11 posts tagged “life”

It was 109 F. today. I bet I could have fried eggs on the car hood...You know, if I ate eggs.

Thankfully, Rain and I know how summer goes here (we do technically live in a desert). With these high temperatures in mind, by the middle of May we set up cooling proceedures as if we were on Red Alert. Because of the condition of our house's ceilings (the house is nearly 90 years old) we knew we wouldn't be able to put in central. Instead we invested in top quality window units. One in the dining room which is at the moment blowing my hair like those shampoo ads. It's the biggest one and should have been able to cool our house on its own if you just looked at square footage. But the front bedroom was a special case, receiving both northern and western sun exposure, having huge windows, no insulation, and attic access. It needed a window unit to itself.and still is much warmer than the rest of the house. However, the number one life saver? The hundred year old trees we have shading the house.

I love trees.

We need more of them.

I think I'd live in a tree house if I could. You know what? That'd be awesome. A tree house! With central air and plumbing because, you know, we aren't monkeys.

With temperatures so high, we are spending a good deal of time just watering. When we moved in, I knew the land here had been majorly unloved but I didn't realize years of bad tenants had turned this lot into glass-ridden, weed-infested rock and clay. You don't even want to know all the work we've done just to get it at the point we have it now. It's involved tons of imported dirt, sand, and stone. With all that work (a lot accomplished with help) and water, our veggie and fruit beds are doing better than I entirely expected. We've had huge zuccini and our tomatoes (without warning labels) are starting to ripen and our melon plants are starting to stretch out. Our strawberries are still pouting but our corn is doing wonderfully and I think will bear cobs this year maybe. Our sunflowers are surviving. All our herbs are thriving. Our flower beds are doing well. There's calalily blooming outside the backdoor and I saw some of the canas popping up through the bed we created out of the old water feature (it was a hazard). The cutting garden seeds are sprouting. And the Joseph's Coat rose I got for my birthday has beautiful form and just got done with an explosion of blooms. The front yard is full of daylillies and roses and petunias and the hollyhocks are surviving and will bloom next year. The grass we laid down in the front (salvaged from my sis's school) is almost entirely green and filling out very well. The backyard's grass is starting to recover. We had to lay sod in the backyard over that hauled in dirt. Still, it's struggling because of how bad the land was here and the temperatures. Plus, sod seems to have a pretty bad die off it's first season. But the bermuda is starting to fill in and I think it'll be better later on. We'll need to seed over it with a winter grass so that it doesn't turn green just in time for winter to come and turn it brown.

Just a short update for the neighborhood.  

here would be the two songs for this act:

 

 

...560 pages? Well, the answer is definitely not two. But I digress.

On Sunday after a sedate Easter dinner with kids and family, Rain and I were going to print out a copy of my novel so that I could finally have Tabby do the first complete read through. I don't know what we were thinking. Obviously we weren't. It was late and we were both tired. So after a couple chapters were printed, this was the conversation:

Her: Wait, how many pages is this again?

Me: ...560.

Her: And each page is 50 cents. Alright, what's half of 560?

Me:....Oh shit. A lot.

Her:Yeah.

Me: Cancel! Cancel! Cancel!

Her: I'm cancelling! I'm cancelling!

Yeah so moral of the story? Do not print out a copy of your novel at Kinko's. That will be a several hundred dollar print. Yeah. No. So instead we came home and used up both our almost-full black ink cartridge and color cartridge. And we had to buy a new cartridge in the morning to finish printing the last seven chapters. You'd think a full ink cartridge would go further than that, wouldn't you? Apparently, it really only has about 350 pages worth of ink in it. I suppose under normal circumstances, that's more than enough. In ours, not quite.

Though we did not end up printing at Kinko's, we were still considering binding it at Kinko's. The lady assured us that they could bind anything up to two inches thick. We ask how many pages is in that. She ended up telling us the 560 pages would definitely be less than that.

Uh, no.

Quickly into the printing, we realized this was not so. In the end, it was about 3 1/2 inches thick. Quite impressive weight. In the family, threatening to hit someone upside the head with my novel is now a very gruesome threat. Though it appears impressive, I know quite well length means nothing to the quality of a piece. So, I was very nervous about the first full read-through my novel was about to get.

Usually, there are people reading along with my writing. Though I do not post my original work on the internet, I do have several great friends who are kind enough to be my test-readers. But family life has been so chaotic that writing was something I did on my own time and really didn't try to bother people with. At least until the end. By the time I finished it, I had read over this thing so many times, I was sure that I had lost perspective for the sheer amount of times I have reread this thing. To ensure that my style remained consistant and the voice was strong, every time I spent more than three or four days away from writing, I'd reread the entire thing, editing along the way. I know exactly what is happening, what has happened, and what is about to happen, from seeing one or two sentences off of any page.

I was very nervous for this first reading. There were several points that I thought might be questioned. I worried the length meant I didn't do well with pacing. I was trying to be as critical on myself as possible, hoping that it'd help when I was having to accept criticism. As my fellow writers know, criticism is a terrible blessing. We know we need it. We know it'll make us stronger. And we know we're going to hate it. Like I said in the previous post, I expect to be told where I suck, to become upset, for it to be insisted, and for me to slowly come to accept the advice.

But when Tabby finally read through it....I was surprised that she seemed to enjoy it. In the end, her feedback was extremely positive. Though she did warn that it might not exactly be an easy sell since there isn't really a conventional relationship in the whole thing. I knew this. I hate the fact that conventional means sellable but I also understand it. Still, I was shocked with how little criticism I received for it. Especially since I know Tabby has no problem telling me when she thinks something needs to be changed or needs to be removed. She will tell me when she thinks I've done something stupid. I even know the tone of voice she uses while doing so. The fact she hasn't...I'm not quite sure what to think of that. Obviously, she's only the first test-reader but I'm very pleased to have such good feedback after all the amount of work I put in this. For about a year and a half, I have been slaving over this. Writing, editing, reworking, plotting, constructing backgrounds and dates, studying....I put a hell of a lot of work into making this the best possible thing I can produce at this point. I know that a writer is always developing and that should I walk away from this for three months and come back, I'll still want to edit it to perfect the phrase with what I've learned during that period of time. Still, I'm happy with the end product.

Is it perfect?

No.

Is it sellable as a first novel?

There's some doubts.

Am I happy with the story and its intricacy?

Yes.

Am I proud of this accomplishment?

Twenty-Seven chapters. 560 pages. A year and a half of hard work and something that accomplished my original goal despite life's constant insanity? Hell yeah.

 

 

 

 

To assure that my last post is tempered.

Five things I am thankful for today.

1. I have curtains in my diningroom finally. Now we can work in here at night and not have people halfway down the street be able to see us. I appreciate mom and grandma's time and attention to this.

2. New slippers. I've been meaning to mention this but it hasn't made it on the list yet. They are finally broken in and are very warm and comfy.

3. A good cry. I knew I needed to discuss what is happening in life on my blog at some point. I knew I needed to be able to look back in a couple years and say, "Yep, we overcame that." I think the post accomplished that. I also got a good cry out of it and feel so much better now.

4. My penset. I was using one of the pens from it earlier. I really love them. They have such a great weight to them.

5. Tea. My friend Mandy would laugh at this but tea really does make the world so much better, IMO. So I am thankful for the set of tea my parents gave me for Christmas. I think I've already drank half of it.

Write your own Wikipedia entry for yourself (or share the link if you already have one).

Well, here's a general entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial

They have yet to giving me a proper entry in disambiguation.

To the Tune of Random.

It seems that the long absense form the internet has affected my vox posting skills. Rather sad considering there's so much going on. I suppose that's the problem, there's so much going on all the time, it's hard to keep up nonetheless share.

Rain and I have been in our house for over a month now. I'm very happy with this house. Maybe its because I spent so much time working on it in the weeks going up to our move, but I feel very comfortable here and I have since the beginning. The layout of this house is just fantastic. People before 1960 really seemed to understand that you can make a comfortable house while still using space appropriately for living. The livingroom is just big enough to feel roomy but small enough not to feel overwhelmed. The diningroom is perfect for more formal dinners but no one feels out of place to have pizza in here or to sit down and get some work down on a laptop. The kitchen is a lovely galley style that seems so much bigger because the counters are the narrower size used in the 20s. That breakfast nook is perfect for guests to sit at during a party when the hostess is in the kitchen and you can easily have a conversation going on between the sunroom, kitchen, and breakfast nook. I think we'll be getting a lot more use from the breakfast nook once our kitchen is fully functional. The kitchen sink is supposed to be going in tonight! I am so thrilled. You guys have no idea how much you subconsciously rely on a kitchen sink until it's not there. Blasphemous's dad will be over to hook it up for us. So nice of him.

I love my bedroom. Even with its three doors leading in (not including closet door.) The uniqueness of having so many doors kind of adds to its charm. It's a little funny though to have so many shortcuts going through my bedroom. Sometimes, one can be a little overwhelmed with the options. For example, should someone knock on the front door while I'm in my room, what path should I take? Should I go out the door leading into the dining room and go to the livingroom that way or should I go out the door leading into the hallway and go into the livingroom like that? Or getting to the kitchen. Should I go out the door leading into the diningroom and go into the kitchen like that or go out the door leading into the sunroom and go through the kitchen like that? Seems really silly but the first few days, I had real trouble getting around because there weere so many paths. Maddie really loves that. She likes for me to go through one of the doors and for her to try to guess which door and room I'll use to get out. That can keep her entertained for a good long time.

Maddie is fitting in rather well with the routine around here. She's an absolute doll but not the brightest bulb. I'm used to German Shepherds and so I keep assuming that all dogs can learn a command within five minutes and be able to remember it from thereon out. Not so with Maddie. She needs a strong hand and repetition. It's not that she's stupid. It's just that she's not a German Shepherd. I've done some more research on Old English Sheepdogs and found quite a few useful tidbits of information. For example, OES (Old English Sheepdog) only have their tails docked if they aren't born naturally without a tail. That's why they're called Bobtails in the UK. How interesting since I thought they were like Rottweilers and had their tails docked when puppies. We think Maddie was naturally tailess because it's so close to her bottom that no one could safely dock a tail that short. There are definitely some ups to having a dog without a tail. We don't have to worry about her accidentally knocking things over with it or hitting the kids with it. And she does this little butt wiggle which would've been wagging her tail except she doesn't have one. It's so cute and reminds me of Casey, the rottweiler that my family had when I was a child.

Like I said, Maddie is an absolute sweetheart, even if a little bit more energetic than one would expect from a six year old dog. She regularly demands as much as three walks a day. And often these are not small walks around the block we take her on. She loves taking a walk down to the Tower District which is probably a half mile away and then taking a twisting way back. Not a really long walk but not a short one either. She likes to have a little run on her walks and loves to say hi to any children on the way. Maddie loves children which is fantastic since we have so many children in the family. On walks, she's very good at ignoring any aggressive guard dogs on the way and does a very good job of walking with her head at my thigh. She's so good on a lead, sometimes I can forget that she's on a leash at all.

Rain and I have been doing a lot of hoe-ing in the backyard to get the bad weeds up. And we've been removing any glass we find. It's to the point now that Maddie can run around back there and she loves the size of the yard. We need to find her some of the tennis balls we have around here because she loves to fetch.

We still haven't gotten to moving over the plants from my parent's yard to this one. We definitely want them here and planted somewhere before the first frost but its only recently that we've even been at the point that we could start thinking about it. I think the house will look so much better once it has some semblance of a yard. I think a lot of the reason that the house's bad paint job sticks out is because of the lack of proper landscaping. And, of course, the paint job just sucks.

We're having family Thanksgiving here so that will be interesting. Hopefully once the sink is put in and the fridges exchanged, we'll be able to finally get our kitchen in runnning order. I'm really hoping the our vintage 54 stove works. It worked when we got it but since then, it's been moved several times and things could fall out of place. This stove is gorgeous, you guys. I'll take a pic and upload it later but this is what it looks like. Good thing is we'll have a functional kitchen and be able to make our own meals. Bad news is, I'll be having to learn how to make our own meals. I know my mother had to have been at my point in the beginning and maybe even my grandma but it's hard for me to think they weren't born with an ovenmit on. I don't think I'll be bad at it once I learn to relax but until then it'll stress me. Especially things dealing with the burners. I'm good enough at things going into the oven. It's the damn burners that get me every time. And they know it. I think they giggle about it at night when I'm sleeping. The oven's more of a Hufflepuff, all "Come on, let's give her a chance." Those burners are Slytherin, all boastful of their mad potion skills. Show offs.

I still need to sew our blinds. Yes, you read that right. I need to sew them. My grandma has volunteered to help but I still have to sew blinds for the windows in this entire house. This house has a f*ck-load of windows. Give me a moment to count . . .1-2-3...22-23-24...I think I'm going to have to sew 24 panels. Luckily, it's not going to be all that complicated. At least in theory. We're making Tie-Up shades. You might be asking why we're making this instead of buying it. Simple. Our windows are HUGE! Normal window treatments are made for windows about 84 inches long. And then if you want the superbig ones (that are pretty damn expensive) it's 110 inches long. Our longest window is 120 or more inches long. Damn! So we're breaking it into these managable panels that will help keep the house insulated. Because there are several places in this house that if you stand next to a certain wall or window, you can feel a draft. So far my mad skills to find the warmest room in the winter has come through again. Which sucks because I'm the only person in this house that likes to sleep cold! Though our house has enough wholes to put the Titanic to shame, I'm throwing down my covers every night. How rude! Full House tone and all.

We've finally got most of the shelves installed in the bathroom and the medicine cabinet up in there. Finally, we have an accessible mirror. We aren't really mirror people but at least it's there if we need it.

It's great being close to so many useful things. We're a three minute walk from my sister's school and a ten minute walk from my favorite area of town, Tower District. We can walk down and get the best Chicken Pot Pies EVER! At the Chicken Pot Pie Shop. And we can rent movies and get Starbucks and all the best live theatre is here. And the dollar store. It's amazing what that store has and why we'd ever pay more than a buck for it.

I suppose that's a long enough post for now. I could probably go on for another five or ten pages, there's so much going on. Ten thousand important things at once. Some of the most important but also the most depressing of those I've purposefully not posted about. Maybe in the future, when it's over I'll be able. But right now it's too raw.

Hopefully, now that we have internet, I'll be making more posts. I think it's a good thing for me to have this vox. I've never been a diary person. But I think it's good for me to document what's going on in my life. At some point, I'll probably need to come read them and have a good laugh over what I wrote or good cry over what was left out. . .

There's lots of things happening today. Sink, Performance, Novel, Project Runway. And I bet you this song is going to stay in my head all day.

 

Show us your idea of the perfect Sunday.

Finally getting Internet Connection! WOOOHOOO!

. . . . But I never made any promises to any of you when we began this affair. Take me as I am or leave. That's the agreement. No strings attached. You said you were all for it as long as you got a piece of Denial out of it. But you begin to believe what we have is real. You fall in love with Denial. Can't blame you really.  Denial is a free spirit. No allegiance. A bee that must go from flower to flower to flower.

WTF am I going on about? I have no idea really. But I hope it amused you.

I just don't like it when I see that it's been more than a couple days since I've updated my vox. Nothing like when I had Myspace. I had to be nagged into posting something to that piece of ....internet space.

I've been inching towards the end of my novel. I am on the cusp of the ending. By all reason, these should be the funnest parts for me to write. I know I'm going to have to edit the beginning 50 pages or so far more heavily than anything else. Once I figure out what piece is missing from there, it'll be great. But until then, I shall brooding and artistically frustrated. There's some part of me that believes, life has been going so wrong at almost every turn lately that soon, we're all owed something big, something unexpected, that is going to pull us out of this terrible luck. That's how those type of things are supposed to work, right? I mean, the only consulation in all this is that it can't keep getting worse forever. So, I'm thinking what's going to happen is either we're going to win the fucking lottery or I'm going to sell this book and get a really fantastic deal. Yeah, I know how likely both of those are. Go burst your own damn bubble. I only got a couple left to call my own.  

I mostly thought I'd just share this new song I found. Love is a strong word but I really, really, really like it.

 

And just for Christy . . .

 

I really like this fanvid.

 

 

And this is a pretty interesting song:

 

If you had a CD or album coming out, who would you thank in the liner notes?

First, I'd like to thank my beautiful wife, Candy. Without her, I'd be another drunk guitar god in the gutter. Song by the same name was written for her. And of course, I must thank the light of my life, my beautiful daughter, Coco. "Pink Railroads Into the Sunset" owes itself to her precocious vocabulary. I'd also like to thank McDonald's for their $1 menu. Otherwise, we would've starved. Rock on!

You know those times in your life where you greet every new phone call and every time you wake up with the same, “Alright, God, what do you have for me now?” Yeah, my family and I have been living through that time since the beginning of October. Here are a few highlights.

 

It all started well enough. We had a nice Canadian Thanksgiving because my mother is Canadian and so it gives us an excuse to have two Thanksgivings. My brother had hit his head the day before. Really f*cking hard. Neither he nor my father told any of us this until after the fact. During the supper though, he was having some problems. Because his wife was working that night, it was decided I’d stay just to watch over him. “Make sure he doesn’t die in his sleep.” Everyone chuckles. That night he has a big seizure. Believe me, no one’s laughing now. He’s carted off to the hospital, poor guy. His son never wakes up, scary in itself.

 

His nephew decides this is the perfect time to make his appearance. So, his wife is having to go between the Maternity ward where her sister is having her first baby and the ER where her husband is getting treated for a seizure. In the same hospital at least.

 

This also happens to be the week that my brother had volunteered to look after another agent’s agency. So, while he’s out with this seizure business, he’s not supposed to be running ONE agency but TWO! At one point, our home phone was ringing, our personal cell phone was ringing, and our business cell phone was ringing. All at the same f*cking time!

 

He goes to see the specialist and he’s told that he can’t drive for six months or be left home alone for six months. Joy! So, every time he needs to go someplace now, he has to be chauffeured. I decided to start the process of getting my driver’s license to help out with this. I have put it off for four years, but we need another person able to drive around here.

 

Still haven’t submitted my Drivers License application because we’ve been too damn busy.

 

So, every time his wife had to work, someone from our house had to go over to his house to make sure he doesn’t die in his sleep. Believe me, no laughter. No problem watching over him, but this does cause problems with disrupting sleep.

 

I watch over him one night. Messes up my sleeping schedule. I can’t do that. I’m recovering from a major bout of BPD illness. And my sleeping schedule is meticulously maintained so that I don’t go into manias. So, I can’t watch him in the night anymore. That leaves dad, who works his ass off every f*cking day of the week and my mother who works her ass of ever f*cking day of the week. Fun!

 

Learning interesting (using that word broadly, of course) agency stuff is very taxing, BTW. So, we’re all putting a lot of time and energy into working for the agency. This is much bigger and more tiring but I don’t want to go into that. Let’s just say it involves meeting quotas at the last minute, making calls to random friends (Yes. Phone. Shut up.) at nine in the evening, and dealing with customers that don’t speak the same language as you! I so need to learn conversational Spanish.

 

I haven’t seen any of my friends (off in Washington, Indiana, London …) since the end of summer. I really, really miss them.

 

Working on other people’s stories with them. I love this. I really, really do. But it takes time and I feel like I can’t really tell these people what the f*ck is going on because I can hardly believe it myself. I’m scared people are going to start thinking I’m making this sh*t up. And so, I feel bad when it goes a week before I can respond to them and then I have to use the excuse “A lot of stuff is going on.” Such a f*cking understatement.

 

I’m trying to work on my own f*cking novel. And because it’s a historical fiction, I’m at least trying to be as informed and appropriate to the setting as possible. I’m very lucky. It seems to be working out how I wish it. I’m only 22 pages in. That seems so pathetic to me but most days, I’m terribly surprised I’m able to write in it at all.

 

Learned about new baby being expected. Really looking forward to that. One of the bright spots in the last few weeks. (Not mine, to anyone wondering about me omitting something big) Morning sickness is a b*tch.

 

Siobhan got sick. Really sick. Very, very bad ear infection. Gave her vertigo. She threw up on the doctor. (There has been a lot of throwing up ON or AROUND the doctor lately.) Poor baby.

 

Dad got sick. It is really, really bad. Things like Pneumonia, Valley Fever, and broken rib. Yeah, he broke his rib coughing. Lovely, huh? And now he has a huge bruise and we’re hoping it’s not him bleeding internally. He’s off of work at least until December.

 

Grandpa got sick. Really sick. Not good at his age. Still rather sick. Poor grandpa.

 

Because of the new baby and the pregnancy we can’t have these sick people around them at Thanksgiving. What are we going to do? No idea. No f*cking idea. If it was up to me, I’d say the Canadian Thanksgiving (Oh, such a fateful day) counts in my book. We’ll see.

 

And I need to make an appointment with my psych doc who will ask me such things as “How are you? How are things? How have you been feeling? Mood swings?” And know what? I really do not want to tell him all the sh*t that is going on because ….blah. Yes, because blah. However, I should so get credit for keeping sane during this insanity! And I swear to God, if he says anything about “Well, have you been considering taking a few classes? Just a light load?” or “I cannot stress enough how much better you will feel if you get an exercise routine, join a gym. Mmm-hmm.” I’m going to laugh. And he’s going to think I’m insane. Again. And that’s quite counter-productive to my whole wish of being lauded for keeping my sanity.

 

*Sigh*

 

Don't I look pitiful?

 

 

Noire trying to cheer me up by killing a box:

 

 

 

I need chocolate. And a hug. But I’d settle for a chocolate kiss.