Random Acts of Silliness

The house is shaking! Earthquake! Leap from chair and run around in circles.

Oh. Wait. It's just the washing machine on the spin cycle.

Return to computer. Feel stupid.

P.S. More silliness: I was writing tags for this post, and I wrote "washington machine" by accident. Made me laugh, as I live in Washington State.

Learn and Grow

There's nothing worse than starting a blog, and then not being consistent in posting. If you expect followers to read your posts, they must be frequent and interesting and sometimes interactive. I've failed on all counts due to a heavy (read impossible) workload). So, apologies to the few loyal readers who check in every so often. I'll do better.

Why do I edit? What makes me think I can make a living as a freelance editor? Well, I love to edit. I can't explain it. As a kid, I used to delight in finding typos in books and newspapers. I think it must be an inferiority/superiority complex. *g*

But when it comes right down to it, I'm a natural nurturer, and helping fledgling writers makes me feel happy and worthy of existing on this planet earth and inhaling my share of oxygen. I love coaching writers, educating them, expanding their writing horizons. I love when they suddenly "get it." I love seeing their writing become better and better. And I especially love when they say, "I couldn't have done it without you."

I can't make a decent living at this job. It doesn't pay me very well. But it is satisfying, and I get to work from home and be my own boss and have my dog under the desk and my cats snoozing on top of the desk. And I have other clients who are published and don't need coaching, but they also give me the fun jobs like writing their newsletters and designing their bookmarks and setting up a mailing list database.

I get all my work from referrals from existing clients, so I must be doing something right. I have become friends with many of my clients. And I have been forced to grow, to learn new things, because I have to keep up with my clients. So, as I teach my clients, they teach me. Learning and growing--we help each other and we enrich each other's lives. And isn't that what life is all about?

Bad Handwriting

I just finished a job inputting an editor's edits into a client's manuscript. The editor had the worst handwriting I've ever seen. It was a real challenge interpreting her handwriting, and often I had to use intuition. What's more, her erasures were incomplete, so that when she wrote over the erasure, the bleedthrough from the erased bit made it very difficult to read the new text.

She also used pencil, and a dull one at that. After working on a computer all day, my eyes are tired. Trying to squint at bad handwriting written with a dull pencil just kills my eyes. At times, I had to put drops in my eyes and keep them closed for 15 minutes in order to continue. I also put a high-watt lightbulb in my desk lamp to help me read the handwriting better.

I think there are some jobs that one should have the courage to say to the client, "Because of the intense difficulty of this job, I will need to increase my rates." I've never worked so hard on a job. Toward the end, I was putting in 15- and 20-hour days. My eyes are still bloodshot.

But the worst of the job is done, and now I'm inputting line edits by the same editor. The handwriting is still bad, but the line edits are fewer than the original batch of edits. One must be thankful for small bits of happiness whenever they pop up. *g*

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It's raining and sleeting, and the temperature is reeeeeally cold! Yesterday we had a brief spate of brilliant sun, despite the cold. You could hear doors open all through the neighborhood as pasty-complexioned people ran outside to stand in the sun. My horse, who spends most of his time snuggled down in his clean, dry stall, actually poked his head out, then went down to the pasture to see if the grass was growing yet.

I am so ready for spring!

Mercy Me!

Hello, peeps! Long time, no see. I guess Blogger doesn't like me anymore, because it has suddenly decided that I am an illegal alien. In other words, I have not been able to access my blog! How rude is that, I ask you?

So I experimented and played around and found a way to trick The Powers That Be, and finally managed to get in. What a waste of time!

For the past 6 weeks I've been invovled in an incredibly stressful job. Big client, horrendous deadline, many parties involved, but we made it. The stress nearly did me in. Who'd have thought being a freelance editor would be so stressful?!! Have been putting in 15 and 20 hour days, and I'm looking forward to relaxing and getting my life back to normal.

So this is just a quick howdy to explain why I have been so quiet. If you never hear from me again, it's because Blogger black-balled me. (What did I ever do to them, I ask you!)

Sherrie

On the Fly . . .

I've been so buried in work, with not a moment to myself. For the time being, I'm going to direct you to my Twitter account, where I write a very short (1-3 sentence) daily post. It's not much, but it will keep you posted on my scintillating, fascinating, amazing life. ~Sherrie

Blog Hog

Hello, peeps! Blogger has eaten my posts twice, and like an idjit I'd composed them in Blogger instead of in Notepad. Thus, my creative efforts were lost forever. I'll try to do another post sometime in the coming week, and let's hope this time it sticks! ~Sherrie

Movie In My Head

I just finished watching Cinderella Man, starring Russell Crowe (the man with the velvet voice) and Renee Zellweger. It was a great movie, and it inspired me with ideas for about ten million new stories I want to start writing this very minute.

I'm a very visual person. When I write, I envision the scenes like a movie playing in my head. When I play out the scene in my head, I often stop to visualize camera placement, lighting, sound effects. Each element clicks into place like pieces of a puzzle, and then the scene and actors are set, and my fingers start flying.

I often wonder if readers do the same thing. When I read a book, my internal movie is always running. How about you? Do you visualize as you read, like a movie in your head? Or is it the actual words that do it for you? How do you experience a book?

Living Frugally

I just read a blog by a young man who'd spent several years depleting his bank account with extravagant spending. He had an epiphany and decided all of a sudden to go Extremely Frugal. He made a list of the things he's being frugal about: never eating out, buying food in bulk, riding his bicycle instead of driving the car, etc.

Bless him for his efforts, but he's missing the boat. I speak with knowledge on this subject, because I know how to live frugally where it counts. This young man didn't list the more obvious (and green) things one can do to live frugally, such as lowering the thermostat on the furnace, combining errands during an outing, taking shorter showers, drying one's clothes on a clothesline in the summer and a wooden clothesrack in the winter. (If you like your towels fluffy, toss them in the dryer for 5 minutes, first.)

By turning my thermostat down and being frugal in the use of electrical appliances, I have lowered my energy consumption by 29%. By growing my own fruits and vegetables, I have lowered my grocery bill. I carpool to my weekly writers' critique group with a fellow writer.

And I recycle like crazy. In fact, I only have to go to the dump with "real" garbage a couple times a year because I recycle the rest and burn my paper trash. The real garbage comprises one or two brown paper grocery bags per year.

Are you frugal? What are you doing, frugal-wise, that has made a difference in your life? Please feel welcome to list any tips!

Nostalgia #6

Long, long ago, when I was a kid, going to the garbage dump used to be an eagerly anticipated family event. Back then, the dump attendants didn't mind if you plowed through piles of garbage looking for cool stuff. To us kids, going to the dump was like a massive treasure hunt.
There were the regulars, too, people who went to the dump on a routine basis, looking for things they could take home and fix up for personal use or to sell. They collected broken lamps, tricycles, clothing, chairs, hubcaps, knick-knacks, record albums . . . you name it. It's astonishing the amount of stuff people threw away that had nothing wrong with it.

There aren't that many open-air, dump-on-the-ground, garbage dumps left, and that's a good thing. Nowadays the handling of garbage has gone high-tech. For one thing, recycling has helped reduce the amount of garbage thrown away each year. Many dumps have been turned into solid waste transfer stations, where garbage is hauled away. Sanitary landfills now have liners to prevent contamination of ground water. They have systems to collect the methane gas generated by rotting garbage. Liquid leachate is collected and sprayed back onto the garbage to hasten decomposing. Some landfills use gigantic 59-ton trash compactors. Others incinerate their trash. Still others bury garbage with tons of dirt, compressing the garbage so much that they gain an extra 30-40 feet of depth when they scrape off the dirt 6 months later to add more garbage.

New York City produces 25,000 tons of garbage every day, which they send to other states and cities. Americans produce 330 million tons of garbage every year. Thankfully, people are becoming more diligent about recycling. Now that I recycle, I only have to go to the dump once or twice a year, with a brown grocery bag full of unrecyclable/unburnable trash. The rest is recycled. And while I love the idea of being a greenie, I have to confess to a nostalgic longing for the fun and excitement of the garbage dump days of my childhood. Which is probably why I still love flea markets and garage sales.

What about you? As a kid did you know your garbage men? Did you ever go to the dump? Did you ever remove a treasured something from the garbage that your mom had thrown away?

Big Brother is Watching You!

Taking another break from the nostalgia series to tell you about a funny that just happened. I am looking for pricing on new windows, to get an idea what it would cost to replace my old single pane jobs. I Googled "window prices" and came up with a least a trillion hits. So I clicked on the Home Depot link and suddenly this man in a Home Depot shirt pops up on my screen and starts talking to me about windows. It was REALLY startling, because he was looking right at me and chatting in a chummy way, and there I was sitting in my chair in front of him . . . buck naked and trying hastily to cover myself. Yes, I know he couldn't really see me, but it was still a shock when he suddenly appeared and started talking! Here's the link if you'd like to see what I mean: http://tinyurl.com/373oh3

I think I've become paranoid because of all the companies that use hidden surveillance devices. I didn't realize how widespread it was until I got hooked on YouTube and saw all those video clips from surveillance cameras. Most of them were funny or alarming, of the bungled bank robbery or high-speed car chase variety.

But it has become evident that Big Brother is out there, and you'd best not pick your nose or scratch your butt when you think no one can see, because chances are, there's a surveillance camera recording it. They're everywhere: restrooms, shopping malls, ATM machines, fitting rooms, gyms, taxis, nursing homes, you name it. If you don't believe me, go to YouTube and check out all the video clips from surveillance cameras.

Certainly they have a place in this day and age of terrorism, theft, and other nefarious deeds. For instance, surveillance cameras were instrumental in identifying Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing. Surveillance videos can help the public identify criminals when they are broadcast on news stations.

Where things get dicey is when the person monitoring a surveillance camera abuses the position. A JC Penney store manager sued her employer when she discovered that male employees monitoring a camera zoomed in on her breasts, and then shared the pictures with their friends. I read a recent article by a man who discovered naked pictures of himself on the Internet. He'd been showering at the YMCA, and the person monitoring the surveillance camera posted the pictures on the Internet.

Have you ever found yourself monitored when you didn't expect it? What do you think about grocery stores that show a TV monitor where you can watch yourself entering the store? How do you feel about Big Brother?

Nostalgia #5

Lesley's comment to Nostalgia #4 reminded me of the time I fell down the stairs as a teen. It was the only time I ever told my mother to shut up and lived to tell of it.

We lived in an old Craftsman style house with a long and steep set of wooden stairs leading up to the attic bedroom I shared with my sister. As I started down the stairs one day, I missed my footing and sat down with a thud. I immediately made a rapid descent, shooting down the stairs on my butt. Bump-bump-bump-bumpbumpbumpbumpbump ...

I landed unhurt in an ignominius heap at the bottom of the steps, where my mom had witnessed the entire episode. All she could do was laugh and sputter like a hyena. When she asked me if I enjoyed my ride, I gathered all my teenaged dignity about me and said, "Shut up!" and stormed to the bathroom to massage my wounded posterior.

At the time, I was too embarrassed to see the humor in the situation, and I resented my mother's obvious glee. I got over it fast, however. Not too long after that, my brother did the same thing, and I was right there at the bottom of the steps to laugh with everyone else.

Do you have an embarrassing childhood memory, one that perhaps haunts you to this very day?

Baboon Butt

We interrupt this nostalgia series to bring you this important announcement: Sherrie Holmes has baboon butt. Sherrie Holmes is not a happy camper. Sherrie Holmes is in PAIN!

Yes, I have a flaming red backside and backs of my thighs, thanks to 6.5 hours scooting around on the wet roof on my butt. I was scraping off moss with a screwdriver and broom, then wetting down the roof with the garden hose and broadcasting Tide laundry detergent over the entire surface. (Tide is an excellent moss control for roofs)

Unfortunately, I discovered that scooting around on a wet composition roof (think sandpaper) makes your jeans very wet. And scooting around on a wet roof in wet jeans while grinding laundry detergent into the tender nether regions gives you a painful (very painful!) detergent burn on baby-tender skin.

I am typing this standing up. I cannot sit down. The skin is raw and weeping in places. I tried putting soothing Lubriderm Advanced Therapy hand lotion on the inflamed skin, and all it did was make me do the Mexican Hat Dance. Talk about sting! I looked at the ingredients on the lotion bottle. First ingredient - water. Second ingredient - ALCOHOL!

So now I'm walking spraddle-legged in my undies because I can't bear anything to touch my skin. And I have a flaming red baboon butt and flaming red thighs, plus a flaming red calf on one leg for good measure. I'm too old for this. I'm going to bed, since I can't sit.

Have you ever done anything stupid like this? I would dearly love to know I'm not the only one who does stuff like this.

Nostalgia #4

One of my most nostalgic childhood memories was when my sister Lori and I used to go for what we called Walks. These weren't ordinary walks. When we said we were going for a Walk (capital W), it meant we'd be gone for hours, exploring the woods and different neighborhoods, picking blackberries, admiring pretty houses, and talking about our dreams. I always took my turquoise Instamatic camera or a sketch book. We walked everywhere, and never worried about boogeymen. Nowadays, no right-thinking mother would let her adolescent daughters go for walks in strange neighborhoods and be gone for hours.

The worst that happened was the time my sister and I were picking blackberries on a little bluff that overhung a large, briar-filled gully. I leaned out too far trying to reach some plump berries in the briars, and fell face-first and spread-eagled on top of the huge briar patch. Despite being suspended 15-20 feet above the ground by painfully wicked briars, my sister and I got the giggles at the sheer idiocy of the situation. Besides, I looked funny spraddled out on the briars.

Lori was able to push a flat board across the briars and I managed to ooze my body onto it. Then I inched backwards to safety along the board, poked full of a million holes. Had I taken a drink of water just then, I'm sure I would have sprung a dozen leaks.

What kind of favorite nostalgic memory do you have? Did you ever do something idiotic as a child? (What child hasn't!) Tell us!

Nostalgia #3

Today I had a blast doing the sister thing. My sister Lori and I spent the day making and baking. I made a corned beef hash casserole and she made a zucchini casserole. I made squash bread and she made salsa. We sliced and diced and laughed and reminisced. It was quality time. And it fits right in with my Nostalgia Series, because what we did today was build memories.

And boy, were we tired! After spending all day working in the kitchen, we were too tired to bake the chocolate chip cookies at the end of the day. We divvied everything up--each of us getting 2 casseroles, squash bread, salsa, and cookie dough.

I'm sitting here at 10:30 at night, full of good food and happy memories. Do you have happy family memories? Are there certain meals you fix that make you nostalgic? Perhaps it was a meal you loved as a child. My favorite nostalgia meal is meatloaf and scalloped potatoes. Comfort food. What's your comfort food?