I'm confused.

The rumor of impending ring of younger son (passed on by the Spousling two days after he overheard a conversation by my own personal action hero--aka monkey boy, who ran off to climb mountains) has not crystallized.

makes sense. Even if it's obvious as hell and the equivalent of a tank running you down.

There are no words. None.

Oh, there are these, I suppose. And there will be crit words next.

But for yesterday?

Zip.

oh, I don't know. Make shit up.

Another week has flown past. I was there. I lived through it.

You'd think I'd remember.

or, almost. Bless Jodi. And beating back my obsessive tweaking on this query.

My eldest is responsible for calling my attention to it. (I guess the leg wrestle challenge during brunch wasn't enough of a gift. These guys are my boys' stunt doubles. One guess which one plays the eldest.)

Survived the week from hell. Yay, me.

I organized the classroom in a frenzy all day Thursday. Then I went the entire hour of Open House at the same pace. Eighteen families showed up, and most of them wanted some talking time with me. One of my favorite conversations involved one particular student's propensity for keeping a Spiderman mask in his pocket. For Just in Case.

Can I call them or what?

Dear Fumble Fingers of Foolishness,

Stop typing "Paper Brane." Now.

I mean it.

She, whose brain may very well consist of paper in its slushy stage, but who doesn't require a reminder.

I'm barely surviving. Mother's Day crafts (card, letter--"I love my mom because...", and cover for the gift envelope) are done. Now I just have to shrink those silhouettes (twice) and cut twenty of them out, stick them onto card stock and voilá, I am done. Except for the bit where there is that little matter of Open House on Thursday night.

begin.

Day #3 of dead bird watch: No bird. No smell.

Jamie posited in chat last night that Harley had finally eaten it.

Blech.

I wouldn't be able to smell the thing anyway--I have a cold.

Plus! The added bonus of why I write speculative fiction.

After a full day of zoo fieldtrip, followed by a one-hour IEP that began a full hour later than originally scheduled, I arrive home, fling open the car door, and hear the high-pitched yelps of a dog. Mine, d'oh. Why are they outside?

I enter, drop the assorted items, and open the sliding glass doors. The dogs race in, the short one barking excitedly because Mom! Home! Treat! are the first things that spring to his small mind.

Then I see the Slug's note on the slider.

Mom! Don't let Harley in with his dead bird.¹ He found it in the yard, dragged it in, maggots and all. Thus the vacuum.

I turn in horror to the heretofore innocent-appearing vacuum that now harbors maggots. I swear it shrugs. Or maybe that's just the maggots wiggling in its tummy.

I turn back to the note.

Harley and the bird are outside now, but I couldn't get the bird away from him. So DON'T LET HIM BRING IT BACK IN.

Love,
The Slug

WTF! I have maggots in the vacuum and a dog who attempts to kiss me with those very same lips/tongue that have now lovingly carried around a dead bird filled with maggots for god-knows-how-many hours.

Happy Friday.

*pulls out the gin and pours*


¹This would be the bird he caught three days ago that we could not wrest from his jaws, nor find his hiding place for it.

*screams* *thudding and dancing* *singing*

(Not mine, mind you!)

The Slug received notice that University of Colorado has accepted her.

(Minor detail yet to be resolved: how she is going to pay for it.)

Much work yesterday--not nearly enough around the house, because I ended up lettuce-leaf limp. And it was cold. Freezing, apparently, based on the shivers and my need to wrap in blankets.

While a week or so ago it was the in the 90's? Make up your minds, weather gods!

And a whole lotta cranking going on.

Ah," she said, and sipped. The hot liquid burned the roof of her mouth, and she gulped, then prodded the burn gently with her tongue, as she realized the colony's machinery lay silent.

WTF.

What machinery?!

*bangs head on keyboard*

Life is good again.

My computer is not making noise, the car is (although I'm not listening to it at the moment) and Friday is over.

Singing and confirmation went well last night, even with the unplanned, impromptu addition of four songs--only three of which we knew.

my precioussssssssss

Item one: teh internets abandoned me for two days this week. With much sneakery, I managed to trick it back. (Everyone else had it a day earlier than I did. WTF?)

Item two: As of last night, I have a high-pitched whine cycling up and down, fading in and out of my computer. I can run the thing twenty-five minutes after startup before it begins. Rumor has it's my harddrive.

Item three: The car began making a new noise last night. This would be in addition to the rattle/vibration noise it's had for the past several months that is muffler-related and being taken care of tomorrow. I think the car knew I was fed up enough to have it ripped apart and is irritated. Or it and my computer are cousins.

Item four: Friday night? I don't know about you all, but I'll be singing confirmation. Have fun having a night out.

The only good thing about today is that it's Friday. (Cycle back to item four and repeat. I would have written that command in Basic, but it's too damn early to remember.)

So let's take an in-depth eagle-eyed look at exactly what I achieved this weekend in no particular order:

A whole 200 words.
Two crits.
Fruit salad.
Sang two masses.
Research on hydrocarbons and petroleum engineering.
My share of the taxes.
A short nap
A dinner for eight...

need apply.

Okay, so I settled down to write, reread what I had on the short, tweaked a few things as I always do on a reread, and added some words--and the phone rings.

A child. It's always a child. The dogs would use the phone if they could just get their nails to hit the right buttons. I answer, you see. It's a failing.

or how to guarantee nothing goes as planned

Writing? Ha. Claiming so would be a big fat lie.

Bread-and-butter making? Repeatedly. Four days this week, to be exact. And I don't think I've ever been quite so grateful to finish up with an arts/crafts project.

recipe writing, part one.

Another 800 words cranked out on that short, but with added angst and hair-pulling.

No, I guess I don't know what exactly happens in her first physical run-in with those tricksy pirates, and I've got to work on visualizing that colony much better. But mostly with the actual happenings, kthx, brain. Could you work on that while I'm herding small children into the Civic Arts Center and praying like hell my worst nightmare--they'll all want to hit the bathroom at once--won't happen?

and moving on.

When we left our saga yesterday, my traitorous Magic 8 ball had just delivered a message to the dummy on the other end: Write something else, stupid!

Fine! I'll show you--I'm gonna kick that little black sphere with pretensions to divination to hell and gone.

is the one you went to school with....

I'm performing that balancing act most writers have to perform on a regular basis.

You know the deal.

The one where you've convinced yourself that your short (or novel) is as well written as you can possibly manage (which means, of course, you've hurdled the middle step of believing it's utter crap,

and the Magic 8 ball of doom.