Tag: blogging

About Me

The internet ‘n stuff

Autumn

Lately I’ve been wondering how much blogging matters.

You see, I’m old enough to remember Neopets, Gaia Online, and LiveJournal, and the internet sure as heck ain’t what it used to be.

I’m pretty convinced that certain monoliths suppress literally everyone, then select which individuals they want to become popular, and there’s nothing organic about any of it for anyone.

‘N stuff.

But don’t worry, this isn’t my “farewell forever” post. If my calculations are correct, I’ve got about 11 real live actual people who come here to read, and I’m not going to up and abandon you just because of something as silly as stats.

Actually, I’m getting tired of trying to be structured.

And if I get the impulse to post a random pun at 10:43pm, I might as well do it without explaining anything.

I’m also tired of pretending like I’m not as cynical as I am. After a certain amount of bullying and ostracism throughout my childhood, I made the conscious choice that fictional friends were considerably better than real ones — 90% of everyone will go out of their way to hurt you purely because they can.

Hell, five years ago I tried to get out and be more social with the assumption that adulthood changes how people interact with each other, and it ended up mentally fucking me up pretty badly. Conclusion: adulthood has made the bullying even worse.

And let’s face it, modern fashion trends are purely an experiment in how far people are willing to debase and humiliate themselves for the sake of fitting in. Yes I said it. If you don’t look at yourself in the morning and immediately feel good about yourself, then you should trust me when I say that *you* aren’t the problem, it’s your fucking ugly clothes. Change your style. Just do it already.

Aaaaaanyway.

I’m gonna do what I want for awhile.

Alice and the Warden

Random notes about AatW

Autumn
  • I feel like I’m writing the baby too much like a prop. I’m always mindful to make sure that she’s present and accounted for (instead of simply not being there for some unexplained reason), and newborns really do spend most of their time sleeping, but I want to throw in more descriptions of her to make her feel more like a character.
  • I want to flesh out the friendship between Kate and Gertie. I know how they’d interact, but I can’t quite figure out how to slip it into the story. My brain is being totally blah about this.
  • Because I originally intended this to be a novelette, I’ve been typing it on the laptop. Right now, I’m really missing the ability to scribble notes in the margins. I have no clue if LibreOffice has a similar feature, because I never bothered to learn anything beyond the bare basics.
  • I’m also really terrified of my laptop crashing and losing everything.
  • I wrote a really sexy scene, and now I don’t know what to do with it. What’s this story rated anyway?
  • I need to describe pretty much everything better, and figure out what the heck that English thing is. You have no idea how mortifying it is to publicly post a first draft.
  • Nobody’s reading it anyway (except for you, of course).
  • I’m starting to worry that the pacing is too slow, and I need to get on with it already. But, given the speed of the rest of the story, doing that might make the ending feel unpleasantly rushed.

About Me

Personal Note

Autumn

I got a million things to do.

At the end of the day, I consider myself to be an author and not a blogger. So when something’s gotta take a hit, it’s going to be my blogging instead of my fiction writing. I like to fantasize that all of my visitors are here to enjoy the fruits of my imagination rather than my incoherent babbling, and would prefer that I maintain my fiction updates.

Side note: I didn’t sleep last night.

Anyway, the gist is that I’m tired and busy and I don’t feel like blogging — I’d much rather spend my free time working on Alice and the Warden. And napping. I’m also having anxiety about Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but we don’t need to get into that.

So, Alice and the Warden will continue to be updated every Monday.

But I’ll only check in when I feel like it.

Observations

Observations

Autumn

It’s one of those hot and sticky days.

The advertisements in my inbox assure me that this is the last weekend of summer, but the weather feels like it has other plans. I’m sitting outside with a floppy crocheted sunhat, freshly washed hair spilling everywhere, and a bunch of kids completely ignoring their new splash pad.

Smells like cats.

Crows are cawing in the distance, cutting over the music I have playing on a bluetooth speaker. The neighbor’s door slams as they let their dog out. A semi truck rattles by. The baby starts to fuss as she achieves a death grip on my hair, and the two-year-old informs me that she needs a new diaper.

…

The air conditioning inside feels nice and cool. The baby is settling down to nap as the kids beg for ice cream.

Sounds like a great idea.

About Writing

Basil Hackett

Autumn

WordPress finally forced me over to the block editor, and now I know why everyone complains about it. It strikes me as something that a bunch of tech geeks thought would be AWESOME, and they completely forgot that a lot of us users have skills that are more in line with typing up articles in Word.

But le sigh, I will have to learn it anyway.

Or I’ll start copy-n-pasting, and bypass this change all together. Everything keeps popping around and disappearing too much for my tastes.

Back to our originally scheduled program…

Basil Hackett.

For those who don’t know, he’s my fictional character from Alice and the Warden

It’s taken quite some time for me to get a clear mental picture of him, so thus far he hasn’t been properly described. This is the sort of thing that I usually add in while working on the second draft, but that will be awhile. My current goal is to write about 1000 words a week, which is comfortably steady and works well with where I’m at in real life right now, but it’s definitely not fast.

So we’ll go ahead and describe him now.

Physically, he lifts weights a few times a week (lunch break in the prison gym sort of thing), but he also has some extra padding from never saying ‘no’ to dessert. He’s bulky, but not “beefcake.”

His hair is short, combed back, mid-brown with a few gray strands at the sides. He’s always clean-shaven.

His eyes are the one thing that I do describe, a striking hazel-green that can make you forget what you were saying if you look too closely at them.

The impression he gives is being like a boulder, impassive and unmovable. The part that Alice never sees is that, as the warden, he likes to run a tight ship to ensure the safety of everyone in the prison (guards and inmates alike). He takes his job very seriously, doles out discipline when necessary, utilizes psychological methods to promote good behavior, and provides lots of training and resources to help inmates transition to the “outside” world.

Of course, the story mostly portrays Hackett behind the scenes in his private life.

Those are most of my non-spoiler thoughts about him. Honestly, it’s a little weird to be openly writing about characterization with an unfinished story, but hey, first time for everything.

About Me

*QUALITY* CONTENT

Autumn

One of the cats got into the chicken run. Not entirely sure how she pulled it off, but she’s the one we joke about being part liquid, so she probably turned into some sort of gelatinous blob and slithered in while we weren’t looking.

The chickens FREAKED. The cat FREAKED. Every animal involved was terrified out of its mind.

The chickens eventually retreated into their coop, and we got the cat out of the run.

A little bit later, my husband asked for help because one of the chickens hurt the comb on top of its head during The Great Panic. We went out to the coop with a bottle of iodine and a flashlight, because it was getting dark.

My husband picked up the hurt chicken. With the flashlight, we can clearly see that its comb was torn off and quite literally dangling by a thread.

He said, “I’m going to need the scissors.”

I replied, “You’re on your own now.”

True story.

About Me

Hello, again

Autumn

We had another girl, born at 7lbs 13oz, and she’s a perfect, princess-angel-blossom in every way.

Highlights include: sending my husband out for donuts during labor, because I had a mad craving and I knew there was still plenty of time; my first water birth; and, remembering that newborns really are that tiny.

Even though this is my fifth baby, it’s still amazing that I created a new person. I also still frequently wake up to check if she’s breathing. Some things never change.

I’m thoroughly enjoying my “baby-cation” of lazing around and snuggling, but I’m also getting a liiiitle bored of watching movies. I’m not sure how coherent I am at the moment, but I think its time to get back to creativity despite that. That’s what editing is for, anyway, lol.

About Me

AWOL

Autumn

This is the worst pregnancy brain I’ve ever experienced. I can’t remember being so forgetful before … har har.

To give me some credit, this is also the most children I’ve ever had, and between waking up early with the kids, trying to get quality time with my husband in the evening, and spending the night being pregnant, I’m probably not getting as much sleep as I need. Trust me, I’m trying, but for some reason everyone in my family loves me and wants to be with me. LOL.

So I’ve become horrendously absentminded with everything.

ANYway, as I’ve stated before, I’ve been planning on going AWOL while I prepare for my new baby, and with everything that’s happening ‘n all, it’s especially important for me to retreat right now. The last thing I need is to absorb all the stress and anxiety that’s going around right before I go into labor.

So, I won’t be on the internet for awhile.

I have a stash of yarn, a recipe book full of desserts, and a lawn chair with my name on it.

If only I could remember where I put the sunscreen.

About Me

Vacuums

Autumn

Long story short, there were some sparks and part of my vacuum melted. Uh oh.

With 4.8 kids, vacuuming is very much a daily chore, so I decided to meh it and buy a cheap one at Walmart to tie us over while we figure out what to do about repairs. At this point, I’m pretty certain I have some sort of curse in regards to vacuums, so I didn’t care enough to be picky when the darned thing is probably going to explode anyway.

I never go anywhere during the busy times, so it was life as usual when we set out at ten in the morning. We walked past a masked employee on our way into the store. I think she was counting people, but she didn’t say anything and hid off to the side. No awkward Walmart greetings.

It took some meandering to find the vacuum section. No one stopped us to interview us about our TV watching habits (or rather, lack thereof in our case).

I spent a moment wondering if I cared about the length of the power cord. Everyone who walked past gave us a wide berth, probably because of our horde of virus vectors freely releasing germs into the air with every breath. It was beautiful.

My husband and I came to a decision without having to constantly remind the kids to be considerate of others. I’m starting to wonder if a number of people were deliberately going out of their way to passive-aggressively treat my children like they were an inconvenience. It wouldn’t surprise me — I’ve gotten some pretty nasty criticisms over having kids, but I’m not at all sorry that I have single-handedly set women back 5000 years by choosing to give birth. I like these little people of mine, and it’s my life.

We picked up a couple more odds-n-ends, since we were already there and we had some space to think of them.

Self-checkout. I couldn’t tell the employees from the people who are just wearing masks, but no one came close anyway. Didn’t bag anything, because plastic bags are yucky.

Left without a single person asking to check our receipt.

Almost makes me want to go to Walmart more often. Almost. But I’m still bitter over Shopko closing.

And I’m back to vacuuming every day. It hasn’t exploded yet, but the curse still has plenty of time to kick in.

About Me

Easter, et al

Autumn

We survived Easter.

There’s about a million things happening this Spring, and throwing chocolate rabbits and jelly beans into the mix resulted in absolute pandemonium with the children. O. M. G.

But we miraculously survived.

Phew.

Naturally, the kids immediately started counting down the days until the NEXT EVENT, and I couldn’t help but groan inside. Better than sitting around bored, but I wouldn’t mind slowing down the pace somewhat. Just give me enough time to catch up on the dishes? I can’t move very fast anymore.

Honestly, I’m rather enjoying lockdown. We got bored of movie theaters and the mall years ago, restaurants lost their appeal because the quality was going downhill, and public celebrations were unpleasant with all the people pushing my children out of the way to get a better shot on their phones. Not to mention, we discovered that ‘social distancing’ is a fantastic way of avoiding certain personality types without coming across as overtly rude.

It’s nice being able to breathe without everyone getting up in my business — and the grocery store is still only a few minutes away. Win-win!

I don’t expect the lockdown to end any time soon, so I might as well be open-minded and adaptable; it’s probably better to have the children climbing trees instead of playgrounds anyway.

I miss being the sort of person who straps a newborn to my chest then hikes up a mountain.