Clean ALL the Things!

And away we go...

Whip It Good

I just had a client have to remind me that this is a holiday weekend when I tried to schedule a conference call for Monday. That might be sad, but not as sad as the fact that what's exciting me most about the prospect of an extended weekend is finally having time to clean my house. Not that I'm such a clean freak that putting the emphasis on the "labor" part of this particular holiday fills me with joy; but our house still hasn't recovered from our camping trip last month, and I can't even remember the last time I vacuumed the carpet. This house needs some serious whipping into shape, and it looks like I'll finally have time to do the whipping.

Of course, I shall have to do it all whilst wearing my new t-shirt.

And if I'm really feeling ambitious I might even tackle the mountain in the garage that represents two years' worth of backed up recycling -- the first step in converting the garage from a big space to throw the crap we don't want to deal with into an organized haven for craft supplies and camping gear. Party on!

This month is shaping up to be a pretty good one, work-wise. It never ceases to amaze me the way freelancing is always feast or famine. Never does it happen that one client needs something one week, and another the next, and so on so that I've got a steady stream of work and nobody's ever competing for my time. Instead it always happens that most -- if not all -- of them have major projects that need done all at the same time, or hardly anybody needs anything from me at all. Right now I'm looking at a feast of web design and VA work, so that's going to be keeping me busy for the next few weeks.

Gotta say I'm relieved, because as much as I appreciate that Demand Studios is there to get me through the famine times, it's definitely not my favorite gig, probably because it's the one that requires the most mentally taxing work for the least pay. After a long day of struggling to focus enough to research and write just a few articles, I'm always too mentally fried to do anything else. I'm feeling energized just thinking about having some truly creative work on my plate again. Even so, I'm going to try to keep doing at least a few DS articles a week, just to ensure I'll have a steady, if small, paycheck to buffer against the unsteady nature of freelance pay.

Somewhere in all this working and cleaning, I've got to be sure to get outside and enjoy this perfect fall-like weather we're having. This would, of course, be a lot easier if Matt would let me take the laptop out on the patio, but he's afraid I'll smash it to bits on the concrete and then we'll have to spend a big chunk of money to replace it. And he does have a point -- I do tend to be accident prone, and I wish I could say that I don't have a history of expensive accidents, but... well, let's just say I don't have solid ground on which to argue in favor of ever leaving the house with my laptop. So if I want to go out I guess I'll just have to leave the computer behind and, like, get some exercise or something. How novel!

A Girl and Her Turtle

I lost Matilda the other day. Only for about ten minutes, and Matt found her before she found a hole in the fence, but those were a frightening ten minutes by the end of which I was nearly in tears. I was so sure that she'd escaped and I'd never see her again, that she'd gone under the fence and right out into traffic and that was the end of her, and I'd never, ever forgive myself.

I don't normally take her out of her pen in the middle of the day, but the weather has been gorgeous lately, like early fall, so I decided to sit out on the patio while I outlined some articles, and I figured she'd enjoy an afternoon stroll around the yard. Then one minute I was watching her sunbathe and munch on a dead cicada, the next I looked down at my writing to jot some notes, and by minute three I looked back up and simply could not see the turtle.

You might think that it would be hard to lose a turtle within the space of a minute. After all, they don't exactly have reputations as speedsters. But they are, in fact, faster than you'd expect, and on top of that they have built-in camouflage that, as it turns out, does an excellent job of blending in with the overgrown grass in our way-past-due-to-be-mowed yard.

I spent about five minutes walking the yard and poking through said grass before I went to get Matt, to have him stand guard at the most likely point of escape while I continued to scour the yard. After another five minutes, he spotted Matilda hiding behind a cement brick by the back fence. That's the chain-link one with links that she can't fit through, thankfully, and not the wooden privacy fence that lines a busy street and has gaps that she has yet to discover are just the right height for her to slip right under.

Afterwards, I tucked her safely back in her pen, where she burrowed down in the dirt in her favorite sleeping spot beneath her hollow half-log, and then sat down to recover and be amazed at how attached I've become to a turtle. I mean, yes, I've wanted a turtle just like her for a really long time. But she's not exactly cuddly, and all she does is eat, sleep and crawl around. But she sure is cute doing those things, and it's neat to watch her hunt for bugs, and she seems to enjoy being baby-talked and having the back of her neck rubbed. As it turns out, I love her for all of that. And I will never, ever, ever leave her unsupervised in the back yard again, not even for a minute.

How Jeanie Got Her Groove Lack

This has not been the best week for me, productivity-wise. It got off to a rocky start on Monday when we spent over an hour trying to jump-start Matt's truck before finally giving up and deciding it needs a new battery. After that I still had several errands to run, and by the time I finally sat down to work, my focus was shot and I was good for nothing.

Tuesday was better. I spent all day writing articles for Demand Studios, which is pretty much my full-time job until my business picks back up. I wrote enough for a decent day's pay, but I was still frustrated because I could have done more if I didn't have focus issues. I know there are people on there who can hammer out 10 articles or more a day. I've never been able to manage more than five--which is really enough to make ends meet, but wouldn't it be nice if I could write enough to actually make some extra money for a change? Sigh.

Yesterday I actually managed to knock out a couple of articles despite not being home most of the day. Thanks to an online ordering screw-up with the university bookstore, we had to drive to the campus 45 minutes away in my hometown to pick up one of Matt's textbooks so he can study for a test on Friday. And since we were in town we figured we might as well visit my mom, which was lovely, but there went any chance I had of getting more than two articles, or anything else, done that day.

Which brings us to today. And here I am blogging instead of article writing, but I have to figure out how to fit blogging in somehow. I haven't even had time to think about topics for my Task Wrangler blog, which is no way to build up a readership for that one. And don't even get me started on the state of my house, which still looks like a camp site blew up all over it a week and a half after our return. It was great and necessary for us to get away for our little camping holiday, but it totally messed up my groove, and I'm still struggling to get it back. And of course Matt's ready to go camping again as soon as the weather cools off and his schoolwork lightens up a bit, so most likely I'll find my groove again just in time for that to happen, because that's the way these things go. Such is life.

Camp Wear-you-down

We're back. And let me tell you about camping. Or I guess about vacations in general, because it seems to me that the whole point of vacations is to make you shut up and stop whining about your day-to-day existence and appreciate how easy you've got it on a regular basis, because it seems like my vacations always leave me feeling more worn out and drained than when I started -- which of course I never remember until after they're over -- and this was no exception. Matt and I both came back burned, battered and just plain beat.

But about camping, specifically. To hear my mom tell it, my family went camping all the time until I was about two years old, then they up and moved to the lake and there was no longer any need. So for all intents and purposes, this was my first time. Matt's camping experiences were both sporadic and long ago enough that he was essentially a newbie, too. So it should come as no surprise that we made a lot of rookie mistakes.

Mistake the first: not traveling light enough. Before we left we stocked up on everything we thought we could possibly need or use over the weekend. Our little Aveo was so crammed full of crap that there was barely any room left for us. We only ended up using, eating or wearing about half of what we took. We brought along way more food than we needed, and we weren't so far from a grocery store that I couldn't have just gone shopping after we'd set up camp. We also took gallons and gallons of bottled water when our Pür pitcher would have been more than sufficient. Next time, we'll pack much, much lighter, which will make the next item less of an issue.

Mistake the second: parking too dang far away from the camp site. This wouldn't have been an issue if we'd stuck with the lot we'd originally reserved. But once we got there and saw an available lot right down on the water, we were so lured by the prospect of doing all of our swimming and fishing right there next to our tent that we didn't care that we couldn't drive down to it and had to park 50 yards away up a steep hill. It wasn't so bad carrying all of our stuff down hill on the first day, but having to schlep everything back up that hill on our last day pretty much undid all of the rest I'd managed to get in the interim. Which wasn't really that much, considering...

Mistake the third: setting our tent on rocky ground and trying to rely on cheap water loungers for air mattresses.  Both of which popped about ten minutes after we turned in on the first night. The next morning I wasted no time driving into town for some quality camping air beds, but we're both still covered in bruises from that first night of having to try to sleep on the ground with nothing but a tarp, the tent bottom and cheap thin plastic between us and the gravel. A situation that was aggravated by...

Mistakes the fourth and fifth: not taking ear plugs or an animal-proof locker for our food. Ear plugs would have made it easier to sleep through Pete's incessant barking at the raccoons that invaded our camp looking for food, and the locker would have kept them from finding it and strewing hamburger and hot dog buns all over the camp site. After that first night we started keeping the non-perishable foodstuff in the tent with us, but that didn't stop the critters from trying to get to it. And let me tell you something. In my house, when I'm safe in my own bed, I cannot sleep without having my feet covered, because I have a basic, deep fear, which precedes Paranormal Activity by about thirty years, of being awakened in the middle of the night by some unseen thing grabbing my feet. So when that actually happened the other night? Knowing that the unseen thing that had grabbed my toes through the tent wall was a cute and furry raccoon didn't really make it any easier to stop being terrified and go back to sleep.

I'm sure other mistakes were made, but these are the major ones that I think rectifying will make our next camping go-round a lot more restful. And there will be a next time, because despite all of our shiny new aches and pains, we had enough fun that we're already planning to go back for a weekend fishing trip in the fall. Matt caught a couple of fish, and the fact that they were too small to eat and had to be let go didn't make it any less exciting. The shore we camped on was rocky and I kept banging myself up on underwater boulders, but swimming was still fun, especially watching Pete swim back and forth between us until he was pooped enough to make a break for dry land. Despite the extreme heat, between the lake breeze and being able to jump in the lake when the breeze wasn't enough, we managed to stay pretty cool. And in between all of the swimming, fishing and hauling stuff up the hill, we fit in a lot of lazing about, as illustrated in this picture of Pete, who'd had all of the hyperactivity worn right out of him.

Now that we're home, we need a vacation from our vacation, but a single day of recovery will have to do. I woke up this morning feeling stiff and achy and sore all over, but also really appreciative of my own bed and all of the small luxuries and creature comforts we enjoy on a daily basis, and of not having to carry anything up a big hill again any time in the foreseeable future.

Chill-away Camp

I'm still nursing my wrist, and still doing a lot of non-blog writing, which is still seriously cutting into my blogging time. It's been cutting into my Twitter/Facebook time, too, so I figured I'd better leave an update so nobody thinks I died.

Our air conditioner is broken. Again. It's done this every summer since we moved into this house, which I think is a good argument in favor of replacing the ancient piece of spottiness. We took out a debt-consolidation loan large enough to cover a replacement, but Matt's still nervous about committing to throwing that much money at the house, even though that thing's so old that any new AC is bound to be way more efficient and lower our cooling bills, no matter whether or not it's rated high-efficiency, which I think is another good argument in favor of a replacement. And also that we'll need to replace it before we sell the house anyway, so we might as well get it done now and reap the benefits for a few years. I think you can see which side of the argument I'm coming down on. But we're both too cranky to discuss it calmly and come to a mutual decision because it's so motherlovin' HOT, you guys!

By the by, this week I learned that a broken AC, short shorts and a leather desk chair are unmixy things.

Anyway, maybe we can figure out the AC business during our long weekend camping at the lake. At least, I think we're going camping this weekend. Matt suggested perhaps putting it off until the weather cools down a bit, but I pointed out that we can be hot here, or we can be hot there, where there is a great big lake to jump in to cool us off. Besides, the whole reason we were scrambling to go this weekend in the first place is because we realized he starts back to school next week and by the time the weather cools off he'll probably be too buried in studying and paper-writing to go. So it's pretty much now or... not this year.

And, you guys. This is my ONLY shot at getting a vacation this year. And you know, if you've been paying attention AT ALL, how desperate I'm getting for a vacation. Even if it's just a hot and sweaty long weekend in a tent at the muddy-bottomed lake out by where I grew up. At least it will be a long weekend without internet access or cell phone reception or anywhere to plug in my laptop, all of which will force me to, y'know, chill the heck out. Which at this point is ALL I NEED.

***

Matilda the turtle is doing well, for those who were wondering. She's the only one of us who doesn't mind the sweltering heat. She just buries herself in the back yard for the worst of it, and at night it's saving me from having to turn on the reptile heater in her indoor tank. I've got a pretty good handle on what she likes to eat, or rather, what she likes to be fed on the days when she hasn't managed to catch some bug the size of her head and remind me that she is perfectly self-sufficient, thank you very much, lady who is holding me prisoner. But for all that she still makes a beeline for freedom every time I let her roam the back yard, she otherwise seems to be enjoying all of the attention and pampering. I'm pretty confident that a bigger habitat will nix her escape attempts.

How Is a Turtle Like a Tree?

For a long time now, I've been wanting a pet box turtle or tortoise. But since the local reptile sellers never seem to have box turtles in stock and tortoises run too far out of my price range, I figured I'd just wait until I encountered one on the side of the highway in need of rescuing. Because every single summer of my life there has always been an abundance of turtles plodding right into traffic and needing someone in possession of better common sense to stop and pick them up and save their lives. Every single summer, that is, until I decided I wanted a pet turtle. It's like word got out and they all made a plan to stay hidden whenever I drove by.

Apparently one turtle missed the memo, because on Wednesday morning, while I was eating breakfast, it strolled right up onto my patio and settled in to chill. I squeed so hard I almost choked on my Kashi, then ran outside to pounce on it. I couldn't believe it. A turtle! On my back porch! In the middle of the city! What are the odds?

It was good timing, too, because I'd already planned to take the day off to give my wrist a break. So as soon as I could I set to work McGuyvering an outdoor habitat out of things we already had around the house and yard, which included flowerbed fencing, plastic chicken "wire", bread ties and paper clips. Yes, I actually used paperclips to hold the chicken wire in place, and it worked like a charm. Add a bowl sunk into the ground for a "pond" and a half-log Matt had left over from his reptile-keeping bachelor days, and it turned out to be a pretty nice, if small, turtle habitat.

Now before anybody reams me out for taking an animal out of the wild, let me say that I did take time out to check my conscience on that. My yard is surrounded on two sides by busy streets and on the other two sides by a big dog and a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant family who appears willing to eat just about anything that moves, so I didn't like her odds for survival once she left our yard. So we decided to keep her on a trial basis for a few weeks. Originally, I was thinking that if she didn't take well to being a pet, we'd drive her out to the country and release her, but now I can't stop imagining some bozo on a four-wheeler tearing through the countryside and ending her, so I'm thinking it would be better to see if the zoo or any local wildlife sanctuaries would take her. On the other hand, if she seems fine with the pet life, we'll build her a bigger habitat with plenty of room to roam. In the mean time, she pretty much just sleeps and eats in the little pen, and the rest of the time we let her roam around the yard or the house. Supervised, of course.

Since she literally walked into my life, I've been doing a lot of research on box turtles, and here is what I've learned:

• How to tell the sex of a turtle - her yellow eyes, shortish claws and convex bottom shell tell me that she's a she (you can also tell by looking under the tail, but I won't get into that here - this is a family blog).
• How to tell the approximate age of a turtle - this is the answer to the title riddle. Turtles have growth rings on their shells that you can count to get a good idea of their age. Going by this, she's 4-6 years old (a couple of the rings were faint enough that I wasn't sure whether they should be counted, hence the +/- 2 years margin of error). She'll live around 30 years, so it's a pretty major commitment if we decide to keep her.
• She's an ornate box turtle and as such won't get any bigger (her shell's about 4 inches long), and she needs a drier habitat than other turtle varieties.
• I have to feed her bugs, which is gross, and she particularly likes roly-polies, which is just sad. Hopefully I'll manage to get her outdoor habitat populated with enough of these that she can hunt them on her own and I won't have to feed them to her.

After spending some time with her, I've decided to call her Matilda (after trying on and rejecting Phoebe). This is her fourth day with is, and so far she's doing great. She's already used to us enough that she responds when we baby-talk her, she's totally over any initial fear she had of the other pets (although they're still pretty freaked out by this strange rock that can sprout legs and come after them), and she's taking food out of our hands. Well, out of tweezers, since she accidentally bit Matt hard enough to draw blood while snatching a roly-poly out of his fingers. At night we bring her inside and let her sleep in a heated terrarium,another left-over from Matt's pet reptile days. If we decide to keep her, we'll also build her a bigger indoor habitat in time for winter.

She's pretty neat, and I'm having a lot of fun with her. If we end up having to give her up to keep her happy, I'll definitely have to start saving my pennies to buy a captive-bred turtle. But she already seems to be getting pretty comfortable with the ridiculously pampered lifestyle that goes with being our pet. I have a feeling she's going to stick around for the long-haul.

***

In other news, I haven't blogged all week mainly because my tendonitis has been flaring up a lot lately, and I can't type for very long without pain. I've also been having to write a lot of eHow articles for Demand Studios to help make ends meet while business has slowed down for the summer, and that's pretty well pushing me beyond my pain tolerance threshold. Any time I can make for blogging is mainly going to my new Task Wrangler blog, and I'm only managing to post there once a week.

As a compromise to tide me over until my wrist quits acting up, I've started a Tumblr blog, "Falling In the In Between", meaning that if it's too big for Twitter but not really appropriate for here, it goes there.

And now I have to go write some more articles to make up for Wednesday's turtle-centric slackitude.

Weekend Lulz On a Weekday - Batdog Edition

My tendonitis has been flaring up big time lately and it hurts to type, so here's a pug that can say Batman.

Croutons

Notes from the Twitterverse to spice up this blog salad...

17:57 Cleaned up at used book store today. New (to me) @scalzi, @marjoriemliu and Tess Gerritson. I'd be reading all week if I didn't have 2 work. #

18:45 I should write some articles but my wrist is killing me. Numb fingers probably mean I should get off the computer for a while, right? #

13:10 Did a kickboxing workout DVD w/ my sister and it almost killed me dead. Ow, my thighs. #

13:16 Supposed to rain tomorrow. Must mow today, or else the lawn will swallow us up like Jordy Verrill. #

13:17 But first: must write articles until my wrist gives out. #a mwriting #

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Croutons

Notes from the Twitterverse to spice up this blog salad...

16:09 Today I blogged: Due Date - bit.ly/d8uyPI (sadness warning. Could be triggering if you've had to deal with miscarriage.) #

17:21 I need some music to write about algae-eating fish by. #

17:37 Punny! RT @taerin: @jmbauhaus Dr. Demento introduced me to this fishy song a very, very long time ago. :-) bit.ly/9WFItu #

17:42 Pretty & non-intrusive. Just right. Thanks! RT @taerin: @jmbauhaus Paul Winter (with whalesong) is also good: bit.ly/c79lgv #

19:23 Finished my fish article, which shouldn't have taken me this long. Fact-based articles are definitely not my favorite thing to write. #

19:26 RT @wilw: This is the best way I can think of to honor Sir Patrick Stewart, as we celebrate his birthday today: bit.ly/ciksHe #

21:58 Wrist is giving out. Time to call it a night. #

00:00 I'm cool with that: I write like Chuck Palahniuk. Proof: bit.ly/cmkFxB #

00:06 Now it says the sad thing I wrote today is like Douglas Adams. Um, okay? #

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