Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Summer blogging...

(shimmy bop bop, shimmy bop bop, shimmy bop bop yeah...)

Now see the problem with summer blogging is that I have both too much and too little to talk about.

I have too little, because basically? I hang with the kids, keep them from killing each other, and run the occasional errand.

I have too much because my whackoid gray matter goes into overdrive and I have this bizarre urge to comment on EVERYTHING, from the adorable kittens at the Pet Smart shelter, to the fact that Ladybug lost an earring, to Big T's new facial hair. And at the time it occurs to me to comment? I'm freakin' hilarious. By the time I actually sit down to blog? My brain is as active as the fly's brain on your windshield, and just as coherent.

Weird shit, seriously. Weird ass shit.

Anyway--here are a few of the once-brilliant and now just sort of weird observations I have made in the last two days.

1. The editing process sucks. You send your baby out to a perfectly nice person, and suddenly you are a katydid's back-leg from RIPPING HIS FACE OFF for telling you exactly what you need to hear. I DO need to fix the parts we've talked about. THAT'S what readers are for. And he's a nice kid. (And Eric, don't stop. I promise--your face will remain where it should be.) And to make matters worse? You become the neediest version of yourself. "So what about this part? Was it okay? Was it good for you? Did it move you? Was the prose thin? What? Too many weepy men? WHO SAYS THERE ARE TOO MANY WEEPY MEN? Oh, wait... don't take that the wrong way..."

It's a good thing my editors are nice people, used to seeing me in a tizzy, or I'd be sunk.

2. I need to parent full time to figure out how to parent full time. Seriously--I'm on vacation. A part of me resents having to babysit on vacation. A part of me wants them to go play by themselves without beating the living shit out of each other. (Did I mention that lost earring? Yeah. I blame her brother.) Most of me is glad to see them everyday, but a part of me is pissed that my feet hurt because it's feeling the need to go hauling ass over the neighborhood listening to my ipod at ear-blistering volumes so that I might exorcise the demons that plague the mother who has heard one to many shrieks and wails of "Mo---oom... she/he screwed me over just by being born!"

3. I can't just jump on Rampant. I can't. I actually thought about it, because everyone wants some, but I'm reeling from the ginormity of BMoon II, and I don't think I can really start Rampant until I've got that monkey in the lap of iUniverse and off my back. To that end, I'm writing porn. Well, no, not real porn, but I am doing that m/m shorty I've been nattering about forever--it's going to tie into Green's Hill, and it's got a couple of hunters in it like the ones in Supernatural only not, uhm, ick, RELATED BY BLOOD! And I'm getting a big assed kick from writing fiction in which I can use the word 'motherfucker' with impunity again. Cory is only a short story away:-)

4. I'm actually working on something NOT a sock and NOT an acrylic sweater. A billion years ago, on the way home from Stitches, I cast on something with a cut-rate 100% wool somethin' somethin' I bought. I had some vague parameters: Ladybug's colors, (purple, pink, fuschia and pink) Ladybug's dimensions, and...well, that was it. What I'm ending up with is sort of a cool Jesus sweater with seed stitch borders. I fucked up the neck big time--because I constructed it sideways, and I'm too stupid to figure out where the center is--but I'm gonna pull up a hood along the neckline and you'll never know. And if you do know, it won't matter, because I'll accidentally forget to remember that it can only be washed in glacier water three times filtered through qiviut knit by yogi gurus on a sevenday fast in the glandular secretions of the nik nik bird during mating season but NOT after it's been mated. And since a virgin nik nik bird is about as rare as a virgin ANYTHING in Green's HIll, I'm thinking that it's destined to felt and be sewed up as a purse in it's second life--if the neckline FU doesn't hide itself in shame like it's supposed to.

5. And that's it. Except I think I've probably saturated my kids in me-ness. Today? They asked to go back to the babysitters. Honeymoon over!

Edited for Needletart to add: A Jesus sweater is California slang for something that looks like a guy with long hair and a wispy beard might be wearing while drinking wine on the beach with friends. The ones around when I was in high school were usually woven in Mexico with a slit-placket opening in front and a tied by the neck to keep the hood up. They pretty much fall straight from shoulders to ass, and for some reason have vertical stripes--although that last part is optional:-)

6 comments:

  1. Will the babysitter take them? You could run away and just sit in a coffeeshop and do damn-all in the air-conditioning and laugh, LAUGH at all the important people with important agendas bustling in and out.

    You, unassisted and unedited, already write better than 80 percent of the books out there. With the help of editors and their perspective, the quality only improves. Editors just tell you the stuff you would have realized for yourself after you got a little distance on the thing. (Can you hear me comforting and pep-talking myself here? I am sooo with you!)

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  2. I think we are going to need pictures of that sweater before it felts :-)

    I always hated this time of the summer when the kids were bored but the normal routine was still a couple of weeks away. A day at the babysitter might be just the break you all need!

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  3. I'm with Galad. And what's a Jesus sweater anyway (asks the person out of that particular loop?)?

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  4. Oh yes - kids - can't kill 'em and there's NO resale value.

    Seriously, you're not alone - I flat out adore my kids! - But only in the times I don't want to commit infanticide!

    Some days I would kill them just to have some quiet around here! (but mostly I love them death rather than real death!)

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  5. Holy Moly,
    You weren't kidding about the knitting!
    Dave from amazon

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  6. Enjoy the four more weeks. You may even get knitted projects finished.

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