Off-task

Well, that's no way to build an audience, is it?  After several weeks of stunning circulation figures (as many as 40 readers in a day!) production levels dropped to zero posts per week.  I shall have to account to my superiors for my lack of productivity.

Today has been something of an exercise in futility.  I've found that multi-tasking is far overrated; however, the habit of trying to do multiple things at once is so deeply ingrained that I can't break it now.  Just during the course of this post, I've clicked over to other tabs at least five times; I'm working on vacation-house searching (note: don't start looking for a beach house for August in June) and finishing a weekly newsletter.  Mild OCD and extreme ADD are not a good combination.  I'm always on task; it's usually just the wrong task.  Back to work.

Paved with good intentions

Isn't that how the road to hell is always described?

Yesterday, I was embroiled in a slight controversy, involving someone who said that she thought that I was trying to push her out of a job, when I thought that I had been helping her.  So much for the good intentions; they paved a one-way street to all-day minor-drama hell.  It all worked out; emails and texts were exchanged, and a long, emotional phone call put everything right.  

I think it did, anyway.  The other person said that she felt much better, and everyone else involved seemed relieved and satisfied at the resolution.  And I guess, after I washed off the tire tracks and then removed the clothespins that were holding me on to the clothesline where I had hung out to dry for a bit, that I felt better, too.  There's really no particular reason why I'd feel compelled to write about it in a veiled and mysterious manner the next day.  It's not like my feelings were hurt or anything.  

Fiction

I don't check my stats very often, because no one reads this bilge, except that apparently, a few people do.  24 pageviews in a day is nothing, of course, to real bloggers, but since my average is zero, it was pretty astonishing to see that 24 people had actually landed on this blog and possibly even read some of it.

Of course, I used to have readers.  I blogged regularly between 2007 and 2010, and lots of people used to read and comment.  Because of an unusual work situation, I had time to write and to read and comment at other people's blogs, which brought readers to my blog.  Then, in 2010 or so, I dropped off the face of the Internet for a while, not to return until late 2013.

Now I'm wondering if any of my literally dozens of readers noticed my rash threat to write a novel.  I'm not sure if I can live up to this or not.  I might need to be more careful about what I put in writing.

Every few days, give or take, I write the book

Who said that a talent for writing does not necessarily mean a talent for writing anything?  Everyone whoever sat at a keyboard, probably.  Reading novels is easy; writing them is not.

****

Never having attempted fiction, except for a short story that was required for my last college class, I'm finding that it requires a bent of mind that I probably don't have.  I like to write dialogue, but everything else is relentlessly hard.  Maybe I should try to write a dialogue-only novel (note to self: has this been done already? investigate) or maybe I should try to just adjust to the relentless hardness and continue with the one that I started.

****

It's been months since I wrote those paragraphs, and the novel has been set aside.  I like the voice of the main character (she reminds me of someone--who could it be?) but I can't figure out what to do with her.  I could:

1. Try to keep her in the situation she's in and see what happens.   That approach isn't working too well. 
2. Keep the character, but put her completely elsewhere.  I don't know where else she belongs, though, other than blue-collar Philadelphia circa 1986. 
3. Start all over.  New character, new setting, a completely new idea altogether. 

I think that I'll try 2 first.  If it doesn't work, and it won't, then onto Plan B, which in this case is Plan 3.  Tonight, though, I think I'll just go to sleep.  I'm too tired to write. 

You can't make some people happy

Those people being me, of course.  Just two days ago, I felt overwhelmed with work, not sure how I'd fit everything I needed to do this week into this actual week.  Just like that, though, some incoming work was delayed, and now I'm at a loss.

I learn something new every day, and one of the things that I'm just now learning about working from home as a contractor is to always have a back-up plan.  Not necessarily a back-up plan for making more money (although that, possibly, would not be a bad idea) but a plan for how to spend time set aside for work when the work fails to materialize.

A long to-do list, no matter how overwhelming, is pretty easy for me to manage.  Unscheduled blocks of time, however, are another matter altogether. In The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape explains to Wormwood that his job as a demon is to take a person's soul and to give as little as possible in return.  The demon's goal is to make the victim realize, far too late, that he wasted his life doing neither what he should have been doing nor what he wanted to do.  This is what I'm afraid of, every time I have unscheduled, un-spoken-for time.

This too shall pass, and probably much faster than I want it to.  Meanwhile, I have more work coming in tomorrow, but I think that I need two lists: What to Do if the Work Comes in on Schedule and What to Do if it Doesn't.  Foiled again,Wormwood. Foiled again.

Mise en scene

Among the occupational fantasies that I occasionally have (A teacher!  I should be a teacher!  No, I should have been an actress, but it's too late now.  Maybe an accountant!  I'm OK at math, and I'm very detail-oriented, but I do bounce checks...), jobs involving food almost never appear.  I don't really mind cooking that much, but I do hate to plan menus.  I think that I lack food imagination, and this is why it's always so hard for me to figure out what to make for dinner for today or for the week.

My husband came shopping with me one day last week.  This is rare.  I was happy to have help carrying the bags, but even happier to have help with dinner ideas.  "What do you want me to make for dinner tonight?"  I asked as we walked through the store.

"Oh, whatever you want is fine," he said.

"Wrong answer,"  I said.  "I need specific ideas."

"I don't know.  Whatever you make is good.  I'm sure you'll think of something."

"Nope," I said.  "Try again.  Remember: SPECIFIC."

He sighed.  "OK, how about tacos?  And that shrimp thing you make sometimes.  Can you make that this week?"

The tacos and shrimp dish idea gave me an idea for a third dinner menu, and I left the store with the very satisfying knowledge that I had dinner menus planned and supplied for the next three days.

The next morning, planning for how to manage work, volunteer work, and kids' activities, while still getting halfway decent meals on the table, I thought of doing several days' worth of prep work all at once.  Having cleaned out the refrigerator during the previous week, I had a beautiful cabinet full of clean and well-organized containers with matching lids.  45 minutes later, I had a beautiful refrigerator shelf stacked with containers filled with chopped red and green pepper, diced onion, chunks of cantaloupe and watermelon, sliced tomatoes and avocados, and neat little fluffy broccoli heads.  So pretty, in fact, that I hated the thought of having to use any of it, because it was so nice to open my refrigerator and see something that I could proudly show to any visiting nutritionists or diet experts.  That happens all the time.

"Prep cook," I thought!  "The perfect job!  Just me in the kitchen with my exemplary hand-washing habits and my outstanding knife skills!"

Two days later, I had more onions to chop.  This time, I couldn't summon the project-related energy and excitement.  I was no longer an expert prep cook, presiding over a perfect mise en place.   I was another sucker stuck in the kitchen, wiping away onion tears.  So much for occupational fantasies.  I'll stick with what I know, and what I know is that I am very good at cleaning the house.  I could probably turn that into a business.

Pins and needles

I'm the opposite of a hoarder, almost to a fault.  Because clutter bothers me, I'm quick, sometimes far too quick, to purge, recycle, donate, trash, or otherwise dispose of things that don't appear useful at the moment.  This seldom gets me into trouble, but I do feel guilty (often) about having such a surfeit of stuff that it's necessary, or even possible, to get rid of things.  It's easy to forget that the world of plenty, in which an item broken or trashed can always be replaced, is not guaranteed to continue for any length of time.

My preoccupation with the gulag was preceded by a childhood preoccupation with the Holocaust (I was a sunny and upbeat child,for sure.)  In one of my favorite books, I Am Rosemarie, a Jewish female inmate at Westerbork is accused by an SS guard of having stolen three needles while sweeping the SS mess hall.  As punishment, he orders that the entire women's camp will go unfed for three days.  Another woman pleads with him: She will find and return three needles if he'll only allow them their very meager rations.


Three needles.  Big deal, right?  But even the barest necessities were in extremely short supply in wartime Europe, and the women of Westerbork have less than the barest necessities.  Stripped of almost all of their possessions, most of them have nothing but the clothes that cling in tatters to their bodies.  Maybe one woman, dragged from her bed at three in the morning, had the foresight to grab a needle and thread before she was thrown into the Gestapo wagon, but three?  Impossible.  And the commandant, knowing perfectly well that they'd have an easier time finding one needle in all of the haystacks in Europe than in the barracks at Westerbork, agrees, but he ups the ante: TEN needles.  If the women can find and bring him ten needles by the end of the day, he'll feed them.  If not, then the already dangerously malnourished camp will go without food for three days.

******

Just a few days ago, I found a needle with a little bit of thread on the floor.  I was vacuuming the family room, on the opposite end of the house from where I keep my sewing box.  I almost never sew.  An occasional ripped seam or missing button is about the limit of my skill and inclination to sew, and I didn't remember having done even that much within recent memory.  Still, there was the needle.

I have a whole box full of sewing stuff.  I also have a little travel sewing kit in my overnight bag.  If the Gestapo were to demand ten needles by the end of the day, I could give them 20 without even looking hard.  I was tempted to just throw this one away, rather than to walk ALL THE WAY TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HOUSE to put the stray needle back in my sewing box.   I kept the needle, though, returning it to its proper place in the box.  I also kept the safety pins that I found on my son's dresser, carefully distributing them among my various purses (see? so many purses that I need to spread the safety pin wealth around.)  Those safety pins could be urgently needed one day, and I'll be prepared. 

*******

Miraculously, the women  managed to find ten needles, and a tiny piece of paper to pin them to.  They paid the bounty and were spared from starvation for a few more days.  I Am Rosemarie is a novel, but it was based on Marietta Moskin's actual wartime experience, and the needle story might have been true.  Who knows when pins and needles might make the difference between life and death?

I learn something new every day

1. For example, there's a reason why wooden spoons shouldn't go in the dishwasher. 
2. The heating element in a dishwasher gets very hot.  
3. Even wet wood will burn. 
4. I don't handle computer- or technology-related stress very well at all. 
5. Psych.  I already knew that. 
6. Seriously, I completely lose my already-tenuous grip on reason when my computer does something that I don't want it to do. 
7. Anyway, at least the house hasn't burned down. 
8. Yet. 

Open mouth, insert food

"No, not Spanish Fly.  Spanish RICE."

Sometimes, a conversation is funnier imagined than heard.

My children are 13 (almost 14) and 10 now.  I had to attend a meeting tonight, and my husband texted me at the last possible minute that he had been delayed at work.  I had already made dinner, with the idea that my husband and the boys could just warm it up after they got home from work and swim practice, respectively.

With my husband delayed, I had to let the kids know that they'd be on their own after practice, and that they could just warm up the food and eat by themselves.  I left written instructions: taco meat 30 to 45 seconds, Spanish rice 30 seconds, taco shells 10 to 15 seconds, no aluminum foil, lids, or spoons. .

45 minutes or so into my meeting, my phone rang.  My 10-year-old's first words were "Mom, do you remember how you wrote no aluminum foil and no lids?"

"Oh no," I thought. "Yes, I remember.  What happened?"

"Nothing, but we wanted to make sure that we're supposed to keep the rice and the meat in the bowls."

My fellow PTA board members had to wait a few minutes for me to regain my composure.  After I caught my breath and wiped the tears away, I explained.   The funniest thing was not the idea that I'd just narrowly escaped having a microwave full of uncontained meat and rice, but imagining the several minutes of earnest discussion that had probably taken place just before they called me.  Are you sure we're supposed to use the bowl?  I mean it says no aluminum foil and no lids, but it doesn't say to keep the stuff in the bowls, right?  What should we do?  Should we just try it?  Maybe we should just eat it cold.  Hold on, we should call her.  You call her.  No, you call her.  OK, I'll call her.

Maybe more detailed instructions next time. Bon appetit.

A list

Frog and Toad is, in many ways, the sum of all wisdom. If you're not familiar with the stories, you should remedy that right away. Cliff Notes:  Frog and Toad are a large, upbeat, energetic, optimistic frog and a small, dumpy, fearful, neurotic toad who are best friends. In almost every Frog/Toad scenario, I am Toad.

In one of my favorite Frog and Toad stories, "A List", Toad decides to write everything he needs to do for the day on a list. Beginning with "wake up," and proceeding through "eat breakfast," "brush teeth," and "get dressed," he lists every single thing that he needs to do. Toad is absolutely delighted with the simple ingenuity of his plan, which will allow him to efficiently plan his day and accomplish everything he wants to accomplish.

If it didn't get crossed off the list, then it didn't happen.

"Oh, that is very nice," says Frog, in typical kind and indulgent fashion, when Toad enthusiastically shares his list with his friend. Frog, of course, lives in the moment, and it would never occur to him to waste time in the first place, so he would never have to worry about making a list to be sure that things get done. Frog just gets things done.

Frog invites Toad for a walk; Toad, consulting his list, notes with satisfaction that "take walk" is in fact one of his listed activities for the day, and the two happily set out for a walk through the woods.

It's a beautiful day in the woods, but it's windy, and the wind carries Toad's list away just as he's checking to see what happens after the walk. Toad, being Toad, panics. Frog, being Frog, reassures Toad and calmly and reasonably advises Toad to run and catch his list.

Wait for it.

Toad CAN'T run after his list of things to do, because running after his list of things to do isn't on his list of things to do. Frog runs after the list, but it's gone, lost forever.

******

I have learned a few things about myself, and one of them is that if I'm not held to account in one way or another, I'll postpone and procrastinate and forget about all of the hated minor chores that always seem to be hanging over my head. If I didn't make a list, no phone call would ever be returned, no email ever written, no bill ever paid. So I make lists; weekly lists and daily lists. But just like Toad, I don't just need the list to make sure that I'll do everything that needs doing. I need it to feel the sense of accomplishment that comes only with crossing an item off a to-do list.

Lists, in fact, have to be very specific. If I have two returns to make, then I list them separately. After all, I might only have enough time to get to one store on a particular day, and it would be just terrible to have completed a task, but then be unable to claim the reward of crossing it off the list, because it's only half-finished. Worse still is to tackle a particularly irksome chore, and then gleefully run for my list, only to find that I FORGOT TO WRITE THAT THING DOWN IN THE FIRST PLACE.

******

That was a break; I had to recover my composure.

At the end of "A List," Toad, despondent, sits for a few minutes doing nothing. He has lost his list; there's no hope of retrieving it, and so he can't do anything now, anything at all. Necessity is the mother of invention though, and Toad doesn't live in the woods for nothing. He finds a stick, and writes "go to sleep" on the ground, and goes peacefully to sleep. His day now completely crossed off, Toad is finally able to rest.

It's been a long, though productive work day. My weekly list grows longer by the day, but I was able to firmly cross out two things, and I feel hopeful about my crossing-off prospects for tomorrow, too. Good night.