Tag Archives: eternal overachiever

The Saturdays

This is from the reserves match earlier this week. We sat in the club seats. There was rain, hail, cold feet and a pretty sky. You can kind of see the hail in this next one:

Last week was another busy and tiring one. Apparently at my advanced age I can’t do everything all the time.

Yesterday I had some downtime. Last night I slept like a champion. And today I am trying to do everything again.

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Missing Object Anxiety

Bob and I both suffer from a condition we call Missing Object Anxiety. It mostly happens when you are on vacation and you compulsively check your pack or your pockets over and over for your room key, your wallet, your passport. Your room key, your wallet, your passport. Your room key, your wallet, your passport.

In its most extreme form, it causes a burst of panic where you are convinced that you’ve lost something and there is nothing more important right at that exact second than to stop everything and take every single item out of your pack or pockets until you find that item.

When I get over-extended like I have the past couple of weeks, my entire life starts to feel like a Missing Object Anxiety attack. It feels like there are things I’m missing but I can’t possibly stop and take everything out to release the stress so I remain in a state of hypervigilence, repeatedly checking my keys, my wallet, my cellphone. My keys, my wallet, my cellphone.

Our property taxes are due at the end of April but the bill comes, I think, in February. I put it in the place where I put all the bills I pay and wrote on it with big block letters with the due date. Plus I put a big note on the calendar in April that said property taxes were due. Meanwhile, several times over the last few weeks I’ve had these moments of hair-raising anxiety where I was certain I forgot to pay it.

One day I was checking my bank balance and I realized the check hadn’t cleared. Except later I also remembered that I hadn’t even written the dumb check yet. I finally transferred the money into the checking account and paid it so I could stop fretting about it.

Sometimes I wish I could take all my things and spread them out so I know it’s all there.

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Spatchcocked!

If nothing else, I recommend spatchcocking because it’s fun to say.

I thought I was so clever putting plastic wrap over my keyboard. I needed my computer for my spatchcocking slideshow. It turns out it’s tough to work the trackpad. But not impossible. The plastic was all ooky by the time I finished.

Here’s that spatchcocked sucker.

Here’s an important piece of information: if you think that dinky pair of poultry shears that you got in that wooden knife block for your wedding however many years ago, 16? 17?, is going to snip the backbone out of your turkey, you are going to be in a world of hurt. By the time I realized how inadequate they were for the job, it was too late. I’d taken a big enough gouge out of poor Butterball that I was committed. It was pure brute strength, a lot of bad words and an adult beverage that made that happen.

And then when I was done mine didn’t look like the picture and for a second I thought, “Oh shit, I cut out the wrong backbone.”

I got it all figured out.

The other thing you should know is that you are going to be deep up in your bird’s business. I’m not especially squeamish and I had a few moments of doubt during the process.

The final result, which I failed to get a photo of due to a complication explained below, was fantastic. I’m going to buy a pair of industrial shears and try it on chickens, too.

The dinner turned out great. The only snafu was that I nicked the tip of my thumb during the last hour. If you’ve ever been near a kitchen during the last hour before serving Thanksgiving, you know that a lot has to happen at the same time. Having a thumb that wouldn’t stop bleeding made it extra challenging. There aren’t a lot of work arounds when you can’t use your thumb.

Bob helped and I developed a pattern of do something, blot, do something, blot. We had dinner on the table only 20 minutes later than planned.

I’m off to find my first piece of pie of the day.

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And Then They Went Shopping

School bus stop on Red Cap Road, Orleans CA

I read something today about someone who worked at a clothing store and it made me remember this story.

When I was a teenager but before I could drive I made money by babysitting. Somehow I met this great family who ran a vending machine business. They would leave a giant box of candy on the counter for me to pick snacks from. They had two daughters. The younger one was sort of a pill but overall they were good kids. I babysat plenty worse.
 
When I was old enough to drive and wanted to get a job, the Mom wanted to help me out. She knew this lady who ran a clothing store and decided that this would be a great job for me. Me, being a self-involved teenager with no clue how the world worked, thought that I was going to get a really cool job.
 
I went to the store to talk to the lady and the first thing she said was: what kind of experience do you have?
 
Me: None.
 
What the hell? I was sixteen. I went to high school. I did babysitting. Where in the world would I be getting all this experience?
 
She told me she had nothing for me and that was that.

Prospect Trail on Ishi Pishi Road, Orleans CA (not recommended)
 
At the time I was hurt and confused. Why set me up for this big thing if you weren’t even interested in giving me a chance?

Now that I’m a grown-up and have a better understanding of how the world works, I suspect that babysitting Mom shopped there regularly and probably chit-chatted with the lady and that was the basis for their relationship. She probably told the store owner, oh this girl babysits for me and she’s a good kid. She never burns down the house and our kids are always still alive when we get home. She never takes more than 3 candy bars even though we leave out about 60. I’m sure she would be great at selling clothes.
 
And then this lady has to be polite, “Oh wonderful. Sounds swell. Send her over.”
 
And then I show up and she can’t wait to get rid of me. Although as I recall she was pretty snotty about it.

I ended up getting a job at Jack-in-the-Box where they did take teenagers with zero experience and paid us $3.10 an hour.

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2000! 2000! 2000!

This is a Karuk-style basket start that’s on the wall at basket class. I should probably put a photo of a finished basket up so you can see where this is going. Try this.

Hey! Great news. This is my 2000th post since I started blogger which was February 2001 if my archives are to be believed. This is going to be a rambling post filled with history and random tidbits that I have scrawled on little pieces of paper and post-its all over my desk. I was going to wait until I had time to write a really good 2000th post, but then we’ll never get to it because my entire life is on hold until I have time to do it better and who knows when that will be?

I started a website in April 1996 (check out the Wayback machine) and some of that stuff survives in the ancient archives and some of it is stashed in a folder on my harddrive.

I’ve always wanted to bring back the Delta Sucks post and the responses including the one from the crazy lady who told me: “Your stupid!”

If I ever have money to burn I’m going to hire an assistant and that person’s job is going to be to surf the Internet and visit comment threads and any time a person posts some version of “your stupid” or “your a moron” my assistant will reply with: I think you mean “you’re stupid.”

But I’m getting away from my planned rambling. I actually have a huge page of notes for a different post to be titled “The Internet is Ruined” which I thought would be perfect as a 2000th post but I’m not in the mood today. Someday.

Last weekend I went to California to hang out with the family. This is Minky.

Does anyone ever intentionally set out to get a cat or are cats something that people just end up with? It seems like every person I’ve ever known with a cat(s) ended up with them.

Minky’s original name was Wink and Wink lived at the house next door where they already had bigger cats and also dogs. Wink was small and timid and a little overwhelmed trying to get a good meal with these other critters around. So Wink wandered the neighborhood and found my parents house. I’m not sure if she was nibbling on Shy Boy’s food or what but Dad fed her and that was the beginning of the end.

The owner retrieved her cat from my parents’ house several times but she always snuck back in. One night my Mom got up in the middle of the night and there was Wink hanging out in the hallway. She found the cat door. When the owner moved, she left Wink to live with Mom and Dad.

Wink became Winky and because she has such soft fur: Minky. But it’s a great name. You can say: inky, stinky, rinky dinky, finky, pinky, drinky. I made up some limericks for her but she just gave me this same bug-eyed stare so I stopped.

In this photo she has made a nice nest in my big warm coat. She was able to spread her fur around to all of my clothes. She’s a very sweet kitty.

I have a follow up to the Verizon story. They sent me a response to my customer service email that starts off by saying that they’d call me to walk me through my problem except that they received my email too late and due to industry regulations they can’t call me.

Because it would be a shame if any of this wasn’t all my fault. Why not have your workers on the job during the time that industry regulations allow you to call?

But that doesn’t matter because I already fixed the problem myself by doing the simple steps of canceling my autopay and then restarting it with the new credit card number. They also mailed me a notice thanking me for enrolling in autopay and welcoming me.

Your welcome. (intentional mistake because I think its funny)(that was intentional to)(that too).

I had another milestone last week — it was 20 years since I started working as a paralegal in Indian Affairs. I don’t know what to say except its nice to feel competent at a job. I did not feel that way for a very long time. I remember reading legal cases and it would take all day and then I’d read them again and again. It’s like you have to train your brain how to think a certain way and I was not a natural. 20 more years and I can retire! (sigh, geez)

Watercress harvesting. I’m sure my family is thrilled that their butts are on my website. That was the angle I had.

I have one of those dinky iPods that’s as big as a postage stamp. I have a gadget so I can listen to it in the car but I’ve only used it a couple of times because normally the only places I drive are the park-n-ride or the grocery store and those trips aren’t worth plugging in the iPod.

If you’ve ever used one of those tiny ones, you know that you can’t work it while you drive. Well, you could but you’d probably crash into something. So I had it all set up with mega-long playlists and I would get it set up and then pause and then once I got going I could listen. I had a 100 favorite song playlist that I could shuffle and an audio course and a bunch of podcasts.

The ride down worked great. I’m not sure what I did on the way home but somehow I managed to make it so it would repeat the item. After I heard the same song 3 times I realized there was a problem. I had a pitstop and I fiddled with it and thought I fixed it but I did not so it was completely aggravating. Then I tried tapping on it a bunch of times so then I was skipping all around which made the audio course a bit confusing. I’ve got it sitting here so I can figure it out when I’m feeling frisky.

Another funny technology story is that I always forget some cable that I wish I had so this trip I put every single cable and charger that I have into a plastic bag and threw it in with my stuff.

Then I forgot my laptop.

I very carefully made sure it was charged and I use Dropbox and I made sure it was synced. Bob said I left it on the couch which is pretty random because why would I put it on the couch? I think it was all subconscious. But, I had my notebook with me and wrote longhand every day so the streak (which has been going since Oct 31 2011) lives!

Goodness, are you still reading? That’s enough of that. Signing off Post 2000!

Get excited because Monday starts Timbers pre-season!

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Statistics

Orleans bridge

I was going to write about this yesterday but then I got distracted and went off-topic.

These are my writing statistics.

I had 22 submissions.

I sold one story. Two reprints. And the anthology for the story I sold, also sold subsidiary rights. So, does that count as a reprint? Where are the writing statistics regulations?

I think I finished 5 new short stories and did about 15,000 words on the novel which is still in a condition that I don’t want to use negative words to describe. What else can I come up with? Unfocused? Searching for greatness? Acting out as a disaster?

My word count is 178,000 for the year which is mostly first draft words but it’s not completely accurate because I have system for how I count the time I spent revising and working out stuff when I’m stuck.

I read 30 books and I read 149 short stories/novella/novelettes although I don’t keep track of all the short stuff so I read more than that.

I attended at least 25 soccer games. That has nothing to do with writing but does explain where a big chunk of my time went. I would not dream of changing this.

I’ve been thinking about it and I honestly don’t think I can dramatically increase my output without major lifestyle changes that I’m not willing to implement.

I used to think that I just needed to focus more and be more motivated (and those aren’t the major lifestyle changes that I’m referring to) but my work days are long and I spend my days reviewing and drafting documents. On occasion I can come home and have a productive evening but I can’t sustain that for any length of time without becoming completely miserable.

And I have a lot of weekend time to work, and I do, but I also like to do other things like bake and garden and hang out with other people. I also insist on exercising on a regular basis.

So, my goal is to produce slightly more finished material than I did last year and Bob and I have already talked about some ways to promote that goal.

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No Carb Left Behind

Earlier this month I wanted to do 12 Days of Christmas with the Rentz girls but I could only find 3 photos. I just picked up another giant bag of photos on this trip so next year, watch out. I love this one because of the lederhosen and also the delighted expression on both our faces. We always had a really cool swing set in the backyard when we were little.

This morning I tried on my test pants. You know the pants you use to test how far gone you are? If you can zip them, you’re still okay.

I could zip them. Whew.

I think what saved me is the 10 lbs. of Fisherman’s Friend I’ve eaten in the last 2 months for the never-ending cough. They keep me from coughing and I can’t say they kill my appetite but they don’t do it any favors. It also helped that no one ever got around to making cookies.

Christmas was all good. California was great. I’ve enjoyed my time off. I accomplished about a third of the things on my list which is pretty good.

I even did the thing that’s been on my xmas vacation list for about 5 years that I always put off. I cleaned out my pantry. I took everything out and scrubbed down all the shelves and tossed all the outdated stuff. It’s always funny to find something that says Best By 2005 and you can’t imagine it’s been there that long.

Here’s a question: why do baking mixes come in goofy quantities? The instructions for making will call for 2 1/2 cups of mix but the package will have 3 1/2 cups of mix? What do you do with the extra mix? Yeah, duh, you could buy another mix but I’m not falling into their trap. I’m going to combine all our leftover mixes and make date muffin-cornbread-12 grain pancake something.

Bob and his new friend Shyboy having a Christmas nap.

I also finally tried that recipe for Ocean Rolls that I’ve been sitting on since summer. As usual I biffed it up a bit. I guess I need my recipes a little more hand-holdy than that one. After it was too late I found a site where someone had posted feedback and said that it was too much flour. My dough was pretty dry.

Then I couldn’t understand the instructions for shaping them so I wung it. When I opened the oven door to check progress, they’d all come unrolled and it looked like Medusa’s nightstand if she takes her snakes off when she showers.

They tasted terrific so I will definitely try again.

Tonight I’m having my favorite New Year’s Eve — the one where I stay home and reheat leftovers then go to bed by 9pm. I woke up at 5 this morning so I might go to bed earlier.

Happy New Year.

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First Time For Everything

Someone asked me if I’d ever heard of green tomato pie.

I had not.

It didn’t take long to pull up some recipes and yesterday I tried it.

It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t my favorite.

I think if it were the zombie apocalypse and there was no fruit to be had but someone managed to find a sack of green tomatoes, that this pie would be a welcome treat.

But if you’d spent the past few weeks eating peach and berry pies, it was just okay.

My real thought is, you could probably saute kitchen sponges in butter, season with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and sugar and bake in a fatty crust and come out with something halfway decent.

Earlier in the week I did a writing retreat at Edgefield. Lots of good photos here, but make sure you’re looking at the Oregon one.

How the whole thing came about is a long story that I don’t want to go into.

But I had some work leave and I wanted to set aside some time to concentrate on a writing project and I did a little homework and found out that Edgefield has a twin room for $50 a night. So I booked it.

Overall, it was awesome. I was really happy while I was out there.

I’m the eternal over-achiever so naturally I didn’t finish everything that I wanted to do and every second I wasn’t working I felt guilty. But I did get a lot of work done and was happy with my progress.

I would do a retreat again, but I’d probably shop around and try a different place.

There were lots of great things about Edgefield. Excellent food. Great places to walk around. The soaking pool.

They have a movie theater onsite and since I never go to the movies anymore, I thought I’d treat myself to Captain America with my pizza and beer after my long day of work.

Turns out the movie was cancelled and it was a history thing: 13,000 years of Salmon in the Columbia River.

At first I was bummed but then I realized this is exactly the sort of dork thing my husband would drag me to that I would end up loving and I could still have my pizza and beer.

And it was good. And also, packed. Yes, there are tons of people who will leave their house on a Tuesday night to go to Edgefield and listen to a talk about salmon bones.

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Chore-O-Rama

One thing I forgot to mention earlier was that when Friday’s first game went into penalty kicks ESPN had to preempt some sort of Paintball Championship. I’m sure all three people who tuned in to watch it were devastated.

Today was my first full weekend day at home without soccer. It was chore-o-rama.

I did laundry and a bit of yardwork. Cleaned up the cupboards and fridge. My main thing was defrosting the outside freezer and tidying up the shop which had gotten so overrun with empty boxes, Home Improvement Project detritus and every day stuff piled around that you couldn’t find anything or get around in there.

Tonight I’m whipping up a salad from leftovers and roasting some turnips. yum.

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Bit That Guy’s Head Off

omigod. I put 4 more volumes of the pamnewsletter online this weekend. I’d try to type a URL for the blog but I’m afraid the process would force me to put my eyes out. You’d think transfering the pages over to the new site would be easier than it is, but for some reason I slightly altered my folder structure and it’s making everything a giant pain in the ass. What was I thinking?

It took me about 15 minutes just to get the Secrets of the Louvre link right. I was ready to dropkick Yoda (my iMac) into the backyard before I finally got it right. I think I still have a few screwed up links but I’ll leave those for another day.

Tonight we went to McMenamins in Vancouver for dinner and I had the hummus plate. I should have my own hummus restaurant. It’s my favorite food. I can’t believe there is a www.hummus URL — I typed it into my computer as a joke.

I’m reading my manuscript Little Friday this weekend because I’m doing a writing workshop for specifically that in a couple of weeks. I haven’t looked at it for 2 years and it’s not as dreadful as I had convinced myself. There is some tweaking to be done, but I still think it works. More on this exercise as it develops.

This weekend there was free cable because the shameless money grubbing capitalists better known as AT&T are doing a drive for our tax refund checks. Bastards. (Long, long rant omitted.) I taped Pitch Black because I always wanted to see it and I liked it — esp. when that thing bit that guy’s head off in a spray of blood. We also taped Trekkies and all I can say is, don’t miss this movie. I can totally relate to the obsessed fandom and I am happy that it exists in this country — but mygod, are there some freaks in that universe. Fun freaks, but freaks, nonetheless.

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