Chicks-n-Scratching

Archive for the ‘gripes’ Category

Really? This can stop any time.

Normally, in any given year, my area will get one, maybe two big winter storms. Even so, those are more often ice than snow, and they aren’t that big. The largest accumulation I’d seen (aside from my visit to the Rockies) was the nearly 36 inches we got in the Blizzard of ’96 in DC. That was a lot of snow. But here – um… maybe a foot or so? And that’s it. No more. Oh, alright, maybe a dusting.

This year? About 18 inches of snow. Followed by nearly 2 feet of snow. Followed by another 8 inches or so. And another 3 inches. And some ice. And, just to keep things fun, some sleet.

That’s over 4 feet of snow. In Central Virginia. Not in the Shenandoah Valley. Not in the mountains. In the middle of Virginia. Not counting the ice and sleet.

Yeah. I’m ready for some not-snow. Maybe my kid can go to school for more than one day in a week. Crazy, I know.

But I can dream, right?

Yes, I did.

I was on the elevator going home this morning after a semi-long shift and two people got on with me. Not on my floor, but as I’m in descent down the elevator shaft toward the D level.  On the 1st floor, a doctor got on and hits the D button. Um…you might have an MD, but you must not have noticed I had already pushed the button. (None of that was said out loud, only in my head – along with this) – Or is it because of your MD, you think I wasn’t qualified to push the D level button correctly?

The elevator stopped on A. A resident got on. Pushed the D button. (Which is still lit by the way!) And we start on our way down to the D level without further interruption. However, all the while in my head I’m hearing my inner monologe screaming, “Did you really have to hit that damn button again? It was already lit, jackass. It doesn’t make it more offical just because you hit it.”  – In elevators it only takes one time to hit the button to get to your floor. If you get on an elevator and the button is lit, it releaves you of the duty of having to hit it yourself. Score!  Leave it be. That poor little button didn’t do anything to you. Stop poking it. What do you think it is, a scab? Leave off.

Sheesh.

Sorry. It just had to be said. You may all return to your regularly scheduled day.

-Kate

I have a mess and a half to clean up today. Majorly.

Backstory. I knew my children had a two hour delay due to weather that threatened to turn into a cancellation. The threat was a good one, I figured they would be home since our school system freaks over a chilly fart in the wind. So they had spent a long time building this elaborate play area where pirate ships attacked a Lego village and set fire to things. The fire department would then have to work at rescuing everyone. (One kid is into pirates, the other firefighters, can you tell?)

Rather than dismantle it, I left it alone assuming they would get up and resume playing. With me so far? Yeah? Good.

I have been battling this insomnia thing that is frankly kicking my ass. I took a little something to help me sleep and went to bed at the ungodly early hour of 11PM. Lights out, that’s all she wrote. zzzzzzzz

*CRASH!*

I heard it but through my drugged fog, didn’t care. I figured if it was something dangerous, the smoke alarm would go off. Back to dream land I go.

This morning I wake to discover a fucking bomb went off in my kitchen.(Explanation, my kitchen dining room were open/attached but I converted the dining portion to an office area.)

This is the story relayed to me by my husband who was sleeping on the couch for other marital reasons…

In the wee hours, our Christmas gift kitten, named FELON, is an instigator to trouble. He pounced on the older cat who acted as if he were mortally wounded and went streaking into the kitchen. Hubby followed half asleep to investigate. He tripped over a pirate ship, fell into a ladder truck and against my 7 foot fully stocked bookshelf.

Now, I had a lot more than books on that shelf. I had a few hundred books but also a couple baskets of junk, a nice display of my collectible tins, etc. Said bookshelf teetered and tottered before falling, taking with it everything in its path, namely the Lego village, a second matching 7 foot book shelf and the lamp. Shit flew everywhere, hitting my desk, pushing a bunch of stuff to the ground, littering the floor, breaking glass, etc. My CD collection skated across the floor like drunks on ice, my printer is in two pieces and my computer went for a trip form the middle of the desk to the left.

Hubby picked up the aforementioned FELON, threw cat in the kids’ room and shut the door and went back to sleep. I awoke to writer/mother Armageddon in my office area.

I am not a happy author. Nor mother. Nor cat owner. Nor wife for that matter. I have spent two hours already cleaning up broken stuff and gathering little dangerous things like push pins and thumbtacks and what was a beautiful candy jar. Paper clips and pens and all sorts of desk paraphernalia. All mixed in with pirates, firefighters, legos and matchbox cars.

Luckily, my computer only slid and suffered no damage or I could have ended up in jail for feline/hubby murder.

So no writing today, I am restocking the shelves and rearranging furniture to avoid anything like this in the future.With the entire family under foot. Joy.

I have a new pet peeve – well, maybe not new, but one that’s been steadily building for the last few weeks. I’m really starting to get pissy with the constant back biting and rudeness I’m finding in every facet of daily life. From stories people are telling me at work about things that happened to them in the course of their day, to things I’ve read online. (Posts between each other on forums and groups.) Does anyone know how to speak nicely to each other anymore? Now, I’m not talking about giving a friend a good-natured hard time because you can and you know you’d both go to the mat for each other in a heartbeat, no questions asked. I’m talking about mean spirited stabs and barbed comments meant to correct, verbally hand slap, or forcefully impose their opinions on others.

Can’t we all just get along.

First of all, I’m an adult. I’ve lived nearly 44 years without having someone give me input I’ve never asked for, and I’ve done reasonably well. I’m an intelligent individual who has formed her own opinions based on experiences. And just to ensure I don’t start doing this to others, I’m going to start prefacing everything I say with….it’s been my experience. God save me from being that which I’ve come to peeve.

I was on the phone the other day with my mother. She had the audacity to tell me I didn’t know anything about politics and history. Me? The History Channel junkie. The one who watches Fox News and regularly discusses such with her husband. – Mom and I just so happened to be talking politics, which was probably not a good thing since she and I don’t agree on anything having to do with government. But it is my honest belief that she doesn’t care to know the other side, or even listen to any commentary that might be negitive, even if it’s the God’s honest truth. Nope, that old woman has to tow the party line, even if it’s been dragged through a cesspool and garbage. But I digress.

If my own mother has no gumption about trampling on my opinion (to which my response was – you better stop this conversation right here, or you’ll lose this debate) what’s to say others will shy away. They won’t. And I’m not talking about politics specifically, it’s just the example I used for the conversation with dear old mom. It’s just the fact of living any more.

The other day a colleague of mine asked my opinion on something that happened to her and what she should do because I have been a shift charge person and still fill in when the occasion warrants it. Well, it seems my colleague had a run-in with someone who works in our ER yelling at her over the phone, telling her she better learn policy and our entire department better figure out what we’re doing. Um, she quoted them chapter and verse from the policy and procedure  manual and they still yelled at her. Unbelievable. My response. Write it up. We have firm policies in place at work which considers verbal abuse a terminable offense. And yet….I hear of people crossing the lines with their co-workers all the time. Yes, we work in a high stress job and sometimes you just have to let that frustration out (which is why most people just let it go and don’t write up verbal offenses). But I think if more people did, you’d see a decrease in the escalation of word wars going on there. It’s not a very happy environment to work in.

I was told the other day of a CT Scan tech yelling at an Attending Physician. Ballsy. That’s what that was. Pure ballsy. And I happen to know the physician involved and he’s a very sweet man and just let it roll off his back. He’d never think of turning someone in for that. It made me wonder if the CT tech even knew the guy was a doctor. You’d never hear of him abusing the trauma surgeons in such a manner. It just wouldn’t happen. So, why give a neonatalogist grief?

I don’t know. Maybe the world has been like this for a while and I’ve just really noticed it more since my ear is shot and it really pains me to actually talk, and am listening more. Or reading and not responding if it has to do with a forum. I’d rather not get involved anymore. Or maybe I’m finally worn down from a fight. Whatever the reason, I just want to have one day where everyone actually plays nice with everyone else. And please, no bitching behind someones back I won’t be able to pretend I don’t hear it forever.

-Kate

Ear update: I have an emergency appt. to see the ENT tomorrow. It seems having serrous fluid pouring out of your ruptured eardrum isn’t a good thing.

I have to say since the accident that stole my hearing in my right ear last week, I’ve been a little depressed. No, scratch that…a lot depressed. Though the ENT assures me I should enjoy a full recovery to my eardrum and my hearing, I’m not so sure. Well, I trust him…but I’m scared. Not that I can’t hear anything from that ear, because I can hear some. But the damn fishbowl effect is driving me crazy. Everyday I wake with the hope that I’ll notice something different, something better. So far, nada. I’m still living with Charlie Tuna under the sea.

The worst part? Nothing tastes right.

Now, why is this? I understand why you can’t taste when you have a head cold and your nose isn’t working. Part of taste is also the sense of smell, the aroma of the food exciting the taste buds into a Pavlovian frenzy. But hearing? How exactly have I ruined my taste receptors by putting my eardrum out? My hubby insists it’s because my auditory canal is swollen and achy and not acting right and “everything is connected in there.”

I know this. I’m the one who took A & P and works in healthcare for her regular job. But I guess I didn’t expect such a dramatic change. And I’m not liking it.

I also didn’t enjoy the pain that shot through my ear when I tried to pull myself up out of the bathtub last night. What was that all about?

I am not enjoying this in the least. I’m not even sick enough to take medical leave from work as I suffer no dizziness…only annoyance.

And with that, it’s my cue to go get ready for the nightly grind.

-Kate

So. Do you think the plot bunnies have radar? Or some kind of super-stealth surveillance network? Because I do. They always know when I have the least time and energy to deal with them. Those sneaky plot bunnies are stalking me, waiting to pounce when I am most vulnerable: swamped with other projects, snowed under with real life concerns, stuck in an endless morass of dreary prose.

And then they pounce.

Now, mind you, my plot bunnies are not the nice, fluffy bunnies of petting zoos and Cadbury commercials. No. My plot bunnies bear a strong resemblence to a certain rodent in a certain Monty Python movie. Yes, it’s true. My plot bunnies have a mean streak a mile wide.

Let me set it up for you: I have a cold. A really nasty cold. And a deadline on the dissertation. A really close deadline. And edits for an upcoming Freya’s Bower release. And finish work on a submission. And Munchkin is through with camps, so she is home. Which means I have to watch her. Plus, I had to buy school supplies today.  And I have approximately 20 other WIPs lined up in the queue.

Naturally, the plot bunnies, sensing weakness, attacked.

Darned rodents.

I am. Bring on the holy water, the garlic and grab a stake.

Why do I feel this way, you ask?  Because yes, yesterday Michael Jackson passed away at the age of 50…and I don’t care.

I mean, I feel bad for his family and all and he did have children but yeah…

This impacts my life not at all. He left some great music behind and a whole lotta weirdness. I pretty much gave up caring about Michael Jackson around nineteen eighty …wait, I never did care about Michael Jackson.

And this is why I am evil. I think that his legacy isn’t one of just music but one shrouded in ugly innuendo and out right accusation. First, he was an accused child molester, not once but a few times. Makes you stop and go hmmmm. Second, what did he DO to his face??? Third, his behavior with his children was off beat and somewhat nutso. So yeah, he was not a celebrity I would have had in my home by choice. Sorry he died. 50 is too young but I am not torn up about it.

Go ahead, throw stones.

I’m back. For those of you who weren’t following along, I was in Daytona Beach last week for the day job. It wasn’t much fun. In fact, I didn’t even get out on the beach. It rained. Now, it didn’t rain ALL the time. No. It only rained when we weren’t working. Niiiiiiice. All sunny and beachy from 8-5 (with a few scattered showers), rainy and non-beachy from 5-10, more or less.

In the interest of full disclosure, there were a few odd moments of beach-ness. I just didn’t take advantage of them.

I came back with t-shirts for Munchkin and DH, and came home to find that the upstairs toilet had decided to take a vacation. Fortunately for me, DH is handy like that and has fixed it.

In any case, I can’t say I got that much done, and I definitely didn’t have any major partying going on. Oh, well. I did, however, get yet ANOTHER story idea. Go figure.

This is me. well, I think this is most writers at some point in time. 2008 was the year of word spillage. I poured out four complete manuscripts, started a few others, finished a couple short things and got most of them edited. I also lost nearly half of one when my flash drive gave up the ghost. Of those four MS, two have sold to Samhain and two are in NY making rounds.

And I wait.

On covers
on feedback
on BETA reads
on Final line edits
on first round edits
on my agent
on publishers’ decisions
on the laundry fairy (Hey, I can dream)

wait wait wait wait

I am not a good waiter. i think the microwaves is too slow.

The incredible push to get a story done is still there and of course, I am still writing but…hello, closure?? I guess I will get that first with JINXED in June but until then, I wait.
Will Monster Love make it in NY? Will WITCHMARK? What will Myla by Moonlight’s cover end up looking like? Did the revision I implemented make the story better or more convoluted? CAN JUNE JUST HURRY UP ALREADY?!?!

I have promo chats schedule,waiting on them. I have an idea file bursting at the seams, waiting to see which direction is a better use of my time. I have an anthology piece I am working on plus a few freebies for my series written. Waiting on the right time periods to put them out there.

I hate waiting.

My mother says I need a hobby. Writing is my hobby so, yeah, not working there. maybe i need to learn how to knit or something.

A friend suggested this and OH MY GOD does it sometimes feel good to get crap off your chest and tell your troubles to just fuck off.

So, here are a few of mine! Feel free to join me in F-U Friday!!

F you, taxes.

F you eyes for failing when I need you most.

F child of mine who must have gotten those genes from your father’s side, get over the drama queen shit already!

F you Big G, if you are using my laptop, turn the damn thing off properly. If I lose one more damn file because you are too lazy to hit TURN OFF, you won’t know what hit you but it will hurt like a beeotch.

F you waiting game. I despise you like a festering boil.