Organizationally Challenged

At the moment, I have a sticky note stuck on my PDA. I'm sure the information will make it into the PDA, but unfortunately not by osmosis. I'm thinking there's a flaw somewhere in my data input chain here.

I've read that one of the most effective strategies for accomplishing your goals is to spend ten minutes a night reviewing the next day and making a to-do list. Something in me just rebels at this, though. Or maybe I'm just lazy. Ten minutes seems like such a *long* time. I could do ten minutes of art, watch a segment of "Dirty Jobs," do a Sudoku, feed the guinea pigs...there's so much I could do in ten minutes. Frankly, by the time I'm done with the day and ready for the next, I'm too tired to plan anything, and I've usually forgotten to charge the darn thing anyway.

The Muse in the Sterno

The first sentences of a story for the Writer's Digest prompt came to me on the way home last night after a Pu-Pu Platter at the Hong & Kong: "He’d been with Hector the one-testicled elephant for years, but not in that way. She was his one and only. But when she shaved her beard to fit in with the other soccer moms, he cried."

We'll see how this goes.

The last time I had any inspiration was when I saw the ad about Werewolf stories and I was in the mood to procrastinate regarding my novel.

But this reminds me--the muse only comes if you let her in, I guess. I rarely save any brain space for "I think I'll write a short story," or walk around with any "I'm a writer" receptors up. This is one of the biggest challenges I have. I've got so much on my plate--how do I remind myself that I'm (allegedly) a writer, when, for instance, my youngest has just peed on my foot or I can't even find a pencil?

This Month's Writer's Digest Contest Prompt

From Writer's Digest--write a short story of 750 words or fewer based on this prompt. Winner receives $100 in WD books and publication.

"After years with a traveling carnival, the strong man and bearded lady try to adjust to normal life as a married couple."

In the (Wrong Kind of) Flow

What I really love about writing is that wonderful state where all the neurons have had the time to connect and the right words jiggle together into something miraculous. Actually, anything can be like this--when you're somehow in the right state of mind, and conditions are favorable (no one yelling "wipe me!" for instance)-- suddenly you find yourself fully present and happy.

I get distracted easily, though.

There's lots of flies here. Darn them. They're landing on my legs while I try to write, or rubbing their little legs together on my pile of envelopes. Some of them are stripy and have big red eyes.

So I have discovered that killing flies is as much fun as writing, unfortunately perhaps more so. Last week I killed about twenty of them (the large, stripy uber-flies) with an old, paperback copy of "Statistics in Everyday Life." Once you kill a few, it's hard to stop. There's a strategy to it, almost a martial art. If you move too slow, they feel the movement of the air and escape. If they see your shadow, they're on to you. One good whack, and the luckier flies dance in the air until something in their little brains tells them to land again, and the process repeats. It's a dance.

Downstairs I have a standard-issue swatter, which I initially bought to use in an art project (along with the corn-holder nipples-to-be, but let's not discuss those) but is now my weapon of choice. I'm racking up the points. Land, spot, swat. Land, spot, swat.

I'm just about out of flies now, so I guess it's on to something else. If I'm really clever about it, maybe I can be distracted by chapter 1 of my novel.

There's a Chipmunk In My Toilet and My Hair is Turning Gray

I've decided that that's going to be the title of the next book I pitch. Barring that, maybe a country-western song. Barring that, that's what I'll be singing to myself holed up at my writing desk with a good beer, perhaps one too many.

Really, though, there was a chipmunk in my toilet.

Usually when you hear the words "and it's trying to swim" coming out of your child (in reference to anything living or previously living in some kind of perilous situation involving liquid), really what it means is "it's dead as a fucking doornail." But no! In this case, the chipmunk was very wet and exhausted, but definitely among our living chipmunky friends.

I did not get a picture of him in the bowl, as I was busy rescuing him. I will cite this to prove that I am a compassionate person.

The Day of the Cock

Yesterday we sat down after getting a lot of work done for some nice family time watching "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery Channel (TIVO, actually). If you haven't seen it, you should--it's this great show where the (coincidentally really hot) host sees what it's like to do the kind of menial, awful jobs that some people do so we don't have to.

Someone picked the "Dirtiest Animal" show, which sounds pretty tame, right? Of course, one of the segments was on electro-ejaculating a bull with a huge rubber dildo-like thing about a foot and a half long. This is, I suppose, kind of tame next to someone shoving their entire arm up the bull's ass. No questions here, fortunately.

Then we head out to lunch and some errands. Right now I need to preface the rest of the story by saying we go out to chinese food too much, and my kids are intimately familiar (and I realize that after that last paragraph, the phrase "intimately familiar" sounds unclean) with the Chinese Zodiac menus they always have. The male chicken-mate is always called a "cock," which is just fine, until you realize that your nine-year old is still calling a rooster a cock.

So Wiley spikes up his hair and says "Mom, I look like a cock!"

And then we repeat the occasional "perhaps you should start using the work "rooster" like everybody else" conversation, which leads to me explaining what the colloquial meaning of "cock" is, and how one usually does not use it in polite conversation. Which, of course, leads to Wiley asking "so when *would* you use the word 'cock?'"

All I could think of was "In no conversation you'll ever be having soon."

Sigh. At least I got out of explaining what electroejaculation was :-)

Economics 101

The kids have been playing store lately with a tray full of play money. Kiran was excited to show me his hanging squash money-holder (which has now been expanded to three squash).

It's been fun listening to the kids haggle over prices, negotiate deals, and set up specials and discount tables. They're taking it extremely seriously, which is mildly unfortunate because when Kiran runs out of money he has a fit.

But even he understands now that if you charge $100 for a block of wood, no one will buy it.

Playing Bass May Make You Blind

The kids have been spending most of their time up in the boys' room listening to CD's and playing their various instruments along with the music: Wiley on rock ukelele, Kiran on strumstick, and Mira on the chanter.

Spidey here, who's meant to hang upside down, got to help out in his usual disturbing position.

As soon as I walked in the room, Kiran jerked Spidey's hands up and down and said "He's playing Bass!"