It must be Tuesday...

So I've been to camp. And now I'm home. Three days early. Oh, my.

I shall tell this tale with headings that really encapsulate the microcosm that each day was. It all started Sunday... *insert flashback music/wavery image here*

HARD DAY'S NIGHT

We worked from noon to midnight setting up for camp. I unloaded ALL THE KAYAKS EVER from the trailers (since I am the kayaking instructor), and set up the lake. Granted, I took some liberties and went for a nice long paddle all alone on the quiet lake, but I swear, the rest of the day was basically an extended exercise in endurance labor. I built six wigwams from plumbing parts, helped set up the kitchen, helped check in all the staffers, and moved seven ancient (and heavy) camp bunk beds into a new cabin after the first one flooded in a huge rain storm, and built the camp store twice (it also blew over in the storm).  By the time I got to bed around 2 am, I was thoroughly pack-muled out.

It was hard work, but essentially uneventful (plus, remember the nice peaceful paddle).

This brings us to MONDAY. I DON'T HAVE ANY FUN-DAY.

Monday morning started out with a bang. One of the counselors woke up having been sick during the night, and didn't want to tell anyone. She kept it secret because the previous night at the counselor meeting, one of the directors announced not to eat too much candy, because candy makes you puke, and pukers get sent home. It's just her funny way of warning the kids off eating too much junk and making themselves sick. Well, this girl went to FUCKING GREAT LENGTHS to hide her illness, not realizing she'd basically contaminated the entire camp with GODFORSAKEN ROTAVIRUS. So we had Typhoid Mary walking around all day, leaving her germity germs of death EVERYWHERE. When we realized she was sick Monday afternoon and sent her home, we were worried, but not too worried. We should have been...

This brings us right up to today: TUESDAY, also known as IN MY TIME OF DYING, and I COMPLETELY OFFERED TO EXORCISE THE CAMP SUNDAY AFTER SOMEONE DIDN"T FEEL WELL, AND THEY BRUSHED IT OFF LIKE I WAS JOKING, AND THEY'RE SORRY ABOUT IT NOW.

The dominos began to fall. We had a few girls get sick by lunch time. Then a few more. By the time my kid succumbed at 7:30 this evening, there were 15 sick girls, and a few more who looked green around the gills. In the span of an hour, we went from a fully functional camp to a CDC quarantine zone. For crying out loud. So we had to shut down camp. I brought my little puker home, and I've been rewarded with not having thrown up, and by having access to the internet. At least until tomorrow night. If they decide to reopen for the final two days of camp, I'll go back, but I think the kid is done.

I taught exactly three kayaking classes. I was supposed to teach fifteen. Oh, well. Maybe next year.

So I'm home, and now I can get back to work, because editing is all but impossible at camp when you're surrounded by 75 girls who all need your attention RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. Read a sentence, change some punctuation, THEN HERE'S ANOTHER EMERGENCY HANDLE IT NOW. It's not even worth turning on the computer. So I'm secretly thrilled that my kid's sick. How awful of a human being does that make me?

In fact, the poor thing's curled up on the bathroom floor with a pillow and her kindle. :(

So hopefully the rest of the week is an improvement. I'm done.

Dear Real Life,

I started out composing this as a tweet, but then I realized I had too much I needed to say to Real Life today. I would like to begin by showing you the untweeted tweet, because Real Life is a royal jerk, and I think everyone needs to keep this in mind:

Dear Real Life, will you please stop trying to interfere with my writing? It's getting annoying.

Sincerely, me

I'm just getting over a bout with the plague, and hadn't been able to write for several days. This was bad enough, but at least I'm recovered enough to attain a seated position for stretches of time again. Of course, the day I try to start writing again, the neighbor decides to have his entire wooded lot serviced by a tree trimming company. EVERYTHING GOES IN THE WOOD CHIPPER. I'm pretty sure Real Life has a twisted sense of humor.

My view for the last two days, sans the EXTREMELY LOUD NOISES.

Just when I think it's safe to sit down and concentrate for a while, they crank that puppy up and RAKWWWKKGGRRRRRGRRRGRRRRR. It's like being attacked by angry bees over and over again.

I've also been helping Lulu with some projects for school. She had to build a useful object from recycled materials for her Inventions and Innovations class. This was fun, but time consuming. Have you ever tried to build a working greenhouse out of old muffin boxes and yogurt cups? She darn well better get an A on it, is all I'm saying.

Then there have been numerous errands. Numerous things to take care of. After four days in the Blanket Fort fighting the plague, all those little things start to pile up. I still have to do them. They didn't magically take care of themselves in my absence. The jerks.

All this means is that on top of feeling guilty for not writing, especially when I love my current draft, I also feel quite paranoid that I'm still not caught up on all the necessities. Anxiety is not a frame of mind that's conducive to focused writing. So then I feel even more guilt, which adds to the anxiety, and you see the horrible pattern emerge.

What I realized today was that Real Life wasn't causing my problem. I can't stop that bus. I either grab on and go for the ride, just like everyone else, or sit on the bench and never get anywhere. Nope. I realized that *I* am causing my problem.

Not much I can do about all the piddly stuff. I'm getting caught up as fast as possible. And I wrote more than a thousand new words last night. Progress is progress, and I will choose to be happy about it. Sure, it's not the 10,000 words I could have written while I was sick, but didn't. It is 1,000 more words than I had yesterday at this time.

There's also a pile of boring, mundane crap I need to do. Pay bills. Collect Girl Scout Cookie money and deposit it. Paperwork for summer camp registration. Balance the checkbook. Correspondence that needs to be handled (most sincere apologies if you're waiting for email from me). But I'm working my way through that, too.

There are things that will always need to be done, but I have to keep reminding myself that I can't do everything all at once. I'll just do as much as I can, and try not to let it get to me. Even with Real Life throwing wood chippers in my way.

The words will come. I'll give them as much time as they need, within reason. So now, to the store to pick up the forgotten items from the list, and then home again just in time for the Evening Rush to start up here. Homework, dinner, tv, family. It might interfere with my writing, but I only have one family, and they deserve some of my time, too. Eventually, hopefully by 7 or 8 tonight, they'll leave me alone to play with the words again. It's all I ask from today.

Bully for you

When Lulu was in kindergarten, she came home from school one day with a Blue Slip. Blue Slips were filled out for disciplinary actions, and were just about the worst thing a kid could get before they started calling parents in for conferences and handing out detentions/suspensions. Needless to say, I was shocked and horrified. MY CHILD?! A behavior problem? Surely not. There must be some mistake.

Turns out, a little boy on the playground took a swing at her, so she used her kung fu training (she came to class with me four times a week), and delivered a textbook mountain punch to the kid's gut. I asked if she was okay, was she hurt when the kid punched her, and she said, "Of course not. I ducked."

It took all my Supermommy power to keep from cracking up at her response. She'd obviously been paying more attention than I'd thought in kung fu. We talked about how it's not okay to hit someone, even if they tried to hit you first. We talked about appropriate responses to anyone who hurt you, whether with words or actions or physical violence. I thought we had this covered. I was wrong.

Lulu's in 7th grade now, and she barely even remembers the incident with Punchy McSluggerton way back in kindergarten. Until yesterday, I thought she'd at least remember the lessons we talked about back then, and over the years in between. It seems that every year the school sends home letters about bullying, how the school has a zero tolerance policy for dealing with bullies, and how they are having assemblies to deal with the topic, and class time dedicated to talking about it. It sounded to me like the teachers were all over this issue, looking to nip any sort of aggressive behavior in the bud. Once again, I was wrong.

She'd been a straight-A student, especially excelling in English class. This year her honors level class only has 16 students (which is a near miracle when most of her other classes have upwards of 30 students each). So you can imagine my surprise when she's bringing home consistent C's. I thought she must not like her teacher. Maybe she didn't care for the poetry assignments (always my own least favorite English class unit). I couldn't fault her for that. But then she was getting dinged for not turning in classwork. She'd been in class, so why didn't she turn in the work? She'd done it perfectly. I couldn't understand, and I was beginning to think she might have some sort of problem with her memory. I was considering taking her to the doctor to ensure she hadn't sustained some sort of head injury. I couldn't think of any other way to explain her sudden memory lapses, her refusal to talk to me about why she wasn't turning things in, and why she wasn't able to focus in class.

Yesterday she reached her breaking point, and finally told us what was bothering her. Or, more specifically, WHO was bothering her.

Let me be clear, I am an involved parent. I volunteer with her Girl Scout troop on a near-continuous basis. I know half the kids at her school, and most of them know me. I am The Library Lady, and everyone from her old elementary school knows me. I have asked her on numerous occasions if she's seen any incidences of bullying at school, and she's told me about a few things she's seen happening with other kids. I thought we had this covered. But we really didn't.

After she told me everything that had been going on, essentially since the beginning of school back in August, I was heartbroken. "Why didn't you tell us about this? Why would you let this go on so long?"

She looked me in the eye and told me she didn't say anything because what could we do? What the kid was doing to her was not bullying, so she couldn't do anything to stop it.

Go back now, reread that last sentence. I'll wait right here.

Done? Are you as shocked as I am? Everything she described to us, from him deliberately knocking things off her desk every time he walked past, to telling her to "shut up" on a daily basis, to making faces at her in class, to recruiting a group of girls to laugh at her, THESE ARE ALL THE THINGS SHE'S BEEN TAUGHT ARE BULLYING BEHAVIORS, AND SHE STILL DIDN'T THINK SHE WAS BEING BULLIED. SHE THOUGHT SHE JUST HAD TO DEAL WITH IT.

She knew teachers had seen this behavior, and because they did nothing to stop it, she assumed she just had to live with it. Despite all the talk about bullying at school and how to deal with it, despite her strong group of friends, despite all the Girl Power lectures, despite our repeated conversations at home about how she should never let anyone make her feel lesser, she thought this treatment was somehow either deserved or something she had no power to stop.

*pauses to sob*

This is what I'm having the hardest time understanding. My daughter knows what bullying is. She can tell you right away when she sees it happening to someone else. She supports her friends when they're going through frustrating situations like the one that's been bothering her. She has always been told that she should NEVER put up with anyone who makes her feel small in any way. In theory, she carries this knowledge with her all the time. I have no idea how to remind her of that when she's feeling alone, hurt, and defenseless, and I'm not there.

This is why we rely on the teachers we entrust our children to every day. I handed her over, in the hopes no teacher would permit any student to belittle another student in her class. I am so disappointed in this entire situation. Disappointed in myself for not pushing for more answers when I saw my child struggling with her grades. Disappointed in the teachers and school staff for not holding her tormentor accountable for his actions. Disappointed in the other kids, some of whom I know personally, for not only doing nothing to stop it, but sometimes participating in it and encouraging it. Disappointed in my kid, for not thinking she had the right to stand up for herself and seek help from any adult within shouting distance the moment another child said or did something that made her uncomfortable. And disappointed that despite all the training and speeches they give the kids at school, she STILL felt as if she were the one in the wrong for feeling upset by another child's abusive behavior.

I am at a complete loss. What could I have done differently? I know there's no way to shield someone 100% from bad feelings. There are always going to be jerks in the world. I just wish I knew how to give her the tools she can use to defend herself. Hopefully this will be a good practical learning experience. It's the best outcome I can hope for at this point.

I spoke to the guidance counselor at school this morning, and I'm waiting to hear back from her on how they intend to deal with this. I am at a complete loss. I don't know what more I can do, other than to constantly remind her that she is awesome, and that nobody is allowed to make her feel otherwise.

***UPDATE: Two sides to every story***

I heard back from the school today, and it turns out Lulu is just as responsible for the bad behavior as the kid who made her feel bad. And you know what, *I* might be partially responsible for it. Let me explain.

Lulu has a few words that really bug her. Pet peeve words. Apparently the boy who teases her has a favorite word, which is at the TOP of the list of Lulu's despised words. That word: Swag.

This kid is the king of swag. He loves the word, and applies it to himself regularly (as 13-year-old boys are wont to do). Every time Lulu hears it, she yells back "Yes, you are curtains." She's had it with swag, YOLO, and half a dozen other irritating catch phrase words, and she inherited a large dose of snark from both me and her father. Her friends think we're funny when we tease each other back and forth, but a kid who doesn't know she's just playing around, just trying to be silly, would likely take those comments the wrong way.

So we have a lovely opportunity to remind her that teasing someone for their word choices is also bullying. I might correct her usage and vocabulary at home, but that doesn't mean she's allowed to make fun of others for using words she doesn't like. Unless someone's words are derogatory or hurtful in some way, just let everyone else be.

So there you go. I feel like kind of a jerk for getting all bent out of shape yesterday, now that I know this whole situation started because of something she said herself. I'm not saying she's entirely to blame, but I know that she's at least 50% responsible for it. She's definitely responsible for letting it escalate to the point where it's interfering with her school work, for not saying anything sooner. There will be a big discussion tonight.

The Art of Compromise

Right. So I've known my husband, the Helper Monkey, for nearly 17 years now. We've been married for 15. And every once in a while, I learn something completely shocking about him. Sometimes it leads to snort-drooling laughter.

 

I decided to make pasta for dinner tonight, since I forgot to make up a shopping list for Helper Monkey to get the ingredients for @Fizzygrrl's crock pot curry recipe. This sort of mental lapse is typical. We eat a lot of pasta as a result.

So, I ask the Monkey and Lulu what kind of sauce they want. I have two jars, one regular marinara type sauce, and one of vodka sauce. Vodka sauce is one of my favorites, by the way, so I consider it a treat whenever I make it. I was personally leaning toward it, and had convinced Lulu it was the option to choose. Helper Monkey did not agree.

For the last seventeen years, I've made vodka sauce countless times. I knew it wasn't his favorite, but he always ate it with minimal grumbling. I don't know why tonight was any different, but The Truth has finally come out. Turns out, Helper Monkey equates vodka sauce with vomit. Lulu promptly renamed it Vomit Sauce, and hilarity ensued.

I laughed at his response, but then realized he was completely serious. This made me laugh harder. I was stomping around the living room with the reviled sauce, wondering how anyone could repeatedly eat something that they equated with puke. I have no idea why I found this so entertaining, but I was literally floored. I fell to my knees, laughing so hard I was drooling, all the while berating the Monkey for keeping his vitriolic hatred a secret so long. The mind boggles. Truly, if someone served me something I didn't like once, I'd probably eat it and be polite. I might mention that it wasn't exactly to my taste if they suggested they make it again. If they tried to foist such horror on me a third time, I'd put my foot down. There is no way in hell I'd repeatedly eat something I detested for seventeen years without opening my fat yap and screaming. No. Way. In. Hell.

The Monkey knows I like it, so he never said anything before now. O_o

Hello, people?! Compromise isn't about torturing yourself to make someone else happy. It's about having your needs met while also meeting the needs of others. Sure, I eat foods that aren't my favorite, but I do not eat foods I hate. I feel like I should bake the Monkey a cake. He's apparently suffered greatly in my culinary equivalent of Guantanamo. I'm pretty sure he likes chocolate cake, but I think I'll ask first, just to make sure...

I'll say one thing for sure, I am now eternally convinced of the Monkey's love. He suffered in silence all this time for me. Granted, I'd rather he'd have told me, but shoot. I can't be mad about it. He did it for love. :D

 

How far would you go to keep your dearest love happy? Would any of y'all really go this far? What's the nuttiest thing you've ever done for love? Or, if you're one of my writerly friends, what have you made your characters do for love? I'd love to know.

Frankenstorm: Is it time to panic yet?

For those who don't know, Helper Monkey works at a grocery store. He gets to witness storm panic first hand. When he got home this morning, he said the lines were out the door, and they were selling bottled water faster than they could restock the shelves. O.o

Also for those who don't know, I grew up in Miami. I survived Hurricane Andrew. We didn't have power for nine days after the storm. We didn't kill each other. There was no zombie uprising. Life went on.


A few years ago, we had Hurricane Irene hit the DC area, and watched appalled as folks prepared for the storm like they do for a blizzard. They lined up to buy bread, milk, and toilet paper. Sure, these things are all dandy, but when the power goes out, you're going to want a whole different list of things on hand. I think they've learned their lesson now.

My family and I go camping frequently, so we have a lot of the things that people might need in a power outage. Lanterns, batteries, a radio that works with a hand crank instead of batteries. We have ways to stay warm if the heat fails (since we have an electric heat pump). We have a fireplace and plenty of wood. We don't mind living off the grid for a few days, should our power go down. It's not fun to think about losing access to the internet, and not being able to write after my laptop battery and the backup battery both conk out, but I would live through it.

I volunteered to go to the grocery store today, but Helper Monkey vetoed that idea. He'll pick things up before he leaves work at 6 am. There shouldn't be horrible lines then. So far, my list of emergency supplies we need consists of:

Bread

Yes. One item. We went shopping a few days ago. I don't want to fill the freezer or fridge with things that would spoil. We always have a supply of canned goods and other foods that are shelf stable. I'm sure I'll add to the list throughout the day, but after Andrew, I can't really get worked up over a storm with merely 70-mph-winds. And we live so far inland, and up in the mountains (yes, technically they are mountains), I'm not particularly worried about my own house weathering the storm.

I am worried about all the low-lying, coastal dwelling folks not too far from here. If any of you want to camp out at my house, we're all ready. Bring marshmallows. We'll make s'mores and tell ghost stories.

So, the thing I'm worried about most at the moment are the ice cream I bought last week and had been saving for a rainy day. I guess I'll be devouring the Sea Salt Caramel Gelato in the next two days. That's right. Remember, everyone! Frankenstorm isn't even due to hit for ANOTHER TWO DAYS! YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PANIC YET! GO ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS! You have time to run all the errands, to fill your tank with gas, to make sure your zombie-slaying kit is in full working order!

And with that, I'm off to assemble my zombie-slaying kit. If I get cut off from the digital world, send flamethrowers. Good luck to you all.

Crazy is ABSOLUTELY NOT as Crazy Does

I am stunned and appalled about the attack on literary agent Pam van Hylckama yesterday by someone the police believe is an author who queried her and was rejected. If you are in any way involved in the writing and publishing community and miraculously have not heard about this, you can read about the incident here and here.

I have seen an online outpouring of good wishes for Pam and her family, and for her little dog who bit the attacker and scared him off. That is a GOOD DOG! Sorry. The dog part of the story makes me go all verklempt.

I've seen some great responses online, including the suggestion that a database be created that shames authors into not sending hate mail to agents and editors who don't want to represent them. It is a business decision whether an agent wants to take you on as a client or not. It is not a personal attack on you. It does not require a response of any kind, especially a hate-filled one. End of story.

I think a database like that might be useful. Harry Connolly summed up the idea pretty well on his blog here. It's a sad world we live in when agents (and anyone else, for that matter) are used to getting threatening or hateful mail. When a real live red-alert-level threat comes through, it's not a warning sign that law enforcement should get involved immediately. If authors knew that their response to any rejection might be publicly posted, they might think twice before firing off an angry, heat-of-the-moment retort. That way, any harassment that did come through could be considered a real and actionable threat.

My thinking is also this: before an agent responded with a polite rejection letter, they could google up the author's name on the database, and find out if they are the type to respond poorly to rejection. Your name is on the list? Maybe as a repeat offender? Then no response at all for you. Life is too short to deal with that kind of crazy.

Speaking of crazy, that's been one part in all of this that really gets to me. That word has been bandied about a lot over the last 24 hours. The perpetrator was described as "crazy." I frequently hear jokes about how all authors are a little crazy. I even participate in them. But I feel a little entitled to make crazy jokes. You see, I, myself, am crazy. I got a doctor's note and everything.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1997. Through a lot of hard work, I live a relatively normal life. Writing is the main thing that keeps me stable, hence the title of my blog here. I write the bad stuff out of my head and on to the page. I have a feeling a LOT of writers out there are doing something similar.

I sometimes make light of my condition, because I've found that some people find it upsetting. When they see I'm not suicidal, and that I don't look or act like a crazed monster, it makes it easier to talk about. I want people to be open-minded when it comes to mental illness. I never want anyone to avoid seeking treatment because they are frightened or ashamed. Humor helps.

BUT I WOULD NEVER SEND THREATS OR HATE MAIL TO ANYONE!!! MENTAL ILLNESS DOESN'T NECESSARILY MAKE YOU VIOLENT.

Absolutely, what this person did was crazy, illogical, and idiotic. It was not in any way a normal response to rejection. 99.9999999% of people who query agents would never dream of hunting a rejecting agent down and attempting to hurt them physically. We all get it. We understand the way publishing works. We are NOT deluded into thinking that a rejection of our manuscript is a personal rejection of all that we are and all that we ever hope to be.

To be perfectly honest, I don't mind rejections. If an agent doesn't love my writing, why would I want them to represent me at all? I mean, really. LOGIC, PEOPLE!

Finally, I've been thinking a lot about my online presence. If you follow me on Twitter, or read some of my blog entries, you can probably make an educated guess as to the general area where I live. You could find my phone number with a small effort. My "author" email address is posted on my blog, for crying out loud. I'm not hard to track down. This scares me now.

When I started this blog (and even longer ago started a blog over on LiveJournal), I had no reason to hide my identity. Y'all know my real name. It's in my twitter name. No, you wit, not MittensMorgul. But for the first time ever, I've seriously wished I'd made up a different name to write under. Not to mention the fact that there are a bunch of other people named Laura Hughes running around in the world. It's not exactly an exotic name. I just don't think it's possible to change it now. I mean, the Internet remembers everything. It's out there now, and it's going to stay there whether I try to change it or not.

With all that in mind, I would like to inform the world that I am a brown belt in kung fu. I own swords, and I know how to use them. I carry a quarterstaff around in my car. I wield a mean purple pocketknife. My elbows are certified as weapons. And I know six ways to kill a man with my bare hands (that sentence is a lie, but the rest is 100% truth). I did used to work for an orthopedic surgeon who pointed out all the nerve bundles and joint spaces to hit if I were ever attacked by a madman on the streets. It might not kill you, but you'll likely wish you were dead.

Hopefully I will never need to back up the previous paragraph. Hopefully the world will be a nice place from now on. Hopefully it will be just as nice as I remember it being until yesterday afternoon, a world where writers and agents respect and learn from one another, and where the cost of running a practical business isn't the acceptance of threats as "business as usual." Us kung fu practitioners will be watching you, so freaking behave, already!

(Insert Hysterical Yet Thoughtful Title Here)

Don't you hate it when you think up the absolute perfect premise for a blog post, you laugh, you think of a way to tie it in to something relevant to your own life at that moment, you laugh again because it is STILL funny after ten minutes, and then you fall asleep? Yeah, me too.

I used to keep a notepad by my bed so I could write things like that down. I moved it, uh, somewhere. Don't remember where. I probably took it to the office to transcribe past notes, and then never returned it. It doesn't really do me a lot of good if it's not there to make notes in. Once again, my brain failed me.

I was just too lazy and tired to get up and find writing materials to make a quick note of the fantastic blog post idea. I wouldn't forget something that funny, would I? Of course not!

Unfortunately, all I remember of the Perfect Blog Entry idea is that it once existed. Every detail has been permanently wiped from my brain. Unless someone out there knows hypnosis, which I would be open to trying. Ugh.

So there you have it. The Perfect Blog Post that should have lived in this space has been replaced by a Writerly Warning. Here goes:

When you think of something great, for glob's sake, WRITE IT DOWN IMMEDIATELY! You will suffer brain failure eventually. You may point to me as the example.

Oh, dear, look at that poor woman over there, suffering from Writerly Brain Failure.

It's not polite to point, dear.

I know, but...she's suffering. Isn't there something we can do for her?

It's her own fault. Should have written it down.

So there you have it.

Giant Brain Eraser wants to eat your good ideas

In better news today, I got a lot of editing/writing done last night. I say Editing SLASH Writing because brain failure struck again. I had to put down the WIP several months ago to work on revising two other books, which turned out to be cannibalistic. They ate their little book-mate right out of my brain! I had to go back to the beginning and rewrite some things that had to change because of changes made to the first two books, and also to remember the details I'd already written. Without further ado, it's time for the triumphant return of the:

PROGRESS-O-METER for BLACK SHEEP! *confetti cannon* *flailyhands* (I really need to make a widget for this)

Words: 54,970

Pages: 171

Edit Page: 19

Explanation for those new to this concept: Words is the total word count, Pages is the total page count, and Edit Page is the page I'm up to in a revision. As you can see, I have a LOOOONG way to go. Progress-O-Meter tracking keeps me honest and shames me into actually working. I expect shaming when you don't get regular updates! Thank you for your support.

What I have to say on the subject of Creepers

Okay, folks. I finished a major revision last night, which means my brain is taking a day of rest. This day of rest is being enforced by a case of the blergs I brought home from camp. I plan to spend the day reading and sipping tea (and probably napping and sneezing and eating cough drops by the pound), but there's been something swirling around the internet for a while now that's really bothering me. Namely, creepers.

***WARNING: TRIGGER ALERT! Please don't read on if any of these subjects is a trigger for you: Creepers, rape culture, pervasive sexual harassment, etc.  /WARNING. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!***

**SECOND WARNING: This is a long post. I also wanted a little buffer space between the trigger warning and the beginning of the trigger-inducing words below. Sorry to make the post even longer, but those are two very good reasons for a few extra sentences. /WARNING.YOU HAVE BEEN DOUBLY WARNED**

I know, you're thinking, "Not another one of those posts!" But I gotta say something, so here it is.

I started hearing about this upsetting behavior when the Readercon Creeper Incident came to light and every blogger in the known universe put forth their two cents. (By the way, that link takes you to a comprehensive listing of posts about the Creeper.) The ugliness continued with disgusting comments on some of these blogs that only perpetuated or excused Creeper behavior.

I started seeing more posts about Creepers at other conventions, as well as in ordinary life. This post by John Scalzi sums up the creepy phenomenon pretty well. This VERY LONG post by Captain Awkward goes one step further, and outs a broad spectrum of the kinds of problems creepers cause for people, and introduced me to the concept of rape culture. This post is very hard to read, but I encourage people to do so, including the comments. Even Wikipedia has an entry for rape culture. Jezebel has an entire section devoted to it. The fact that all of these entries need to exist at all proves there is something very wrong with our society.

So now that you know the backstory (sorry for the info-dump, by the way), here's my thoughts on the whole matter.

I consider myself to be a friendly person. I'll happily say hi to strangers who smile and greet me politely. I never thought much about the intentions of the people who comment on my appearance, for a very good reason. Frequently when I go out, I dress like Evil Mary Poppins. I expect to get some offbeat comments from random strangers. If I didn't like the attention to a certain degree, I'd buy "normal" clothes. This is not to excuse creepy behavior toward me because of the way I choose to present myself in public. There is still an appropriate way to ask about my outfit, or to compliment my unusual sense of style without being creepy. Some people understand this boundary just fine, and I'm happy to engage in a brief conversation with them, as long as it's polite.

Me and Lulu. Evil Mary Poppins at Disney World.

When I know I don't have time for the commentary and conversations -- if I need to get errands done in a hurry, for example, or if I'm going out to enjoy time with my friends and not spend the day chatting with every random stranger that feels entitled to comment because I stand out -- I dress down. Dressing down involves casual clothes (jeans, t-shirts, ponytail, no makeup, etc.). This strategy only backfires when people who know me for my odd clothes recognize me in my incognito getup and wonder why I'm not in my finery.

Reading all the posts mentioned above got me to thinking, though. I usually don't take abuse from people. I'm not exactly shy, and if you rub me the wrong way, I will let you know it. The problem is, creepers are gonna creep. Because I try to be nice to people who ostensibly noticed the effort I made to look nice in a stand-out kind of way, I sometimes let things go too far before I realize the commenter's intentions are less pure than is comfortable.

Then came the revelation: EVEN THOUGH I DRESS THIS WAY IN PUBLIC WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT IT IS UNUSUAL AND WILL ATTRACT ATTENTION, THAT DOESN'T MEAN I'M ASKING TO BE CREEPED ON. THERE IS AN OBVIOUS DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POLITE COMMENTARY AND/OR APPRECIATION AND CREEPING ON SOMEONE. /end yelling

I like talking to people I meet. I genuinely enjoy it. But it can go too far very quickly if I'm not careful to stop it. I should not have to worry about this sort of thing, but I do. Dressing nicely, wearing unusual clothes, carrying a parasol, applying makeup in a tasteful fashion, or even responding to your inquiries with a smile and polite "thank you" IS NOT AN INVITATION TO CREEP. Sorry for the additional yelling. This is upsetting... *deep breaths, count to ten*

I thought back over my life and remembered these incidents that still make me cringe:

I briefly ran cross-country and track in high school. We had running practice down Main Highway in Coconut Grove. I remember being whistled at and having highly inappropriate things yelled at us from passing motorists. I was 15 years old, you skeevy middle-aged creeps. I can't say EWWWW loud enough. Not to mention, when a truck full of creepy guys paces you as you run, it doesn't make you feel good. It makes you feel fear. It was the main reason I quit running. So thanks, creepers. That was special.

Years later, I was at the grocery store with my young daughter. She was about four years old at the time, and sat in the shopping cart while I did the shopping. This was back in the days when I was too busy raising a small child to worry about dressing up to go out of the house, and I think I wore something super-sexy like a pair of long pants, a t-shirt, and flip-flops. While perusing the produce, I noticed a strange man with an empty shopping cart zipping through the store. He seemed to be in a hurry, and raced up and down the aisles without putting anything in the cart. By the time I was half way through the store, he'd passed by me several times. The third or fourth time he zoomed past, he stopped and said something to me. I don't even remember what the initial few comments were, or his "reason" for stopping to talk, because the rest of the conversation was so creepy that I blotted out any "normal" chatter that came out of his mouth.

He asked me if I was married, and I told him yes. He asked how long I'd been married, and I told him my seventh anniversary was in a few weeks. This is where the conversation derailed completely. With no one else in earshot, other than my daughter, he raised the bar to new heights on creeping. The next question out of his mouth froze me completely. To this day, I wish I'd had a better comeback ready. I just couldn't believe that ANYONE would say something like this FOR ANY REASON.

He asked if I was having a "seven year itch." O_O

I think I stared open-mouthed, or something equally intelligent. I wish to glob I'd said something like, "OMFG, YOU DID NOT JUST SAY THAT, YOU DISGUSTING CREEP. GO DIE IN A FIRE!" I was paralyzed by the jerk's audacity. That's the only explanation I have for my failure to defend myself.

While I gaped like a fish, and my daughter sat there staring at this strange man, and looking to me for clues about what the hell was going on, he kept talking. He went on about how his twenty-first anniversary was coming up, and he was "looking for his third seven year itch." He asked if I was interested. This is where I began hallucinating the WHOOP WHOOP siren noise you hear when the starship Enterprise is under attack.

I said something forceful and pointed, to the effect of, "Um, No. That's sick." I stared at him until he went away. I also reported him to the store manager. She said there was nothing she could do about it. They couldn't ban a man from the grocery store, let alone call the cops, if he didn't commit a crime. Being creepy isn't a crime.

Well, it should be.

This guy was clearly on a mission. He was trolling a grocery store with the sole intention of finding a woman who would agree to sleep with him because he needed to cheat on his wife for the THIRD TIME. Oh, lordy. In what universe is any of this acceptable behavior? Shouldn't people at least get tickets for acting this crassly? It was demeaning and insulting. Nothing about his approach, his behavior, or his words was flattering. If I hadn't been proficient at kung fu, I would have been scared to walk out to the parking lot alone. The manager did offer to have a male employee walk me to my car, but that would be admitting this guy got to me. He got to me, all right. I had a feeling if he'd approached me in the parking lot, the poor employee would have had to step in to protect the creeper from my Fists of Death, or my Kneecaps of Castration. (Sorry, getting a little ragey there. I hate that he was able to ruin a perfectly pleasant day and make me all ragey.)

You might think, "Hey, be glad he found you attractive! You have a kid, and still manage to keep yourself nice enough looking to get a little attention from men!"

Uh, no.

This was not flattering. It did not make me feel pretty. You know what gets this level of attention from members of the opposite sex? Dogs in heat. This guy just did the human version of humping my leg in public. How is anyone okay with this? And he did it in front of my CHILD.

I propose women (and sane, normal men) everywhere begin handing out tickets for this sort of behavior. It doesn't have to be a real paper ticket, but we have to start standing up and shaming these people when they act this far out of line.

You can't tell me this guy was unaware that his behavior was inappropriate. I don't care how socially awkward you might be. Propositioning a woman in the grocery store is never okay. Nor is angrily demanding a response to your hoots and howls while we walk or run down the street. I am not here for your entertainment, even when I'm dressed like Evil Mary Poppins. I do that for my own entertainment. If you derive pleasure from it, how about keeping it to yourself. If you must say something, a polite, "You look lovely. I admire your sense of style," should be sufficient. I don't want to hear about every time you ever donned fancy dress in your lifetime. Nor do I want to tell you my life story, and all the reasons I like to dress that way. I wish that people who see me walk away smiling because they saw something they don't typically see. I wish that they might have a more pleasant day for it. I don't owe you anything else. Hell, stranger, I don't even owe you THAT.

To end this post on a note that doesn't turn my stomach, I have a pleasant experience to relate. The day that picture was taken, we walked through Tomorrowland and a pleasant young gentleman approached our family. He was dressed in Steampunk finery -- a brown pinstripe tailcoat and a matching bowler. He came over to us, complimented me on my fashion bravery, and wished us a good day. We saw him several more times over the next few days, and each time we exchanged a smile, a wave, and a howdedoo. Nothing creepy at all, and everyone went away feeling happier for the exchanges. So, Steampunk guy from Orlando, it was a pleasure to meet you. Why can't more people get it like that? See how easy it is to NOT be a creeper?

I'm a little nervous about opening this post for comments. I've seen how some people who posted on this topic have been abused by negative, spiteful, or downright threatening comments. I will be watching closely. If you are demeaning, I will delete your comment. If you are offensive, I will delete your comment. If it gets ugly, I will turn moderation on, but I hate to limit the flow of ideas. I would rather keep an open forum if at all possible. So be like Steampunk Guy. Just be polite, speak civilly, and then move on.

Things I learned about middle school today...

Technically this was supposed to be the last Buccaneer Blogfest post. I was supposed to discuss all the wonderful benefits I enjoyed through participating. And I think I've been pointing all the benefits out all along. I've found a TON of great writers to follow, read a berjillion interesting posts about writing, and met a lot of wonderful, interesting people. Hopefully all of that has been conveyed in every single Buccaneer post I've made over the last four weeks. It has been a fantastic experience for me, all around.

So now to the off-topic Crazy Ranting:

I realized around dinner time tonight that I learned something important today. There's a huge difference between sheltering your children from specific harm, and sheltering them from the entire world without any explanation or reason why. I can't even begin to express my dismay at the latter attitude.

I know not everyone has kids, but everyone who is ever exposed to kids in any way, or writes YA or MG (or even children's picture books) might understand how frustrating this is for the kids in question.

I completely understand the drive to protect our kids from the realities of the cold, cruel world as long as possible. It's not necessarily healthy to cover half the world with a black cloth and blindly pretend all the bad things don't even exist, though.

Case in point. Swearing.

By middle school, most kids have heard all the bad words in the box. No matter how hard we try to prevent them from hearing all the *!%& words, there will always be a kid or two who heard their older sibling or a frustrated parent exclaim them once or twice. That kid will be sure to spread the language like wildfire. Forget middle school, because I think my daughter heard most of them by the end of second grade. I don't really think there's much point in keeping my 12-year-old from watching a movie or tv show because a few "bad words" are used. But I know parents who do this.

Telling a child a word is bad, and then preventing them from ever hearing it while they are in our presence, seems counterproductive to me. Sure some words mean bad things, but I prefer to teach my child WHY they are bad, rather than issue a confusing blanket ban on certain words. Does this make sense to anyone else? I think the difference is an important one.

I would never want to limit my daughter's experience of life. There is a HUGE (read: gaping black chasm) difference between saying a word is altogether bad and preventing exposure to it with all my might, and teaching my daughter to THINK when she hears a bad word. I think this is a critical thinking skill as much as anything else. She does not swear, but will sometimes say a word that causes a couple of select friends to cringe and tattle to the closest adult that she cussed. Really? At 12?

I know it's not a polite thing to talk about, but since when does the word "fart" fall into the "dreaded-four-letter-word" category? Or "crap?" Or a dozen others that have recently sent a few of her friends into dramatic paroxysms?

Shouldn't we be arming our kids with the reasoning behind the specific uses of words that are bad? Some of my friends have even banned the use of the word "stupid" entirely. I taught my daughter that it's one thing to call the coffee table stupid when you stub your toe on it, or your cell phone stupid when it drops your call. It's another thing entirely to call someONE stupid. She would never do that.

I also don't stop her from listening to music with bad words in it (heck, some of my favorite songs are off albums with parental warning labels on them, and she's been listening to them since she was born). I don't stop her from watching movies with bad words, or violence, or scary things like ghosts, vampires, and demons. Strangely enough, some of the kids whose parents have blanket-banned all these things are the ones with the worst case of the jitters when thrown into a new situation. New situations roll off my kid's back like water off a duck.

I think it comes down to not simply blindfolding our kids. There is bad stuff in the world. They deserve to know this. I'd rather have all this explained gently and lovingly by her parents than forced upon her in the wilds of middle school playgrounds by a bully who wants to use his or her special new knowledge to frighten or shock. Something tells me that the "kid explanation" of the horrors of life won't be quite so reassuring as the parental explanation. And there is ALWAYS an age-appropriate explanation that's ALWAYS better than just pretending the bad thing doesn't exist at all.

I want my daughter to trust me. If I dismiss her questions, if I don't try my best to explain scary things in a way she can understand and take some comfort in, then what will happen when she is older and in a real-life scary situation? Will she trust me with the important things in her life later if I don't put a little trust in her now? I don't want to take that risk. I tell her all the time, if she wants the truth, Mom and Dad are the source. She knows we will never lie to her only to make her feel better. We'll do our best to make her feel better, but we only dispense truth around here.

Thanks to everyone who made it all the way through my sermon. I've been thinking about all this for a while now. Seeing as how I don't seem to have scarred my kid for life yet, I'm pretty sure she'd agree with it.

Parental Nerves Run Amok, or Sunday Afternoon

The house is very quiet tonight. And dark. The little person who normally runs around leaving lights and TVs on in every room is away this week. I loaded her on an airplane all by herself yesterday afternoon and sent her off to my sister's house for a week. It was a tiny airplane. She loved it.

Tiny plane.

We almost didn't make it to the airport. I'd spent the last week thinking her flight was at 2:35. Yesterday morning around 9 am, I printed out her boarding pass. I'm glad I decided to do it when I did, instead of waiting for the last possible minute to take care of it. Her flight was at 12:22.

I spent the next 15 minutes panicking. Luckily I made her pack the night before, and she only had to throw a few last minute items into her backpack. We both got dressed (I think the TSA would have frowned on us arriving in our pajamas), and bolted for the airport.

The last half a dozen or so times I've flown, I've used National Airport. This was the first time I've had to use Dulles since they installed the underground trains between terminals. First, I want to say how much I miss the old jetway busses that raised and lowered to the height of the plane. They were repurposed as shuttles between the main terminal and the newer terminals, but now they've been almost entirely replaced by the new train. Which is probably the least efficient airport transport system I've ever seen. Ever.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with the train itself, but the security lines that bottlenecked us twice before we could join the labyrinth of escalators and hallways beyond the screening point leaves a lot to be desired. There are about a dozen different lines you're randomly assigned to, and then the lines are randomly shut down  from time to time.

Once you finally make it through the boarding pass/ID confirmation point, you're shuffled into one of half a dozen other randomly moving lines to go through screening. Luckily, the kid didn't have to go through the backscatter machine, so neither did I. Those things creep me out.

There were so many escalators beyond this point that they could speed them all up and call it an amusement park. I haven't been up and down that much since I rode the Tower of Terror at Disney last summer. I considered going back and taking a picture of each one, but I try not to act suspicious at airports.

I tried to take this picture in the least suspicious manner possible.

Just so you know I have nothing against the trains, I rode in the front car on my return journey to the main terminal. Nice view.

After the kid was safely airborne, I had to get to work at the Keys game. It was so difficult to work when the kid was sending me messages on my phone, and I'm not technically allowed to have my phone while I'm working. So sue me. I cheated yesterday.

She's having a great time at Girls Rock Camp this week. Her band formed today. They assign girls to bands based on their musical tastes and preferences, so hopefully she'll have a great experience. In case I haven't mentioned it before, she's the drummer.

They did team building activities today, including writing an advertizing jingle for Orange Aliens. She promised to write the lyrics down for me, and assured me it's hilarious. I'll keep you updated as they write their actual song this week. They get to perform in a real concert on Saturday. Fingers crossed for her.

Now that all that's out of the way, I used the unusual quietude around her today to finish the edits from the Magnificent Crit Partner of Magnificence. I can't think of anything else I want to change. Now I'm trying to convince myself that Running Down the Dragon is ready to meet the world. I'd hate to send it out in public only to find out its skirt was tucked into the back of its pantyhose or something.

I think I'll wait until the thought of showing it to agents and editors no longer causes respiratory failure. Yeah. That might happen. Or maybe I'll just wait one more day.

It's Thursday, so why is it acting like a crankypants Monday?

Today is Thursday, but it's behaving like a tantrum-filled Monday. Not fun. I haven't been bombarded by nitpicky lunacy like this in a while. I hate to get on the blog here and rant, but I need to blow off some steam before I get back to editing or, heaven forbid, take my rage out on the WIP. Nobody wants to see that.

So, everything started out on a stressful note. I heard my email notice chime on my phone last night while I was falling asleep. I figured I'd check it out in the morning, since I'd been having a back and forth with a crit partner. I thought it might be more edit notes. HA! No. It was nothing I want to go into here, but it wasn't good news. That's the first thing I saw this morning, and unfortunately the day didn't get much better.

I knew I had to pay bills today (I forgot the phone bill was due today, and while I was there I just balanced the checkbook and paid everything else). That never makes me cheerful, but I thought it would improve my mood to know I didn't have to think about it for another few weeks. So I guess that did work out in my favor. I was feeling better. Temporarily.

I had to go to a training session for the camp I'm working at in a few weeks. I forgot to bring the paperwork I needed to hand in about my kayak instructor certification. I'm glaring at it right now, so I have to make another trip out in the heat to deliver it.

While I was at the training, my cell phone refused to connect to the network. It's been doing this a lot lately. Stupid old phone. It took a 20 minute phone call to Sprint to make it work again. It apparently keeps dumping all my password information. Grrr. At least it works again, but I was like five hours behind on everything because I still didn't have time to catch up.

I paged through the mail while we were fixing my phone, and the community association wants me to take care of a fallen tree in my yard. Apparently it's ugly. Oh, and so are the weeds. Sorry, I haven't had a chance to spend two days hacking through the jungle that my garden turns into in the span of two weeks every summer. So now I have two weeks to take care of it. In record-breaking heat. By myself. Ugh. Lulu volunteered to help, at least. We'll see how that goes.

We also had to go grocery shopping. At least that was fun. I think I overcompensated for my bad mood by buying ALL THE SWEETS. We have moon pies, doughnuts, and two kinds of cookies now. At least I can't blame my problems on a lack of delicious, fattening sweets.

Come to think of it, that makes today...not all that bad, in retrospect. Because it's kind of impossible to be upset when you have Moon Pies! :)

Okee dokey. I'm going to put on my hat, grab some water, and go hack through the jungle. Maybe if I pretend I'm Stanley on a mission to find Livingston in the Deepest Corners of Darkest Africa, I'll make it through. It feels hot enough outside, and it's always easier to take care of horrible tasks if you can make up a good story to play with while you're torturing yourself.

Or maybe I'll wait until after dinner. Maybe the tension headache I gave myself from grinding my teeth together will be gone by then, too.

So there you have it. I worked myself up into a lather for nothing. Life's not so bad. At least the air conditioner is holding out...knock on wood.

I hope everyone else is having a happy Thursday, too.

Let's Play a Game, how about, which finger is the band-aid on? Answer: All of them!

Well, well, well. It's been a very interesting couple of days. I was going to start with the most telling moment and make this post all clever and sophisticated by then "flashing back" to all the correspondingly nit-witty moments of the last few days, but I'm all out of clever.

The First Bad Thing: Our living room TV crapped out for no discernible reason. Lulu was watching Spongebob one minute, and nothing the next. We tried for about six hours to figure out what was wrong with it before we finally gave up and brought out Ye Olde TeeVee from Lulu's room, and put the newer, albeit dead, unit on the floor. The 20-year-old tv has a bizarrely blurry picture, but then again, I think I was just used to looking at HD. The 10-year-old, yet dead, tv wasn't HD, but it was more than 10 years younger than the ancient beast we're using until we buy a new one. It's amazing what 10 years of technological advancement means in a TV.

Okay. I was upset about having to shell out a few hundred bucks for a tv this week, but I was getting used to the idea. Then last night Helper Monkey was leaving for work, and came back a minute later. His "Check Engine" light was on, and he wanted to take my truck to work. Fine. I know he needed a tune up, and I even knew why his check engine light was on. I'd been putting off tuning his Jeep for a month or so, but I knew last night I couldn't wait any longer. I'm not fond of mechanic work, but I'm competent. I just don't like to get that greasy. So this morning, I loaded Lulu into the Jeep, and we headed off to the auto parts shop.

Sidebar for a moment here: Tomorrow is Father's Day, just in case y'all forgot. I have to work the baseball game (which inexplicably, I just typed as "basebally game"). We'd been planning to order pizza tonight, and Helper Monkey proclaimed his desire to have a beer with his pizza. I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and get beer while I was out getting auto parts. Helper Monkey was unaware that I'd severely depleted our beer stockpile over the last week or so, and I couldn't have him disappointed on Makeshift Father's Day. We also needed to make a stop at Dairy Queen, because that's how I managed to bribe Lulu into coming out with me.

So we went into the store, bought spark plugs and wires, but I couldn't convince the guy working there that the Jeep did, indeed, require two PCV valves, so I have to go back and finish the job another day. I didn't feel like standing there arguing with him, though, so I took my purchases and headed off for alcohol.

I bought a case of Guinness Black Lager for the Helper Monkey, swung by Dairy Queen (which I keep wanting to spell "Diary Queen"), and we headed home. My hands were full of auto parts and beer, while I trudged toward the garage refrigerator to deposit the bottles. I got the fridge door open, and then the handle on the case ripped and the smashing commenced. I nearly cried. All that Nectar of the Gods, gushing out onto the concrete! Forsooth!

Sad.

Luckily, only two bottles of the 12 smashed. Still. Sad.

Even worse: Trying to rip the box apart to salvage what I could before the entire garage flooded with Guinness, I ripped open my finger on one of the broken bottles. I didn't even realize I was bleeding until I got into the house and couldn't figure out why my hand was still wet.

Oh, and this morning, I cut a different finger on a can I was rinsing out for the recycling. So I have matching gashes on each hand.

Okay, so I came inside to let the engine cool down enough to work on, and we ordered pizza. The pizza was great! Every story needs a little break in the tension, after all. Pizza makes for a great break. STET.

After dinner, I headed out to do the tune-up. It should take about 40 minutes. It SHOULD take about 40 minutes, but I'm a ninny. I got 5 of the 6 plugs and wires replaced, but the last one just WOULD NOT COME OUT!!! I cursed the Chrysler corporation for putting the last spark plug right up against the alternator. What ding dongs.....oh. Right. I have a wrench attachment to go around corners that fixes that problem. Which I only remembered after ten minutes of wrench wrestling, cursing, wailing, and grumpiness.

Still, Chrysler put the battery in the way of replacing the right headlight. You actually have to remove the battery to change the wee tiny light bulb. Ding dongs. So I feel justified in cursing them, even though I had an easier solution to my current problem at hand.

The Jeep runs like a dream now.

I have a picture that I only realized the true magnitude of when I looked at it later. I wanted to send my step-father a picture of the offending spark plug that caused the fault, but the defunct TV is on the floor in the background.

I am the queen of Defunct Things.

When I was done, I was informed I needed to wash up before I was allowed to touch anything. Before I started work, I put a band-aid on my owie finger. Can you guess which finger that was?

Hint: It's the one that looks different.

So that ended up being the Helper Monkey's father's day. He gets a like-new car (with 218,000 miles on it), pizza, beer, and a frazzled, injured wifey. Oddly, it works out for us.

Now I hope the people at the ball game tomorrow night don't think my hands are still dirty when I serve them beer. It's 100% impossible to remove All The Grease in one day.

If only I could write this many words on my WIP today! That would be a true miracle. But seeing as how the Helper Monkey will be up in about 15 minutes, and it's his first day of vacation, I figure I should hang out with him tonight.

#b22k will have to wait

For those unfamiliar with #B22K, this is the creation of Lindsay Smith. She explains it on her blog here.

The idea is that you find time for writing every day. That you make time for writing every day, and set goals. In this case, the goal is 2k words. I started off the challenge with the best of intentions and the worst timing. I keep swearing to get more written every day, and then the fates conspire against me with finger injuries, car maintenance, and smashy beer.

I WILL write more. Dang it. Just not tonight. I need a nap now.

Progress-o-Meter:
Words: 54,145
Pages: 179

Lost in New York City, or Writing About Somewhere I'm Not

Okay fellow writers, here's a head scratcher for you. Sure, I wouldn't be in this predicament if I were a plotting plotter, but this is the dilemma my pantsing has led me to. I hope someone out there has some advice, or at least some tea and sympathy. Or even just some tea.

My current project has my main characters running around New York City. I'm 54k words into the project, so New York is staying put as the location. Right now, I need to get my characters from Harlem to Queens. They're following some bad guys in a car across the Queensboro Bridge. They NEED to cross this PARTICULAR bridge, but when I tried to get a good location view on Google maps, it jumps around between the upper deck, the lower deck, and the surface streets of Queens below the bridge as I tried to trace the route visually. THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING I WANT TO CRY!!!

I just need to know what the first possible exit street from the lower deck of the bridge is. My MC needs to be waiting there to pick up her surveillance on the bad guy's car. AND I CAN'T FIGURE THIS OUT!!! GAH!!!

Are any of you familiar with the Queensboro bridge? Or know someone who is? Can you ask that person to let me know?

I sincerely appreciate it. I will reward anyone who can share this info with me. I'll buy ten copies of your next book. I'll name my next pet after you. I'll climb up on the roof and sing a song about your gloriousness and post it on YouTube. Whatever you want! I'll do anything! You name it!

Can you tell I'm desperate here?

I've never had this kind of trouble before. My first novel in this series was set in places I'm very familiar with (Miami, Washington, DC, Boston, Maine), and the second was set in parts of Europe I was able to do a massive amount of research on. This third novel I had to go and set in a city I'm marginally familiar with, but haven't spent a huge amount of time wandering around. At least, I haven't spent a lot of time studying exit ramps from the Queensboro Bridge. Who the heck would do that? Well, I should have.

I'm about to the point where I'm going to take a day and drive up there, cross the bridge, maybe have lunch somewhere in Atlantic Beach, and drive home again. Talk about a long, boring waste of a day just to see what the first stinking cross street is on the Queens side of the bridge is! :)

UPDATE: While trying to copy an image of the Google Map to this post, I realized I was being a nincompoop. I just had to get them to travel across the upper deck of the bridge instead of the lower, and ALL THESE PROBLEMS ARE SOLVED! *doing the victory dance*

This is what happens when tired writer tries to write tired. From now on, I will hash out all my problems in blog post format, just to torture my few loyal readers. It seems to work! :)

Queensboro Bridge: Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:59thstbridge2007.jpg

Now that I've solved my own problem, it's time to go fix the MS.

Have any of you ever had difficulties writing about a city other than your hometown? How did you go about solving your difficulties? I'll probably have other location problems at some point in the future, and not all of them might be solved this easily!

Thanks again, everyone!

Happy writing!

Oh, and the Progress-o-Meter is running well lately:

Words: 53,650
Pages: 178

Though, these stats are only valid BEFORE I fixed the problems listed above.

Blood and other necessasry things

Every 112 days, I'm eligible to donate blood. I'm tall enough, heavy enough, and A-negative enough to qualify to donate Double Red cells. This is not a regular blood donation. It's the super robot high tech blood donation. And it makes me LOOPY. I apologize in advance if this blog entry is less-than-sane.

They hook me up to an apheresis machine, which sucks out a regular unit of blood, spins out all the red blood cells, mixes the leftover bits (plasma, white cells, etc.) with some bizarro chemical, and then shoots the liquidy bits back into me. Then it repeats the entire process (draw out a unit of blood, spin, mix, return the dregs). It takes about an hour, makes my lips and nose tingle (that bizarro chemical's reaction), drops the body temperature (it's COLD in the Red Cross, and having two pints of 60-degree plasma shot into you in under an hour is chilling), and makes me woozy for a few days.

I hate feeling short of breath from climbing a single flight of stairs. I'm not fond of the lethargy. But then again, the person or people who benefit from my blood probably aren't fond of being in a hospital fighting for their lives. I figure my day or two of wooziness is a fair trade for someone's life. Especially knowing that my blood is usually used for premature babies and infants with chronic illnesses. Definitely worth the wooziness. And I got free cookies!

So if you aren't a regular blood donor, please think about going out this week to give a pint. It takes less than an hour, and you'll get free cookies. Oh, and you might save someone's life.

Only 5% of the eligible population actually donates regularly, and the donor center I went to today was deserted. It kind of makes me nervous to think if my life were on the line, there might not be any blood for me. My blood type is rare enough that I do worry about it once in a while... So if you're one of the rarer blood types, especially, please think about making donation a regular part of your life.

Plus, doesn't this look awesome? (squeamish people, please hit "page down" a couple of times right now)

Going Out

Coming back

Thanks for listening, or reading. Whatever. Loopy, remember?
END PSA.

So I finally managed to buy a ton of food that pleases both the Helper Monkey and Lulu. I was all set to put a roast in the crock pot this morning before going off to get loopy. But apparently I started out pre-loopified this morning, and I totally forgot. So, tomorrow we have the roast. Last night we had salmon steaks, corn on the cob, and taters. Starch city, but it was good.

Tonight, I was absolutely too whacked to cook, so we had pizza. The loopy continued, with Mr. Happy Sriracha Sauce Pizza Face Man.

Doesn't he look happy? He did, until I ate his face. Tasty!

Okay, where was I? Right. I've been Writing Actual New Words! Hooray! I hope they're not as kooky as I feel, but they actually exist, which is more than I can say about most of the week's writing progress.

Helper Monkey now has a new alert function: The Warning Siren of Distraction. Next time someone offers me a lovely gift that will clearly become an obsession, he's supposed to slap me on the back of the head like Gibbs on NCIS. Hopefully this tactic will work.

I'm not sure if it's a function of the bipolar disorder, or if I'm just a smidge OCD as well, but when I'm presented with a project that has a definite structure (such as a scarf to crochet, or a book to read), I tend to drop EVERYTHING ELSE, nearly to the point of forgetting to eat and sleep, until said project is complete. It's a Bad Thing. It's probably the Worst Thing, in fact. Anything that keeps me from writing regularly causes a backlog of the kinds of obsessive mental problems writing helps me deal with every day.

As much fun as it was to do something different for a few days, I'm suffering all around for not writing. But now I'm back at it. And oddly, I have a new idea for a new book, completely unrelated to the series I'm working on right now. We'll have to see if it goes anywhere, and I really have to get the first draft of the WIP done before I start anything new. Otherwise, I'll be stuck in a much larger version of the cycle of distraction I was trapped in for most of the week. Finish one project, then start the next. It's the only way I can work.

I'm completely envious of people who can work on two separate novels at the same time, but I just can't handle it.

Does anyone out there currently have two Works in Progress? I'd love to know how you juggle them both, or if you have a schedule for writing two works at a time. How do you balance it? How do you keep everything straight in your head? Just wondering. If you have a good strategy for managing it all, I'd be willing to give it a try... *frantic scanning of the room, waiting for the Gibbs Head Slap*

So that's it. Back to work! And it's now far enough out from the blood donation that I'm allowed A Happy-Ass Drink.

Progress-O-Meter:

Words: 52,458
Pages: 174

Strange Food Issues and Other Obsessions

My family is hard to cook for. Strangely, it's not the 11-year-old that has the food issues. It's the Helper Monkey with the sensitive tummy. Poor Sad Monkey!

I can't cook with peppers, and onions are only used sparingly. Chicken is boring. He's sick of pizza and pasta. That leaves me with few options on busy nights. I rely on stir-fry with rice or noodles a lot of nights because I'm too busy to cook a more complicated meal. Unfortunately, he hates this. Unfortunately, Lulu loves it. Her favorite snack is sliced bell peppers. I guess I should be glad she loves the vegetables, but I have to control myself because Helper Monkey would live on meat and carbs if I let him.

Dinner last night was a breaking point. I made a stir fry with chicken and veggies (leaving out the peppers and adding a bit of onion to balance out the flavor). Lulu loved it, I ate the whole thing, and Helper Monkey picked at it with disappointed chagrin. Again, Poor Sad Monkey!

I asked what I can make that doesn't take hours, but would be satisfying and tasty. I was told "Pot Roast." So today I head out to the grocery store for slabs of meat and bags of potatoes. I was also told to buy more fresh fish. My complaint about that: you have to use it THAT DAY. I am NOT going to the grocery store every day for fish, even though I'm on board the more fresh fish bandwagon.

So that's the current dilemma. At least I had a cure ready for last night's dinner faux pas. I took Lulu and the Helper Monkey to Dairy Queen. DQ fixes everything.

Birthday Cake Blizzards!

In other news, I finally finished the scarf made from the gifted yarn. I complained that I haven't been writing, and it was starting to get to me in a bad way. Once again, the Helper Monkey pointed out what should have been obvious. He watched me accept the gift of yarn, and only told me last night that he knew it would cause this problem. He knew I'd let everything else in the world fall by the wayside until I finished the yarn project. He's promised to warn me next time someone tries to give me something nice, so I can politely decline the gift in favor of keeping my sanity.

I have a little problem that once I start something, I MUST SEE THE ENTIRE PROJECT THROUGH!!! I have a hard time letting things go, and I'm limited in how much I can multitask. When something like a beautiful skein of yarn comes my way, I'm incapable of focusing on anything else until the project is done. Sort of like reading a new book. I can't write until I finish reading. It's like throwing a wrench into an engine.  I have to spend a whole day taking the engine apart and carefully putting it back together instead of just pulling the wrench out and starting it up again. If I start something, by goshen, I'm going to finish it.

The Scarf of Glorious Obsession. At least it's purty.

So with that inspiring philosophy, I've got errands to run this afternoon before I get back to writing tonight. And tomorrow, I get to go donate double red cells to the Red Cross. To anyone who needs A-negative blood this weekend, you're welcome.

One last thing before I go: I had a weird moment this morning when one of my sister's books, Sex Made Easy, was featured on the local news this morning! Yay!

Coffee fixes everything.

Well, coffee certainly fixed my sagging mental capabilities when I dumped Coke and Dr. Pepper as two of my main food groups. So, I guess everything else that got better in the last 48 hours can be indirectly credited to the influence of a good cup (read: pot) of coffee.

What's the most interesting thing to happen in the last few days? Something I'm not allowed to talk about. Sorry folks. Nothing writing related, but I promised to button my lip, so I'll shut up now.

Second most interesting? Finding out I correctly diagnosed the problem with the Helper Monkey's Jeep. I am now renaming myself Grease Monkey. Helper Monkey SWORE he thought the problem was in the exhaust system, and I swore up and down it was a spark plug misfiring. Of course, when plugged into the diagnostic machine at AutoZone, it spat out a cylinder 4 misfire code. Which means I WAS RIGHT! :)

So there. This is why I never get taken advantage of at car repair places. And why the Helper Monkey makes me take both cars in for repairs. You can't fool me. I know engines better than some mechanics I've met. So when my writing career fails to materialize, I think I'll go into automotive repair. Now I just have to find a few hours in which to give the Jeep its tune up. Oh, and buy spark plugs and wires. Gah! Too much busy!

I actually wrote for several hours last night, which is a vast improvement over the complete wasteland my WIP is becoming. Last time I opened it up, a few tumbleweeds rolled out. So now, I have 30 minutes to write before I have to think about dinner, and then another few hours to work again tonight. Busy busy busy...

At least the baseball game I was scheduled to work tonight is getting rained out. I'll get back on track someday. I swear I will. *boohooing over lack of writing time*

Words: 41,435
Pages: 137

This is why I lost on Jeopardy!

I stink at pushing the button. It's my major downfall in life. It's why I only managed a single win on Jeopardy! The Stinking Button. (For anyone who doesn't know about the whole Jeopardy! thing, you can read about it here and here.) (And yes, when referring to the game show, if you leave of the exclamation mark, you've spelled it wrong.)

Despite the obvious nerd credit involved with just being on a show like Jeopardy!, I obviously lack some basic nerd skills. I'm not great at video games, because I have a slow trigger finger. I never mastered the darned buzzer button, and I only won a single game because I lucked into a couple of Daily Doubles and wagered big. As soon as I had to face another contestant with a faster thumb than mine, I lost.

Don't get me wrong, I type quite well. I used to be a medical transcriptionist, and you have to type fast to scrape a living doing that. Obviously I lack any other button-pressing skills. I've managed to get quick enough on the Wii to beat an 11-year-old at Mario Kart, but I don't think that skill translates 1:1 into button pushing.

To wit: I failed TWICE to make it into The Writer's Voice multi-blog writing contest. And they even added an extra 25 slots to the second round of entries!

REPRIEVE!!! The four blog owners who are running the contest graciously opened up a third entry window, with only 25 additional slots, today at noon. Maybe the third time's the charm? I can only hope so. My internet connection has been wonky lately, with extra-slow loading capabilities. It's been a nostalgic few days here, hearkening back to my old dial-up connection. I've got to call Verizon and figure out what the problem is.

So I've got one last chance. Let's hope I'm a little quicker on the draw today. Since I don't have the ridiculous schedule I had to battle yesterday (where I was only home for an hour, and running around like an idiot for at least 14 other hours), maybe I can go all zen and miraculously come in under the wire this time. Here's hoping!*

And May the 4th be with you today, this fine Star Wars day.

With the crazy schedule this week, I haven't been writing much, but I feel the need for an update here, if only for my own records:

Words: 39,064
Pages: 130

* And no, I failed again. I kept hitting the refresh button waiting for the widget to appear, when all I needed to do was scroll down to the bottom of the post. I came in at post #206, and they capped the entries at 200. Once again, how the hell did I ever managed to qualify for Jeopardy! in the first place?

**And edited to include this photographic evidence:

Me, as a blonde, and the Trebekster

Tumblr is a Time Sink

That's right. I was writing. "Was" being the operative word in that sentence. I happily edited the last ten pages or so I made last night, and picked up writing where I left off. And then I took a break and checked the Tweeties. There was an interesting link to someone's Tumblr. I tried to resist clicking, but I had to see the damned picture. So I spent the next forty minutes dancing through Tumblr posts. Gah! That's why I don't use it more often. I'd waste my whole life reading through everyone's mental meanderings and random photos. What is wrong with me? I have important work I need to be doing!

I had to take Lulu to the mall today to buy a pair of plain black flats for her chorus concert in a few weeks. They rejected her current pair because they have little metal pyramid studs across the toes. So I spent 30 perfectly good dollars on a pair of shoes she'll probably wear once. Crap. At least we got soft pretzels. The mall is good for something.

We also got new slippers. Two pairs for $10, and they're as soft as little pillows. I have a slipper obsession. I don't have any idea why, but I wear them constantly, and they wear out almost as fast as I can buy them. I think I'm on my fifth pair since the new year. My slippers are black with little purple bows, and it took me ten minutes to realize there was no "right" or "left" slipper. They're like little glorified ankle socks, with cushioning sewn into the sole. Delightful! Lulu's are rainbow stripes.

So now I finally get a chance to sit and write, and what do I do? Waste half the night on Tumblr. I give up. I'm going back to work now. Fooey on the Internet for being such a tempting diversion.

Words: 30,157
Pages: 99

I wanted to write today, but...

I got sucked into the whole Big 6 publishing/Amazon/Apple/DOJ controversy, and I followed it online all day. Sure, I didn't get a lot of writing done, but now that the business day is technically over, I'm getting back to writing.

Let me say, as a writer who hopes to be published someday, the lack of understanding of the publishing industry by the Department of Justice seems mind-boggling. It's a little worrisome for someone who has yet to break into the professional writing world, thinking this controversy will make it that much harder to make a living as a writer.


Since I'm not a publishing professional, I'll defer further commentary to those who understand the issues better than I do. I'll just reiterate that I'm a nervous writer today.

I'll be writing more this evening, though, so it hasn't been a wasted day. Yesterday almost felt wasted. I only got about a thousand new words on book 3, which still doesn't have a proper title. My cover page has a big blank space with the words, "Thalia Drake Book III" under where the title should be. My LEAST favorite part of writing is making up titles. I'd rather write synopses all day long than try to come up with a clever, catchy, memorable title.

So far, I have Dragon Hunter (book 1, and I wish I could come up with something better, but this seems to fit best), and Devil May Care (book 2, but I still don't like it). I'll leave it up to my currently theoretical future agent/editor/publisher to adjust the titles to their liking. I apparently stink at that. ;)

Now that I'm actively writing again, rather than mired in interminable revisions, I'm resuming the Progress-o-Meter:

Words: 13,761
Pages: 47