The Pleasure of Putting My Eyes Out

Yesterday was affirmation of that statement as it relates to shopping. It's not a true statement, not by a long mile. Just read back a few dozen posts to the ones about my eyes and my fear (terror) that I had the start of a detached retina.

But that does pretty well describe how I feel about shopping. I hate shopping and simply saying 'I hate shopping' doesn't describe how I really feel about it.

Yesterday and last weekend are two perfect examples.

Last weekend I had the Saga of the Jeans. The end result, after going through the horror of actually finding them and paying for them, was wearing them.

Pair 1 is fine. It's not a perfect fit because they're just a touch too big, but I can live with that. They ride reasonably well and I don't feel as if I have to keep grabbing the waistband to haul them back into position.

Pair 2, however, is something else again. Same brand, same style, same cut, but nothing like the same 'feel'. They feel like nothing better than a pair of crack pants. Whoever made the fabric used about 300% too much spandex (and why does every garment made by man these days require spandex, anyway?).

They bag and they sag and they shift and they are miserable to wear. Ordinarily, I am not a consumer who complains. This time I did because I figure they need to know to improve their product. I specifically said: I bought 'em fair and square. I washed 'em and I wore 'em so I don't expect anything in return.

This just makes me hate shopping even more.

Yesterday I got to go to Costco. Normally, I like Costco. Or, at least, I don't hate it. Yesterday, though, made me hate Costco, too.

I decided to buy gas, which I never do on the weekends because the station is packed. But I decided to get it over with so I wouldn't have to do it on Monday morning.

Got into line - one car ahead of me with two cars at the pumps. I figure it'll be just a couple of minutes. Sure enough, the front car finishes and pulls out but the guy in front of me doesn't move. The vehicle in front of him is a big truck with a correspondingly large gas tank. Five minutes I sat there waiting for something to happen. It finally does and I get to the pump.

I put my card into the reader and get the "Remove Card Quickly". I did. "Re-insert Card". I did that twice more and, by then, I am annoyed. I am annoyed that I have to do this at all. I am annoyed that the idiot in front of me didn't take advantage of that empty pump before. I am annoyed at the stupid mechanism.

Idiot finishes before I do and gets back in his car just as my pump stops. I finish up and get in my car and start the motor and idiot is still sitting there - paying absolutely no attention to the fact that there's a line behind us, and that those people probably want to get this over with, too. Idiot.

So, I put my car in gear and pull out to go around him and that is the point at which his brain engages. He pulls out.

Almost fifteen minutes spent doing something that, under normal circumstance (stopping during the week) takes about five minutes and, on the weekends assuming I don't have an idiot in front of me, takes maybe ten. I'm annoyed.

I find a space, park the car and get into the store. My shopping is done in about ten minutes because I know what I want and where to find it.

At the front of the store they have moved tall displays in front of the registers so you cannot see the lines from the other side of the displays. Is this deliberate? I have no idea, but I pick a line and... it's long. It's five people long and the guy at the front, which I didn't realize immediately, had two overflowing carts.

Shit. I look around. All of the other lines, now that I'm on the 'right' side of the displays, look just as bad so I heave a heavy sigh of resignation and settle in to wait.

Front guy's first cart is emptied and his wife starts unloading the second cart and... crash. She dropped a double jar of jalapeno peppers. Oh, frabjous day!

Four full carts in front of mine and a puddle of vinegar spreading from a mess of shattered glass intermixed with peppers.

Cue the mop bucket and two guys tasked with cleaning it up. In the meantime, as we all do, I'm looking around at the other lines.

The woman who had been behind me but whose husband had stationed himself in another line which moved faster than the one we were in has moved over and has reached the register while I still have three people in front of me.

What do I have in my cart? A bag of six avocados and a case of water. That's it. That's why I'm there. That's what I'm buying and I stood in line for nearly twenty minutes for the privilege.

By the time I got to unload the avocados onto the belt, I was so frustrated and annoyed I was ready to just walk away and leave it. Then, the woman in front of me has this insulated bag filled with stuff - which means the clerk has to unload the bag in order to scan the items inside it. Irritation notches up another two degrees, and spikes again when he says, "Oh, the bag of veggies broke open."

Shit. So they deal with that while my toes are just about doing a tarantella inside my shoes from frustration and impatience but, by this point, the temptation to just leave the cart and walk away is over-run by "just get it over with". I waited and they finished. My order took zero time since it was a matter of scanning just two barcodes. I paid and got into the line to get out of the store. I was NOT happy but when the guy at the door said, "How're you?" I didn't snap. I just said, snidely, "Just peachy, thanks."

In the car, I turn on the motor and start to pull out, stopping when a family strolls by at a snail's pace as if they haven't a care in the world. They didn't stop to wait for me to pull out. They acted as if they hadn't seen my tail lights and the car moving. They wander off and I start to back out again and the cart wrangler shows up. Standing between my car and the cart corral that's right next to my car he ignores my back-up lights and wrestles carts into line so he can pull them out, line them up, so he can push them back to the store. It's like my car with its taillights (which do work, by the way) doesn't even exist.

Finally I get to pull out and start home. I get into a line of cars at a traffic light and there's another idiot in front of me. He's not paying attention, looking down (probably playing with his God damned phone!) and, when the light changes, he just sits there. I honk. He looks up, scrambles and he just makes the left turn light before it turns red, leaving me sitting there at the red light. This is a major intersection, not a minor, and that light is about three minutes long. If he hadn't been screwing around with his phone we both could have made that light but noooo. He had to pay attention to his phone.

I HATE people who do shit like that. And this is why I HATE shopping.

Thank God it's Sunday and the shopping is done for another week.

I'm breathing again. Sitting here in my PJs with my coffee and I will relax, dammit.

Have a quiet, shopping-free day with no idiots around.

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Kitty Landmines & Falling Leaves

This is Sam. He's my almost nineteen year old kitty. He leaves little landmines for me overnight. Which is one of the reasons we lock him in a spare bedroom at night. I love him anyway.

At nineteen - or about ninety-two in people years - he has a right to be a bit crotchety and forgetful. He's skinny to the point of bones and skin. His joints don't work like they used to, and neither does anything else. I also suspect that, because of his age and how things don't work properly as we get older, he's not as quick off the mark when the need arises. Or, he has trouble getting the right angle on things in a time of need.

So, I don't mind, really. He did it yesterday. He did it this morning. He may do it again tomorrow. But I know his time is short. He's old.

On the plus side of the ledger today, we got a hefty dose of rain and about a billion leaves fell off the Sycamore trees in front of our building. They're not yet dry enough or worn out enough to be soft. Walking down the street a little while ago, I felt like a kid again. No matter how I lifted my feet, unless I wanted to look like Peter Robin from the Pooh stories, I scuffled and shuffled and made a lot of noise. It was fun. Just like I was a kid. Is this second childhood?

Other things are playing out around me. The weather is key because I do like rain. I like the way it sounds and smells, the feel of the soft air and the crispness of the season.

At work I've tossed my hat into a ring and now I'm waiting to see if it gets tossed back. Initial signs are favorable, but the final decision won't be made for a few months and much can happen between now and then.

I also tossed two of my hats into the ring of a potential publisher for two of my stories. One got tossed back posthaste with a very nice 'thanks but no thanks' note. I haven't heard on the other one so, who knows. Another case of time will tell and I have the time, so I'll keep plugging away and plan on a different course for the one rejected.

That's part and parcel of writing to be published, though. You work your tail off creating the best story you can create but if it's not what the market is looking for just then, forget it. The one that got tossed back isn't what's 'hot' at this time. It may be again, but it's not now.

The other is an erotic romance story with humor and hot scenes and all sorts of stuff to make it interesting. This is what's 'hot' - in more ways than one - right now, so perhaps this will garner interest. At least it hasn't been rejected and, if it is, I'll shop it to a couple of other houses. If it gets tossed out there, I'll self-publish it.

I read through it again last night - all of it - and found only a few things to fix and tweak to fill in a couple of holes. A few punctuation misses. A couple of minor details and one straggler of a detail that needed removing (a scene that's no longer in the story has a passing reference that might be confusing). More details to be added - how did the men pursuing my heroine know where she was? Oh! A miniature GPS transceiver - available from many sources for cheap and only about the size of a quarter. Easily concealable in an item of clothing.

The biggest thing for me on this story though is getting the sequel going again. I've got one started. I'm about a third of the way through it and don't even have a title for it yet, but I know how it ends (I think, unless something changes). I'd like to have that completed before the first book is out so that it can follow in a timely manner and be of equal quality.

Would you think I'm weird if I say that I almost hope this publisher does send another 'thanks but no thanks' letter?

I don't think he will, though. I think, maybe, I got through round one and am in the running to go before the editorial board for consideration. If that's the case, I'll get a note asking for a sample of the story. Or maybe they'll ask for a synopsis. Which is the second bane of a writer's existence.

It's both harder and easier than the back-of-the-book blurb because it's longer, but without telling the story you have to provide the arc.

How does the story start? What's its middle and end? Usually in less than a few hundred words. They can, however, be extremely helpful in identifying problems in a plot.

When I first wrote a synopsis for 'Genevieve's Piano', I realized I had a Grand Canyon of a hole in the plot. Jean's husband wasn't developed enough to be integral to the plot - yet he was supposed to be. It led me back to draw him in 3D, to make him live and breathe as much as Jean and Win. What was his motivation? Why did he do the things he did? Like beat her into a coma that nearly killed her in the opening paragraphs.

So there is good and there is not so good and then there are landmines. And not all of those are left by kitties.

Tomorrow I "get" to spend a few hours doing crafty stuff. Taking glue and glitter and putting them together on Christmas ornaments for our company's Holiday party.

Digging ditches? I like doing that better than crafty things.
Fixing fences? I like doing that better than crafty things.
Scrubbing floors? I like doing that better than I like crafty things.

There are all sorts of stuff that I like doing - but not crafty things. They're too 'fiddly' and don't permit for large movements - like swinging a pick-axe or wielding a shovel or spade or hammer. Even scrubbing floors allows large movements - sweeping movements as you swish the brush across the floor.

But, I volunteered. Not for this, not specifically, but for the party in general and this is part of the party in general that I roped myself into. Stupid. I should know better. Oh well. This too shall pass as all things do and something else will come along.

In the meantime there are my stories and my hope that someone will like something I've written and will pick it up and read it and suggest it to friends and around it will go. Which means that right now, I should get back to writing.

Have a lovely day - enjoy the leaves and watch out for landmines!

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Should I be worried? Nah!

I'm actually pleased as can be. I just looked at my stats and tracker for this little piece of drivel that I do every day and found that I have had five reads each from France and Russia, two from Britain, many from the US and a couple from Romania and India. Never in my wildest imagination did I think people from around the world would look in on this.

Of course, if I'm going to be perfectly honest, I didn't think anyone would read it more than once - so thank you if you've come back a time or two (or three or four...).

I just hope that this is entertaining, a little bit of pleasure in an otherwise ordinary day. For myself, I enjoy doing this. As I've said before, it's a bit like writing notes and letters to my mother. It's satisfying and pleasurable to slice and dice my days - no matter how good, bad, awkward or just plain there.

For instance, this was a fun and interesting week.

That voice over I was trying to do? It's still not done. I had a bit of privacy Thursday afternoon and I got started going through it, advancing the slides and talking. Then realized a couple of those slides stay on the screen for an awfully long time while I drone. I needed something more, something to liven it up and drive home the points.

Five new slides later... What can I say? I'm a writer. It's never good enough.

I did discover that my personal laptop has a better microphone than my work laptop. The clarity is better, which means those poor people who have to sit through this will hear my slightly nasal drone all that much more clearly! There's also not that annoying hum from the fan I got with my work laptop.

Since the first classroom session isn't until week after next, and I know that one of my work roomies is out next week, I'll wait for a time when I have the place to myself (there are only five of us here) and then do my drone. Worst case scenario is I take the script home with me and do the recording in the privacy of my bedroom.

The saga and quest continue into next week.

On Wednesday I was co-running a meeting when I lost wifi connection to our servers. That was no fun at all. The data I had captured to that point - almost an hour into the meeting - went pfft. Gone.

I hate moments like that - when the heart stops and everything clenches as you think oh SHIT! It happens to everyone at one time or another. That is the one and only consolation in that time. I wasn't the first and I won't be the last and I offer my useless pity to anyone to whom it does happen.

The funny(?) thing was that while I was having a severe case of heart failure, one of the people at the table kept pointing to a minor change they had requested.

They asked once while I was in atrial fibrillation.

They asked again when the EKG monitor was flatlined.

The third time they asked testily, I looked over and said, "I'm not worried about that right now. I'm worried about the three blank lines under it."

Oh, yeah. The data that had been there and was now gone? What was that? Was it important? Yeah, probably, or it wouldn't have been there in the first place.

Fortunately, it was an online sessions with my computer screen shared, so everyone participating saw when it happened. This way there's no finger pointing (which also happens whenever there's a large group - at least one person will try), but it means we do have to go through the hassle and headache of trying to remember what we said.

I'm not looking forward to those sit-downs, but I'll meet with each department and resurrect what we can. The good news on that is that I didn't lose anything really critical. It's important, but not utterly critical to the finished project.

I've also already let everyone who was there know the info is really gone. Just confirming what they all saw, so there will be no surprises when we meet as a group and start over. Or if someone does act surprised, I can at least point them to the e-mail I sent after the meeting and after trying to recover what I could (thank God for back-ups!).

At least I know what I'm doing Monday and Tuesday next week. Four groups, four sit-downs and four resurrections before our next group meeting on Wednesday. Most of these don't take that long, anyway, so it's just a matter of making sure that I get them done. Or we'll be back to where we were last Wednesday with gaps and holes and missing information.

In the meantime, my plans this weekend are to edit and edit and edit. The massive kinda-sorta half rewrite of 'Moments' (my post from the other day) has gotten started. I'm all the way through Chapter One! I've started Chapter Two! I don't even know how many chapters I have left, but I'm down from 119,059 words to 118,800 something. It's not a lot, but it's a start.

As a pain-poke - you know, you get a wound and just have to poke it: 'does it still hurt?' 'Ouch! Heck yeah, it still hurts!' 'Wonder if it hurts now?' 'Ouch!' - I read a bit more of my story last night. Under all the excess and adverbs, it is a good story, so I just have to clear the weeds and brush so the flowers can glisten in the sun. That's going to be my primary focus this weekend.

While I do that, you go off and have a lovely day!

Best~
Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Life Lesson Learned

Life Lesson for the day: Too much of anything, no matter how good it might be for you, is too much.

Day before yesterday I was fixing oatmeal for breakfast. As usual, I added a bit of milled flax seed. I didn't realize it immediately, but I had measured the water incorrectly and used too much. When I took the bowl out of the microwave it was more like soup than oatmeal.

Huh, thought I, running my spoon through the thin gruel, that doesn’t look very appetizing. I know! I’ll add more flax.

I’ve done it before, added a little more when the resulting oatmeal is thinner than it's supposed to be.

Something went wrong though. My hand slipped or something and I dumped a LOT of flax into the bowl.

Huh, thought I, staring at the pile of ground seeds while I debated what to do, oh well. It’ll be fine.

I mixed it in and happily ate it noting that it really didn't taste any different than usual.

 

Not! It took a while but it was not fine. It was anything but fine.

The day went by as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary until late in the afternoon when I started feeling a bit bloated. By the time I got home, the bloating sensation was worse and I felt as if it was three days after a fight that I had lost. Still, it kept getting worse. When I went to bed, I couldn’t get comfortable so I didn’t sleep well.

When I got up yesterday morning, I hurt. It wasn’t too bad. Still bloated and even though it was more than uncomfortable, it was less than painful so I got ready and went to work.

After all, thought I, I’m going to be miserable whether I stay home or go to work, so I might as well go to work.

By ten o’clock I was in severe (what I consider severe, anyway) pain. I couldn’t sit up straight. I had to lean to my right – a lot, sitting almost diagonally on my chair with my left leg extended for all it was worth to relieve the pressure in my left side. Moving was really bad whether I was sitting, standing or trying to walk. It felt like I had a spike driven into my side, halfway between my ribs and my pelvis. At last I decided that since I was doing more sitting around contemplating how awful I felt than doing any of the work that I had, I would do better to go home and lie down.

After notifying my boss and the Director of HR that I was leaving, I started getting things ready. When I turned to reach for my bag on the floor behind me, I cried out in pain. The sharp shooting pain of that spike being driven deeper took me by surprise. I started to cry from it. That cry told me I was in a very bad way indeed because I never cry out in pain. Ever.

Except during childbirth when the Pitocin kicked in and I went from 0 to 60 in the space of thirty minutes. My only child, an eight pound, nine ounce, twenty-one inch daughter was born three hours after the first Pitocin induced contraction at 9:35 pm. She was delivered at 12:34 am. Two hours, fifty-nine minutes start to finish, back labor and all. Yeah, I cried out for that one.

When I had steroids injected into the bottom of my feet because of plantar faciitis, spreading all of the bones, tendons, ligaments and stretching the skin like a balloon I bit my lips, clenched everything I could clench, but I did not cry out in pain. Even though the doctor said it was okay if I did because everyone else did. I didn’t though. I held it together as a matter of pride.

So that’s what told me This Was Bad.

I drove home, sitting diagonally in the driver’s seat all the way. Managed not to drive off the road or hit the guy in front of me when I had what felt like a five minute cramping session, even though I started to cry again.

At home I got upstairs and attempted to get into bed. Just doing that was amazingly painful – more crying out because of shooting cramps from the change of position.

Once lying down I could lie on my back or on my left side, not my right unless I really enjoy pain.

All of that was because of a little too much flax seed in a bowl of oatmeal.

This morning things are a lot better. I’m still sore. Standing up is a trial but not as much as it was yesterday. The bloating sensation is gone. I’ll go to work and try to put in a couple of extra hours so I can make up for some of the lost time from yesterday.

The take away from this is: too much of anything, even if it’s supposed to be good for you can be really, really awful. Don’t do it.

Will this put me off flax? No. But I won’t make the mistake again. If I ever do the adding too much, I’ll pitch it and start over. It’s not worth it.