No Fault of My Own

Life can sometimes throw you a curve ball. Things go along, and every day is pretty much the same as the day before. And then, poof, things aren't the same anymore.

I've had a few of these momentous change days. Close to 34 years ago, everything was simple. I was a student in nursing school working towards my RN and my husband was working retail and going to school. And then we were going to have a baby. Just like that.

Poof.

Everything changed. We would forever more be parents with all the joys and responsibilities that entailed. There was no going back. Everything was changed. I did finish nursing school, Craig was 13 weeks old at the time. I did manage to get my license after passing the State Boards. I did learn about diaper rash, colic, and eventually became a dreaded soccer mom. Nothing has been the same since. I couldn’t even imagine the changes on that long ago day in the doctor's office when he said, "You are pregnant."

Years later I noticed that things were in the proverbial handbasket and heading for hell. I told my husband that he had three months to get things back on track or the boys and I would be gone. He did. But in that re-examining period, he noticed that he not only repeatedly and continually told me about how much he hated his job, he really and truly hated his job. He asked me if I would support us while he looked for a new job and I said yes. He handed in his resignation letter and instead, got a promotion and transfer.

Poof.

All of a sudden, everything changed. We moved. We raised our children far away from their grandparents. We left our secure home and moved across the state. And then poof, again. And we moved back. And then poof again, and we moved to South Carolina. Much farther away.

Sometimes, without warning, things change. Sometimes, there is a warning. Sometimes we miss the warning.

Poof.

Everything changed again. After working since he was 14, never without a job, always able to support his family either with or without me providing a second income – after all that, suddenly he was without a job. He went to work on Friday morning gainfully employed although hating the job (again or still?) and came home "not fitting into the company's future plans."

Not only has he always had a job, but for many of those years, his job entailed traveling and so I was more or less accustomed to having the house to myself during the day and often all evening and night, too. This has been a huge adjustment. We are in each other's way. We are walking on eggshells trying not to overly annoy each other. This new life style lacks a bit of style.

But as with other changes, I assume that this one will prove to be a blessing, so far in disguise. We have always made it before, and I assume we will again. He will find a job. It may be with a pay scale such that I will again be in the working world, too. But we aren't going to be living on cat food diets and in cardboard boxes. This, too, will all work out.

I'm happier when my life is routinely working. This upset in my routine, this uncertainty about the future, this latest hiccup – it's really just annoying. There could have been a string of four-letter words with derivations in there, but it wouldn't have really altered the amount of annoyance inherent in the situation.

Perhaps I will be able to write – quite soon, if I have my way about it – about a new poof experience. His new job. One that he can like or at least tolerate without rancor. One that will last until we are really ready to retire.

Maybe everyday has some small poof moment to it and I'm just really good at ignoring the small ways my life changes on a daily basis. What I'm perfectly certain about is this – we will survive this.

Dashed Dreams

Well, I was published for a bit there. Now, not so much. It seems that the Monday Quarterbacks have just tons of ideas about how this should have been done. Not that they shared those ideas during the doing portion, but now ...

So I guess that the two people who were dissatisfied are now all happy, warm and fuzzy. The other 16 are maybe not. This one isn't. And I probably won't forget being all cold and brittle. I wanted my book. I worked for my book.

But it's gone now. I don't know if it will ever come back. I don't know if 18 people can agree on things. I know that two people are on my shit list. They were able to whine, whine, whine, but weren't there for the work, work, work.

But at any rate, the book is off the market. There is no Lulu link that works. I'm back to unpublished in print.

I sure hope that the two people who didn't like the way this was run will take control of the "way things should be" and do it right their damn selves. But I am fairly certain that it won't happen. They will have said what they needed and then expect someone else to fulfill those needs for them. That's the way things usually work.

I will hopefully be able to come back here and post a new link to a print book with my name in it. Probably not. I'm betting the those who "knew" more and better will now crawl back into the woodwork and the book will just slowly fade away to memory. Because if they couldn't even be bothered to read their mails or message boards, God knows they will be far too busy and important to actually do any of the work that went into getting it up for sale.

So long author. It was nice while it lasted. More than a mere 15 minutes, I had days. Now back to my regularly scheduled oblivion.

Writer's Dream

I have always loved words. When I learned that they had no intention of teaching me to read in kindergarten, I refused to go back. My mother showed me the code – the secret of the alphabet. I've been hooked ever since.

I love to read. I read books and magazines. I read newspapers and notices. I read the back of cereal boxes if that is all that is available. Words cry out to be decoded. Words speak to me.

I played with writing when I was a teenager. I wrote horrid stories and worse poetry. It was awful. And then my life caught up with me and I was too busy to write. But I never gave up reading.

I went back to writing after that 'empty nest' part of my life kicked in. I had time again. My stories were still horrid, but I wasn't writing for a large audience. I wrote to see if I could. I think I can. I know I've gotten better with practice.

I'm good with writing essays, especially opinion pieces. When I have an opinion, I can list reasons why not only I have that opinion, but why you should, too. When I went back to college in my dotage, I learned that I could also write business essays and technical manuals.

Then I found RGQ and wrote letters in the comments section. Lots of letters. And then I pitched an idea to Bruce about a little 'this day in history' thing that has grown into my essays with attendant quotes in the three issues every week. And I've filled in the off days and have an entire book written containing expanded essays with at least four quotes per essay that I would love to see published. But that takes a lot of work and I've not done that – yet.

Publishing is very hard work. Writing is easy for me. I don't do too much polishing. I type, I spell check, I reread and correct, I plop it up on a blog or message board. Finished! I understand that some people agonize over each word. I agonize over the flaws I see, but I only notice them after I've plopped them somewhere.

At MWC, there was a message thread called Station Shorts where people wrote flash fiction about characters who were abandoned or no longer used by their Boss or Author. It was fun and imaginative. The word play was exhilarating. And the thread grew. And more people contributed. And I joined in the fun, even though I was new to MWC and late to the game.

Then someone mentioned that we could publish the whole and there were volunteers to put together the string of about 70 stories into a cohesive whole. Mark Hoffman, Citabria, is my hero. I cannot even imagine the number of hours he put into the job of getting us all published. But he was willing to take on the task of making the book.

And so now, about 50 years after I first learned to read, I'm published in a book. Me. And Tim and Gyppo, and about 10 to 15 more of us playful people who learned to love words long ago, or in some cases – not so long ago. We have a book for sale! On Lulu, where you, yes you, can buy a copy.

I've been published in a monthly magazine put out by a HOA where we once lived. I've been published in a scientific journal as a co-author on a psychology study, I've been published in RGQ, and I've been published on my blogs. But now I'm part of a book.

A real book. Station Shorts is for sale. And, get this, I'm one of the authors. I am beyond thrilled. You've got my word on that.

Politics

I do not have the least bit of faith in the political process. I do not believe a word that passes the lips of any of the Presidential candidates. It is my heartfelt belief that they – one an all, of any political party or none – will say whatever they think will get them elected.

It is my belief that they – one and all, regardless of party affiliation – are only seeking the office for self-aggrandizing power. There is no reason for me to believe that one candidate or another will in any way better my life.

It is my belief that any candidate will promise anything to get elected and then will tax me unmercifully to make sure that I'm powerless against the machine. Someone will lower my current status of health care while taxing me more than I am currently paying for health insurance, all in the name of "helping."

Someone will do something to make sure that everyone who doesn't work will have the same luxuries that I, as a working person, can enjoy. Karl Marx must be rolling in his grave laughing. He said that democracy would devolve or perhaps he thought it was evolve into communism.
Everyone wants something for nothing. Kids go to school and expect to be taught without putting in the effort to learn. Everyone is disabled or differently abled in some way that means that they must be catered to in order to level the playing field. Jobs should pay better and work shouldn't be so difficult.

There is no free lunch. Every thing that is given to the constituency is taken from the constituency, run through the red tape and skimmed, and then given back more useless than ever. Every "helpful" program has ended up hurting the people it was designed to help. From Unions to Welfare.

Jobs leave the country because union workers don't work. They attain seniority. Welfare creates a system of entitlement and robs the person of the humanity they were born with. The War on Drugs makes criminals where none really exist. Thank you big government.

I have been pestered for about two weeks now with several phone calls per week from AARP needing to talk to the head of household. Apparently AARP hasn't yet heard that women are now voting and given equal status before the law and not just puppets for their husbands. I have told and told the people calling from a hidden phone number and probably from someone who bought the AARP contact list, that he works and isn't home during the day.

I have offered to talk to whatever idiot it is that is calling me, but have been repeatedly told that they can't talk to me because I'm not the boss of myself and do only what the head of the household tells me to do, I'm worthless and not a thinking or rational being. I'm secondary and unimportant.

I guess I was close enough to murder today when I again was called – twice – and on the second time the caller said she would speak to me, even though they were supposed to talk to a male cuz I'm worthless. She wanted to know if we had yet received a booklet put out by AARP listing what each candidate has said about "affordable health care" and some other issue. I had seen the mailing. I saw it on the way to the trash.

I assured her that we had gotten it and would study it diligently before casting any votes, because if a politician said it – ever – even once in their whole lives, then by God, mom, and apple pie, they will stick to whatever rhetoric they have spewed. Because there has never, not in all of recorded history, ever been even one politician who went back on a platform promise once they were elected.

Hopefully, I will not be getting any more phone calls. I know in my heart that it doesn't matter. Politician, at this level of government, are all a pack of self-aggrandizing liars, thieves, and scurrilous dogs. Nothing they say can be believed. Their real and true and only message is "I want to be elected. Vote for me."

Dissatisfied

I thought I would separate my usual blog stuff from my Station Shorts. I thought I was being smart. But as so often happens, it didn't work out as planned. Robert Burns is rolling in his grave laughing.

This is not an endorsement. However, Blogspot has some really nice features that Geocities at Yahoo seems to have forgotten. The most important one for me is the ability to edit a post. There is an option to edit posts over there. And I did try it. Unfortunately, "Your post could not be saved" was the response in tone if not exact words.

The only way for me to edit was to delete it and repost it. Now, that isn't a horrible thing, except that my stories are based on the previous tale and so … getting them out of order was going to be a problem. So if I needed to edit post 2, I had to delete it and repost it and then delete and repost #3, #4, etc. all the way to the end.

I had some glaring issues and I wanted them corrected. So I did all that. Then I found something else that really needed help. And then I got really disgusted. It isn't supposed to be that difficult.

So I created The Station all over again at Blogspot. Now, this place isn't perfect, either. When I copied and pasted from a Word document into the text window over at Yahoo, the text that I had italicized on my computer stayed in italics in the new window. Not so much here at Blogspot. It will continue to hold onto links okay, but any other type of formatting gets tossed when I paste into the text window.

But at least I can see that I didn't italicize Hotel California or Wizard of Oz and go back and edit the post and have everything stay in a nice neat line. So I am giving up one kind of problem which was driving me to distraction and getting a smaller problem in return.

The other thing that I couldn't understand over at Yahoo was the spacing between paragraphs. They apparently like white space over there. One blank line is really sufficient to the task of paragraph delimitation. I'm not sure why Yahoo insisted on so much space. If I left the spaces in from my own typing then the space was even worse. It was all confusing.

I know that technology is our friend. I even like technology. Most of the time. I like it when I can get it to do what I want done. I'm not so happy with it when it remains perverse, sticking to the program as initiated by some geek behind the screen who didn't know what I wanted or was just messing with me cuz he could and so there. (That was a run-on sentence resulting from high distress and frustration.)

My son wisely informed me to include links to the my stories when sending out reminders that there were new ones put up for reading. So at least I won't have too difficult a time telling people that my site changed. I've changed the link over at My Writers Circle so they can find my stories, too.

Writers' Strike

I am a writer. I am an unpaid writer, unlike people in Hollywood who are usually paid, but are now on strike and not being paid, either.

Jay Leno is going back to work tonight, Wednesday, January 2, 2008. He has been supportive of the writers but since talks broke down nearly a month ago and there are no new talks scheduled, according to Jay, he is going to put his other 100 employees back to work.

It seems that the sticking point of this strike is how people are to be compensated when their product is used over the Internet. I understand wanting to continue to be paid for work that is in continuous use. I would like to be paid for anything I write, first, second, or continual use be damned.

So how do people feel about this? According to the responses at Market Watch, some people are not happy. Some other people are not sympathetic at all. According to one person, without writers, television will come to a grinding halt and will cease to exist.

The strike began on November 5, 2007 and as far as I can tell, there are still people on the television. Some shows don't need writers. Reality shows, talk shows, game shows. Other shows are in reruns until this strike is over. And more and more people are using Indie stuff from the cursed Internet to fill in the gap.

A man who designed conveyors for the auto industry tried to explain his stand by pointing out the irony of his demands for a piece of every car ever built, sold, resold, or scrapped if it used his conveyor system while being built. And some writer sympathizer, or perhaps simply writer, pointed out that unskilled labor was not the same a skilled writing.

First of all, designing a system is not unskilled labor.

Then the writer went on to point out that without writers a show is worthless. Oh my. There are so many shows that are worthless with writers. And then there are so many people who would love to be given the chance to become a paid writer (pick me, over here, pick me) that this is a somewhat ludicrous statement.

So second of all, writers are swarming all over the planet and if the most talented ones are currently working in Hollywood, it speaks horribly about talent and what talent alone can do.

I think I am supposed to support the writers' strike, but I don't really think that I do. I think that writers are paid to write and get paid for work in syndication as well. The Internet isn't generating tons of funds, unless these are the writers who script porn, which makes money over the net as well as anywhere else. If they are those particular writers, surely they don't think that their work is essential to the production. I mean, really, what sort of plot/dialog/suspense can a writer add to porn?

I don't really know the whole background story, but I do know that the writers are losing support with the unwashed masses. It's been two months now and nothing much is going on in the negotiation front. Soon, the Indies will be selling their finished product to the Networks and all the huffy, over-inflated, self-aggrandizing writers will find out that television CAN get along without them. Be careful what you wish for.