On Getting Blindsided, and Car Love

Posted by ccdenham on May 19, 2013

Last night I got T-boned by some guy in an SUV running a red light. It was a slow speed street, so thankfully, I appear to physically be all right, apart from a seatbelt bruise (apparently neck injuries can take days to manifest, so I’m crossing my fingers). My car, on the other hand… sigh.

I won’t know what the status is until next week when I can actually talk to the insurance adjuster and get my car looked at. But it’s not really drive-able. I thought it was, until I drove it home from the accident and realized that any right turns or bumps created a horrible crunching/dragging noise, apparently shaving bits of tire tread and doing whatever else. Last night, it looked like I’d just need a new rear drivers-side door. By day, however, it’s clear that the damage is a lot worse.

I’m heartbroken, y’all. It’s a Honda. My first Honda. I love that car. The thought of it being hurt, or worse – having to replace it, literally brings tears to my eyes.

The irony is that this is the first “normal” car I’ve ever had. My first car was a ’73 orange Super Beetle. I drove that thing until the engine literally collapsed in it. No, really – I was on a road trip of doom from Tennessee to Boston and back, and it was pouring rain at 2 in the morning in the Adirondacks of New York, with construction and 18-wheelers all around me, when I suddenly could not shift into first or second gears. Or was it first and third. I don’t remember. That turned into the very first hotel room I ever rented on my own. When I got up the next morning, the left side of the engine was hanging from the bottom of the car, having apparently fallen off the mounts and was laying on the clutch cables. I managed to coax the poor baby to my parents’ house in Ohio, where it retired while I bussed it back to TN.

My car after that – well, I guess it was “normal.” But I didn’t buy it or pick it out. It was a practical, cheap, and convenient little Datsun Sentra. Yes, Datsun Sentra. No, I’m not that old, but the car was. It was silver, and leaked water when it rained, and the doors had this high-pitched squeak to them so that, all things combined, it was known as the Dolphin Car.

From there, I got to “borrow”/inherit my mom’s Escort station wagon, which was “normal” too, I guess. My relationship with that car was on/off as I migrated from Tennessee to Ohio to Boston to Atlanta. Eventually I officially owned it, and not long after that, the brakes completely gave out while I was exiting 85 North in rush hour traffic. That was fun. No, really – it was fun because I got to show off my badass stick-shift coolheaded driving skills and not get killed while downshifting my happy ass to safety. I was very sad to retire the Escort, but its time in snowy-salty Ohio, combined with my last few months in Boston on the bay near the airport (salt air), had eaten the brake lines through.

Enter the second car I ever picked out and purchased on my own – Peg, the blueprint-blue PT Cruiser. I wanted to love her. I did love her interior and quirky looks. But the extended warranty I shelled out money for, MORE than paid for itself. Peg, as it turns out, was kind of a lemon. Like about half the PT Cruisers out there. Or more than half. I don’t know. All I do know is that apparently some of them are absolutely great cars, and others are nothing but trouble. Peg was the latter. My husband finally begged me to trade it in while it had any value left at all, before I wound up stranded out in the middle of bumfuck Georgia or worse.

Which brings me to my beloved Honda, Hermione. She sat in the Carmax lot for months – I recalled casually browsing their inventory and noting her way before we actually decided to get me a newer car. She was still there because of the stick shift, I’m certain. I love that car. It’s not quirky, it’s not even an interesting color – just white with beige interior. But she drives beautifully and she’s mine. Practical and smart and fuel efficient as hell for a non-hybrid. And now she’s crumpled in on the side, wounded, crippled, and possibly beyond repair.

I realize it’s silly and selfish and I should just be grateful that *my* injuries were minimal-to-none. But I don’t want a newer car, or a replacement, I want my Honda. I’m just – sad.

A Question For Fellow Writers

Posted by ccdenham on May 13, 2013

One thing that is suggested by many writers who I hold in high esteem (Chuck Wendig, Kristen Lamb, etc.), is to set wordcount goals and plan out the length of your chapters and stories. This is something I just can’t seem to get. See that little sidebar over there? The one with the WIPs and the progress bars? Yeah, that’s total bullshit. I have no idea how long my stories are going to be until they’re in first-draft mode. None. And I don’t know how to fix that. So I am turning to you, dear internet, for your help. How do you do it? How do you know ahead of time how many words will fit into that first-time pegging scene? How long is a smutty retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? How many chapters is that time-travel steampunk faerie/shifter romance going to be? How the fuck do you know these things ahead of time?

Happy Mothers’ Day (Belated)

Posted by ccdenham on May 13, 2013

Honestly, I don’t know how mothers do it. Which is maybe part of the reason why the universe hasn’t aligned to make me one (yet), if that whole universe-alignment/fate crap sort of thing is real, which no one really knows. But judging by the way I parent our pets, I would probably be a bit neurotic, a bit of a helicopter mom, a LOT sarcastic and mocking, etc. I’m that person who laughs at crying kids, unless they’re genuinely hurt or in real distress.

Ugh, I really don’t know where I was going with this. Except to say that I know, without having fully experienced it myself, that parenting is a mammoth job. There are so many parents who screw it up, so many people who have absolutely NO business breeding (and so many really awesome folks who can’t have kids but would make incredible parents, and I’m not talking about me, here!). There are parents who just amaze me with their sheer fortitude, never mind helping their kid(s) actually learn and become decent humans with common sense. (Seriously? Cleaning up projectile-vomit from walls and the crevices of couch cushions? Hell, just the sleep-deprivation alone would make me homicidal, but the toxic waste of kids would quite seriously reduce me to a whimpering pile of useless.)

And then there’s the part where little kids grow into teenagers – I get an anxiety attack just thinking about that, so let’s just skip it, move on to the delicate balance of parents and their adult offspring… Nah, nope. I honestly don’t think I could do this job. So, my hat’s off to you, moms and maternal figures out there. Hope you had a lovely day.

My mom is completely and totally awesome, btw. She’s my best friend – I have that kind of relationship where we can talk about nearly anything (except spit/swallow, because EW I DON’T WANT TO KNOW THAT ABOUT YOU, MOM!). I love you, mom.

Still Alive!

Posted by ccdenham on May 4, 2013

(touch wood) (no particular reason for that part, other than I’m feeling particularly fatalistic lately)

Hello out there, internetland!

I’ve been putting off blogging, for much the same reason that old friends fall out of touch – after a while I just felt so guilty about not updating, I wanted to hide from it, and I didn’t know what to say about my absence, or why anyone should care, etc., vicious cycle, blah blah blah.

The problem I guess I’m having is figuring out what I have of value to contribute. For the past six months or so, I’ve suffered a burnout of blogs and writing advice, and really reading in general. So the idea of trying to regurgitate something “useful” here felt really fake and pointless. But, there must be a blog, and the blog must go on. So for the lack of anything else, I’m just going to give a quick rundown of what’s been shakin’.

Placenta Piano -Did you know that by day I am a piano technician? I’m pretty good at it, although I suck at being self-employed and managing myself. Over the winter, I took on this restringing/refurbishing project:

(that green shit on the strings is corrosion and rust)

What was all that funk on those strings and soundboard, you ask?

I actually thought it was animal urine the whole time I was doing this job.

Until I completed the job, when I was informed the previous owner’s cat had given birth in the thing.

Don’t even ask me how placenta is supposed to be any worse than the assumption I’d been working under, that some animal had been living in and peeing in this poor instrument, but there it is. I will don a gas mask and latex gloves and use cheap vodka to scrub cat placenta out of a piano before replacing the parts I can replace.

It’s physically hard work, as well as very detailed and tedious. But that’s what I did this winter.

Usually I just tune and do regulation and minor repairs. I don’t have the shop space or winch for doing complete rebuilds (which require carefully removing the huge and heavy cast-iron plate, among other things). But I will do just about everything else to a piano.

I’ve gotten myself pretty heavily into a new game, and that game is Ingress. With all the driving I do for tuning, it’s an ideal new hobby. And I’ve become pleasantly (to my concerned husband) social with it. For an introvert like me, that’s pretty impressive. And my dog loves the footwork and exploring we’ve been doing. I highly recommend checking it out, if you haven’t already. Enlightened all the way!
My current extra-curricular is a small community theatre project involving writing vocal arrangements, musical directing, and accompanying. It keeps me playing and not just tuning.

So, that’s about all the non-writerly stuff going on. As far as authorly pursuits, I’d admittedly gotten really stalled out for several months. What can I say – for much the same reason I suck at being my own boss as a piano technician, I’m pretty lousy at self-discipline where everything else is concerned, too. I would really, really love to find whatever magic button or potion that would make me suddenly just “DO” it. There’s no whining or excuses, there. Whether it’s ADD or just personality type, it’s simply something I have to work my way with and around.

I’ve learned that reading really is essential to keep me writing, and for some reason I just could not get into anything book-wise for several months. Maybe after writing and reading about writing and editing, it became impossible to shut off the editor/critic enough to just enjoy the read. I’ve forced my way back into it out of need. No writer is perfect, even my heroes. And there’s always the ever-constant fact that some of the best selling books out there are complete drivel. Not saying that to fluff my own ego, or even for the whole, “if FSoG can make it, I should be able to.” But because it’s the story that matters, and success is frequently just a piss in the wind anyway.

Finally, I’ve decided to very soon start publishing chapters of a serial idea I’ve had for years. It will just be an indulgence, because the idea is just too soapy for any kind of well-formed book. But, it’ll be free and a regular or semi-regular installment that maybe someone out there will enjoy while I get these book projects completed and submitted to agents/publishers, and/or self-published.

So, there it is, the broken silence of my blog. And now I can get back to my regularly scheduled programming. Because I have tons of links and videos to share, too.

Hope you’ve all been well!

XOX,

Christine

The Virtues of Sleep and Caffeine

Posted by ccdenham on January 19, 2013

Sleeeep… now they’ll sleeeeep…

It’s been gloomy and cold and rainy and miserable for at least a week straight here. Yesterday the sun finally came out and I nearly wept in gratitude. So good. Today, I woke up, had some toast and yogurt, dicked around on the internet for a little bit, then laid down on the floor and took a nap in a huge sunbeam, cat-style. I have no regrets.

I seem to have reached a point in my life where I am finally accepting my sleep requirements for what they are, rather than something to control or be ashamed of. Apparently, I personally require about nine hours of sleep to be really functional, alert, and productive. Any less than that, and I wind up dragging my feet, dicking around, barely getting by, no matter how much caffeine I ingest. At least, until I take a nap to make up for the hours-less-nine that I didn’t get.

There is nothing wrong with getting nine hours of sleep.

There is also nothing wrong with when I get that nine hours, provided my waking hours are reasonably productive at least some of the time. I tend toward lateness – always have. And it’s always been a pretty big guilt trip for me, too. Why? Why is there this common judgment that anyone who doesn’t wake up before 8am is a lazy slackoff, even if they were awake and working until two in the morning? Okay, to be fair, I am usually not working on pianos until two in the morning, but I am frequently writing until two in the morning. I don’t judge people who are sleeping peacefully while I’m working those hours, so why should I judge myself for getting a solid nine whenever they happen?

Being self-employed and making my own schedule means A) I have the luxury of dictating my sleep schedule, and B) With that luxury comes responsibility. I don’t mean textbook responsibility, like the whole, “get to bed early enough to rise as a decent hour.” I mean kind of the opposite – my responsibility has become that of approaching my work load at any given time, of not writing a day off because I was up until 4am the night before, and didn’t really get started on my day until the afternoon. My luxury is also in being able to do this work at any time. So my other responsibility is to go ahead and get the sleep my body needs in order to do that work effectively.

My husband can go to bed at four in the morning and haul himself up at 9 or 10 and “make” himself wake up. Sure, I can make myself be technically awake. But I may as well be asleep for as useful as I’ll be. Even with caffeine. In fact, I’ve noticed over the years that caffeine actually does very little for me when I am tired. There have been many times when I’ve had a cup of coffee and promptly gotten so sleepy I’ve needed a nap. So, why do I “need” my coffee, then?

Because of God.

I love coffee. And I know, you either know what I mean, or you just don’t get it. It’s not that it is integral to my being awake, any more than cigarettes were a chemical addiction to me because I was a nic-fitting fiend (I wasn’t – smoking was always about the physical action and angst, a subculture, and a ritual).

Yes, ritual. There’s a lovely ritual to coffee – whether it’s the grind/tamp/squeeze of pulling espresso shots, or the lovely sound of the Krups machine percolating the last bit of drip coffee. I’m actually kind of glad that my husband doesn’t drink it, because that makes the coffee-ritual a thing that’s all mine, and somehow that makes it even more precious. And while coffee may be ineffective at keeping me awake when I’m truly tired, those first couple of sips are, without fail, some kind of divine pleasure that seeps through my system like… like I don’t even know what. And I’m a writer – I should be able to metaphorize it, and I can’t/won’t because it’s a pleasure in and of itself.

Anyway. There it is. I have learned to embrace the sleep that I need, to not be ashamed of it, and to not use that false-failure as an excuse to throw away my days, if that makes any sense. I’m also letting myself work odd hours so that I can absorb as much sunshine as possible in an attempt to ward off S.A.D.

How about you? Anyone out there struggling with sleep-guilt? What about caffeine and/or nicotine addiction?

Friday huh wha?

Posted by ccdenham on January 11, 2013

Lookit me, y’all! I’m a grumpy old woman! GET OFFA MAH LAWN! *shakes cane*

Seriously, I’m full of gripes right now, even if I’m not actually angry. Well, I try not to be angry.

First off is yet another change in wordpress’s layout and functionality. I need to get to my “Add New Post” page – you know, the full one that shows all of the functions? I’m an author trying to be found and trying to crosspost and properly tag and categorize my shit! WORDPRESS WHY YOU MAKE THIS SO DIFFICULT?!(I did finally find the right posting page, but seriously – it was hard enough before to flip through the eighty different ways of looking at and using WordPress. Now they have to add another way? Grargh. Yes, yes, I will flippin’ bookmark the post-new.php page from now on, damnit.)
Secondly, Dogs. We’ve all seen the news clip about the Labradoodle that’s getting mistaken for a baby lion, and the multiple 911 calls from people in Norfolk reporting a lion “on the loose.” If you haven’t seen it, the top google search for “lion dog” will land you at all the stories, including video of Charles running across streets. Okay, yes – the dog is fucking cute. Most Labradoodles are. But am I the only cranky old bitch who is utterly face-palming at the stupidity and carelessness, here?Here. For starters, have a picture of an actual “baby lion”…
Not this:

Even Charles thinks this is f’ing ridiculous.

However, with as many people as there were calling 911 to report a lion on the loose from the local zoo, don’t you wonder at what point some trigger-happy genius is going to shoot the thing?

But most importantly of all, I’m sorry, but does Norfolk not have any leash laws? Even if they don’t, what fucking moron lets their dog run loose around the city, darting across streets unattended?
I’m also grumpy because there are some young girls in my neighborhood who have a young pit bull – they walk it around my block sometimes, and they just – they just should not have this dog. It’s a rambunctious little thing, and cute as a button, and their walks consist of them screaming at the poor thing to quit pulling, sit, etc., and smacking it. I’m so upset, and ultimately, even if I knew where they lived, there’s very little that can be done about these little assholes. The only thing I can think I can think of at this point is to find where they live and leave them a package with a copy of My Smart Puppy (DVD included) and a note begging them to be patient with their dog, and explaining that dogs aren’t people, they don’t understand words unless you teach them, and yelling and smacking their dog is only teaching it to fear them. And a fearful pitbull? sad and not good.
What would you do, realistically? Suggestions?
You know what? We’re broke! I pride myself, however, on maintaining my awesomely wry sense of humor and mad food skills. It’s been a while, but I do have poor-living skills under my belt. And the wheel will come back around eventually. But meanwhile, I made some kick-ass rice and some balls-awesome crock-pot Mexicali chicken mess to throw into some tortillas for the next several days. It’s funny, though, how uncomfortable some people get when you’re honest about things not being hunky-dory. My in-laws, for example, would freak the fuck out if they knew how we’re scraping by right now. I’m like, “What? It’s just a thing, man!” I swear, the longer I have in-laws, the more sane my own family seems. We know shoestrings, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. And ultimately, ‘shoestring’ in my privileged white world is still a far cry wealthier than a lot of people have it. So there you go.
I have a bunch more gripey things. Instead, I need to just share the awesome retro-ness that’s in my head this afternoon:

Fridays Are Meaningless!

Posted by ccdenham on January 4, 2013

In my world they are, anyway. My husband called me a “true Renaissance woman” the other day. I guess he’s… sort of right? I mean, it’s it’s been over a decade since I’ve had any sort of ‘normal’ job path. Oh, there was like, six months in there where I worked as a receptionist/admin assistant for a lawyer. But for the most part, I’ve been self-employed for a long-assed time. It has its pros and cons like anything. Making my own schedule is nice. But finding my own work and income is a little stressful. Taxes are a bitch, and with the economy what it is, any thought of a retirement fund is laughable. You know, the kind of laughing that involves nausea and tears if I think on it too long. Let’s not even talk about insurance, ‘kay? And vacation time? Oh, that’s a sore point for me. People like to point out that I can “make my own vacation time,” or that I have to work it into my schedule. Which would totally make sense, if my workload was steady and consistent. (It’s really, really not.) Otherwise, my ‘vacation time’ gets spent on involuntary ‘staycations’ when work has slowed to a near-stop. I don’t get to dictate when that happens, either.

Pianos are just not a priority for most people, and I get that. That’s why 2013 is my year for nose-to-grindstone writing, and other stuff. But again, that’s me being self-employed. And really, while it’s got its own bag of stress, I’m so used to being my own boss, it’d be really hard to go back to the 9-5 grind. But it does mean that, well, Fridays are pretty much meaningless for me. So, here – have a couple links:

Dog Bless You and the Warrior Canine Connection have a brand new litter of future service pups on the live puppycam! Brand-new as in 1-2 weeks old baby-dogs, I believe.
This one isn’t new, but it’s new-to-me. Gay Men Will Marry Your Girlfriends:

Still easing back into the swing of blogthings, obviously. All the other links I’ve noticed lately are a little too judgy to really share. And anyway, aren’t I supposed to be working and writing?

ccdenham

Sugar and Smut