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!
I have a new former co-worker who insists I start writing again…
…I don’t know what to think about that right now, or even if I want to pencil in when I want to think about that.
– “In Absentia, Refactor” 12/29/2024.
After I turned in my work paraphernalia, I met the NFCW and another new ex-colleague for lunch. Thanks to the happy confluence of being within walking distance of a Vietnamese restaurant and not having any afternoon meetings, I got to have phở for the first time. It was as delicious as I had hoped, and I had zero regrets afterward about the food.1
The jury remains out on the aftermath of my lunch conversation with the NFCW, which picked up again via text while I was walking back to the nearest Metro station. She bet me a bottle of fancy brandy2 that I could come up with seven chapter titles by the time I got to my last stop on the Metro. There were seven stations on my way back.
I did it in five. I didn’t invest a lot of thought into coming up with the titles. I was paying more attention to her messages about the horrible date she’d had over the weekend and my inner argument about how ridiculous it was that my first reflex to figure out when I could distribute the boxes of holiday cookies I bought for the neighbors before dropping off my work stuff3 was to check my work calendar which I didn’t have a) access to anymore and b) a need to access anymore.
But, yes, yay, voilà, there the chapter titles were on the phone note I popped open when I sat down on the train, and they even seemed to fit together.
Huh.
Maybe not thinking so much can be a viable strategy?
Maybe?
Anyway, I’m trying it. Since I was already twitchy about no longer having a recurring 10:00 AM meeting, I decided to reclaim that timeslot for writing. I’ve consistently made that appointment. Unfortunately, I’m still struggling with4 making my biweekly 3:00 PM meetings, which I repurposed for professional education. I have a few certifications that will expire in 2025 if I don’t complete enough continuing education credits, and there are some others I’d like to earn while I’m on this vacation. I’ll figure it out.
Yes, I’m still calling it a vacation.
Modus Dementi 