A typical day

--Get up.
--Make breakfast.
--Eat while checking email and making small talk with kid.
--Kid leaves for school.
--Start article.
--Get distracted and wander off.
--Notice unfinished walls look uglier today than ever before in the entire history of the house
--Haul out bucket of drywall mud, realize it needs thinning.
--Call husband (off on his own adventures) to determine whereabouts of mud-mixing drill attachment
--Find drill (NOT where husband said it was) and attachment.
--Mix mud.
--Remember article.
--Return to computer.
--Continue article.
--Sister calls with ridiculous cute stories about niece.
--Mop kitchen while on phone.
--Finish call.
--Realize mud is drying out.
--Start applying mud.
--Daughter calls from school.
--Cover mud pan with damp rag and wash hands.
--Find daughter's math book.
--Drive to school.
--Deliver math book.
--Come home.
--Realize dogs must be walked before it gets any hotter.
--Walk dogs.
--Come home.
--Need to eat immediately.
--Finish article while eating second breakfast.
--Finish mudding rest of first wall.
--Start second wall.
--Realize I forgot to call dentist.
--Cover mud pan with damp rag and wash hands.
--Call dentist.
--Remember thousands of other vital calls that need to be made.
--Start making other calls.
--Husband asks me to look up prices online for on new diamond mumblety grinder something blades.
--Research mysterious items.
--Get distracted by shiny Internet.
--Remember half-pan of mud.
--Finish mudding.
--Clean up pan and trowel.
--Walk to other house to get paint for fancy new wall.
--Walk back.
--Realize I forgot tint.
--Walk back to other house.
--Notice plants down there look thirsty.
--Water plants.
--Get tint.
--Walk back to regular house.
--Realize I'm starving again.
--Eat lunch.
--Check email.
--Read new assignment.
--Research way too much.
--Start new article.
--Wander off.
--Mix new paint color.
--Return to article.
--Realize dinner needs to get started.
--Start dinner.
--Shower while things are simmering.
--Finish dinner.
--Eat dinner together.
--Ditch husband with dirty dishes
--Have chill movie-watching time with kid while also working on art projects.
--Notice kid has not washed hair in god only knows how long.
--Commence mild lecture about personal hygiene.
--Send kid to shower and bed.
--Continue art project while reducing titles in Netflix instant queue.
--Remember article isn't done yet.
--Find computer.
--Work on article in bedroom till husband arrives.
--Close computer.
--Shovel art crap off bed while he showers.
--Get jammies on.
--Get book out.
--Read approximately three and a half sentences.
--Notice utter exhaustion.
--Turn light off.
--Turn light on.
--Finish article.
--Turn light off.

My Dad. (again)

This is a repost from last year, but I'm going to print it again because it's all still awesome and true.

Love you Dad! xoxo

http://almost-like-real-life.blogspot.com/2010/06/my-dad.html

Skittish

Regular computer and backup computer both breathed their last over the weekend, leaving me disconnected. Yesterday was spent getting to know my shiny new computer...laying down a trail of enticing tidbits, trying to get it to come close enough to eat out of my hand....pet it a little before it snorts and runs to the other side of the corral...

So, we're on well enough terms to check email and bank accounts, but not really reached a stage where we're comfortable enough to write together. Working on it though. Maybe by Sunday.

If not now then when

Okay.

So, you know how sometimes you see a job listing for an article writer on craigslist and you think "I'm totally unqualified" but something about it catches at you, nags you, maybe the way the ad was written or something, and you leave it open in its own browser tab while you do your daily trifecta of email-facebook-reddit and then you go back and read it again; they want a grammar nut and you're definitely that plus they're asking for three writing samples so maybe those could get you hired even without experience if you're actually any good and if there's not much competition and it's kinda funny how lately you've been thinking about updating your resume anyway so, what the heck, why not today, what else are you really doing with your time and so you get everything out and spend the next six hours tweaking your accomplishments and polishing your degrees and adjusting fonts until it's all just so and the entire time you're thinking "Why am I doing this, I really need to mud that living room wall" but some whisper makes you keep going anyway, some insistent if not now then when and all day you keep re-reading that damned ad and you find yourself polishing up three writing samples instead of making dinner and you really wish your sister weren't sailing in stupid Puerto Rico this week so she could proofread everything for you and you think "Well it's not like I'm applying for anything right now anyway, just getting my resume in order, it can wait" and then you're spending another hour composing the perfect intro letter that's the just-right balance of funny yet professional yet casual yet definitely interested and hoping it's not too funny or too casual or too interested and then you're hitting send in spite of yourself and thinking "My god, what just happened here" and all of it without you ever consciously deciding to actually apply?

Yeah. That totally happened to me last week, too.

An hour after the guy got my email, he called me to schedule a phone interview. He offered me the job, pending a one-week trial period "Which in your case," he said, "will probably be just be a formality. I have a good feeling this will work out really well."

It pays almost nothing. Nearly enough to support us, if we lived in a third-world country. And it completely doesn't matter, because I can officially add 'writer' to that hard-won resume now.

I love my new life.