Slowly getting better

Well, we finally moved all my mother-in-law’s big furniture stuff we had to, and filled the oil tank, and got the van back from the shop, so it seems like things are slowing down a bit, which is nice. I’m hoping that things will level out a bit going forward.

My wife totally put my sister-in-law in place, pretty much telling her that she was overbearing and needed to back off. We still ended up moving her stuff for her, but the fact that she got the smackdown helped. Yay for wife!

I’m strangely looking forward to doing some yard work. Maybe it’s a hope for spring, but I’m really dying to chop thorn bushes down and re-hang a broken door on our shed and such. I think it may be an “order from chaos” thing that I do when I’m stressed.

The kids were dying to play D&D this evening, but I was way too burned out to play. I like to give them a good time when they play, and I just wasn’t up to it this evening. Hopefully we can play tomorrow (and finish my son’s project on Robert E Lee, and go to the movies… thing I try to do too many things?)

I’ll post again tomorrow… maybe someday I can get to the stage where I can do some story posting, maybe I serial short story or such. Like I always say, we’ll see…

NOT a good way to start the New Year…

I’d like to say up front that I’m not exactly pleased with 2009 so far, and, if it keeps it up, I may end up returning it to the store and use the money to reserve 2010.

• The car’s in the shop getting brakes redone… again… for about the fourth time in the past 9 months, and the mechanic has NO idea why the brakes keep crapping out. NOT a confident statement. Again I’m thinking of taking someone back to the store.

Me: “Hi, I’ve got this 62 year-old mechanic I’d like to return, please.”

Cashier: “What’s wrong with him?”

Me: “He’s installed my brakes four times in 9 months and they still don’t work.”

Cashier: “That’s fine. I’m going to need a receipt, though.”

Mechanic: “Could you put me down? Can I go home?”

• Our oil tank is empty. The house that we rent has the insulating properties of an ice-covered colander, so imagine my surprise when I go down yesterday morning to check the gauge and find out it’s pretty much on zero. I was afraid to tap it and have it drop to zero immediately, preferring to believe in Heisenberg’s Oil Level Uncertainty Principle, which states that, if you don’t tap the gauge, it may well be stuck, and you actually have tons of oil in the tank. I once kept a furnace burning for three months that way until my wife convinced me that we MUST be out of oil, at which time all the quantum oil evaporated. I’ve got a delivery scheduled for today, but it’s gonna be close.

• We’re moving my mother-in-law this weekend. Normally that statement would be bad enough without any explanation, but wait, there’s more! We’re also moving some things for my wife’s sister, which, somehow, has earned us her undying wrath. We’re renting a U-Haul truck to move some of the things we’re storing at our house, and, while we had it, offered to move a few of the things her sister wanted as well. I’m guessing here, but I think the phrase “We’d like to help you move some things” sounds remarkably like “We’d like to kill you and do unspeakable things to your corpse” in Sisterspeak, because that’s the reaction we got. My answer to this dilemma would be to leave the sister standing next to her big pile of stuff as we drove away in our U-Haul, waving to quickly shrinking form in the rear-view mirror, but my wife seems less inclined to go that route. I’ll keep working on it.

There’s a few more personal things which I won’t spell out here in gory, graphic detail, but you get the picture. Maybe Monday will be better, starting the first full week of 2009. I can only hope.

What a day…

Posting even though I’m exhausted (so there!). Just spent about 12 hours moving my mother-in-law from her rented house to elderly housing, which is a move she desperately wanted (New England winters kick her ass)., but BOY, she did NOT want to move. I don’t know if she thought the moving fairies were going to come and pack everything up for her or what, but when we got there this morning to move her, NOTHING was packed. There were just piles of random things all over the place that we had to box up and move into the truck we rented (with her acting as Lord Overseer, demanding we tell her what we’re doing with each pile of old photographs, cough drops, and lipstick…).

Needless to say, an interesting time was had by all.

I’m posting, though, dammit, even though I’m tired and hurt. Not really hurt, but kinda hurt… took a boxspring to the ear, of all things. Ripped me open a little bit, and my ear is kinda purple. When it happened I thought I had ripped the damn thing right off my head. I’m gonna end up looking like an MMA fighter if I keep this up.

See you tomorrow, kids!

I’m posting…

… even though I don’t really want to (but that’s the point, right?) It’s so easy to just say “I don’t feel like it today”, but I find myself using that excuse a LOT.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m lazy, or if I don’t really want to do things like write, but then I think about it, and I do. I enjoy doing all these creative things, I just find it very difficult to follow through on them. I mean, really difficult. Like sometimes I feel like there’s a post-hypnotic suggestion in there saying “whenever you feel like being actively creative, instead of just thinking creative things, you’ll turn on the TV instead”. I’ll waste a day like that, and then look back and say “WTF?!?”

I hate sabotaging myself. It’s like that song by Lit, “My Own Worst Enemy”

“It’s no surprise to me I am my own worst enemy, cuz every now and then I kick the living shit out of me….”  (Here, take a listen)

Anyway, I’m at work, so I can’t post a ton, but I did want to post something. I’m honestly hoping this gets me back in the habit of typing words down, and, eventually, words that go into book form.

We shall see.

So…

If John Scalzi and Wil Wheaton do it (two people I highly respect) then damnit, I’M gonna do it… and totally jump on their bandwagon.

What I’m really hoping is that this will get me in the habit of writing on a regular basis, something I haven’t been doing lately. I think my pipes are frozen, and the valves are rusted shut, and… any other metaphores that go along with not having things flow the way I want.

Here’s hoping for more writing in 2009!