Downtime

Monday: Christopher Columbus was a terrible person, and Columbus Day is a stupid, stupid holiday. But after years of 1099 contracting, I am grateful for any paid day off. I didn't do any work today. This does not count. Nor does the laundry.

Some of my friends have been urging me and other friends to do less. Reject chronic busy-ness, reject overwork and overscheduling, and just be. "You're a human being, not a human doing," they say. "You're a person, not a productivity machine." "You're allowed to exist without having anything to show for it."  All true, I suppose, but that's not how I live my life. It's not how I roll. Like Toad, I'm a veritable slave to my to-do lists; and when I'm not doing something, I worry that I should be.

But I didn't do any work today. I went shopping and bought some new things. I went for a walk and waved to Running Lady. I took a nap while my kids watched "The Office" on Netflix. I did some housework. I read a book. It was delightful.

Tuesday: The best thing about an officially sanctioned weekday off is that no one else worked, either; so you're not behind. Everything was just as I left it on Friday. If not for the password reset debacle, it would have been a good day.

But there was a password reset debacle, and I have only myself to blame for it. Last week, I had to reset my password for the timecard system. Yes, that timecard system. I was sad that I had to reset the password, because first of all I hate resetting a password like I hate rodents and invasive medical procedures. And because my old password was awesome, comprising a sharply worded insult to the company that invented the timecard system and the required capital letter, number, and special character. It made me laugh every time I logged in, and that's worth something.

But I had to change it. And I decided to outdo myself and make an even funnier password. And so I did. I created a funny funny password, and I confirmed the funny password, and I completed the captcha, chortling with glee the whole time. What could have gone wrong? What could I have possibly have forgotten?

Yes, the super-creative password is the Internet version of hiding something so well that you'll never ever find it. I played chicken with the log-in screen, refusing to click on the stupid stupid "forgot your password?" link, knowing all the time that it would lock me out after too many unsuccessful attempts. And I made too many unsuccessful attempts, and it locked me out. And that was the end of that.

So after the system administrator bailed me out of Internet jail, I created a new password. And I wrote it down.

Which is good. Because it's hilarious.

*****

Thursday: I didn't actually skip a day here; I just wrote something that is becoming a little too long to be just a daily journal entry, so I'll expand on it a bit and post it next week. I'm sure you're all agog waiting to read it.  

Son of a birchtree

Monday: It's spring break now. The three male residents of my house are off for the week, but I'm working. It's a busy week, so if I don't start writing this now, then there won't be a post this week.  Too much to contemplate, I know.

I got mad at a writer today. Well that's not quite true. I got mad at a sentence.  A sentence so long and so convoluted, which took so many meandering turns and detours before finally reaching, in its own good time, a not-altogether-clear conclusion, that I had to read it five times before I finally figured out what it was trying to tell me.* And I still wasn't sure.

In a perfect world, I'll only have to read something once. But the fact that it's not a perfect world is one of the reasons that I have a job.  But still--three times is my limit. If I have to read the sentence more than three times in order to discern meaning, then I consider that the author is just having fun at my expense. And I'm not amused.

*****

Tuesday: Scene from the Greek cafe where we're picking up dinner after Confession:

Cashier (on the phone): What? I mopped last night!  I took out the trash, too. Check the camera! What? No, it wasn't my turn to do the bathrooms. Yeah. No, we're pretty slow today.

Cashier (to coworker, having hung up the phone): Yeah, he's all mad and yelling at me about the trash, and then I told him to check the camera, and he got real quiet. Hmpf.

*****

Wednesday: I'm supposed to be writing an article for our neighborhood newsletter. Instead, I'm shopping on Amazon and watching the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs (Columbus vs. Pittsburgh).

You know the scene in "Elf" when Buddy befriends the mailroom guy, who confides in Buddy that life in the mailroom isn't as glamorous and high-powered as it looks from the outside?

No? You haven't seen it? That's just ridiculous.

Forget that entire last paragraph. I'm going to just assume that my many readers are decent members  of society, who have seen "Elf." Anyway, when you watch that scene (three times a year, minimum), don't you think to yourself, "Wow. That's the oldest-looking 26-year-old I've ever seen. Sunscreen, you know? Antioxidants. Something." Well, that's what I was thinking about as I watched 29-year-old Phil Kessel and the Pittsburgh Penguins demolish the Columbus Blue Jackets. No particular reason; it just popped into my head.

*****

Thursday: It turns out that Android OS is yet another thing that's more polite than me. The Capitals are playing Toronto tonight in round 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Toronto scored, a minute and 35 seconds into the first period, while I was at the grocery store shopping for Easter dinner ingredients.

Naturally, I was somewhat perturbed, and I tried to text "Son of a bitch" to my husband. You know, when you type the word "son" on an Android device, the predictive text function will suggest "of a" as next words. What do you think should come next? I can tell you what Android OS thinks should come next: "By," "but," or "boy;" but not "bitch."

I added an i, which refined my selections to "bit," "bin," and "bill." Even when I added a t, Android refused to cooperate. It offered me "bite," "bits," and "biting."

If cursing were a crime punishable by fine or imprisonment, then evidence that you typed the letters "son of a bitc," would be enough to convict you, I'm fairly sure. By adding the c, I felt certain that I had made my intentions clear and unambiguous.  So imagine my confusion when predictive text offered me one option, and one option only: Bitcoin. Son of a Bitcoin. This is the expression of dismay and anguish that Android believes is appropriate when your team gives up a goal just over a minute into the first game of the playoffs.  Ridiculous.

All's well that ends well.  The Capitals made the game rather interesting, as they tend to do, but they won in overtime and we're up 1-0 in the series.

*****

Friday:  Good Friday.

Question for Waze and Google Maps: Is "Proceed to highlighted route" meant to be helpful and instructive? I mean, if a person is even remotely capable of navigation using an actual map, would voice-directed satellite navigation apps be even necessary? Asking, as the Internet says, for a friend.

*****

Saturday: I have too much to do today.  This is why I'm sitting on the couch at 10 AM, drinking more coffee than I should and watching "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire." I like to think that I work better under pressure. There's no evidence that this is true, but I continue to procrastinate, telling myself that the adrenaline rush of panic will drive me to accomplish great things. I have no idea why I do the things that I do.  I'm a cotton-headed ninnymuggins.

*****
Later, but still Saturday. Still behind, but I've made some progress. I'm having a little bit of an indecision- and anxiety-fueled panic attack. Not a big deal. Just a little hard to breathe. I hate this time of year. T.S. Eliot was right.

(2 hours later.) That took an unexpected little turn there, didn't it? I'm back to normal now, whatever that means. I still can't decide how to cook the potatoes for tomorrow.  Maybe I'll drop them into a solution of vinegar and food coloring and pass them off as eggs.  Happy Easter.

*****

* That sentence suffered the same fate as the former Yugoslavia.  It's now a bunch of different sentences.

Curiouser and curiouser

Do you get credit for courage if you bravely approach and walk past what you believe to be a snake, which then turns out not to be a snake?  I was walking this evening, and saw what looked very much like a snake, coiled up in the middle of the road.  I walked toward it, intending to pass it as widely as possible, but to pass it nonetheless. It turned out to be a pair of baseball or golf gloves.  Don't ask me why they looked like a snake; just trust me that they did.  Had they been a snake, they would have bitten me.

*****

Strange things happen sometimes.  Today, a coworker who almost always brings Starbucks to work was instead drinking a homemade smoothie from a reusable travel tumbler.  Another coworker, who usually drinks a homemade smoothie every morning, was instead drinking takeout coffee from Dunkin' Donuts.  The first coworker almost always wears pants; today, she wore a skirt.  I almost always wear skirts; today, I wore pants.  What kind of through-the-looking-glass rabbit hole did I fall into, I wondered.  The rest of the day proceeded without incident, however.  Until the snake.

*****

It's May 18; Memorial Day is just over a week away.  So right now, I'm sitting on my couch wearing a sweater, as a fire crackles away in the fireplace.  The weeks of cold and rain have affected more than my mood; I feel like I have lost track of time and seasons, and am permanently anchored in some London-like place where it's always cool and misty and gray.   People do things that are just slightly off, just slightly out of character.  Things look like other things.  I boldly approach a snake and walk right past it.  Yes, it was an imaginary snake, but I didn't know that at the time.

Ain't nobody got time for that

I signed up with NaNoWriMo in November, because I wanted to really get started on my novel.  I knew that I didn't have the vaguest chance of actually finishing it in 30 days, and I didn't finish it in 30 days.  In fact, I just passed 50,000 words yesterday, and I think I have about 40,000 more before it will really be finished, which means that I'll have finished it in about a year.

Maybe a real writer can finish a novel faster than that, but I'm working full-time and up to my neck in lots of other projects, too, so I feel fine about that time frame.  I write for about 15 minutes a day, almost every single day (sometimes I take Sundays off.)  Every so often, I go back and revise. Sometimes, I cringe when I reread my own work, thinking "who would ever read this bilge?" Other times, I laugh out loud at my own funny funny dialogue, because no one laughs harder at my jokes than me.  It's not necessarily a humor novel, although there are funny parts.  At least I think they're funny, but I'm no judge, because I crack myself up.

*****

My husband wants me to go shopping with him to pick out tile and paint and fixtures for my bathroom, which is in dire need of repair, especially the floor, a horrid old stick-on vinyl hot mess that won't come clean no matter how hard I scrub it.  As badly as the bathroom needs attention, though, and as much as I want the project finished, I just can't bear the thought of spending hours in a home improvement warehouse picking out stuff.  Instead, I'm picking out tile and a vanity, etc., online, and we'll just pick it up at the store when it arrives. "But what if you don't like it?" my husband asks.  "Don't you want to see this stuff in person before you buy it?"  No.  No, I don't.  Even if the tile color is slightly off; even if the vanity doesn't look quite as nice IRL as it does online, it will be much better than what we have now, and that's all I need.

*****

When I was young and single, I read magazines.  Vanity Fair was my favorite; but I also loved Vogue, Mademoiselle, and Glamour.  I stopped reading magazines because the Web made them obsolete; and because I just didn't have time anymore.  Not only did I not have time to read the magazines; I didn't have time to live life the way the magazine writers said that I should.  If everyone did everything that magazine self-help articles advised--8 hours of sleep, daily structured workouts, organic paleo diet, the right clothes and hair and makeup--then no one would ever have time for anything other than self-care and maintenance.

I was busy before I started working full-time again, but now I'm ridiculously busy.  I can still accomplish things, though; I just have to set priorities and manage expectations.  I don't have time to shop and deliberate over fixtures, but I can still renovate my bathroom as long as I'm willing to live with whatever I can order sight unseen from the Internet.   I can write a novel as long as I don't need to act however a novelist is supposed to act.  I'm not sure how novelists are supposed to act, actually, but I'm pretty sure that they're not supposed to write two or three sentences at a time, for five or fifteen minutes at a time, while dinner is on the stove or coffee is brewing.  Eventually, I'll have a functioning bathroom and a book that might or might not be readable.  I'll also have 24 hours a day; same as everyone else.

Stranger things have happened

There's a lady in our neighborhood who runs every day, almost without fail.  Rain, shine, cold, heat, wind, snow; it doesn't matter.  Running Lady (we call her Running Lady, although I do know her real name) runs.

I used to joke about running.  If you ever see me run, I'd tell people, then you'd better run too.  Don't ask questions, don't waste time looking to see what's coming, just run.  The idea being that if I'm running, then something is chasing me; and you, to save your life, don't need to outrun whatever it is.  You only need to outrun me, and that's not hard.  The bar is pretty low.

Well, never say never, is what I always say (although I suppose you should never say always, either.)  Unpursued by anything life-threatening, I started to run a few weeks ago, and I feel strangely compelled to continue.  I'm really terrible at it, and I mean really terrible.  I'm slow, awkward, and lack endurance.

Every runner hits a wall at some point; for me, it's usually about 15 or 20 steps in.  That's no exaggeration.  I'm barely out of my driveway when I start to feel like I can't go on, but I push past it, and once I do, I can usually focus, for a few steps at least, on something other than how much I hate to run.  Each time I run now, the number of steps that I can run while thinking something other than "When can I stop? Now? Did I run a mile yet? No? Not quite two blocks? That felt like a mile.  Damn it," increases, and my determination to go just a few more steps grows.  Eventually, I stop and walk, and then I start running again.

I hope that someday, maybe even one day soon, I'll be able to run for longer distances and that the walking breaks will be fewer and shorter and farther between.  For now, I'll take what I can get.  I'm not planning to train for a marathon (even a 5K would be ridiculously ambitious at this point) but never say never.

Progress

It's November 2, and I'm behind schedule.  If I'm to finish writing a 50,000-word novel in the next 28 days, I'll need to step up my production considerably. I had the best intentions, of course.  I think I heard something once about good intentions paving a road that leads to somewhere; I just can't remember where.

Today was a day off from school, and my sons had friends over.  I did actually start to work, but when you hear someone say "Wait--don't start doing the whip and the nae-nae until you have the spacesuit on," how can you not stop what you're doing to investigate? And that wasn't even the most entertaining thing I overheard today.

The bad news is that I only wrote about 200 words (not counting these words.)  The good news is that I had a scathingly brilliant idea that might really pull the whole thing together.  200 down and 49,800 to go.  Onward.

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.