D*#% Ink!

I ran out of ink--the same ink I always run out of--and so I had to change the cartridge.  I'm already annoyed because I can't use my new laser printer because the toner cartridge ran out and the new toner cartridge is giving me error messages.  I'm additionally annoyed because I like buying ink in bulk so that I save, but the only bulk ink I can find at my favorite savings store sells one of each kind of ink jet ink cartridge instead of sensibly offering two (or three, please!) of the ink I'm always running out of.

And then!

And then I start trying to pry the ink out of the nuclear-bomb-proof packaging without damaging the cartridge, and I have to fight the impulse to tear at it with my teeth like a wild animal out of frustration.  The way the edges and the extruded parts where the ink sits interplay make scissors almost useless, knives dangerous to use, and argh!! My teeth aren't working!!

The scissors finally do it for me, after prying and some ineffectual cutting and forcing blade against seams, and I extract my cartridge.

My nerves, however, are frayed to bits.

And the worst part?

On the front, images of smiling, happy people are mocking me.

But maybe that's not the worst part after all.  You see, I only managed to open one area, which gave me access to two cartridges (one of which I don't need, of course.)  When I next run out of ink, most likely I'll have to open the other area to get to the cartridge I need.

Expletives don't cover it.  I just have to put it away and not look at it anymore, or I'll do something rash like write an angry letter.  

Argh.

I bet they're punishing me for trying to save money.

Argh times infinite.  Poopyheaded packaging designers ...

Farm Drama Trauma

It's been a while since I've had an OMG moment.  It's been building, I think.  Fortunately for us, the mice planned things poorly.

See, when you time a critical sabotage operation, you have to carefully observe the habits of the humans (check,) make sure all mousey watches are synchronized (check,) and put your plan into operation so that the sabotage will be noticed only after considerable damage will have occurred.

This is where the mice ran into a snag.  Although they had the time correct (10pm, humans going to bed or already in bed, mwa ha ha!) what they didn't count on was that the water (!!!!)(&@#H%!!!!) would divert onto the boy's bedding, thereby alerting the humans with an unexpected puddle on the blanket which then dripped onto the floor.  (No futon was harmed in the process of this operation.)

"Hey mom," the boy human said, "there's water dripping into my room from your room."

Seek and mitigate protocols went into immediate effect.  There's no water source in the adult female human's room, therefore, she correctly deduced it must be coming from the kitchen.  Her keen ears perceived a hissing noise.  Not behind the fridge, not behind the kitchen linen drawer, not behind the oven, not behind all the canned food (grr!) and not behind the pots and pa--wait a minute, the hissing was definitely louder even though the cabinet appeared to be bone dry.  

The mice had been working on an entry hole from the downstairs wall to the upstairs kitchen pot and pan cabinet and nicked the (not currently in operation, see refrigerator woes)(note the additional humor in the fact that the tv stopped working since that post and we now have a new tv) water line for the ice cube maker.  After some wrestling and cursing and barking of orders and an emergency caving expedition where the humans sent the young girl human into the back corner of the cabinet to extricate some needed slack from behind a retaining nail, the adult human female was able to (finally!) pinch off the hose and duct tape (yay duct tape!) it that way in two places.  A towel was applied, but proved to be useless--the fine spray had dripped between the walls and (happily) ran a bit sideways into the human boy's room, which caused the alert.  If it had remained between the walls or in the cabinet, it would have been some time before the problem was discovered.

The mice sighed.  "What'll we do now, Brain?"  (reference, Pinky and the Brain)

Luckily we didn't have to call a plumber for an emergency call.  He can come out whenever, and not charge us after hours rates.  I don't think there's any serious damage to the floor (from underneath seepage) or wall, but only time will tell.

Ugh ugh ugh ...

Green Drying

Today my dryer went kaput.  Won't even tumble.  It's just dead.  It's dead, Jim.  It's an ex-dryer.  Now, I had been planning on getting a new washer/dryer set.  Tomorrow?  No!  Like, September, October or December.  Not tomorrow, not next week, not three weeks from now.  And I'm not going to do it.  Not not not!  (Stubborn stomp.)  The good news is that it's summer and the stuff I had in the wash can line dry outside.  The bad news is that I have to line dry outside until I figure out what I want to do (besides research washers and dryers and cave and go to the laundromat.)

I've line dried before.  And those of you who plan on waxing rhapsodic about line drying including how it makes clothes have that special smell and so forth, go ahead but be warned that I may feel an irresistible urge to hunt you down later and talk about how we should all go back to catching and killing our own food and eating it raw.  I can talk for hours about that.  Days even.

Here's the deal with line drying in my limited and reluctant experience.

Upsides:  

• It saves lots of electricity and yes it makes clothes smell nice.
  

Downsides:  

• The clothes often don't feel nice unless you beat and shake them after they're dry.  I especially dislike crispy towels, but some people do like them so this may be an upside for them. 
  
• That nice smell includes an infusion of pollen, so if you're allergic, guess what!?
  
• Spiders and bugs will quickly find the clothes and cuddle up inside their nice shelter.  You have to turn everything inside out and shake to make sure you don't have any unwanted passengers.  Fleas or ticks will not shake out, but fortunately they rarely hop on in the time that you've left the clothes outside.
  
• Birds will settle on the line and leave little whitish and grey presents.  Happy birthday!  (But it's not my birthday ...)
  
• It takes a lot of room.  The pic shows one load.  While you're line drying, unless you have a really nice line drying rig (which I covet, btw) you're limited by warmth and wind as far as how many loads you can do in a day.  
  
• If you want to dry anything big, like sheets, you need a much higher rig than I can conveniently string right now.
  

Hints:

• Don't use a stretchy string or a string that will stretch when wet (like cotton, unless it's woven around a non-stretchy core like many clotheslines are.)
  
• Don't let the clothes touch plants.  Bugs will crawl from the plants onto the clothes.  They'll still creep up the posts and along the line or simply hop on but you won't get as many as you will from the plants.  You'd be surprised how much traffic there is on a single grass stalk.
  
• If you use your spouse's rappelling rope, don't take a pic of it and then post it on the web.  (Oops ...)
  
• Unless you're in a windy area you don't need a lot of clothespins.  Only for socks and underwear.  If you need to put wet clothes out to dry in an emergency situation where your dryer has just quit, assuming it's not super-windy right then, hang the clothes first so they start to dry and then go get your clothespins.  You're less likely to overbuy that way plus they'll be drying while you're driving.
  
• Try not to hang them at a time when they'll be out overnight unless you have no choice.  They'll get dew damp in the morning and you'll have to wait until they dry before you can hang your next load.
  
• Try not to hang clothes in strong winds.  They collect a lot more dust and pollen that way.
• Don't run long stretches of line.  They'll sag a lot.  Additionally, put heavy stuff by the posts first and then hang the remaining lighter stuff in the middle of the line.
  
• If you have jeans out to dry expect that they'll take forever to dry.  Jeans and other heavy clothing items need to be turned and/or turned inside out in order to finish drying.  The rest is fine as-is.
  
• Take in clothes as they dry.  On a warm day things like light polyester or poly-cotton blend work shirts, handkerchiefs, thin socks and/or nylons and scarfs can dry in just a few minutes.  Generally speaking, woven clothing dries faster than knitted.
  
• You can dry stuff outside in very cold, even freezing weather.  It takes longer, but if it's very dry (like it often is in winter around here) the ice in the clothes will sublimate (dry off.)
  

Please feel free to shoot me down or disagree or give me helpful hints or fun laundry stories.  I'm open to ideas, encouragement, and laughs.  Just so you know, I'm also resisting the go to the laundromat option.  It's pretty expensive and inconvenient.  But I'll probably get up tomorrow morning, look at the laundry pile, and cave.

Yes, yes, I'll be looking at Energy Star products, Craig's List (aka I stole this list,) and Sears is at the top of my list for places to shop.  Btw, I've never, ever had a new washer and dryer, so I'm a little excited about the possibility that I'll be getting a new or late-model set.  Not excited enough to offset the aggravation of the timing (couldn't it have quit a couple of months later?) but still.  

My appliance guy had just fixed this thing recently, too.  I may have him take a look, but I've already poured a lot of money into it for repairs, so ... Ugh.

Close but no banana

There's a lot that's challenging about communicating with people who aren't just far away, but which have between you and them issues with line quality, connectivity, and technological limitations.  So today I spent more than a usual time for me trying to do some workarounds.  I figured if I can't even get something off my mail program to the server, then it's going to be a bear, if not impossible to retrieve back off the server.  It may even get stuck in transit.

As far as voice communications you can't appreciate the marvel known as the telephone much less the miracle of cell phones until you try to talk to someone via a program like Skype.  As much as I love this advance in communications, the technology is imperfect and it's actually easier to chat than it is to hear someone's voice and interpret sentences that transmit at uneven speeds and volumes and often drop entire or parts of words.  I'm hoping that these limitations will go away or become mitigated as I gain access to better technology and connection speeds, but unfortunately, there's a good chance that the problems originate as much on the other end as they do with me.

All is not lost.  Far from it.  I love firing up the ol' confuter first thing in the morning, knowing there's a decent chance I'll have some email or a chance to chat with someone I care about.  Not so very long ago I would have been waiting for some sign of life in the mail, a letter that's two weeks or more old and which can only interact with my thoughts–as-words in a limited way.  Letters are conversations, but not the kind of conversations we take for granted in our world today.  So life is good.  But I'm eager for better, because I see the possibilities just within reach.  It's ... right ... there ...!

My brain is full

Normally I post something pagan-ish around the solstices and equinoxes.  Aside from a late night feast and some indulgence for the kids, we didn't do much religious observance on the longest day of the year.  I often get up with the dawn during the solstice, but I didn't set my alarm.

I could theorize, but it boils down to my brain is full.  I've got too much to do in too little time.  Oh well.  Life's always been busy.  As long as I keep breathing, the family and animals stay healthy, and the house isn't falling down around our ears I guess it's okay.  I feel a little weird in my summer dress stinking of sweat from stress and muggy weather, but weird is okay too.  Dakota sighs, content to lay on the cool tile in my office.  The cats demand attention and purr like mad when they get it.  The kids laugh while watching a silly movie, and I smile in answer.  

In writing projects, I'm juggling two novels and a short short.  That's two editing projects and one naked writing.  I really need to send out another agent query for Masks too.  Habits are formed through repetition.  The habit I need to form is the submitting habit, and I've definitely fallen down on that in the past few weeks.  Yeah, yeah, blame the man of the house, but honestly I have hours, daily, to myself now and that excuse doesn't hold up.  

The sad lot of the writer is the same sad lot of a self-employed anyone--by being able to schedule your own hours, every moment can be a potential work or play.  Play can make you feel guilty for not working, and work can seem endless and without sane limits.  When my focus is on I don't feel the stress from self-scheduling.  Right now I'm very unfocused and it's bothering me.  Bother bother bother.  Fortunately I have nice escapes in all directions.  When the writing feels too heavy I try art to get away from the pressure.  It's work, and yet play.  Same with gardening.  Same with gardening as work--the overwhelming sense of endless mowing--I can escape it into writing as work/play or art.  It's still not easy.  But when my brain is full, it helps.  A lot.

Falling Off a Cliff

Sometimes I'm a serious wuss.

When I feel like I've written a keeper I have huge amounts of faith in the story, in my prose, and I'm willing to do all kinds of things to improve the writing so that the story's heart shows more clearly.  Much as I dislike editing, I look forward to what the editing does to the story.  In painting I set out to render something and, through the limitations and advantages of medium, skill and surprise opportunities, I end up with something usually better than I imagined in the first place.  Sometimes it doesn't match up to my expectations, but that just means I'll try again.  Surprisingly often I'm happier with where I land than where I set out to end up.

Unfortunately there are days when I feel everything I've created is no more substantial than a web.  It looked like art when it was fresh, but after a few bugs have hit it and the wind has blown through it, it not only becomes an eyesore but it isn't even functional anymore.  

I've written about good days and bad days and how they're both uncertain ground for a writer to stand on.  Today is definitely a bad day.  I look at what I'm working on and think that I've taken a perfectly good story and a great character and smeared them with crap through my lack of insight and my clumsy ineptitude.  This is not a good day to judge my own writing. 

If I was sure that what I'd written would be the next great American novel or an international classic, that would also be a bad day to judge my own writing.  I can't always take the middle road.  The middle road is for people who don't want to make mistakes, and also people who don't want to discover anything new.  But I shouldn't try to practice my craft while I'm flying or falling off a cliff.  Those experiences can inform the story, but they can't edit it.  I need to have contact with the ground when I'm traveling (editing,) even if it's bounding like I'm on the moon or tumbling down a steep slope.  

So here's to taking a night off, or at least the next hour off, of editing in the name of not butchering what might be perfectly good writing.  It may be, though, a great time to write something new.  The words will be windblown and wild, but as long as I'm fearless maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and find something unexpected and fun to edit on my hard drive.

Return(s) of the Barbie Lady

I was going to blog about this yesterday but I was tired, and then all day today I've been fighting a cold.  I think the cold is winning.  Grr.

Anyway, I was minding business at the front counter when in comes Barbie Lady.  She introduces herself, and I have to refrain from telling her that we all know her on sight at this point.  "I remember you," I tell her instead.

She starts loading barbies and barbie clothes onto the counter.  "I've been to Target and Walmart and Big Lots and a bunch of other stores and no one will take these.  I know some of them are yours because they have the stickers on them."

Indeed, some of them do have BiMart stickers on them.  I explain to her how the UPC codes (in theory, anyway) are unique to the stores and that's how we can tell if they're ours or not.  

"But these are BiMart's because they have the stickers on them," she says, getting immediately defensive."

"Yes, I understand.  We'll scan all these and see what's what."  So I get an RF and start in.  Fortunately some of the boxes, even though they have different styles of clothes in them, have the same UPC so I can stack them and scan just one.  It quickly becomes an exercise in frustration because the system keeps going down and I have to reboot the RF for every other scan.  

To pass the time the Barbie Lady repeats how she's been to all the stores.  She was at Walmart until 2am the day before and she's frustrated and exhausted.  Maybe I just start to have a day, but all I can think about are the poor Walmart employees dealing with a gizillion returns in the post-holiday buyer remorse days as their credit card bills come in, not to mention a healthy percentage of theft items coming back among them with no receipt or fake ones, and then this woman shows up and starts telling them her woes and piling up stuff on their counter and half or more of it isn't even theirs.  

"Big Lots would only take it back for half price," she told me, as if this was outrageous.  "They said they don't carry it and they offered to take it for half price.  And Target said that their stuff only stays in the system for six months.  Are you sure that this isn't yours?  Maybe it's out of the system."

"No, it would still be in our system," I assure her.  We had a fondue machine come back.  We didn't carry them this year.  We had them last year.  Another of our stores across the river apparently did carry it this season, but the point is that she got all these things in the fall and they'd still be on our computers.

I employ the help of a cohort and we start organizing better so that I can start writing things down, marking them off the receipt, and dumping them in the go-back bin.  She starts leaning over the counter.  "I know I paid more than that for those."  

"It's what the RF is telling me, and it matches the tag," I tell her.  "See?"

"Okay, maybe that one, but that one I definitely paid $10 for."

"It's on sale for $6.99, regular price $8.99.  It's right here on the receipt."  I circle the item on the receipt, trying not to get annoyed.  I know she needs the money desperately, but this is starting to verge into two things I don't care for--people who are not my coworkers and supervisors trying to tell me how to do my job, and people who are trying to get more than what they're due.

"I have more of those out in the car," Barbie Lady tells me.  "Should I go get them?"

No, don't get them because you can always bring them in later and we can do this all over again and maybe the RF won't be working at all that day.  "Please," I tell her.  "That would be great." So she goes out and comes back with a fresh cart of things.  A customer comes up and needs a card replaced.  "Would you like to shop around first and come back?" I suggest.  "I'm sorry but I have my hands full.  Or if you'd like I can do it now."

"No, I don't mind," he said.  "I'll come back."  

This apparently set a dangerous precedent.

So we're working and I have one return slip filled and I'm starting another.  I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel when the Barbie Lady looks over my shoulder and says, "She can't help you right now.  She's really busy."  Then she looks at me.  "Can we get this going?  I'm just really tired.  I've been trying to get these things returned for hours."

Whoa there!  Turning a customer away on my behalf?  My cohort and I exchange glances.  "Excuse me."  I turn my back on Barbie Lady and tell her, "I'm sorry, I'd be happy to help you.  What can I help you with today?"

It turned out she was there to pick up some furniture.  She'd come from Vancouver, where they were sold out.  All it took was a few seconds for me to page someone.  All my fond feelings for the Barbie Lady flee.  I turn back.  "I'm sorry, that was probably rude," Barbie Lady says.  "I'm just so stressed out by all this."  Mmm hmm, I'm thinking.  And this excuses you being rude to a customer on my behalf?  "It's just that I had no Christmas.  I was by myself, couldn't even get myself a present, and the bank has called me four times and I've had to go over there for hours each time, and I'm trying to straighten out my credit cards.  Starting a business is so much harder than I thought it would be.  And my doctor told me that I have a degenerative nerve disease, so I can't work, but I'm not considered disabled so I can't get unemployment."  She starts to get all teary-eyed, sniffling.  

This starts to burn me.  I know people with degenerative nerve diseases.  It's a struggle, but they work and those who can't work are formally disabled and get social security.  I know, people slip through the cracks and I don't know her life story, but there are people out there in much worse shape who are getting by.  It's the timing more than anything, like she's trying to gain my sympathy so I take pity on her and, what, feel better about what she's doing?  Work faster?  "I suppose I could work here," she adds, laughing through her almost-tears, sarcasm full on.  "At least I could make grocery money.  I don't know how I'd live."  I'm standing next to someone who's only income comes from her job here, and although this isn't technically a slam her tone is definitely of the 'I'd be crazy to try and of course it would be a snap to get a job here and keep it' kind of thing.  I'm thinking, not with your interpersonal skills, ma'am.  

She didn't hear the theme music that follows me around everywhere suddenly go dark and eerie, didn't notice the darkness that filled my eyes and turned on a little red light behind the pupil, or the fangs when I smiled.  Yes, Kami went bad, I have to admit.  "Yeah, I understand," I told her.  "The holidays are tough for me too.  My father died of brain cancer on Christmas Day."  K-slap!

She looked like a deer in the headlights.  I felt a little guilty.  That's not something I do.  Well, okay, apparently it is something I do.  But she got herself into this mess, buying dolls and doll clothes from retail outlets at prices that everyone else has to pay.  Everyone who is into these dolls knows where to get them and their prices.  Reselling them, she's going to make money how exactly?  And now she's trying to make me feel sorry for her so that I excuse her rudeness?

And I'm trying to excuse myself, I know.  I lost it.

"Well, don't you have the story to tell!" she said.

I do, but it's not for her and I shouldn't have mentioned it.  But she did stop with the poor me stuff, which was a happy relief.  I finished her return and sent her on her way.  She'd been in at least once since I did her first return, so there are only a scant handful of items left on the large receipt she has.  She didn't bring the copy of the receipt my boss printed off the computer when she couldn't find it.  It wouldn't help her anyway.  If she didn't buy it here, we'll know.  She won't be able to double up on returns.

I'm sure I'll see Barbie Lady again.  Until then, to all my fellow retail employees out there:  Never give up, never surrender.

War and the World

When I was young, maybe ten or twelve (I suspect twelve because that was a huge year of revelations) I started thinking about how awful it is that life eats life. At the time I decided that plants were an ideal, innocent life form and I decided that trees deserved to be some of the longest living life forms on the planet. I wished that it didn't have to be this way.

As in many things, this idea has come around again, but with a forty year old's sensibilities. I've been reading "Achilles in Vietnam" (highly recommended) and my sense of compassion began throwing a temper tantrum (though with a calmer facade than my twelve year old self could pull off. Hey, by 60 years of age, I might even sound wise!) I started (silently) whining about why we all can't just get along. I don't mean the end of war. Although the end of war would be nice, it's pretty unrealistic. I mean that if we must conflict, and it seems we have little choice, can't we respect each other? In the book the author blames the loss of respect for one's enemy in part on the goat herding religions, which tend to cast the enemy as the part of villian/evil/monster/subhuman who God will righteously smite. The trouble being (besides the fact that this is horribly prejudicial thinking not to mention really bad manners) that when the righteous God-fearing people start to lose, bad things happen to them psychologically. They are, after all, losing to someone inferior to them in some (or many, in their minds) ways. How could this happen, except that (gasp): God might not exist, or God doesn't love them anymore, or God is an asshole. What follows is a moral breakdown, an emotional mess, and a human being that becomes a danger to himself and others because he's lost one or several vital things that allow him or her to be a positive force in society. Granted I tend to agree with the author's take on all this, especially the religion part, because I'm a pagan and it serves my points of view. But it also makes terrible sense. How many people have had a crisis of faith because something really, really awful happened? If there's one God and that God is good, then what gives?

The advantage that the pagan has (in the book, he looks at the religion followed by the ancient Greeks--which is not an endorsement for that particular olde tyme religion so don't go flocking to sign up and start sacrificial pyres for that pantheon--it's never that easy) is that there isn't one God, and the many gods aren't necessarily good, at least as far as making life bearable on the planet. Gods don't work like that, any more than corporate chairpeople don't concern themselves with Bob in accounting or Sue in HR unless they happen to take temporary notice and start playing favorites. And when *that* happens, you can bet they all won't be on the same page. In fact because Sr. Exec has the hots for Sue and wants to put her on a fast track up the corporate ladder, Jr. Exec may snarl and start to undermine Sr. Exec's efforts. *Which is exactly what happens among the gods in the Iliad.* So what's this mean? It means that if you aren't a peon, you're not playing the same game the peon is playing. Things that you do to try to help may hurt, and you're helping with a sense (and perhaps not always a good sense) of what the big picture is, which may screw over a bunch of people on the side. Whole departments can dissolve and all it might be is a compromise with another exec--we'll cut this department and boost your favorite, and in return, Sue gets to end up head of HR. This is an unequal trade, so the next time a department gets cut, one of yours gets the axe--my choice of which one. Go corporate politics! It might not even benefit the company in the long run. It's just the way it works.

And so it may well be with the powers (if you believe in such) that are immortal (or near-so) and greater than human beings, but still confined within the tides of Earth. The gods don't have to be dead just because things don't go your way. Right? Maybe it goes the other guy's way because s/he's the favored one, or maybe they weren't even paying attention that day. Even if that's wrong, what really matters is that the other way of thinking, that there's a One True God who Loves Everybody, has done some serious harm to a lot of people.

So my (mature-er) tantrum is this--if it screws people up so bad to disrespect the enemy and believe God is on your side, and people know this, why do so many do it? Why are we still following this system of thought?

Because as a species we're slow to change. Individuals can be fast learners, but cultures are not, and the human race moves forward at a painful crawl. We're still fighting holy wars, for pity's sake, and via that mechanism creating monsters out of decent people. And so my soul wants to bang on the keyboard in frustration. Gaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

Who would have thought that the concept of respect could matter (and how many nations respect each other--egad)? Who would have thought that monotheism could do emotional harm? In theory, it does. I wonder what else matters that we undervalue. Hmm, several spring to mind without me even having to sweat--work ethic, compassion, thriftiness among them. Most days I have an optimistic outlook on life and living. These past couple of days I've been verging on cynicism, and it's all because of war and the world.

Poopyhead war. Poopyhead world.

I hope that someday it all works out okay.