Where Does the Carpal Tunnel Go?

Ooh. Weird! Where did that week go?

I didn't even get any significant knitting done - about two inches of sock, maybe (although I got a lot of decreasing done on the toe). And that's it. No wonder I'm cranky and out of sorts!

On the other hand, other than working on my case of carpal tunnel, I've given myself over entirely to the Vampire's (temporary) career. We work on his song. We go to his lessons and work on his song. We grocery shop and eat (we still have to keep body and soul together, of course... think how bad his singing would be without the soul!) and I type, and occasionally I go to bed and get a bit of sleep (not often enough). We talk to publicists and we talk to people about hair. And then we work on the singing a bit more.

Occasionally we do other stuff. Academics, occasionally. At other times we do something crazy and unexpected. Yesterday we locked ourselves out of the car at the gas station, and had to wait until the Vampire could walk home and burglarize our house for the spare set of keys.

Good times...

In the meantime, you can always read the Vampire's blog. He's sneaking up to the computer on the rare occasion that I stumble away from the keyboard in order to have a nice cry and ice my wrists.

Enjoy!

Which Life Would You Choose?

Today's plans:

Me - type, cook, type, chauffeur, wait (knit?), chauffeur, cook & eat, type, eat, chauffeur, type

Pirate - cook & eat, bus, work, lunch, work, bike, grocery shop, chauffeur, cook & eat

Vampire - eat, improv auditions, eat, singing practice, eat, nap, eat, play rehearsal

The Cat - nap, eat, nap, demand some petting, nap

Get A Life... Take Mine, For Instance

I think I'm permanently welded to my 'office chair' now. I'm afraid to get up - the chair might come with me, riding along on my butt like some black leather leech out of "African Queen". And Katherine Hepburn isn't here to help me.

It feels like I've been here forever. It was okay when it was fishing lodge stories, I can handle that. But now it's transcript after transcript of lawyers - and worse, legal publication salesmen - blathering on and on about which is more accessible and useful: print or electronic information? Even more fascinating are the matters of storage and updating and access and blahblahblah until I want to decapitate myself with a legal pad. Or smash my head in with Black's Law Dictionary.

What's worse, the Vampire is all excited, because HIS career is doing just dandy, thank you. It's not currently a paid career - but it's loads of fun for him, and good experience for the portfolio. So we're heading into territory where conversations in our house will go as follows:

Me: Gawd, I'm exhausted. I just typed "hempeerdfplwx." I think my hands are going to fall off. I wish they would...

V: Want to do something different? I need a ride to the radio station, they want an interview.

Me: I would, but I can't see, everything's blurry. What are those blinky lights, floating around? I need new eyes, these ones suck.

V: Could you get off the internet? I need to call my publicist.

Me: Sure. I'll go take a nap. I'll trade it in for the hour of sleep I was planning to get tonight. Which way is my bedroom? I can't remember...

V: I need to go to the hair salon, too. They're going to televise me getting my hair cut.

Me: Shut up.

I'd tell you more about it, but I've got to go listen to this paralegal. She has something to tell me about filing treatise updates.

Plea for Help

Please, please, PLEASE do us a huge favor, and tell everyone who might be the least bit interested that you know someone who is auditioning for American Idol - and send them/give them the address for the Vampire's blog ( http://amidle.blogspot.com/ ). He is working so hard on this, and it would give him a huge boost to know he has support behind him other than his predictably doting mum.

All comments and visits appreciated, no matter how small.

Thank you for your time and attention. We now return you to your regular programming.

More Confessions

~ I have no idea how long it's been since we took our ironing board down. It is starting to look like a permanent fixture between the table and the hutch. The guys have taken to using it as a sideboard for dishes/pots that are hot. This is not a classy thing.

~ The Vampire and I had an argument the other day about when the latest is that we'd ever taken down the Christmas Tree. This is because we had noticed that I have a 'picture hat' sitting upside down on the buffet, decoratively filled with tree ornaments. Because, you know, taking them up to the attic would have been too cold last February. And then it was too hot to take them up in June. I am ignoring the existance of May.

~ We haven't gone to a movie in three weeks, and we went through a gap of more than a month before that. The Vampire has been having spells of dizziness the past few days - I think it's withdrawal symptoms, due to not having yet seen Talladega Nights (not that we would have gone to that in any case), Miami Vice, Descent, Step Up, World Trade Center (we normally would have seen at least two of these), and to our not being likely to see Accepted, Snakes On A Plane, or the Illusionist (the last being the only one his boring parents would have normally taken him to, if they weren't tied to their desks and his lesson/practice schedule).

~ I should be working right now. I'm procrastinating. I live on the Edge.

~ We didn't start watching Boston Legal until now. Now we are watching it on dvd, and we are hooked. The Pirate is starting to get turned on if I sneak up behind him and whisper "Denny Crane!" in his ear.

~ I got some putative cat treats a while back that are freeze-dried shrimp dusted with catnip. The Cat can't be bothered. But they are shrimp, so I can't just throw them away. I am trying to think of a clever Craft Item that I could make with them. Perhaps I should glue them artistically on a cleaned tuna can, glue some fabric inside and call it an Earring Box? Would anyone buy it at a rummage sale?

~ I am a sock knitter in a house full of men who either lose or destroy socks within days of receiving them. This is *definitely* a case of casting pearls before swine (sorry, Pirate... that's not a reflection on your personality, which is lovely). I gave a pair to my dearest friend... and she won't wear them because she doesn't want to damage them. Futility, thy name is Me.

~ But I keep making them, anyway. Because, you know, they are socks.

~ I made up a Pad Thai recipe. It's good, and we eat way too much of it when we can. Does that mean that it's actually Pad Eileen?

Confession

Okay, how sad is this?

All morning long I've occasionally been distracted by a scritching sound, which suspiciously resembles the sound the Vampire's pet rats used to make when they were shredding paper (we used to seal treats in an envelope and watch them chew their way through - our pleasures are simple ones). This has happened - oh, perhaps 30 times so far today. And every single time I've looked up, this sound has turned out to be a piece of gift-wrapping paper that is sitting on a nearby table, which is being blown about by the fan and making the scritching noise as it hits its edges together upon folding in on itself.

The noise is very irritating, as is the interruption when I forget (again) what is making that noise and look up from my catch-up blog reading.

Yet it hasn't inspired me to travel the four or so feet necessary to take care of the problem by either weighting the stupid thing down or (and here's a really clever idea) putting the damned thing away where it belongs.

I mean, I could literally roll over there on my office chair with no effort whatsoever, seeing as we have hardwood floors, and stick something on it. The binoculars, for instance, which for some unknown reason are sitting on the table right next to the wrapping paper.

Here's the sad part: I'd rather stay here and write about it than get up the energy to roll a few feet - let alone get on my feet and take care of the issue once and for all. I am feeling that lazy.

What's more, I'm going to go back to reading my favorite blogs. And in the next hour I will look up to see what is scritching AT LEAST six more times...

Rising for Air

The problem with my work is that it's extremely irregular. So I go for days, or weeks, and once for months, without getting any work... and then suddenly I am inundated, and for days or weeks can't even stop working to get more than a catnap and/or a bite to eat.

I'm in 'feast' mode now, after a long 'famine', so I haven't had time to do Non Survival oriented things - like blogging, sleep, or changing into clothing I would open our door in (I'm definitely the Work In PJ's type - why change into clothes that I'd wreck when I fell into the occasional 1-hour coma?)

This may last a week (it's already been a week, actually). It may last a month. I don't know. The poor Kid hopes it won't last too long - the Idol auditions are in less than a month, and he needs me to help him with practical matters (like getting hold of sheet music, driving him to his distant voice lessons, cooking the occasional meal so that he doesn't expire, etc).

My work also monopolizes the computer, so that it's difficult for other people (the Kid) to get at it if they should need it for research or blogging, themselves. Life is a Vale of Tears.

I offer my apologies to both Readers and Kid for my neglect. Unfortunately, apologies don't mean I will change my evil ways. But I will do the best I can to come up for air once in a while - in hopes that when I do, I will find that you are still there.

The Kid ran in ahead of me in order to get his own Blogging Time in. Read of his adventures here.

American Idle... err, Idol

The Vampire has set up a blog to chronicle his shot at fame and... well, just fame. Fame of the 'everyone has 15 minutes of fame' sort. We don't even think about the Fortune part of the old cliche - in the same way that we don't think about taking a vacation on the moon, or building a full size model of the Taj Mahal in our back yard. We're a bit silly at times for fun, but we're not really foolish people, for the most part.

In any case, the Vampire has a blog, and he wants me to invite you all to visit him once in a while - it never hurts to have a Fan Base, after all. He's working hard, and the only reward he's likely to get is this audience here. But we think you are a darned nifty reward, audience-wise, so he's already feeling lucky!

We look forward to seeing you there (I'll be right there in the Comment section, of course)!

News From Home

Yes, it HAS been an entire week since I last wrote. Quite frankly, I wasn't up to blogging - and if you've been anywhere north of the equator this past week, you'll understand why it is significant that WE DON'T HAVE AIR CONDITIONING.

The Vampire and I spent much of our days last week annoying bookstore and fast food restaurant employees by hanging about their establishments for hours at a time. On one hand, we did purchase things (cold beverages, at the least). On the other hand, we rendered ourselves obnoxious by playing interminable games of Scrabble during which we entertained ourselves by lodging indignant accusations of cheating and immediately following them up with propositions of increasingly improbable and/or potentially rude words of questionable origin: "'catacking', it's a fractious gerund. It's what your cat does when you are trying to take a tic off it during the summer and you're wearing shorts and it scrabbles to get away and gives you huge bloody scratches down your leg. Really!"

We spent the evenings back at the sauna that used to be our home, trying to convince ourselves that the air moving outwards from our fans was doing more than just nudging the beads of sweat around in such a way that they'd thoughtfully spell 'Slippery When Wet' for the benefit of the rescue workers when they arrived (too late).

You will be either amazed and impressed, or dubious and concerned, when I report that the Pirate biked from downtown Minneapolis to Frogtown in St. Paul every day last week. He said he LIKED it. I think he just likes feeling justified in standing outside and dumping cold buckets of water from the spigot over himself. He's just a big kid at heart...

The one thing we DID accomplish last week is to work out our study schedule for the coming six weeks. Which, not entirely by coincidence, happens to be the amount of time between last week and the time that the American Idol auditions will be held in the Twin Cities.

The Vampire has decided that even though he has very little chance of even making it to the Randy/Paula/Simon auditions, he is going to audition. He is doing this for a couple reasons:

a) He might make it to the auditions in front of the producers, in which case he might get some valuable criticism (hopefully constructive, but if not it will at least be practice for dealing with hecklers). He wants to be a performer, and performers need to audition - as with anything else, the more you practice the better you get.

b) He will probably meet lots of people while waiting in line, and hopes to convince a few to join him in growing hair for the Beautiful Lengths program. The Vampire is an inch or two from his goal length - he wants to still have some length to his hair after it is cut. This is a wonderful way to do something good for others, and it costs nothing.

I'm very proud of my kid. Wish him luck, please... it's not easy to risk rejection, and certainly not easy to risk being exposed to the sort of ridicule to which some of the Idol contestants are subjected. Even harder to go into the situation knowing that his youth and relative inexperience nearly guarantee early rejection. But as he says, "The only thing that's absolutely sure is that if you don't try, the chances are 100% that you're going to fail to reach your goal."

Really, don't you wish you were related to him?