Boring post about moving and apartment cleaning.

Okay! Apartment cleaning update, 'cause I know ya'll are following along with my saga. I'm posting it so I can remember how much trouble it was cleaning up an apartment after living there eight years with two cats and two male children who went from grade school to adulthood.

Both bedrooms completely cleaned out, with ceiling, walls and carpets vacuumed. Ditto for living room. Trash was picked up today and four more bags of trash went out to the cans. No more recycling left.

Found the cat pee smell in the living room MIGHT have only been coming from the black bookshelf that was the only piece of furniture left in the room. The boys had said they wanted it but then decided no, so I broke it down and as I was pulling the nails out of the cardboard backing I smelled the pee stink. After I moved all the bookshelf bits to the landing so I could vacuum the pee smell seemed to be gone in the living room. We'll see tomorrow.

Still left is cleaning the oven (damn, I had wanted to skip that but it's listed in my rental agreement) and the compartment under the cooktop. Vacuum, sweep, scrub the kitchen floor and take down the old curtains. Clean the bathroom and sweep and  vacuum landing and the stairs down to the outside door.

Call the landlady and set up an exit walk-through. Next Monday the last of the trash goes out.  Seven more days.

An incomplete written history of my personal history of writing...

Thank the gods I remembered to type this out in Word for ease of editing. Just a when I was about to click post I realized my internet connection had dropped. I might have lost the whole entry. Two hours of work.

So. A daily regimen of writing.

Yeah, I'm probably going to be rabbitting on about this for a number of entries. Also, I feel extra-wordy today. Be warned.

I'd like to write seriously, you see. I have what I feel are novel-worthy ideas. But I must, must, must write everyday if I’m going to get into shape to eventually sit down and stretch these ideas into actual books.  Books with plots and exposition and character development and all that other cool junk that makes people truly want to read what I write. Also to possibly make a bit of a decent income so I can fulfill my other dream of becoming a semi-hermit that doesn’t have to go outside much and you know, be amongst the peoples. I love humanity. I don’t care for most people over much.

When I was a teen I kept a journal and out of my own little head came up with the idea of making a long list of things I thought were really neat and writing about them when my own geeky-massively introverted-awkwardly shy-hyperemotional days provided no interesting fodder. Which was way more often than you might think. Yes, I was a typical teen and sometimes poured out my angst on the page. But I also knew that most every other teen had angst to spare and angst was mostly boring. Gut-wrenching expose can be done well, but usually not by teens who have no real sense of structure and conclusion.

I thought I was very clever and innovative with this list of simple prompts. I had no idea this was a typical exercise for new writers to sharpen skills. This was long before the internet was available to the common masses of humanity, you see, back in the Iron Age of technology...the 1980's. If we wanted to look things up we went to the library. It just never occurred to me that there might be books that help you teach yourself to write. I figured that type of learning only happened in colleges.

I don't know who I thought was going to read these faltering proto-essays. Why write an a page and a half extolling the comforting virtues of a simple cup of tea if no one is going to read it? Hm. I just don't recall. That was twenty-five years ago.  Maybe I didn't think anyone would read them. Well, no one will read them now. During my divorce in my mid-thirties I burned all the journals from my youth and early adulthood as a symbolic act of leaving the past behind...and because most of them were complete crap.

This morning I googled (yay, internet!) for lists of writing prompts (yay, free writing prompts at my fingertips!) and found Luke Neff’s big ol’ list of writing prompts. These will be excellent for in-depth exercises. They are high-school level, which is where I feel I ought to start.Thank you, random high school humanities teacher. Thank you.

I won’t be using one today, however, because upon attempting to write about my personal history of writing and my search for writing prompts, I have managed to actually write. I’ve written an acceptable daily blog post and completed today’s task of getting some damn thing down on paper. Um…getting something on screen? Shut up, I’m forty-two, I’ll describe it however I like. Paper it is.

I feel like I should apologize for the dearth of pictures with funny captions, but I have to break my reliance on visual aids and sharpen my descriptive skills. I'm not a Cracked.com contributor, hilarious as I find them. That would be a good beginning to getting myself out there into the world of published writers but I have no ideas for those list things they do. I want to write sci-fi and fantasy novels. Sci-fi and fantasy stories are descriptive heavy, because if you plunk your reader down in the future or an alternate reality you have to create a whole cloth world for the action to be plausible. At least, that’s how I think it should be done. And that’s how I will do it.

And now…once again…I have to make the hour drive to the apartment to clean. I’m so terribly, terribly tired of this.

 

This post took a left turn at Albuquerque...

So. A daily regimen of writing.




Pictured: Knock-off Romulan Ale

Some days, inspiration refuses to show up, like that person who promised they’d do something important for you, like come to your party and bring the booze. Then they don’t and you’re left playing beer pong with room-temp tonic water and orange juice and Mad Dog and everyone feels awkward and pissed.

That analogy has never actually happened to me because my anxiety doesn’t allow me to throw the type of parties where it would occur and good lord, I would never even invite friends over for movie night if I couldn’t purchase a 30 case of Busch and couple of bottles of Two Buck Chuck.

But when inspiration doesn’t show up when I ask it to, it is as frustrating as I imagine the above scenario might be.

Sometimes inspiration does show up but it drags you through the swamp to the mulberry trees on the other side…like the hour I spent typing up that first analogy because I wanted it exactly right. So, you travel through the swamp and get all mosquito bitten and ruin your favorite boots because damn it, you can’t just buy mulberries at the grocery store and you want to make some homemade dye for your new renaissance faire skirt.

 

Okay, that scenario is totally in the realm of possibility for me.

I'm the one in the big hat. Well...I'm the one in the biggest hat. Those are the friends for which I would totally provide cheap liquor on movie night.





 

Oh, gad. Thank you, BroGirl62. Thank you.

Sometimes inspiration shows up way too early without calling first and follows you around the kitchen throwing ideas at you while you’re trying to make your breakfast of poached eggs and buttered toast and tea. The ideas are like dozens of popcorn pieces being thrown at you, bouncing off your body and falling to the floor and you want to gather them up and plant them and grow popcorn trees, but you really want some poached eggs! 

That’s what happened to me this morning. Because inspiration is a damn flake and I don’t even know why I’m friends with a mental construct. This is what comes of being bipolar. I can’t recommend it.

And now I have to drive the hour to my old apartment again, because this is cleaning week before I turn it back over to the landlady.

New titles, new titles, new titles for old...

I'm considering a title change for my blog. The "hell in a handcart" reference was appropriate when I started the blog several years ago. The blog quickly stalled because of actual life shit that precluded daily blog updates. Now I'm getting back at it, because if I ever want to be a real damn writer I need a daily discipline of writing, even if it's just snarky blog posts. But...what should the new title be? I want something that encapsulates my brilliance, damn it!

 

I have a few thoughts.

 

Corpus Callosum - The corpus callosum is a wide, flat bundle of neural fibers that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Connections, see? Funky connections, which is...like...what I do. Too pretentious?

 

 



Psyche! I totally fooled you guys!

Fangly Fish Laughing - This is all ready the...whatcha call it...domain name? I think that's right, my blog domain name. It's an obscure Homestar Runner reference, from a Strong Bad Email. That there picture of the fangly fish isn't one of the deep sea anglerfish that Strong Bad is referring to though. That's a coelacanth.

 

 Coelacanth Press - 'Cause I just like the coelacanth and this blog is supposed to be about learning a discipline of daily writing. Having "press" up there would remind me of my writing goals, to eventually be published. Have you heard the story of the coelacanth? It was believed extinct for 65 million years. Then it discovered hanging out off the coast of Madagascar.  That's just a whole barrel of awesome.

 

 

 

Got any suggestions? Opinions?

Nothin' to see here...

I miss my kids. I miss DB and Dexter. Yes, it's only been a month since I moved and I've seen them periodically. It's not the same as having them under my roof and making them dinner and hanging out with them watching SF Debris get his sci-fi snark on. I know they're eighteen and twenty-one and this would happen eventually. Shut up. I miss my babies.

not pictured: DB and Dexter. Dexter would never wear that type of sweater.

The above photo shows David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing The Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth. It has nothing to do with me missing DB and Dexter, but it captures the kind of cognitive dissonance we all three think is hilarious.

The unexpectedness has been removed.

It is one of those mornings where time just gets away from me. I was up at 5:45 am, now suddenly it's 7:21 am and I have to get ready for work.

Note to self: Do not start reading Cracked.com articles in the morning. You will never get any work done because you will always want to chase down the interesting links.

So...last week, when I was packing up the last of the books at the apartment, I came across my copy of A Clockwork Orange. I thought DB, being the vaguely counterculture, rabble rousing 18 year old that he is, might want it.

Me - "Bub! Have you read A Clockwork Orange?"

DB - "Not yet. I've been meaning to."

Me - "Here, you can have this copy."

Dexter (older brother) - "Hey, I'd like to read that too."

DB - Hands the book to his brother, "you can read it first. Just give it back when you're done."

Yep. Those are MY kids!!

This story sounded far more hilarious in my head, but I'm out of time. So here's a picture of DB attending a district 300 school board meeting a few years ago, to join his fellow Youth Labor Committee friends in protesting the proposed severe budget cuts.



Comrade Drakon Mal'chika

Did you ever...

Did you ever try to take one established household and cram it into another established household? It is more frustrating than you might think. Unless you were thinking it's tear your hair out, "WHY did I think it was a good idea to quit smoking THIS month" frustrating. Then you are correct.

We have a metric shit-ton of surplus stuff.  If your wondering how a metric shit-down converts to pounds, it is precisely however many pounds of surplus stuff we have. Lots and lots of kitchen items, furniture, records...actual vinyl records and also paper records of things you're supposed to keep, paycheck stubs and such. Toys such as Bionicles and myriad action figures from a plethora of movies and cartoons.  Pictures, both framed and in film envelopes and loose.  I have an entire dresser drawer, a fairly deep one, full to the top with photographs plus more in an under bed box. Dating back to the 1980's some of them. Many things to be sold at a yard sale, priced to move.

"How much is this jumbo Pyrex baking dish?"

"A dollar."

"These action figures?"

"Five for a dollar."

"This two-shelf bookshelf?"

"Ah, that's a good solid wood bookshelf. Very sturdy and in excellent condition. That is two dollars."

Bah. Must get ready for work now. Yet another trip to the apartment afterwards. Fourteen more days, fourteen more days, fourteen more days. When this is over I am getting a damn 90 minute massage.