Category: Daily Life

Well, I haven’t gotten off to a very good start for NaNoWriMo.  Word count so far:  0

Yesterday afternoon my husband called to tell me he’d tripped and fallen at work, injuring his ankle.   He was obviously in pain, and I’m sure that wasn’t helped by the fact that he’s hurt the same ankle twice before.  He was ragingly crabby but unwilling to seek medical attention because "it’s too expensive."  I reminded him that we just spent $300 on vet bills, so surely it wasn’t such a budget-buster to spend $75 at the doctor (especially since it will probably be reimbursed by our insurance company). 

As soon as I got home from work, I dosed him with Extra Strength Tylenol, iced his ankle, went out and bought some crutches to replace the set we’d foolishly thrown away, and took him to the 7:30 p.m. chiropractor appointment I’d booked earlier in the day for him.

By the time we got home, it was after 9:00.  I got him more ice and fixed him some eggs and toast, then pretty much crashed.  I’d have liked to do some writing, but I was just too tired.

The rest of the week isn’t looking too good either, but I’m hoping to at least put in an hour or so each evening.  I have a strong feeling this is going to be like college (and high school and junior high and elementary school) all over again:  a marathon session with the deadline in sight.  Let’s hope not!

For the last couple of months, I’ve been doing a pretty good job keeping my weight down.  One of the cornerstones of that endeavor has been a studious avoidance of sugary snacks.  Naturally, all that went out the window yesterday.

It turns out my new company likes to give its employees treats at holidays.  Yesterday morning, we each received a little cup-shaped metal jack o’lantern filled with candy.  It wasn’t that much candy:  one each of a mini sized Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, Reese’s Pumpkin, Snickers, packet of M&Ms and a watermelon Jolly Rancher lollipop.  I mowed through the entire thing, except for the lollipop (ick).

We have candy, cookies, and crackers made with excessive amounts of high
fructose corn syrup in our office kitchen all the time.  Usually I just
ignore them.  Yesterday, however, once I was on a roll I had to have a couple of the mini Snickers bars.  When I get going with the sugar, I have very little self control.

Then there was our home Halloween candy:  KitKat bars and Nestle Crunch nuggets in various flavors.  I didn’t make it home until after dark, and thus missed most of our potential trick-or-treaters.  Therefore, it didn’t seem to matter that I ate two of the KitKats and one each of the flavored Nestle Crunch squares. 

There’s still a substantial amount of candy lingering in the bowl this morning, but I refuse to give in again…yet.

Well, so much for my weekend o’ writing.  Let’s hope the songwriting mood strikes me tonight.

On Saturday, my husband had a session booked in our home studio (where my office is, too), so I went to my sister’s house to borrow a Halloween costume and hang out all afternoon.  By the time I got home I was feeling rather lethargic, but we had two Halloween parties to attend, so I got myself dressed and out the door by about 8:00 p.m.

We stayed a polite amount of time at the first party and by the time we left, I was yawning every 30 seconds.  I hadn’t had anything to drink, but I felt dragged out and completely unmotivated to drive across town to another party.  Thus, I skipped my favorite annual Halloween party for the first time in probably five years and…went to bed.

I slept twelve full hours, had a late breakfast on Sunday, and then went back to bed in the middle of the afternoon.  All throughout the day, I’d wake up for a while, eat something, watch some TV and then it was back to sleep.

I don’t know if it was a delayed crash from all of the party preparations from the previous weeks or if I’m coming down with something.  Either way, I seem to feel okay today.  Let’s hope I can make it through work, get the trick-or-treaters out of the way and settle in for some solid writing time tonight.  Wish me luck!

This morning I woke up early and made a batch of blueberry scones to take to work.  I still need to grind some coffee to take with me; we’ve run out at the office and it could be a while before we get more.

If you’re in the mood for a morning laugh, check out this classic TableTalk post from Salon that they ran yesterday in celebration of their 10th anniversary.  By the time I finished reading it, I was laughing so hard that tears were rolling down my face.  Get the day pass if you don’t have a subscription – it’s worth it.

I’m still preparing myself for Sunday’s marathon lyric writing session.  The trouble with being a, shall we say, more mature rock vocalist is that it makes me hesitate to write anything that might cause any controversy in other contexts of my life.  For example, the band has a song that they call "Fast Woman."  I’d be happy to jump in and write something provocative from the point of view of the fast woman herself, but then I think, "What if the grandmotherly ladies from my community service organization should ever run across this?"  I know – I need to just get over it.  Same world, different spheres and all that…

I have all day Saturday to goof around while my husband uses our studio/office space for a recording session.  I’m thinking hard about what my NaNoWriMo genre should be.  Chick lit?  Science fiction or fantasy?  A children’s book?  Oh well, we’ll see what happens when I sit down on the 1st and start typing.

Have a lovely weekend!

The unthinkable has happened:  I dropped our iBook.  It’s not so broken that it doesn’t work at all, but it’s not looking good.  My husband may be able to fix it with the proper tools, but if not, we’re either looking at a big repair bill from the Apple Store or an even bigger credit card charge when I buy another one on Ebay.

Without the laptop, I can’t surf and watch TV at the same time.  We also can’t do a live band recording next weekend.

I’m so mad at myself…

Yesterday morning, my sister-and-law and nephew left to return to Kentucky just as I was heading out to work.  Last night I had the whole house to myself for the first time in more than a week.  My husband had a recording session at another studio, so it was just me and the three cats parked on the couch all evening long.

Dinner was a bag of microwave kettle corn and a piece of chocolate cake.  For entertainment, I watched several episodes of "I Love the 80s 3D"  on VH-1 with half my attention while I surfed the net on the laptop.  The cats all curled up on the opposite side of the couch and slept once they realized that I didn’t have any available lap space.

The only useful things I accomplished were baking two loaves of Italian bread and doing a couple loads of laundry.

I’m enjoying the laziness while I can.  This weekend I’m planning to hunker down and write song lyrics and melodies until all of my band’s remaining original songs are completed.  I’m doing it now for two reasons:  We have a shot at a November gig if we can get a half-hour set of original songs ready, and I want to get this out of the way before the NaNoWriMo juggernaut begins (I signed up yesterday).

It was quite heartening to play for other musicians last weekend and get a good reaction to our original material.  Now I just need to think really hard about what I want to write about.  Let’s hope I can think of a good novel topic for NaNoWriMo while I’m at it!

All week long, we’d eyed Saturday’s weather forecast with some concern.  From about Wednesday on, we knew there was a chance of rain for Saturday afternoon.  Friday was a beautiful, sunny autumn day, so we were hopeful that Saturday might be the same.

On Saturday morning, it was cool and clear when we went to pick up my PA speakers and have breakfast.  When we got home, we began setting up tables and chairs in the yard and band equipment on the back deck.  By then, the inside of the house was pretty spotless (for us), so most of our efforts were concentrated on the outside. 

Just as my band arrived, it began to rain lightly.  We moved the more sensitive electronics under the overhang of the porch and waited.  My husband’s band arrived.  They, too, stood under the overhang and waited.  We kept waiting, but the rain did not let up.  As other guests began to arrive, we decided to load all of the band gear into the basement.

Guests kept coming and we all crowded into our small house.  I moved the soft drinks to the front porch, but the tub of beer was too heavy so I left it outside.  It kept raining, but not hard enough to deter someone who wanted a beer.

I tried to mingle with guests and also pay attention to my bandmates, who looked a little lost.  Finally, I returned an idea that had surfaced when we first decided to stow the gear, "Let’s just set up the bands in the garage."

Both bands were game, so we began sweeping leaves and dirt out of the garage to clear a spot for the drums and guitar amps and make sure people didn’t track too much mud around.  We hauled the gear from the basement into the garage and got everything set up.  After one trip to the music store for some missing cables and connectors, we were ready to go.  The party had been going on for about two hours by then, and unfortunately, some of our guests had already left.

We took all the chairs we could find that weren’t soaking wet and lined them up on one side of the garage for the audience.  The band setup was on the other side.  We knew it was going to be LOUD.  There was absolutely nothing in the room to absorb sound, and with acoustic drums and my guitarist’s Marshall amp, there would be no chance of keeping the volume to a minimum.  We hoped none of the neighbors would call the police.

My band played the first set:  five covers and two originals.  My husband’s band followed with a set of about five or six songs, then we played six covers and two more originals, including the one for which I wrote lyrics last weekend.  After my husband’s band played one more time, we opened things up for any musician who wanted to jam.

Let me mention that during my husband’s last set, I was in my kitchen sipping cognac with some of my friends.  I hadn’t really taken into account that I would be asked to sing again, but I was apparently the go-to gal for all jam vocals.  Thanks in part to the cognac, I was willing to sing any song I even sort of knew.  We did some AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Scorpions, Van Halen, Motley Crue, etc.  It was all pretty bad (and we have every performance on videotape, so I’ll have a chance to see exactly how bad it was). 

My band decided we should get up one last time and do Iron Maiden’s "The Trooper."  I think I used to sing it in a band years and years ago, but I really only remembered the basics.  I went online and printed out the lyrics because I didn’t have any of them memorized beyond the first half of the first verse.  Believe it or not, it actually went pretty well (although I guess I’ll need to see the tape to know for sure).

All in all, we had a great time.  Nobody called the cops.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the bands and the potluck food.  Despite the rain, the excessive heavy equipment handling and the rather crowded conditions in the house and garage, it was a lot of fun.

Naturally, the rain cut our party attendance fairly significantly.  Still, if you count us and the various children who were there, we had a total of about 41 people come and go throughout the day.  If it had been a nice day, we probably would have had 60-70 guests, but the numbers worked out well under the circumstances.

Next year I think we’ll move the party back to late spring or early summer.  The risk of rain dogs us no matter when we have the party, but at least we don’t have to worry about it being cold out then.  The important thing is that the bands play outside on the deck.  I’m hoping my hearing returns to normal soon…

• It’s my Friday today because I’ve decided to take tomorrow off to deal with last-minute party preparations.  I’d far rather do it the day before than run around on the day of the party exhausting myself before it even begins.  It takes no small amount of energy to sing heavy metal, you know!
• My sister-in-law and her 15-month-old son are staying with us through next Tuesday or so.  Our house?  If there’s such a thing as "the opposite of childproofed," it would fit that definition.  I’ve rubber-banded all of the cupboard door handles together and moved fragile things off of low shelves, but there’s not much more I can do to stop He Who Must Touch Everything.
• One funny toddler story so far:  he is obsessed with my kid-hating cat.  She reacts in the usual way when he tries to touch her:  hissing, smacking him with her paw, nipping lightly.  He doesn’t care.  The cat is so used to terrorizing small children that the lack of reaction actually seems to be mellowing her out a bit.
• Today we were supposed to have our photos taken at work.  There would be a serious photo for press releases and a "fun photo" to hang on the wall in the office.  I have absolutely no idea what kind of prop I would want to bring for the "fun photo," so I was relieved to get a one-week reprieve.  At least it’ll give me time to get a haircut and heal the spot of poison ivy on my neck, if nothing else.
• Speaking of the poison ivy:  still itching.
• Well, off to shower and get to work.  Today I’m planning on cleaning off my exceedingly messy desk so that when we finally move to the new office (which I expect will be in the next couple of weeks), I’ll be ready to go.

Sometimes people want to know why my husband and I have our annual parties and invite everyone we know.  I think it’s because my parents used to do the same thing when I was growing up. 

Depending on budget and other circumstances, sometimes my folks’ parties were fairly elaborate.  My sister and I will never forget the party where my mother ordered an entire roast suckling pig.  It was DISgusting!  I remember that it had olives in its horrid eye sockets and an apple in its mouth.  We had leftover pork in the freezer for a year, but neither one of us would knowingly eat it.  I presume my mom hid some of it in various dishes and eventually threw the rest away.

My mother worked in advertising and my father worked in law enforcement.  When you put his friends and co-workers together with her friends, clients and co-workers, it wasn’t exactly a seamless blend.  I distinctly remember one party where a couple of advertising and/or media people busily uprooted wild hemp from the woods next to our barn and stashed it in their car while the cops pretended not to notice.

Eventually they divided their groups and had separate, smaller parties.  Fortunately, my husband and I have relatively compatible friends, so I doubt we’d ever need to split them up.  If any group objects to any other group, they’re all polite enough to play it off.

Of course, the "everyone we know" list ebbs and flows over time.  Of the approximately 200 people we’ve invited this year via Evite, more than 100 haven’t RSVPed.  Some of the e-mail addresses are probably outdated, but that doesn’t excuse the people revealed by Evite to have looked at their invitations but not responded.  Common courtesy, folks!  That’s why there’s a "Maybe" option – if you can’t commit, you can at least sit on the "Maybe" fence.  Or just say "No."  That’s better than no answer at all.  </obsessed hostess rant>

So anyway, there’s a precedent for this annual madness and it IS a lot of fun.  Plus, it gets me to clean up my house and grounds, so that’s a nice bonus.  Which reminds me, I need to go put a bandana on my head, change into the t-shirt I use for painting and dyeing my hair, and apply Kilz to the bathroom ceiling.  ‘Bye for now!

After all my yard work on Saturday, I woke up with some bug bites on Sunday.  I had one on my forearm, a couple on my back and one on my neck.  I noticed them, scratched a few times and ignored them for most of the day.

They got progressively itchier and I finally looked closely enough at my arm to see that I didn’t have a bug bite – it was poison ivy.  I knew exactly where it came from, too.  On Saturday I had cut down some poison ivy with the loppers, then left it in a pile with other vegetation to be bagged up on Sunday.  By the time Sunday rolled around, I’d pretty much forgotten about it and thus did not hesitate to scoop up the leaves and branches with my hands.  I had gloves on but my arms were bare.

By midday Monday it was quite obvious that I really only had one mosquito bite…and three rapidly-spreading patches of poison ivy.  I’m covered with flaky smears of Caladryl Clear and trying desperately not to scratch. 

My biggest worry is that the poison ivy will spread to my face between now and my party on Saturday.  As it is I may have to wear a scarf to cover the hickey-like blotch of poison ivy on my neck.

Remind me again what’s so great about the Great Outdoors?