Bitchin’ Excuses: I honestly thought I would be phone-murdered by ghosts.

Now, any of my regular readers know that I make a lot of excuses for not writing, or doing anything else I’m supposed to, for that matter. A LOT. My personal favorites are generally “I can’t write because I have to (insert housewife duty)”, “I can’t (insert housewife duty) because I have to write”, and the old standby “Shut up, I’m watching my shows.” Because of this, I recently imposed a moratorium on excuses on this blog. I’ve decided to change my rule, however, from “No excuses, period” to “No excuses…unless I could write a mildly interesting anecdote about them. Also, they must be the legitimate reason I didn’t do X.”

Thus I present to you the Bitchin’ Excuses series, beginning with the following:

I didn’t post anything on this blog on Monday because I got some freaky phone calls and thus came to the logical conclusion that I was about to die.

Monday night I was settling down to write at about nine o’clock. I was planning on slapping together either a new bit of microfiction or a short piece on how characters can be subtly defined by their favorite alcoholic beverage; I wasn’t sure which just then. As I was deciding, I browsed my favorite comedy website, where I found this article. It was pounced upon with an “Ooo!”, as I enjoy creepy things.

About two sections in I got a phone call. The number came up as restricted, but I decided to answer anyway for some reason, probably a reflex conditioned by ten months of looking for a job. I was greeted with silence. I informed the caller that I couldn’t hear them, hung up, and went back to reading.

They called back immediately. I answered again, thinking they might have resolved their technical issues. Again, silence. I repeated what I had said before. They hung up, and I considered the matter resolved, if rather odd and unsettling.

Five minutes later, a third call.

This time I could hear choppy, distant voices, like a crowd chatting in the room where the caller was. Whoever actually held the phone, however, didn’t respond to my attempts to engage them. After a solid minute of listening to me try to keep calm while repeating “Hello? Is anyone there? I can’t hear you” over and over, they hung up.

At this point, I should probably mention that my favorite horror movie (i.e. the one I’ve seen 152,969 times) is the Japanese “Chakushin Ari”, or the original “One Missed Call”, and that I have such a strong tendency to avoid phones in general (caused by unrelated things; it’s a long story) that I use the following system with my best friend:

One call=pocket dial

One voice mail=pocket dial

Two calls in a row with no voicemail=”Call me back quickly, as it’s an emergency and I’m more than likely badly injured because there is literally no other reason I would call you.”

I don’t like phones.

So, I finished reading, went to the basement to tell my husband about the calls, and returned with a hatchet he bought at the local Renaissance Faire. I then seated myself on the couch where I could see both the front and back doors, turned on Code Monkeys to help myself relax, and waited for the phone demons/ghosts/serial killer to come for me. Blogging thoughts tend to take a back seat to “I hope it’s an ax-murderer, so we’ll be evenly matched”.

As discussed before, I have a habit of flipping the fuck out over nothing. However, when I freak out it usually involves hatchets, and it’s hard to type while holding one. I’ll not even go into the fact that my desk is less than strategically placed for not being ninja-murdered.

I promise I’ll have a real post for you next week, or sooner. In the meantime, what was your all-time best/most ridiculous excuse for slacking off?

The Secret to Shuttle Tatting: The Flip

I’m going to take a minute to rant about lace-making tutorials on YouTube, specifically those demonstrating shuttle tatting.

For the layman, shuttle tatting is a a technique for making lace by using two threads, one wrapped around the left hand and one connected to a shuttle manipulated by the right hand, to make a series of small, sliding knots.  It’s not the most common fiber art nowadays but it is, if I may say so, wicked super cool.  It’s also—and this is an important point to remember—almost impossible to learn without watching someone else do it first.

I learned from YouTube videos a while back, but I’ve not kept in practice.  Thus, when I decided to try a pattern I found, I ran into some trouble.  I couldn’t remember how to do something relatively simple: how to make a chain after a ring.  Either that makes no sense to you, or you’re too confused by my stupidity to even laugh.  Whichever.  Anyway, I turned back to YouTube for help.

Most of these videos follow the same format: how to thread the shuttle, how to make a knot, and then demonstrations of a ring (basic motif), chain (another such motif), a picot (little fiddly floofy bit), and sometimes a join (knot which brings motifs together). I was looking for one which showed a ring followed by a chain.  Simple enough, I thought.  I brought up the first video, watched for a few moments, and was surprised to see the tutor go through the hand motions of both halves of the knot and then straight on to the ring.  I stopped the video.

What the hell? She didn’t teach the flip! 

I was deeply confused.  Deciding not to trust someone who didn’t teach the most important part of the knot, I switched videos.  And then to another.  And another.  And another.

I went through about ten videos before I found one person teaching the flip.

Lemme splain: This is not some advanced, esoteric technique I’m talking about here; this is a tiny hand movement  without which absolutely nothing else will work ever. As I said before, the basis of the art is sliding knots.  In order to get the knots to slide, you have to slacken the tension in one thread and tense the other while tightening the knot, thus causing the knot to twist over to the other thread.  Thread A is looped around Thread B; you do the flip, and this reverses. If you don’t flip the knot, you can’t make a ring, or a chain, or a picot. You’ll never get far enough to even try a join.

I thought at first that maybe everyone else watching knew the flip like I did. The comments quickly dispelled this idea; for each video, probably half the comments were “but I can’t make it slide” and “what am I doing wrong”. My personal favorite was an individual complaining that they couldn’t get the knot to slide when it was on the “right” thread, but could when it was on the shuttle thread.  They had gotten it right, and thought they were doing it wrong.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are very few art forms where there is one simple trick that makes it all work.  Writing doesn’t have one, nor does painting or playing the guitar or knitting, though in the latter the Continental method is close.  Shuttle tatting does.  It’s one simple thing, and it is absolutely beyond me why anyone would fail to teach it, let alone 9 of 10 instructors.

For the love of heaven, if you can teach someone something that will make their life easier, do it. We only have so much time in our lives.

For your benefit, I present the one decent video. Whoever you are, lady, keep doing what you do.

The Dead Man in the Garden

Late last night I loaded up the Dakota with nonessential household stuff and drove down to a little pink house on the edge of the historic district.  My brother-in-law is in the process of moving out, and since my husband’s parents technically own the house we’ll be moving in.  Knowing no one is currently living there, I went to put some things in the basement.

So I parked in the alley behind the house, hopped out of the pickup, grabbed my guitar out of the passenger seat, and jostled open the back gate.  There I stopped.  Lying just beyond the shadow which the headlights of the truck threw off me was a figure half covered in snow and tangled in a large branch.  I could quite clearly see a boot twisted around the twigs and a pair of gloves outstretched toward me.  Startled, I froze.  It didn’t move.  Slowly, I shut the gate.

“A question for you,” I said when Pat picked up the phone.  “What’s the thing in John’s yard?”

“What thing?”

“The thing lying across the sidewalk that looks like a dead hobo.”

“Oh.  Dunno.  He had a Halloween decoration that was a scarecrow in riding clothes.”

“Probably it.  Thanks.”

Tentatively, I opened the gate again.  It hadn’t moved; of course it hadn’t, it was a dummy.  I should have known it wasn’t human.  Its position was rigid and while it was snowing, it wasn’t nearly cold enough to freeze a man stiff.  Still, I thought, looking at it.  Still, though.

And with that I, a grown woman with a husband, a child, a Bachelors degree, and a novel, shut the gate, got back in my truck, and pulled around to the front of the house.  I knew I would have to parallel park.  I knew that even at ten thirty on a Sunday night it would be a pain to unload while parked on a semi-major street.  I knew that I would now have to carry everything the length of the house to the basement by the back door.  I knew that all of this would add at least half an hour to my chore.

I didn’t care.  That thing was freaky.

It could be argued that Descent is, first and foremost, about death.  The protagonist dies three times during the course of the novel: once by inverted crucifixion, once by being stomped to death, and once by evisceration in a falling elevator.  Of course, she would have died regardless, being terminally ill to begin with.  I can write death, and I can do it gratuitously.  I can write gore.  If you put me in front of a weirdly posed dummy on a dark, quiet night with some spooky shadows, however, I cease to be V Rose Dahrke: Wanton Maimer of Characters and once again become Vikki, the junior librarian who always rushed past a certain aisle containing a book with a picture on the spine of what I swear I THOUGHT was a demon rabbit (it was, in fact, a shoe full of jewels.  In my defense, it was sideways), or even little Towie, who thought the scariest movie in the world was The Little Mermaid. Yes.  The Disney one.

Writing is a form of exorcism.  I’ve heard so many people say it so many different ways, usually appended with “for me”, that I’ve begun to believe it’s a universal rather than personal thing.  While I would have a difficult time pinning down a specific demon in this case and while I’m not entirely sure whether the phenomenon is correlation or causation, I do know for sure that I write disturbing things because I am at heart a ‘Fraidy Cat.

All Is Not As It Appears

To put if frankly, I’ve had a bitch of a day.

It turns out that the small argument between my Buick and a snow bank was not so small; what I thought was a slightly skewed alignment turned out to be twelve hundred dollars worth of damage.  Even stranger was getting a letter from my former bank informing me that I owed them a twenty dollar payment…for a credit line on an account I closed in December.  Third, and certainly not least, as I write this, my pizza is half an hour late.

While the first and third situations were lamentable, surely, there was a certain surreality to my conversation with the bank’s call center, a moment of wondering Did I dream it all?  Is this the turn in the film where I’ve gone mad or jumped dimensions or been set up by conspirators? I had several long minutes while on hold where I was forced to fear that I was helpless.

That, the helplessness of unreality, has given me something; it is, I think, the thematic link I’ve been missing in the scene which has given me so much trouble.  I find my protagonist- the unabashedly violent, pointlessly dramatic, and possibly insane Riga Far-fallen- matching wits with an enemy king, Fairsthag.  I know how the scene ends (and before you ask, I’ll inject a sing-song “that would be telling” into the conversation), and I know what I want to happen between now and then, but as far as motivations go I’ve been at a loss.  Something, something that he says, causes her to snap.  Theirs is a not-at-all-subtle power struggle and she ultimately has a piece of information which can destroy him.  However, she knows that if she uses it incorrectly or at the wrong moment it could be rendered useless, and if she uses it correctly it will probably result in her death.  She does, of course, blurt it out, but in a fit  rage, a final act of defiance to which she has been irrevocably driven.

But why?  What does he say to warrant it?

I have to change it up, change the rules engagement on her.  He has to say something which totally upends the game they’ve been playing all along and makes her realize that she has absolutely no other way of winning.

He has to stop playing.

Return to the Mushroom Farm

So, as you may or may not (but probably do) know, I moved into my current apartment back in March because several large mushrooms sprouted in my kid’s bedroom at my old apartment.  The shower in the bathroom had been leaking for some time and the water eventually ran under the wall and into the carpet of the bedroom.  Undetected, this water turned the area under her changing table/dresser into a swamp, causing mushrooms to sprout.

By the time we finally got maintenance in to look at it, the workman told us “This wall is probably all mold.  You want my advice?  Get out.  Get out now.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice.  I grew up with two asthmatics in my family, and we had to leave an apartment in South Korea due to multiple stories worth of black mold.  By the time we left, my youngest brother was having near-constant difficulty breathing.  Mold is not something I mess around with.  We found the mushrooms on a Wednesday; that Saturday we signed the lease on this apartment.

Needless to say, I don’t like water damage.  That’s why, when I noticed the frozen washer pipes on Tuesday, I called maintenance here immediately.  This was the second time this winter this had happened and, as anyone who lives in Colorado Springs knows, these past three days have been brutally cold.  I think Tuesday had a wind chill of -36 Fahrenheit.  Yeah.  Cold.  Last time I called them, they were able to warm the pipe again before it broke and everything was fine.

But Tuesday passed.

And Wednesday.

No maintenance.

I was annoyed that I couldn’t do laundry, but I wasn’t worried until this afternoon when, as I was writing in my bedroom, I heard my husband shout something.  The baby was napping, so all was clearly not optimal, but it wasn’t until he burst into the room, shouted “Get out here!” and pointed toward a hissing sound emanating from the living room that I realized what had happened.

Today’s high was 31 degrees.  The pipe, untreated and clearly broken, thawed, spewing water through the nearest vent.  My dining room, laundry room, and parts of my kitchen were all flooded.

So, here we are, three maintenance guys (who remarked that ours was the sixth unit they’d fixed a broken pipe in today), all of the towels, and a wet vac borrowed from Pat’s property manager dad later.  The carpet is still damp, the towels are only half-boiled, and as I stand in my kitchen in rolled up jeans, surveying the remains of disaster and seeking succor in my postprandial cup of tea, I realize that I, indeed, have miles to go before I sleep.

Once.  Once I’d like to live somewhere where fountains don’t spring from my walls.

If it ain’t broke…

If I ever, by chance, mention to you that I am thinking of changing out the ring in my daith, please demand of me a very, very good reason.

Now, when I first managed to convince the guy to do the piercing (he doesn’t like to do daiths, as they take forever to heal properly), he would only put in a curved barbell.  That was fine, until about a week later when the bottom bead popped off.  Should I have been checking it?  Of course.  Was this possible?  Not really.  For those of you who don’t have this particular piercing, I want you to imagine attempting to screw a peppercorn into the roof of your ear canal.  Your fingers are too big, and it is entirely impossible to see what you’re doing.  Of course, these same things made it impossible for me to replace the bead.  Pat was kind enough to attempt it for me, but after half an hour of heroic effort only managed to bruise my ear something terrible.

Now, of course all of this took place at 2:30 in the morning.

After a short drive to Wal-mart, I was able to acquire a circular barbell which had reachable beads.  Of course, this was about two weeks before my wedding, and the replacement ring had cones on it.  Not a big deal, but I just don’t see cones as something terribly formal.  Absurd, I know.  Nonetheless, I shortly thereafter obtained a segment ring and, after an hour and a half of wrangling, managed to get it in.

I have worn that one since.  I like it.  It’s subtle.  It never clashes, is never too flashy or too informal, and there are no beads to monitor.  However, two days ago for some reason I have yet to understand, I decided to replace it.   I think I had gotten it into my head that after a week at the hot springs it needed a good cleaning; I really have no idea.  I put in a circular barbell.  The bottom bead fell off, and I didn’t have time to fuss with it, so I replaced that in turn with a CBR which Pat was kind enough to join for me.  An hour ago, the bead fell out of that one.

Now I have my segment back in.  I’m not sure why I bothered to take it out, but I don’t think I’ll be doing it again any time soon.  I like how it looks, it’s easy to clean, easy to deal with, and never suddenly craps out on me, and, most importantly, perhaps, I’m capable of working it.