Unpredictable Mondays

It was definitely a Monday today. There's no doubt about it. Some Mondays are better than others. Today wasn't bad...it was just...a Monday.

For example, our lovely new building is still under construction. The deadline for completion is by the time our first workshop arrives. That's in less than three weeks. Thus...construction is in full swing. When we first moved in to our building, we were told the bad noises would only take place during our lunch hour, during the evenings or on weekends. These bad noises involve hammering, drilling, sawing and whatever it is that causes the building to shake so that my entire desk is vibrating.

Today, they added a new sound to the mix: That of the jackhammer.

The jackhammer is evil. Not only does the sound horrible but it makes your teeth hurt. I know it's necessary to construction because concrete must be drilled through somehow but when it's literally right outside your window, it's horrible.

So, today, in addition to the many sounds of a Monday morning- my boss being annoyed because he worked all weekend and got nowhere and conversing loudly with people aboutthat sad fact topped with the fact that his boss came in to talk football with the males in our area....it was loud. Very loud.

Still, the jackhammer quieted, mid afternoon. Aside from the jackhammer and the sawing and the drilling and the tempers...it was just a Monday. Just a loud Monday.

The evening was also odd. I stopped at the closest grocery store to my house on the way home from work- it's not my type of grocery store...it's one of those run-down types where people go to buy the necessities but where you wouldn't feel comfortable buying fresh fish. Still, I just needed eggs, milk and cheddar cheese.

The shopping itself wasn't bad. When I came out, I was stopped by an older lady asking for bus fare. She was stranded. I didn't have too much change and am always wary of people asking for cash so I shook my head. Then she asked for directions which, sadly, I could not provide. Then she asked for a ride to the gas station which I was going to pass by anyway. So I let her ride with me only to discover she just needed a ride to her sister's which wasn't that far. Since I had my GPS, I decided to do the nice thing and give her a ride to her sister's.

Well, we got there....she asked me to wait. I did...just as I thought it was safe to leave, she came running down. Her sister wasn't home. Rather than sit in the cold on the stoop, she wanted to wait in a restaurant and nicely asked for a ride. I sighed and let her get back in my car. Well, it turned out the closest fast food place was next to Jungle Jim's which is where we ended up. This was rather ironic given that I hadn't wanted to go as far as Jungle Jim's to go grocery shopping. When I finally dropped my passenger off at White Castle, she asked if I had any money- she hadn't eaten all day. Thus...silly, soft Monkeypants, I gave her a few dollars.

I have no idea if she really was broke. I have no idea if that was really her sister's place. All I know is that I gave a ride to a stranger tonight whose name was Gail. That's all I know. She barely said thank you when I dropped her off. I admit, I was a little put out- I had driven her around rather a lot and thought a real thank you might have been nice...but I knew that it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It was just an odd way to spend my Monday evening.

Yet, in a way, it was quite an interesting way to pass an hour or so. Sometimes it's doing things like give rides to strange Gail's that take us out of the routine of our lives for a little while and remind us that it really is ok if things don't go quite according to plan. There was no harm done by my little driving excursion tonight- just the opportunity to pass time with a stranger and hope that, in the end, she found a way to get home...or back to her sister's. I will most likely never know...that's the thing about life. If it were a story I was writing, Gail would have found her way back...but in real life, there's never an easy ending...sometimes there's the frustration of never knowing. But for whatever moments of our lives passed together, I hope that Gail found her way back to her little house that has creepy sounds in the attic but has her 35 year old son to protect her. It's amazing how much you can learn about a person in a short time.

As for me, my Monday is almost over. It's been an odd, loud, unpredictable sort of day. As strange as it sounds....sometimes I think we need that. Like with Gail, it's a reminder that life is full of surprises....and I quite like that.

Nevertheless, I think I'll avoid the supermarket tomorrow....just in case.

Happy Tuesday.

Big News in a Small Town...

I've realized why I blog about snow so much. Ok, so yes, I love snow and enjoy putting lyrical odes out into the blogosphere. However, I've also realized that I live in a small town in Ohio and, when it snows, that's the main event.

Take for example, yesterday. Our brilliant weather forecasters reported that we would get possibly one to three inches in the next 24 hours. So, when it started blizzarding down around 11 a.m., we were a little surprised. More surprised were we when the snow did not stop. By the time I left work at 5 p.m., we'd had at least 6 inches, it seemed. Needless to say, driving home...not so fun.

The nice thing is that my coworker and I live in the same apartment complex so we followed each other home in case we got stuck. You see, there is this major hill just down the road from our complex. It's a roller coaster-type hill, all the way down then all the way up. Since the snow was coming down so hard, we were afraid that the hill would be shut off as sometimes happens in bad weather. Fortunately, it wasn't closed and they'd done a great job of clearing it so that it was mostly slushy. The rest of the trip home....not so good.

Even parking the car in this heavy snow is nuts because it was blowing and driving through a drift to find the approximate of a parking space can be a challenge. Fortunately, I purchased Digger, my handy dandy snow shovel. He was very useful this morning. I managed to plow a path behind my car. And yes, I actually enjoyed that.

What I didn't enjoy was, once more, my stray was waiting to ask for a ride. Because I find it hard to be mean, I told him I would but I'm really, really hoping he gets his car fixed soon because he's getting in the way of my 'me-time'. I like to drive to work in the mornings and slowly wake up. I don't mean wake up in the sense that I'm driving down the road, fast asleep because that would be both scary and daft.

No, I mean that I'm awake when I drive but I like to let the day slowly approach me as I'm making my way to the office, not come at me in a rush. I listen to a CD and use my ten minute commute as a wake-up meditation of sorts. Well, unless some moron cuts me off and then I wake up quickly enough to think of many a crude insult.

This morning, I had company on my commute. The roads weren't too terrible this morning; I salute the snow plows who must have been at it all night. Yet my stray is a chatter which is something I prefer not to deal with until later in the morning. He lived in a city before and is horrified that, so far, I haven't felt the need to go into Cincinnati, the nearest city to us. The truth is...I haven't. I love the things that a city offers: Ethnicity, Arts, Culture...all that. Yet, living in L.A. for eight years gave me plenty of it and I think it's ok to take a break for a while and let the peace of this small town wash over me. Eventually I'll have the urge for some Vietnamese food or something else that's hard to find in the little towns near me but in the meantime, I'm loving the simplicity of a place in which a heavy snowfall is the big news.

It also helps that I'm still enamoured with snow and, even in spite of the complications it causes, am quite happy to watch it fall from the safety of my apartment.

Happy Wednesday.

Icy Days and Mondays

Once more, 'tis a Monday. It feels like a Monday already and I haven't even been up that long. When I went out to start my car this morning, I realized that the parking lot of my building had turned into an ice-rink overnight. It was warmer yesterday and a lot of ice started to melt. Naturally, since the temperature dropped below freezing last night, it all froze again. This makes it very difficult to wear my heeled boots that I'm wearing 'round the office this week. Since our company is being sold, our potential buyer (and, hopefully, employer) is in our offices for the next week so we're forbidden to dress the way we normally dress which is to say that we can't just wear jeans and sweatshirts. We're having to look nice and, for me, that means my heeled boots.

So, as has been my habit, I wore my snow boots to start my car and to drive to work. Once again, I ran into my stray. He was not ice-skating around the parking lot. If he had been, I might have been more pleased to see him. The problem is, I can't get away from him. There are at least 25 people in my building. The only one I ever see is him. Don't get me wrong, he's perfectly nice but he's also very friendly. He lives with three other young men and from the sounds of it, they're a little frat-boy-ish, at least judging from the noise that comes from upstairs. They're young. Very young, compared to me. On Saturday, I was coming home and it was almost 12:45 a.m. He was just going out with his buddies and asked me to join them.

Now, it was a nice invitation but here's the thing. I'm in my thirties. Getting in at 12:45 a.m., for me, is really late. I like to go to bed at a decent time and wake up fairly early. I'm not a night owl anymore. Needless to say, I declined. Also, now I feel old. Really old.

My ice-skating stray also likes to knock on my door to see if I want to go get coffee. Again, it's kind of him but being a rather private person, I'm not big on drop-ins. I like my privacy. I lived in a college dorm in which it was normal to knock on a neighbours' door to see if they wanted to do something. Now I'm an adult, I tend to like to have my uninterrupted time at home to do what I want. If I plan something, that's different but when I'm home, I'm home and unless it's someone I actually want to see, I don't like surprise knocks on my door. And yes, I am aware that this makes me into an official Old Grump but, well, it's true.

I should probably defend my grumpiness and remind y'all that I call myself a writer which means I...say it with me now....write. When I'm home and I'm writing, I don't like to be interrupted. It's difficult to get a flow going when there's people around and even a friendly knock on the door can be a stumbling block.

Yesterday, I spent a very long time getting my manuscript ready for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. It was finished but I had to give it a polish and since I never could hold of my edited hard copy, I had to do it from scratch. On the plus side, I'm really happy with how it's turned out and I think it's definitely my most polished novel. It's the last one I finished which is quite a contrast because I had originally intended to enter the first novel I ever wrote and until two weeks ago, I'd been editing that manuscript like crazy only to discover that losing 15,000 words was just not going to be possible to meet the contest rules. It's amazing how much my writing has changed over the last eight years. It's definitely more mature and I use bigger words now, take the time to describe things rather than rush at the story like there's no tomorrow. I'm not sure what's best, only that I love all of the stuff I've written, especially when it's been edited.

I'm hoping to get it entered tonight. Since I had to get a pitch ready, I got to tweak an already existing query letter and, I have to say, it's better. It means I have another letter to send to agents in hopes that just one of them wants to take a chance on me. If not, well, I suppose I'll just keep trying and hope that the urge to jump off a cliff doesn't strike me during the rejection process. The timing of those cliff-jumping urges can be incredibly bad.

Seriously, though, I'm going to try and be more positive for the rest of the day, even though it's a Monday. It's a new week, a new month, actually. It's the shortest month of the year which means I'm a little closer to my next paycheck and we're a little closer to watching the daffodils bloom amidst the melting snow. As much as I love my snow, there's something cleansing about watching the final heavy layer melt and reveal the refreshed world beneath. As a child, those days were marked by getting to wear knee socks with my skirts rather than the heavy winter tights my mum liked me to wear. As an adult, they're marked by the freshness of a spring breeze, the green of the grass and the buds on the trees.

Yet for now, there's a chance of snow tonight and I'm hoping it will make for more traction on the ice outside my building. In the meantime, I can always hope to find my stray ice-skating outside.

Hey, there's nothing wrong with hope, right?

Happy Monday.

Thursday Randomness

It snowed a little last night. It's very pretty but not icy which means I'm feeling poetical about snow again. Don't worry, I won't write about it today. I'll give it a couple more snowfalls before I start talking about the twirling, whirling flakes that create their buffer of peace for the world.

It's Thursday, as I'm sure you know. Unless you're one of those people who can't remember what day it is when you wake up and don't bother checking because knowing doesn't really alter your day all that much. I have a friend like that. I have a feeling he only knows it's the weekend because there are movies opening and he's got a radar for those things. I always know what day it is because I'm a regular TV viewer and I know what show is on that night. This time of year is a little tricky for that though because it's coming up on the winter hiatus and most of my shows are off the air now until January. I probably should just rely on a calendar. I love calendars.

This morning, I took my stray to campus again. He's getting sneaky. I went to leave my apartment and he was waiting outside the building. I'd started to leave a few minutes before but realized I forgot to turn my thermostat down. When I'd left then, he'd been coming down the stairs and I knew he was headed to my place. When I went outside to my car, there he was. He had his cell-phone out but wasn't dialing. He seemed surprised when I politely asked if he needed a ride but it was the type of surprise you feign when you're secretely hoping for something. Like when someone says "let's have lunch, my treat" and you're supposed to say, "Oh, really, are you sure? It doesn't have to be your treat" and then you hope they insist so that you get a nice free lunch. Of course, this backfires if they say, "Oh, alright then, we'll go dutch."

I didn't mind giving him a ride though. It's the last time since his class is over. Of course, had I know that he was stuck for a ride because his class was ICE SKATING, I might have been a little less generous. I mean, Ice-Skating? Seriously? Not that there is anything wrong with ice skating- I can fall on my bottom with the best of amateurs but I thought it was one of those " I stayed up all night to get ready for it and now I'm going to flunk because I can't make it to campus" classes. Ice skating wasn't what I imagined his crisis was. Oh well, glad I could help him become a better skater. Or something.

Anyway, being Thursday, it is The Office and 30 Rock night. Normally, it'd be "Grey's Anatomy" but that's done until January. This is actually a good thing. I used to love my Thursday night ritual of glass of wine and Grey's. Lately, as I've mentioned in my other blog, I'm a little worried about that show. The last three episodes have made me angry. I don't like being angry at Grey's. It's like having a fight with my best friend. It means I can't rely on it for escapism at the moment because the storylines have been making me want to escape from the show.

So, without Grey's, I think I'm going to get festive. I have Christmas cards to send and presents to wrap and some nice holiday movies to entertain me while I do so. My absolute favourite is "Love, Actually" because it's a fantastic film, I love everyone in it and it makes me extremely happy and hopeful that everyone can find love. I'm very susceptible to a good, non-sappy, romantic film like that. Also, I love British actors and it's rare that you find one film that has as many great British actors in it as that one. Except, maybe, Harry Potter but they're all split up. "Love, Actually" has Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant along with many others who I love. I won't watch that tonight though: "Love, Actually" deserves it's own evening, not to be spent multi-tasking. That's what "Elf" is for. I can feel my mother cringing as she reads that. She's not big on movies like "Elf." She also hates "The Santa Clause" which is my dad and my tradition for Christmas Eve. Sadly, I enjoy "The Santa Clause," mostly because it's syrupy and silly and a nice habit to have for the holidays.

I think I'm going to have to apologize for the randomness of my blogs this week. I haven't had a great week. I got myself into a nasty dark mood as I indicated earlier. It's better now but I hate getting into a funk like that. It makes me doubt myself which is definitely not a good thing. Self-delusion is so much less painful and makes the world all shiny and pretty. Like snow. Snow can be shiny. Snow is pretty. And there's still snow on the ground outside. But I promised to hold my lyrical musings on that for the day and so I'll honour my promise. For now.

Happy Thursday.

The Great Cookie Exchange of 2008

So, today is one of those blogging days in which I have no intended topic nor do I have any clue what I'm going to blog about. Which means I probably won't have much of a point. For which I apologize.

I'm not feeling as gloomy today as I did yesterday which is definitely better, at least. My stray from yesterday found me again. He actually knocked on my door and found me. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I don't mind giving someone a ride but I don't like being hunted down. I also suspect he might be the owner of the alarm clock that goes off for hours and beeps. I can hear it through the floor. In every room. The reason I suspect this is that he's a student and he informed me he'd just got home 20 minutes ago from working all night on a project. I wasn't going to ask about his all-night project because, well, he's a student and there's such a thing as too much information. However, he told me it was a finals project though and he had been out at least twice this week and got in 20 minutes before he had to leave for school again. The incessantly beeping alarm clock finally stops about 20 minutes before I walk out the door, as though someone got home and realized he forgot to shut off his alarm. Yes, I'm very good at putting two and two together. It's as far as I got in maths and still managed to get an "A". If I'm right in my suspicions, that alarm clock will not be bothering me much longer because I will be Having Words with my stray. I'm a very wordy person as people like to inform me. It never sounds like much a compliment, unfortunately.

In other news, I made a monumental error late last week. I stupidly agreed to be part of a cookie exchange. Yes, Captain Monkeypants decided to get in the community spirit and participate in a festive event. Captain Monkeypants has since realized it was not one of her brighter moments in life. It seemed like such a nice idea: People bake a dozen cookies to give to everyone participating along with the recipe. In exchange, you get a dozen cookies back. Like a chain letter. With cookies. Nice, huh? What a nice idea, you give, you take, it's all good.

Except that it's not. It's not good at all. I thought they'd be about five of us participating. Sixty cookies is a lot but it's manageable. (See, look, my math skills are rearing their head again! Who knew?!). I could bake sixty cookies. Then, after I'd foolishly agreed to bake my cookies, I discover that there are ten people participating, not including me. That's ten dozen cookies. That's 120 cookies.

Now, if you're a baker or, at least, you like to bake, I'm sure you're thinking: "That's not that many! It's doable."

No. It's not. Trust me. Did I mention that I don't bake?I'm of the opinion that you're either good at baking or good at cooking. You might be able to do both but most people are stronger in one area than the other. Me? I'm not a baker. I'm a cook. I make soup. I can make good cabbage with juniper berries. I even make good potato pancakes. But that's not baking. When I try to bake, I end up with nasty little items that rarely resemble that which it should. My chocolate chip cookies turn into chocolate chip bullets. My cakes don't rise and, instead, turn into cookies that don't taste right because they were supposed to be CAKE. It's like the baked goods know it's me baking and they laugh in my face by morphing into something completely different. Some people blame their oven. Some people blame their pans. Not me. I blame me. I have no illusions. I'm ok with saying I'm a lousy baker.

The problem is, I think I like to bake. I like to have all those nifty little kitchen-looking things around that are part of baking. I like to put things in bowls. And that's usually when I realize what I'm actually doing and I want to stop but it's too late. That's why I thought the cookie exchange was a good idea. I thought, "Ooh! What a cute tradition! I want to play! I want to play!" And then as it inevitable does, reality set in. I can pinpoint the exact moment when reality hit: It was when someone said I had to bake 120 cookies.

I tried to get out of it yesterday. We were asked to say what type of cookies we were baking. I offered up my secret "Air Cookie" recipe- they're calorie free and taste exactly how you want a cookie to taste. They make no mess. Oh, and they're invisible. Apparently, being sarcastic also does not help you get out of a cookie exchange. I'm still in.

So now, I have to bake 120 cookies. I'm terrified. I did think of buying cake mix and doing something with it until I realized that cake mix is also not a success in my hands. No amount of frosting or icing can turn it into a cake; instead, it looks like a lopsided ski-slope. I'm thinking of making fudge. Yes, it involves stirring a lot but then you put it in a pan and you cut it and then you have fudge. 120 pieces of fudge is MUCH easier than cookies. Just because I actually don't like fudge doesn't mean I can't make it. Ok, so it's not a cookie but if I call it Cookie Fudge, then that counts. No one said it actually had to be cookies.

I'm going to find a loophole. I just need time. I have to keep reminding myself of Douglas Adam's famous words: "DON'T PANIC!". But it's 120 cookies. There's no running away from that. Eeek, gads. What have I done?

Happy Wednesday

In which I pick up a Stray...

There are some days that seem like they were made for not getting up. Today is one of them. The temperature is warmer today; it's supposed to reach almost 50 degrees. For Ohio in December, that's rare. It's also welcome because it means the ice will melt, the ground will clear, renewed and ready for the next snowfall. Today, however, it's raining. It's the gloomy kind of rain that is set in for the day. The sky is a charcoal gry, the clouds angry and heavy, the drops falling sporadically but heavily and the ground is soaking wet.

Naturally, I love it. I love the sound of the beating rain against the window. I got to hear that last night. Despite my intentions to go to bed early and get a good night's sleep in hope of kicking this dark Pootle cloud that I've been under since Sunday, I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned and tried to sleep but it wouldn't come. I hate nights like that. On nights like that, it's hard to clear your head whether it's a 'to-do' list, a writing idea, a bad experience you keep replaying over again or just a dejection at the way life is going. It's hard to sleep with that much on your mind.

When my alarm went off this morning, I was already awake. Though burrowing further under my covers would have been most appealing, I finally got up. I keep the heat low at night because I like the room to be cool while I'm cosy in bed. It was chilly though I knew it was warmer outside. I followed my normal routine but somehow managed to leave work a little earlier. The vague thought of Starbucks danced in my head but I wasn't that early. As I was going out to my car, I was stopped by a man I've seen around my building. He was stranded; he was a student at the university for which I work, his car died and his ride hadn't showed.

Though I don't actually work on campus, I drive right by. I felt sorry for him. I hate being stranded. So I gave him a ride. It turns out he recently moved from San Diego, California, had been in the Navy and now was a part-time student. He was friendly and he was nice. I dropped him off.

That was it, really but, in a way, it was much more than that. It was a break from my routine. It not only took me on a different route to work but it actually gave me a chance to interact with a human before I got to the office where, depending on how you see my coworkers, some of them never seem quite human anyway. Sometimes a little human interaction is all you need to give you a little boost. I love living alone but sometimes I get trapped inside my own head and those shadows of doubt that I blogged about last week seem a little deeper. Playing on Facebook doesn't always help, either. I have a lot of friends on Facebook, most of the time I love that. Yet every now and again, I'll receive a suggestion for a friend that takes me by surprise, it's a face I haven't thought about much in years. It's not always a face that comes with fond memories. Most of those faces are on photos that include children, wives and families. And every now and again, I see a former acquaintance and I can't help but think "HE/SHE has kids?" and then the inevitable "What's wrong with me?" starts.

So, I know, sometimes I need to get outside of my own head. But sometimes I have to go there, particularly when I'm writing. It helps to shut out the world and let my story/characters in. Lately, the writing isn't so easy. I can't get a grip on it. I can't settle down and let it flow. My character's voices aren't so clear as usual. That's a strange feeling for me.

I know that it's times like this that make the sunny days and snowfall seem that much brighter and uplifting. After all, you can't have the shadows without the sun which means eventually when the clouds part, the sun will shine brightly and the darkness will fade. Sometimes, all it takes is a good, fluffy, wet snowfall. Sometimes, for me, all it takes is a trip to the post office, a slice of toast and a mug of tea and a little change from routine.

I've already had my change from routine for the day. Tonight, I get to go to the post office. For most people that's not fun; for me, it always makes me feel like I've accomplished something. I love the order of the post office, the stamps, the flat-rate envelopes. Yes, I know I'm weird but we've established that. I'll save my full adoration for the post office for another blog. In the meantime, tonight I'll pick up my package, go home, make some toast, drink some tea and relax, hopefully to the sound of pelting rain against my patio doors. And, if not, it means the clouds are going away and tomorrow the sun might shine.

If that doesn't work, maybe I'll find another way to break the routine, to try something new, to climb out of my shadows on my own. Sometimes, all we can do is ignore the darkness and find our own light. I still have the glow of my two-hundred Christmas lights. I've added more since then. I figure if I keep adding them, maybe I'll drown out the darkness completely. Either way, I'll try to be cheerier in my blog tomorrow. Maybe I'll pick up another stray. I'll keep you posted on that.

Happy Tuesday.