The Prickweenie Parade Moves to Modesto...

Okay--this week has been so schizophrenic in character that I was about a kitten's whisker from writing like, five short posts, bam bam bam like the machine gun I've never heard in real life.

But I'm tired and the Cave Troll needs to be settled and tucked in, and I should go out walking, 10:00 or no 10:00 so I'll try to be coherent as I can. (Which is hard, since my eldest insists on babbling at me about crap-all because he hasn't had an adult to talk to all day, and I've had nothing but...)

Whew...lessee...

We picked out new shoes for Ladybug--it was actually really cute...I'm going for the all-purpose white leather sandals and she toddles out on her chubby little gams and comes back with pink Dora-the-Explorer jelly shoes. And as she tries to squeeze her white-leather-princess sandals into the size 10 pink jellies, one thing becomes clear: We are not leaving that store happily unless her fat little feet are encased in hyperglow pink plastic. Fortunately, the size closest to hers was only 1/2 a size big...and she will hunt those things down with as much determnation as she hunts the kitten in order to not leave the house unless she has shoes on like her big brother. By the way--they accessorize well with the cat scratches across her soft little cheeks...Dennis Quaid has an ear infection, and is not as tolerant as he usually is of intrusive little people. Poor kitty.

And yesterday...some of you got a rather rushed e-mail from me, looking for resources pointing to the idea that knitting helps you concentrate. (Goddess smiles on Needletart for coming up with a Perri Klaas essay--academic Ph.D's are often intimidated by real doctors because real doctors can actually do real things with all of their real brains...don't get me started on the absolute common sense void that is the upper echelon District Office in 9/10's of the school districts out there...) I mean, YOU know it and I know it, but a friend of mine was crocheting during her mandatory bullshit meeting before school started (every school has one)and although her principal had walked up to her and talked pleasantly about her project before the bullshit began, but after the meeting, they called her up (literally called her from their office, across campus) and told her that they thought she had been criminally rude by working on her project during the meeting.

My friend was in tears--and I was pissed for her. It would have been one thing if her admin had said something low key when they had been talking earlier--I mean, I would have objected, of course, but calling her up was just so passive-aggressively PISSY. So I wrote her a letter w/all my ammunition so she could pass it on to her admin if she felt like a fight (I hope not--she's a good person and I'm a loose cannon and I don't want to instigate her when I live here and she lives in Modesto and I can't go stand between her and the big-bad prickweenies), and I walked into my own administrative bullshit meeting swinging my little sock bags like fully loaded .45's at a gangland gold grill convention and...

And in the middle of the bullshit meeting, one of the few administrators that I haven't called a prickweenie (by my count, there are now two out of like, 25 that haven't ended up on the pw list...) comes up to me and pats me on the shoulder. "I love looking out and seeing you knit--it's comforting, like we can't be doing that bad if Amy Lane is still knitting..."

And suddenly I wondered how all of the prickweenie vibes managed to ripple out to Modesto instead of staying centered here in Sacramento, but I was awfully glad they did.

In other news... (did I not mention that this was a schizophrenic week?)

I still haven't written the e-mail to that lady who has my book but wants me to cut 28 pages out of it if she deigns to read it before October... I don't know how to now, and I've gotten such conflicting advice that I think I'll just wait for rejection and keep on keeping on. I guess, if nothing else, it will be good for the old ego to know that I was even being considered. And it will give me some optimistic waiting time while I start looking for the e-mail address for Roc or Tor or Penguin or something like that so I can take another piss-in-the-wind longshot.

However, as much fun as hoping for rejection is, I must say the box I got from my buddy David in Texas was much more fun. David had a chance to go to a Romance Writers conference for literacy...and he got me some serious swag!! I got a bag with book logos on it, and a signed copy of a Kelley ARmstrong book (Exit STrategies) and a signed copy of Sunny's book--the one in which the ending sounds suspiciously familiar... (Adrian, anybody?) which means I have to read it...of course now I have NO time, and I've just devoted my time to Guy Gavriel Kay's Ysabel and I'm so in love with his prose style--I can't possibly drop it for revenge purposes, it would negate the spirit in which I write. (Besides, Sora already told me that it was very similar, and I don't know if I want to get mad...no energy for it and writing too...)

And in the school front? I need to work this weekend--you know, the weekend where my friend's wedding reception is going to dominate my whole weekend... I'm giving the whole 'gymnastics' thing to Mate, I think, and getting in a couple of hours...and then hoping I can accomplish every thing else on Monday morning. HA! But, either way, I'm looking forward to a better year than last year... if nothing else, THAT student (as a friend of mine who worked with her in an entirely different capacity and still loathed and feared her put it) has graduated. Fanbloodyfuckingtastic--that at least is behind me...

And here's hoping for more better fun and schizophrenic weeks in the future.