Dead-End Posts and Decking the Halls

Does any other blogger have this happen? You’re in the midst of a writing a blog post and suddenly it dies. Wherever the post was going originally, it took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. And the post lies like a dead cockroach in the middle of the living room floor. And you stare at the “cockroach” wondering if you should ignore it and hope your husband removes the carcass or get the broom and dust pan.

(In case you’re wondering, we do get the occasional dead roach body—my husband did pest control when he was in grad school, so he knows how to kill bugs other than to spray Raid. But it involves boric acid and wall joints, which “kills bug dead.” But when the weather gets cold and the bugs want a warmer place to live they crawl through the boric acid and die on the floor.)

Back to blog posts. I’ve never had a novel or short story die. But blog posts do. And usually they defy resurrection.

How do I cope? I usually yell out, “Who’s done something funny this week?” And everyone scowls at me. They don’t think they’re particularly funny.

According to the family, nothing funny has happened lately. Of course, there’s the Christmas music incident. Matthew wants to listen to Christmas music once school starts again. I do not. Really, really do not. Christmas music is under the ban until Thanksgiving is over—by January I’m ready to bang Rudolph against the wall. (Though I may make an occasional exception for Straight No Chaser’s Christmas CD, but only if I’m in an excellent mood.) In any case, Matthew chafes at my restrictions. So he found a way around it. (He’s clever that way.) He gathered up a ton of piano Christmas music and took it to music lessons. He said to his teacher (who is a massive Christmas fan), “I want to learn Christmas music”—this was back in the beginning of October!  She said, “Matthew what a wonderful idea!” And she assigned him a whole book of Christmas carols!! A whole book!

Now for an hour a day, I’m listening to Christmas music. I’m ready to Deck the Halls alright. Just not with boughs of holly. Next year, I’m hiding the Christmas music in a dark corner of the basement.

Cockroach Criminals

Crime can be categorized in many ways. Felony vs. Misdemeanor. Violent vs. Non-Violent. Personal vs. Impersonal. I’d like to add another to the list. Cockroach vs. Light-of-day.

A Light-of-Day crime is a crime where the criminal shows his face. For example, when my mom was young, she worked in a bank, and on several occasions a man pulled a gun on her and demanded cash. (One bank robber was on a successful spree after he robbed my mom and returned to rob her bank several months later. While he was in line, he made eye contact with my mom and panicked. He hadn’t kept good records of which banks he’d previously robbed. Even successful criminals are brought down by bad record keeping.) But that’s what I call a Light-of-Day crime. The criminal shows his face.

But there are crimes where the criminal doesn’t show his face. I call those cockroach crimes because like cockroaches they commit crimes in the dark, hiding and pretending to be good citizens. (Like the person who stole my husband’s identity and committed fraud—you’ll find that the bank thinks you’re guilty until you prove yourself innocent. Or the scum-of-the-earth man who stalked me in college and knew the minutiae of my life and eagerly called me during the middle of the night to share it with me.)

You may know what inspired this post if you follow me on Twitter. Yesterday my account got hacked. A friend’s account got hacked in the early morning, so I checked my account when I found out several hours later. My account was clean, so I shut down my computer and snuggled up with The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, which my daughter had asked me to read. Big mistake. Not the book. The mistake was assuming that my account was okay. Six hours later when I checked my account again, I had scads of notices from friends telling me that my account had been hacked. GRRR. (Hopefully, it’s all been rectified.)

Of course, other than some embarrassment on my part and some hacker harassment of my friends, the hacker didn’t get much. (At least, I hope not.) Not like a blogger friend who had her account hacked and had years’ worth of blog posts deleted. And her email address book gutted. And the emails to and from her agent and editor deleted. That’s nasty.

It gets worse. I’ve received notice of a writer whose e-books have been stolen and republished—with new titles. Interestingly, the thief kept her name on the books (you need the name recognition to sell), but the money is funneled into another account.

Hacking writers. Seriously. That’s pretty much taking candy from a baby or stealing an old lady’s purse. Most writers I know have a hard time converting files from Word to PDF, let alone setting up hack-proof systems. So I have a word for you cockroaches out there. There’s no glory hacking a writer (and almost no money in it either). But watch out, we writers will get more savy—at least, our kids, friends and spouses will help us be more savy. The light will shine on you sooner or later. And you will get crunched under foot. Plus, my son is teaching me that you can kill a cockroach by banking a shot with an airsoft pellet, so that it ricochets and hits the soft underbelly. Watch out, I’m locked and loaded.

I Am Not A Cat

Not long after we first met, Calvin told me that I reminded him of a cat. I hadn’t had much experience with cats, but they seemed elegant, dignified and rid the world of rodents. And maybe he meant big cats. Like a black panther or an ocelot. They are lithesome, sleek, and beautiful, stalking through the jungles or the plains. Yeah, I could be one of those.

However, my life progressed, and I had contact with cats. Why do I always have neighbors who believe it’s their calling in life to adopt every stray they can find? These packs of cats watch the world through their tawny eyes with a kind of sneering sophistication. They treat their owners (among whom I gratefully do not count myself) as though the owners’ existence is simply to provide tuna and a warm place to sleep. Affection is withheld until the owner “does his job” in providing salmon, or some other acceptable treat. If the cat is fed Purina cat chow, trust her to hack up fur balls on my driveway.

Contrast this with a dog that brings you his bone, eagerly looking for a pat on the head. Granted, the bone is soaked with slobber, and he probably dropped the bone on your silk skirt. But still, this is an animal who wants to be a part of your life and do his bit to protect you from danger, even if the perils are the blind man down the street and the Pomeranian Devil.

Cats, on the other hand, see the neighborhood as their personal litter box, especially cared-for flowers beds that are nicely mulched. Though I suppose I should fault their owners more than the cats themselves. But cats seem to believe that the entire world belongs to them.

I’ve tried to “tell” the cats that my property is mine, not theirs. First, I sprinkled cayenne pepper all over the mulch. It worked, until the first thunderstorm came. The rain and expense of cayenne forced me to find an alternative solution.

My oldest son, Dead-Eye Luke, can split a cockroach in half with an air-soft pellet at 50 feet. I recruited him to de-cat our front lawn. I gave him permission to leave his schoolwork and nail any cat he saw. (Before you call PETA, please note that the air-soft pellets don’t actually cause irreparable damage to the cats—I actually let my kids shoot each other with air soft guns, provided they wear eye protection.) At any rate, the neighborhood cats now prowl the neighborhood, but avoid our yard completely. They will make a right-angled turn when they reach our property and walk just outside the boundaries—they don’t set a paw on our property. (Luke isn’t allowed to shoot any beast not on our property.)

Now when the neighborhood cats walk by, I think, “I double dare you to try and make a mess of my mulch,” and I smile my Cheshire-like grin—but I am so “not a cat.”