Resolutions

It's almost time for New Year resolutions. Traditionally I've been against the idea, partially because I think it's stupid to tie a bunch of new behaviors and goals to something arbitrary like the position of the earth in orbit around the sun. (I realize that probably doesn't make much sense to anybody else -- just go with the flow here.) But the other reason I hate resolutions is that I can never come up with concrete goals.


This year, though, I think I'm going to be more general. I'm not going to claim to be getting in shape, or losing weight, or improving my mind because I'm just planning on continuing on my current path.

Instead, I'm planning on making more mistakes and failing.

If I'm screwing up, that means I'm trying new things. I have all kinds of things I would like to try (starting with querying a novel with agents) and there's a whole list of ways everything can go sideways, some of which I can control and some of which I can't. But either way I'd like to be more comfortable with the possibility that things can go wrong and it can be because I messed it up.

Maybe I'll come up with a mistake-o-meter with the number of times I've screwed up in the past week. Or... maybe not. I guess that could be the first mistake.

An example of a mistake. It turned into my favorite page of the Christmas calendar I made for my parents.

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I Want A Recount

First off, this is what you get when you have a family of engineers who refuse to spend money on something new when they already have something that sort of does the job. Sure, the tripod isn't really designed to hold a phone, but that's what clamps are for.

It worked just fine.

Yesterday my brother Jeff got extra brownie points for finding the oven light switch. Today he was trying to get the china down from the top shelf and the step stool he was using (for we are a mighty but short clan) slid out and he dropped the container that held all the big plates, breaking five of them in one fell swoop.

One would think that might lower his rankings, but my mom was so glad he hadn't hurt himself that somehow he ended up with bonus sympathy points despite breaking my mom's china. It's like he just can't lose. I'm going to have to study his technique...

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Productive?

Things I did today:

- Made the toaster work in my hotel room, thus avoiding returning to the madness of the breakfast room.

- Won a grammar argument with my mom. This never happens. Maybe I should take up diagramming sentences as my new hobby.

- Slept in until almost 8am because I didn't have four little furry people sitting on me, one little furry person jumping up to lick my face, and one large furry person shoving me off the bed with his nose. Also, the conures' screaming cannot be heard from five hundred miles away.

- Got the web link and password to watch my dogs in their "luxury suite". So far I've watched the big dog lick his privates and both dogs bark at things out in the hallway. So essentially it's exactly what they do at home. They seem to be surviving with minimal trauma.

- Worked on the super secret Christmas present for my parents which is the same thing as the super secret Christmas present I give them every year. (Shhhh!) (For those who are confused, my family doesn't celebrate until tomorrow.)

- Helped make the stollen. This qualifies as baking under direct adult supervision. Of course the step I did by myself (splitting the dough into two parts and rolling out and assembling the loaves) resulted in two wildly uneven loaves. So apparently I cannot be trusted even when directly supervised.

- Read two pages of online reviews of my parents' new oven, every single one of which contained a complaint about the lack of external light switch. (Samples: "WHO WANTS AN OVEN WITH A LIGHT THAT ONLY COMES ON WHEN YOU OPEN THE DOOR???????", "The lack of an oven light switch is driving my wife crazy.") Laughed about this. Realized I really love my own oven.

- Thought about the 25 word flash fiction that is due for a contest tomorrow.


Things my brother Jeff did today:

- Found the light switch for the oven.

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Why I Hate Touch Screens (aka, What is that smell?)

Same situation, two cars:

2002 Civic (no bells & whistles): "Ew, what's that smell? Oh right, I'm approaching Coalinga. Feedlot." Without taking my eyes off the road, I reach over and hit the recirculate button. I know which on it is because there are only four buttons and you can feel a bump where each one is so I can just skip the one all the way on the right and hit the one next to it.

Total time: < 1 second

2016 Super-duper-does-everything-for-you Acura: "Ew, what's that smell? Oh right, I'm approaching Coalinga. Feedlot. Crap, how do I turn on recirculation?" Look at the touch screen. Look at the road. Look at the touch screen. Find the icon on the bottom row that has the car with an arrow going through it. Accidentally hit the one next to it (vents open on the bottom, top, or both). Look at the road. Wait for it to go back to the previous menu. Hit the correct icon. Look at the road. Figure out which of the two choices is recirculate. Hit that icon.

Total time: ~30 seconds.

My car smelled like cow poop for about half an hour.

Anyhow... the good news about failing to get started at a reasonable hour is that the Grapevine is lovely during a sunset, don't you agree?

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The Five Stages of Housecleaning for the Petsitter

It's that time of year again. So here are the five stages of housecleaning for the petsitter:


1. Denial
This is the stage that lasts for the first eleven months of the year. I am down (down!) to four cats, two dogs, and three birds. I'm not one of those people who gets insomnia and then stays up until three in the morning cleaning the grout with a toothbrush. (I don't get insomnia because "a clean conscience is the best pillow" and my conscience is sparkly. It's way cleaner than my house. I'm just throwing that out there to annoy all the people I know who have problems sleeping. Y'all should just be better people and then you'd be able to sleep at night.)

I occasionally try to keep on top of things, but really -- I have a whole list of things I'd rather do than clean the house. I do make sure it's clean enough that I don't have bugs or rodents moving in, but if you're allergic to pet hair... you probably want to be heavily medicated before coming over or just stay away.

Mostly I just don't notice it. I don't wear my glasses at home, so everything beyond a few feet is pretty fuzzy. I also don't look up at the ceiling to notice the cobwebs. I run the handheld vacuum every couple of days until the charge runs out, which keeps the pet hair from drifting down the hallway. I sweep. I do the dishes. But I don't really dust. I pretty much suck as a housekeeper and I don't really care.

2. Anger
In the beginning of December I mostly just get angry that another year has gone by and I still haven't hired someone to come in every couple of weeks and clean the place. I mean, really. It's not all that expensive. I could afford it. Heck, I'd be putting money into the community locally. I'd be saving Woodland!
And yet I still haven't done it. And the beginning of December is too late. Besides, I'd need to clean before they came over to give an estimate anyhow, so it wouldn't help at all.

3. Bargaining
If I mop the living room, I don't really need to clean the window sill in my bedroom, right? Why would my petsitter even go into my bedroom (unless it's to find Effing Scooter who likes to hide under my bed and holy crap, that's where the dust bunnies go to die...).

4. Depression
Do you know how many places four cats can throw up hairballs in a year?

5. Acceptance
I usually get to this stage the night before I have to leave. I mean, my petsitter is a professional. She goes into houses of people who have pets all the time. I can't possibly be the worst at cleaning. (That's a lie -- I could easily be the worst, but remember, the five stages aren't necessarily a linear process and I can be in acceptance and denial at the same time.)

Anyhow, Happy Holidays everyone. I'll be over here marveling at what color the kitchen floor is when it's clean...

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But Will It Be Brittle?

For reasons that are obvious to anyone who has ever seen me ignore directions and carry on, I've given up on baking without direct adult supervision, which means holiday cookies are out of the question.

However, I recently came across this peanut butter brittle recipe which I've heard is easy and as a bonus, doesn't require the stove, thus cutting down my chances of burning the house down to almost nothing. So I bought the ingredients today and whipped up a batch.

First off, let me just say that 50% of what I do in the kitchen is prepare food for the critters, so even though they were all fed only one hour before, all the little furry people in the house rushed to join me in the kitchen in anticipation, except the little dog because after six years she still won't go into that one section of the kitchen, so she got excited and wagged her tail just outside the kitchen. "Get out of the kitchen!" was said approximately fifty times this evening. Its effectiveness was... limited.

Also, my microwave is at least 25 years old. I mean, I think I got it from my brother in 1992 and I don't know how long he had it before that. It still works great, except for the interior light and the turntable. So that section that talks about monitoring closely until it's the right color? Well, I went with checking it every thirty seconds ("Get out of the kitchen!") and then pulling it out at the four minute mark ("Get out of the kitchen!") when one section was really dark brown and the rest was more golden. (Note to self: probably should have at least turned the bowl when I was checking it every thirty seconds.)

(I threw some dark chocolate pieces on the top just to see how it would be.)

I only burned myself a little bit ("Get out of the kitchen!") mixing in the final ingredients and I avoided (just barely!) melting the plastic measuring cups that kept coming in contact ("Get out of the kitchen!") with the hot bowl.

I'm not sure I'll ever get the bowl clean again. If I'd been smart I would have just waited for it to cool down and then given it to the big dog, but I already threatened to cancel Christmas for him today after he got into the kitchen trash while I was taking a shower, so he doesn't deserve peanut brittle even if he would do a great job cleaning the bowl.

It's still cooling, so I don't know if it will break apart like it's supposed to or just bend because I didn't cook it long enough. The stuff left in the bowl seemed okay though.

Now I'm trying to remember if I even like peanut brittle...

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How... Interesting...

So I'm setting up my author website, and... I feel like I should point out right now that I write software for a living and I have built many websites in the past.

Many really ugly websites.

I'm beginning to think there's a gene that allows people to design websites that don't look like they were stuck in the 1990s. Except I think that all my websites look like they are twenty years old because that was the last time period during which everyone expected programmers to do website design.

Scooter gives the blank stare of disapproval to my website design

Smart people who want a website to look good these days hire website designers. There's a difference between a developer and a designer. A developer can make all the widgets work and will make the page not crash when "users" (aka, the stupidest people in existence) defy logic and do exactly the wrong thing.

Website designers, on the other hand, make the website look like it was put together by an adult who doesn't wear just grey and black because those colors always match and you don't have to sort laundry. (Not that there's anything wrong with being ultra-efficient in clothes selection like that.)

Anyhow, WordPress really tries to help people out with their default themes. And yet...

Let's just say that if this writing thing ever really goes anywhere, I'll probably be hiring a web designer to take over.

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