I SHOULD WRITE ABOUT THIS

For the last three months, I haven’t posted a thing on my blog.  The election has come and gone, several new assassinations and attacks have occurred worldwide, one of the barking zombies came close to death from eating a sick werewolf or perhaps an anemic vampire bat, and R almost had to have back surgery.   And still I couldn’t write.  Too much anger?  Too much fear?  Not enough prunes?  Who knows.  However, I have finally come to the conclusion that I need to write something, anything, to entice my muse to return.  So I’ve written down a few ideas that might get me going again, a few things I could write about.  To whit:

Last September we moved.  Again.  We move about every three years or so.  You’d think we were in the military.  You’d also think that by now I would have gotten rid of some of the detritus, but no, boxes still wait in the garage and my room.  I look at them and sigh.  This is supposed to be our last move, our retirement haven.  I shouldn’t need anything that’s still in a box, can’t even remember most of what’s in those boxes.  But I can’t make myself give them away without even opening them one more time.  I should write about this.

Speaking of moving, nothing is harder on my knees.  Not that I do a lot of heavy floor scrubbing or anything.  I just tend to trip a lot over ladders and electric cords or stub my toes on the top of a new set of stairs I’m not used to climbing.  Every time I trip or stub, I fall hard on my knees, resulting in a bruise that starts under my toes and goes all the way to about an inch below my hip.  Every three years or so, one of my legs looks like I just had a full-length avant garde tattoo placed.   I should write about this.

Organizer Peter Walsh says he looks at the boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations in clients’ garages and says to himself…ok, I read it a few days ago and forgot exactly what it was he said, but it was something about people having way too many decorations for any sane person to even think about.  At this very moment there are 12 boxes, three large loose wreaths and a couple of bags of Christmas stuff in the garage waiting for me to attack them.   Aside from the fact that Peter Walsh is anal, I should write about this.

I remember when Christmas decorations were all about the red and the green, maybe a touch of silver, a smidge of gold.  Now all of my favorite magazines are showing gifts and decorations and holiday clothing in chartreuse and puce and teal and neon orange.  I thought traditions were traditional.  I should write about this.

My significant other has a new love—Taylor Swift.  Looks like an angel.  Sings like an angel.  I should be jealous but I’m not.  I love her too.  So how come he doesn’t feel the same way about Michael Bublé?  Barry Manilow?  Josh Groban?  Hmmm.  I should should not write about this.

Four out of five:  Not bad.  Not great, but maybe a new beginning.  Prunes, anyone?

LEAVING ASHTABULA

Now that I’ve written a little something about my brother, the next thing is the move to Ohio(!)  I don’t know what I was thinking when I was thinking about going back home to Ashtabula.  It’s freezing and dirty slushy in the winter (which lasts through April) and hot and humid in the summer (with mosquitoes capable of carrying your luggage wherever you want to move to).   So, R and I have decided to go a little farther south.  Of San Diego.  Amigos.

Found a lovely house that’s already furnished, and the stuff is much better than ours.  In fact, the place looks as though it has been professionally decorated.  So, for the next two-and-a-half weeks (we have to be out of here by Sept. 1), I’ll be trying to decide which of my keepsakes I want to take with me.  My keepsakes include dolls, bears, baskets, Lilliput Lane cottages, several boxes of rubber stamps and the equipment and supplies that go with them, and a whole slew of whatchamacallits.  Not to mention 12 boxes of Christmas decorations and several boxes for other holidays. There is absolutely no room for about 95% of it.  A lot of it hasn’t been touched in many years (the stamps and supplies I’ve been carrying around for, oh, maybe 20 years or so–last used ‘em in 2006).   But what do I choose?  How do I choose?

R and I love this new house, with its views of the ocean, a lake, and mountains.  The barking zombies will have a lot of land to go hunting werewolves running around on, and lots of neighborhood dogs to pack play with.  This is going to be our very last one, bar unforeseen circumstances–and of course there are usually always unforeseen circumstances.  But both R and I are up to the excitement.

And after we’ve settled in, there will be a new burger joint to consider, as well as a consignment/thrift store (howtheheck else am I going to get rid of our stuff?)

For a few weeks,I won’t have much time to sign onto the internet, or write any posts.  I’ll miss all the blogs I’m following and all the readers I have, but I promise, I will return (no pipe, no fights with Truman).  I wish everyone well and good writing!

I GOT NOTHING

My brother died on Sunday, and we’re talking about a move to Ohio (Ohio!) and maybe opening another burger cafe and I cut my hair so that it now looks like a very short silver-blonde bowl on my head and I’ve started biting on my cuticles because there are no nails left and the damn barking zombies won’t stop barking, and other than that, I got nothing.  Nothing.

Maybe later this week…right now I gotta go see about buying a house in Ohio (Ohio!).

 

THE FIRST ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY AWARD

Okay, I admit it–it’s impossible not to accept an award from the writers on WordPress.com.  I don’t know about any of the other blogging sites; I’m having a difficult enough time trying to write stuff for this one.   And now dan4kent has graciously decided that I am worthy of the Liebster Blog Award.  If you don’t know dan4kent, you need to get your fingers and eyes and especially your heart and brain over to his blog immediately–like right now, because anything I say is only a mere whisper of the stuff he comes up with.

The Liebster Blog Award is interesting.  I went looking for its roots and what it means and what a blogger has to do if s/he gets it, and the answers are all over the  board internet.  It may have been started by a German guy who decided that all good bloggers with still-too-few followers needed help getting read by the masses.  It may have been started by some crazy lobster-loving woman up in Maine who figured if she got people thinking about getting Liebsters they’d stop wanting to eat lobsters.  Who knows how things start up in cybertopia?

And as for what you have to do if you are nominated for this award, one blogger answered 11 crazy questions and asked ten crazier ones, then listed seven things that she thought were interesting about herself.  Thankfully, only one blogger did that. But they all did agree on one thing–a nominated person has to nominate three or five (ok, so they didn’t exactly agree completely) other award-worthy bloggers.  I can do that.  In fact, I could answer 11 crazy questions and ask ten crazier ones and tell you seven things about me that may possibly be interesting, at least in the context of this award. Well, one anyway.  So here is that one interesting thing about me:

I once murdered a liebster.  No, wait, I meant a lobster.  I murdered a lobster.  Worse, than that:  I murdered two lobsters.

Sort-of Innocent Me in 1971, Loving My Dead Maine Lobster

In my youth and shining innocence…okay, so I was married and couldn’t therefore have been all that innocent…I loved live Maine lobster.  Cooked whole and served with bibs and lots of butter.

So one day, after my sweet husband had gifted me with a giant gourmet cookbook (now that I think about it, he was probably giving me a gentle reminder that up until then he had had to slather ketchup all over any food I’d cooked for him), I thought I’d surprise him and fix him a lobster dinner.  How difficult could it be?  The giant gourmet cookbook had pictures and everything.  I followed the directions and the meal was delicious.

Or would have been, had the lobsters not started screaming and trying to get out of the pot of boiling water.  I kid you not.  Lobsters scream when you throw them live into boiling water.  And they try to get out of the pot, too.  Why else would they have their claws tied together?  So as to keep your fingers away from them when they’re crawling–or trying to crawl–around on the butcher block before you throw them into the boiling water?  No, No, NO!  Their claws are tied so they can’t get out of the boiling water after you’ve thrown them in, no matter how hard they try or how loudly they scream.  Yes, dear readers, they scream.  Longly and loudly.  Don’t let any crazy clog-wearing chef try to tell you differently.

So, I believe one interesting thing about me is enough for this post, don’t you?  As for the other bloggers I read and like who don’t already have this award …I have no idea.  Geez, only three bloggers I had to find.  Three.  Could I find them?  No.   Not only that, I can’t find out how to find out how many followers any of them have.  That’s why this post is so late in the first place.  Sorry, Dan, I really did try…

Whoa!  Wait a minute!  I just had an idea!  I am going to have a contest!  Sure, why not?  Yeah, that’s what I’ll do!  Other bloggers do.  I’m gonna have a contest for the first five bloggers I follow (you gotta know who you are, right?) who don’t have very many followers and who haven’t been gifted with this award.  I’ll give you a week to tell me who you are so I can send the world to your sites.

AND…another ingenious idea!…if I don’t get at least three any responses, then I just may have to regift the award to someone who already has it.  Sure, why not?  Regifting is a big thing these days.  Very environmentally correct.  That’s it!  Am I smart, or what?  Are those lobsters dead or not?  Hah!

A PIECE OF EARTH IN PURPLE AND GREEN

This is the Ganges River Delta, as seen from a Landsat earth observation satellite, courtesy of one of my favorite blogs, Grist (http://grist.org/), and their reporter, Sarah Laskow

It was supposed to be a photograph I had taken, to be entered in the Weekly Photo Challenge (http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/weekly-photo-challenge-purple/), but I didn’t read that part until after I had been searching for purple in lots of pictures.  When I found this site, I figured everyone should be able to see all the beautiful pictures…to perhaps take away from all the bad things that seem to have happened to some of my blog friends this week.
WP, forgive me…perhaps next week’s photo challenge will be one I am up to…

A PRAYER TO THE WORDPRESS GODS. AND GODDESSES.

Dear WPGs and Gs,

I thank thee for this place to post my thoughts and feelings, my comments on other people’s thoughts and feelings, and my entertainment in reading other people’s thoughts and feelings.  Really, I do.

And I especially appreciate the fact that this is a free site.  There aren’t too many free things in this world anymore including the vote.

But there’s one thing you forgot.  Not that I’m saying you’re not perfect.  Oh no, far from it.  You are  really in need of a major tuneup and some technical advice  good at what you do.  It’s just that I keep finding other things you jerks should already have thought of I would like you to offer.

For instance:

I just spent two and a half hours composing a post. I had come to my Add New Post page from another person’s blog.  WordPress lets me do that (thank you very much oh heavenly beings).   I typed away, frying my little synapses with the enormity of the brilliance of what I was saying.  But  I wasn’t done yet.  I just wanted to reread what I’d already written and try to remember where I was before my mind went ping-ponging off in all directions as it is wont to do ponder the next thought.  You see, it’s been a while since my last real post and I wanted this one to be worthy of its esteemed readers.

However, when I looked for Save Draft I didn’t find it.  I had forgotten that, if I were on another blog and wanted to post something of my own, there was no Save Draft on the Add New Post page.  No place at all where I could click and file this two-and-a-half-hour piece of probable crap my creative muse.

There was only Publish.

No Save Draft.

So I figured if I waited a few minutes, went to another page and then came back, Auto Save would have done its appropriately named job.  It hadn’t.  The entire piece is now flying about somewhere in the warped and tormented recesses of my mind never to be heard from again cyberspace.

So please, oh loved and loving WPGs, get your fingers out of your …ears when you take me to a page that says Add New Post, be sure Save Draft is somewhere on that new post page.  That way, besides saving draft you will also save blog for your statistics about how many blogs you have.  You will save blogger’s hair because I won’t have to tear it out.  You will save airways from a very loud, very cranky, very screechy voice.

Because, my adored lords and ladies, saving is what it’s all about, goddammit isn’t it?

Amen

HAVE A BREAST ON ME

 

Because today is National Fried Chicken Day, and I know how hungry you all are for any post that smacks–you should excuse the expression–of sex food.

The well has almost run dry but I didn’t want anyone to think I had given up quite yet.

 

 

ONE LAST WORD (FOR NOW) ON WRITING WRONGLY

Health warning to grammar police as before (see prior post).

Once I have decided to hit the Publish button, a screen pops up that says the WP proofreader thinks some changes need to be made and would I like to look at the document one last time?

Fuck the proofreader.

HOW TO WRITE WRONG

WARNING TO THE GRAMMAR POLICE:  READING THIS POST MAY BE DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH!

After reading all the essays on the web about how to write correctly ( “write right” would have been much more fun to write–and read–but that’s not correct, is it?), I realize I have been writing incorrectly all these years.  Why am I not surprised?  I never seem to do anything the way other people do. (My blog name, paralaxvu, fits well here…and the title of this post stays.)

When it comes to writing, I usually have a thought in mind, then search for a title.

Sometimes, the title just pops right up through my gray matter and says, This is an idea for a post!

Then I have to get the resulting thoughts, always chaotic and ping-ponging around in my brain, in some sort of order.

Then I start to write.

I am an editor at heart, so I can’t just write, write, write until I’m finished and then go back and refine.  I have to change the misspelled words and the grammar and construction errors as soon as I spot them, because I have a really good grasp of the workings of the English language (the nuns taught it all four years when I was in high school, and we had nightly–and weekendly–homework in it).

Because I also have a B.A. in Creative Writing and the paper to prove it enjoy playing with the language, I take a lot of license with it to make it more fun.  But I endeavor to take careful, mindful license so, of course, that takes a long time.

I work sentences around as my mind looks at them and says, No, that’s not it!

I stop and reread every five or six sentences–if not more often.

I save a draft and come back later and reread from the beginning and make more changes to what I’ve done so far.

Then I go on in the same fashion.

Then, when I think I’m finally finished, I preview the post.  Again and again and again.  (Okay, so maybe I have a mild case of OCD.)

Of course, during all these periods, I keep adding–and removing–more tags and categories.

I’m sure this takes me much longer than simply writing straight through to the end, then rereading, proofing and re-crafting.  It’s probably why I have about 25-plus drafts of posts awaiting my return. I could otherwise most likely have hit the 100-posts mark by now.

But that’s how I do it.

Damn the experts/famous authors.

WHAT THE…

I can never leave well enough alone.  Not that well enough is usually ever around me, anyway. And never alone.  It’s usually being crowded out by kind of bad and what the heck were you thinking of.

So there I was, thinking I liked my blog’s theme well enough but it would be nice if I could put the three pages that identify me up at the top under their own headings.  So I tried.  Honestly, I really tried to do that.  But my chosen theme doesn’t allow that.  All I could do was add a custom menu with those three pages in it.  Need I say anything further?

If you’ve been following me at all, you are probably wondering what the eff has happened, what with the explanation for my blog’s chosen name suddenly appearing as a post, and if you click on one of those pages, one of my posts appears instead.  I think it’s me and not WordPress, although WP has been doing some funny things lately, too.  But no, it’s me.  I tried to make things better and only made them worse.

So I think for now I’m just going to go spin in the kitchen a while with the barking zombies at my heels and hope I’ll have the strength later on to figure out just what I did wrong and how to fix it.  Otherwise, posts will be pages and pages posts and ne’er the twine shall meet.  Twine, yes.  As in rope.  As with what I’m going to hang myself soon…