Category: Home Life

Fiendish Friday: I’m a Bitch

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 10 Comments

I’ve found myself explaining this more than once this week. People just laugh like they don’t quite believe me. But I know this about myself. I know it well. I’ve had lots of experience. The simple fact is I will fill a power vacuum. And the problem with that?

I’m a bitch. I rule with an iron fist. No matter how hard I try, I’m Stalin with a five year plan and god help you if you step out of line. I’m demanding. I’m exacting. I expect everyone to toe the line as the rules are written and you better be able to explain why you deviated. On the other hand if you deviate and can explain it, I’ll back you to hell freezes over.

You do the job and you do it right? I will take care of you. You do the job and make an honest mistake? I will take care of you. Have the universal donor blood and Red Cross is desperate, four hours paid time off to donate, not a question. Pregnant wife is sick, why are you talking to me, take care of her, everything here will get handled. Need to change your schedule to really off hours to pick up your kids every day. We’ll make it work. VP of Engineering is verbally abusing you. Walk out. I’ll explain it to him in terms he can understand.

But for all that benevolence, I am still a dictator. So I don’t take positions of power.

I am an excellent servant. Loyal. Creative. Organized.

Finally the pool board listened. I am NOT the new President. LOL. But I’m still a bitch. LOL

 

Fiendish Friday: Drama

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 4 Comments

I have been blessed to have the kind of life that lands you in a 12 step program. I won’t get into what triggered that but I will say this 12 step leads you to committee work. It also teaches you how to behave on a committee. I wish to god everyone had a flipping 12 step program.

I am on two boards right now. And while I was gone on vaca both boards had drama explosions the size of Mt Vesuvius. Hundreds of emails of back biting and bitching and moaning and complaining.

I have easily spent an 15 hours this week, probably more, listening to or reading people’s drama via email and text,  related to these two boards. All I really want to say is, it’s not personal. This is not about you. This is about providing service to a board that serves a community.

2016-05-10 10.57.45.jpg

 

I want to go back to my vacation desk.

I want to go back to that happy place where my son would rather go to Camp Carnival that demand my time.

Where solicitous men bring me yummy beverages with the slightest nod of my head.

Where the breeze is warm.

The water crystal clear.

My sense of peace reached idyllic heights.

And the ideas flowed unabated.

 

 

Can you blame me?

Predictive Goals Update

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

Still on vaca with the family. So here’s a little goals update (ha-ha) and some predictions regarding those goals…

Days spent in the pool: 9

Days spent in the ocean: 3

Drinks consumed per day on average: 2 (alcoholic and fruity)

Books read: 7 (including my own)

Words written: 12K

massages: 3

yoga: daily

Games of Dominion played: shoot me now levels.

Be home sooner or later. Miss you. Wish you were here. The lounger next to me is open on deck 12…just bring me a drink eh?

Raw Friday

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 13 Comments

No fiendish humor today just raw honesty. I was really grateful for the A to Z Challenge in April, I had a lot going on and it was nice to have that all taken care of. Then things got real.

My hubby woke up one Monday morning having lost the ability to see out of his right eye.

I’ll give that a minute to sink in.

He called the advice nurse who told him to go to the ER. We have a smallish kiddo so I dropped the hubs at the hospital door and drove on to the coop. Gotta maintain for the kiddo. The kiddo went to classes and I taught, conversed on coop business, and arranged play dates as though all was well.

All was not well.

Saw a specialist on Tuesday and turns out he as a branch retinal artery occlusion. The vision loss is permanent and luckily not a total in his right eye, he has peripheral vision. The not well part is this is not based in the eye, it has a cause in someone as young as my hubs and the list of possibilities run the gambit from the obscure and practically impossible in my hubs: sickle cell, to the grim and deadly: leukemia, lymphoma, blood clots in his neck, heart, or lungs, lupus…the list goes on to a stack 1/4 inch thick of pages.

More tests.

More waiting.

More time.

More fear. More fear. More fear.

And then finally, it was all ok. Total random occurrence. They can’t find anything wrong with him. All the results are normal. He can resume his life.

We’re on a cruise in Hawaii right now. Amazing how much dearer these family times become when you just almost lost your family.

My little man turns seven today

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 3 Comments

and in the time honored tradition of this blog (ok I did it last year so that makes this year a tradition right?) I present to you seven things that amaze me about my son.

  1. He is open about how he feels. Whether you are his best friend and he loves you sooo much or you’ve hurt his feelings and he doesn’t want to play with you right now, he’s open, honest, and vocal about it.
  2. We’re in southern California. We’ve just spent two really great days at Legoland. We have most of a third day to do whatever we like. I offer another amusement park. To which my son says “no, I need a quiet day. Can we go play mini golf?” Knowing what you need and being able to vocalize it, priceless.
  3. Despite his youth, he is already a more adept and efficient traveler than many adults we encounter who don’t understand “laptop in separate bin.” Lol. There’s the kiddo swinging his backpack into a bin, pushing it onto the conveyor, and going through the scanner without breaking stride.
  4. Compassion. He really wanted to go on this tower ride, AGAIN. I told him I didn’t want to go but he’s six and pretty bent on going with Mommy this time. So we go, it’s horrible and when we get off he tells me that I ruined it. I remind him I didn’t want to go and tell him I’m afraid of heights. He takes my hand and says “That’s OK mommy, I won’t tell any of your friends.” Compassion.
  5. Everybody loves him. Everyone. And that makes me look good. Enough said.
  6. For his birthday he asked for donations to Make a Wish and Foster Kids.
  7. If it were not for him, I would not be a writer.

Another year of great experiences to come…

Wednesday Lego Monsters 3/30

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 6 Comments

I’m not at cafe right now. In fact as this posts, I am flying home from Southern California, where I just spent a few days at Lego Land with the kiddo and some friends.

I kept bird dogging the weather in the weeks before our departure. I was so excited to see it was going to be mid 70’s and sunny. Yes! A few days basking in warmth was exactly what the doctor ordered. Only…yeah.

It wasn’t quite like that. LOL. Cold, windy, and reoccurring showers. Apparently I imported my local weather to Lego land.

But for all that we had a good time. The kiddo rode his first real roller coaster. Loved it!! Then I took him to Tappan for the first time. So fun introducing kids to new things.

Anyway, can’t wait to tell you all about norwescon in April a to z challenge.

Fiendish Friday: My taste in fictional men

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 10 Comments

I don’t remember exactly the situation, I do recall I was explaining to a friend why I preferred Michael Biehn from Aliens over Johnny Depp or Corey Haim, when the look on her face made me stop and wonder. I was still a kid, maybe eleven or twelve. I had just seen the movie for the first time and I was totally smitten. Sigh. But my friend’s face made it very clear that my criteria were bizarre to her.

After that I started keeping my rational for the fictional men I “fell in love” with to myself. No point in seeing that face again, so I just started shrugging when someone asked why. Over the years I have had school girl crushes on the following fictional characters…

A) the aforementioned Michael Biehn. Why? In Aliens when Sigornie Weaver has what amounts to an emotional break down for her and she says she can’t live if that thing lays eggs inside her and he says, “If it comes to that, I’ll do us both.” That’s it. That got my little eleven year old heart.

B) Matt Damon in Oceans 12, the nose. Oh mi god, the nose.

C)  Jeremy Renner, Neo Ned. He goes to prison and he’s so gleeful, he went to prison for killing a pedophile.

D) the one that brought this to the forefront of my mind, I was watching a rerun of CSI Miami, the club fire, I noticed when the fire breaks out, the girl Speed is dancing with follows him, all over the club as he tries to get them out. Some girl he barely knows, but she stays him, even though they clearly just met. While some girl Eric is sucking face with fights against him.  Which to me says, Speed gives off a trustworthy vibe. Suddenly I find myself thinking, he is rather attractive. LOL

Just few examples, the more bizarre ones, so to speak. What criteria do you use to pick your fictional heroes?

PS – for those of you now wondering about my husband, I am a practical woman at heart, I made a list of the 27 things I wanted in a life partner. The hubby meets them all.

In other words, he’s perfect and yes, he would kill me if I was going turn zombie.

PPS. Yeah for Norwescon! Check out the Clockwork Dragon table in the vendor room. You’ll find my book there if you do. And a lot of other high quality independent authors as well.

 

Fiendish Friday: Stubborn

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 13 Comments

When I was a baby I had this sheet that my mom would spread on the floor before she put me down for tummy time. I inherited it when I got older and on one corner is a picture of a cart driver trying to pull a mule, who has sat on his haunches, forward. Below the picture says T.A. is as stubborn as a mule. I know my mom thought she was being funny, but I think that picture actually programmed my little brain. Don’t want to do something, sit down, put my ears back, and wait it out.

Whenever someone encourages me too strongly to do something I resist. Examples you ask?

A) I had a boyfriend who was obsessed with the movie Bend it like Beckham. When he first brought it up to me, I was like, sounds fun we should watch it. Every time he talked about it though, I got a little more resistant to seeing the movie. Every “you have to watch this” made me more reluctant. Finally I flat out refused. After we broke up, I got a bottle of my favorite wine and watched it on netflix. LOL Pretty darn entertaining actually.

B) Someone once gave me a copy of Dan Brown’s the Davinci Code for Christmas with the note “Read this immediately so I can discuss it with you.” Um, what? You gave me work to do for you, for Christmas? My ass. Still haven’t read that book.

So when everyone and their brother started telling me I need to read Stephen King’s On Writing, you can imagine what happened. Ears went back. I really, really didn’t wanna uh.

Finally I gave in. I did. I read the book. It was actually quite good. I found it super amusing. I have some thoughts about some of his writing advice which I will share over the next few weeks.

Does this mean I am going to read Dan Brown’s book next? Laughing. Not on your life.

So what about you? Stubborn or pliable? Are you grateful when people try to force you into things or irritated?

 

Fiendish Friday: Ugling Ducklings and Swans

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 5 Comments

It seemed like a good time between reviewing Something Borrowed and Something Blue, by Emily Giffin to discuss ugly ducklings and swans. Rachel, from the books, is another character I identified with for some time. She was always less attractive that her best friend, by those markers that most people measure with. She had worked really hard to get to a job she hated but she was good at because she continued to work really hard. Could be the story of my life.

I had a stunning best friend. All those formative years when your self esteem is supposed to be built first at home and then by the reactions of your peers, I learned not nice messages about myself. I always thought I was unworthy.

Now when I was young I simply did everything for the friend without thinking about it because I loved her. In my twenties I got resentful. She was always taking everything I wanted. Everything. In my head I had changed the dynamic from me giving to her taking. Why the change?

We met a guy. And once we had his attention, I stepped back to let her have him. He wasn’t having it. And flat out told me he had no interest in her but that our dynamic was such that it was obvious who he was supposed to ask out. Huh. Really? It wasn’t just that she’s beautiful and I’m not? (FYI, I didn’t actually ask him that. I just started thinking about it.)

Later in my twenties I ran into a guy we went to school with and as we were talking it got round to him dating her. And he told me he asked her out because I begged him to. It was clear to him, I was never going to date him, when I asked him to take her out as a favor to me. huh.

So now pushing 40 I realize that so much of my reality in from 8-28 was colored by these early experiences. And how much of these early experiences were colored by my self imposed glasses. She never openly competed with me like Darcy does with Rachel in Something Borrowed. In fact I remember her getting mad at me in Junior High because I always let her have her own way about everything and she wanted me to grow a back bone. At the time I saw it as one more way I was lacking, now I see she loved me and wanted the best for me as well.

I am neither an ugly duckling or a swan. I am who I am. Which, at almost 40, is a mildly attractive house wife and mom who published her first novel last year. Also, oddly enough, about a woman trying to figure out her own reality from what she has told herself is the truth.

I’m likeable, LOL

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

Good morning friends in blogging land. This morning I got this little gem:

likeable-blog-1000-2x

Congrats on my 1000 likes.

That’s pretty darn cool.

I’ve been working like a mad woman lately on things not writing related because they were time sensitive. In fact, when I added it up, I averaged 2 hours a day this last week on the scheduling committee work. But another few weeks and it will be into maintenance mode I hope. sigh. And then I can spend those two hours on my blog, my WIP, and my reading. I suppose it might help if I wasn’t reading four books and once with a fifth I just picked up at the library calling my name. LOL. But that just wouldn’t be me.  Which clearly you all like.

Thanks for tuning in to read. Big hug and a kiss on the cheek (unless you’re European in which case two or three kisses on the cheeks).