Of everyone who got fired-- 12 at last count-- George was the first to be re-hired.

Finished Chapter One of the romance. Which is kind of a cheat since I had the first 15 pages already written when I decided to go back to writing romances. And now it looks like I won't be having surgery* I won't have all that recovery/forced writing time. Let's see if I still have the willpower to finish yet another romance.

Blogged on my blog. I was only going to take a week off but it ended up being more than 3. And I probably would have continued to not blog if two somebodies hadn't asked me when my next entry would be. Because one person asking, well that's just politeness. Two people, well that's a landslide mandate of epic proportions.

Made jewelry. Haven't been doing much of that. Today I made earrings and. . . something. It's a thing with some some in it. Really, I don't know what it is but it's for sure some type of jewelry.

Took pictures. That's been holding me up. I need to take more. It's funny-- I love taking pictures and I love writing but I hate doing it. That makes no sense but that's exactly how I feel about it.

Put items in both my Artfire and Etsy shops. Along with creating a new "storefront" on Artfire called Handmade Miscellany which will house all my crap that I don't know what it is.

Researched jobs and even found somewhere to send my resume. Which I did.

Plus I did the dishes and swept the kitchen and dining room.

You know, I could conquer the world if only I could get up early in the morning of my own volition.






*Surgeon said to repair the one knee would take at least two surgeries, maybe three plus over a year of intense rehab and the gain from all this would be minor. When the knee gets all hurty and swollen, put it up, get off of it and take anti-inflamatories. Oh and come back in 25 years or so so that the knee can be replaced.

Good Eat's Refrigerator Pie episode was on Food TV the other day. It looked so simple I had to make some. So I made two kinds. First I fried some bacon while I caramelized an onion. That went into one pie along with sharp cheddar. Then I fried up some baby spinach in the bacon fat with 4 crushed garlic cloves. That, along with some Gruyere, made 2 pies.

That made 3 9 inch pies between 3 people. I'm happy to report me, Dany and Justin did NOT eat a pie apiece. When we went to bed there was a spinach pie left with only one piece taken out.

Always when I wrote before, I wrote in spiral notebooks (except when I did it at work at WFS Financial many, many moons ago. There I stapled my allotted scrap paper into little booklets) in sloppy cursive and then transferred that into Word. I had hoped to skip the handwritten part this time around and type directly into the computer.

Nope. Not gonna happen. But I have filled the used spiral notebook I got from Ebony. There wasn't much paper in it since she used it for school and ripped out the used papers when she was done with it, but I filled it pretty quickly.

I have to say-- this wastes a whole lot of time. Why do I stare blankly at the computer when trying to write a first draft of a story? It's a weird, freaky thing.

Tried to make money selling jewelry. Found that I can make a few dollars but not enough. I make just enough to pay for the hobby plus maybe my monthly beer bill. I did an intense round of resume sending and on-line application filling immediately after being fired but laid off of that when I decided to see if I could sell jewelry.

I wanted to jump right in to resume and applications again but. . . Dany wants me to get my knees fixed. And, truth be told, my knees will probably kill me one day if I keep on not being able to use them correctly. They occasionally fail in doing their most important knee duty of keeping me upright and so I'll fall for no damned reason. I can only take stairs one at a time like a baby and, most importantly, the hurt like a bitch most of the time.

It doesn't seem like a particularly bright thing to do to go to a job interview, tell them I'll need a few months off for knee surgery and then limp away down the stairs one at a time.

Today my house is as clean as it is ever going to get after my eight day cleaning, scrubbing and throw-it-all-away binge. I mean I did the two bucket, hands and knees (well, not on my knees, sitting down on my ass) sort of floor scrubbing on all non-wood/carpet floors. I put the dishes in the dishwasher and sat at my computer. Now what?

During my cleaning binge I found one of my old series romance novel manuscripts. Well, the first chapters of three would-be romance novels that I had sent to a professional editor waaaaaay back 15 or so years ago. By the time I had got it back I was already working at my first financial service job and didn't have time to deal with it. Well, I got plenty of time now!

So, when Ebony came down stairs today she found me with Word open pounding away.

"Are you writing again?"
"Looks like."
"Yay!"

Really. She said "Yay!" It's stupid how happy that made me.

Anyways, I had three loosely related stories of the series romance type floating around in my head. One all the way written, one half written and one with snippets written but the whole deal outlined in my head.

I'm reading through what the editor I paid said and boy, do I have formatting problems. I had read up on this and thought I had it right. But nope. And the not-copy editing part of the editing was, well, edifying!

It seems the editor had very few problems with the first chapter (the one that came from the completed book), quite a few problems with the second chapter (the half-way finished one) siting things such as "you didn't think this through" and "where did this come from?" and the third she wrote "this is not ready for editing". This woman had done this a few times knew exactly what kind of crap I had sent her.

So. . . 150,000 words. Think I can get that done while I get my knee done?

New York in the '50s looks exactly like NY now except everyone was much better dressed. Even the poor people in dirty clothes have nicer dirty clothes than the poor people today.

The IT woman is stuffing envelopes. The Big Kahuna went to the second site to complain about not having IT at the main office for a problem they were having over there. Head Mailroom Guy (who, along with Tom Terrific runs the second site) told him, "You shouldn't have fired everybody then." He did it in front of everybody. Even the temps. That's how I know.

Wannabe Gangsta (not fired. I KNOW!) was home on vacation. They called him and told him that he needed to come in. He refused. Then they told him they'd pay him double time-- or he could join the fired. He came in and bitched, bitched, bitched. Last night, they all had to do overtime but come 8 o'clock, only black people were there stuffing envelopes. He stormed into Tom Terrific's office, "Everybody you fucking fired was black except for two people but somehow there are only black people here stuffing envelopes. Why you ain't stuffing envelopes, Tom? You too white?"

Justin says it's funny how they didn't threaten the remaining (white) claims examiners with their jobs for not staying to stuff. I guess it's a black people kind of job.

I cannot keep a house. I am a filthy slob and I have no idea of what is involved in housekeeping. So, I'm cleaning and I say, I'll clean the computer nook- should take maybe a half an hour. But then I pick up one thing and notice 10 things under/behind/hidden by the one thing. It's like pulling a thread-- my whole house unravels.

The half hour clean up of the computer nook has lasted 3 hours and counting. And it looks 10 times worse than it did when I started. It doesn't help that I can not bend my knees. Stupid fucking knees.

We've been here at our house for 5 years and there are family members who have never visited. The brother and sister of the cousin who has been over twice have insisted themselves over the day after Christmas. The problem? There is no way I can get this house in visitor shape by then.

Maybe if my knees were working and I could bend OR if any of the other 3 people who live here would pitch in OR if I was as strong as a regular person and able to lift and move heavy things, then it would be within the realm of possibility. As it stands, no way, no how.


Dany says I nag him and I do. I have to because he's a lazy motherfucker who won't do a damn thing unless browbeaten into it. He, of course, disagrees. On Halloween I asked him to please remove the air conditioners from the bedrooms. He said, "Sure, during the weekend." The weekend came and went and the air conditioners were not removed.

"When are you going to take the damn air conditioners out of the windows?" I nagged.
"Oh my God! Don't start! I said I was going to do it and I will!"

So I started an experiment.I was not going to nag. This was the first week of November. The air conditioners are still in the windows.

Justin was home before 11. Only 2 laid off people (sane manager and her son) and 5 not laid off people came, including Justin. And of those 7 people, 5 are teetotalers. I think this was called too soon. When it was only me who was fired, everybody felt bad for me and that was it. With this massive lay-off everyone--fired or not-- is scared and angry and not in a spend-a-bunch-of-money-getting-drunk-and-partying mood.