Hickory, hickory, more hickory.

[mrissa]

I have been having a craptastic writing week, to be honest. Usually people will say, "Don't edit, just write," and then the results are not as bad as you think they are. This time they really are that bad. No, really. I am taking hours to get mere paragraphs of prose, which would be bad enough except that it is not good prose and is derailing the stuff that was written when I was writing better.

I don't have anything like a large-scale worry about this: it is a blip, I will get through it, I will get over it, it will be fine. I am not wailing and gnashing my teeth that I will never write again oh woes or that maybe I am not a real writer oh doom. I'm just frustrated that I'm having an off week.

So I am deliberately not writing today, rather than trying to write and failing. (And yes, I do have Bea Arthur and Mel Brooks in my head: "Did you bullshit last week?" "No." "Did you try to bullshit last week?" "Yes.") It is not as though other things to do are in any way lacking at this particular time. I mean, frankly, they aren't ever, that's how it works being a Mris: full of projects. But now timprov has gotten to the point with the basement flooring where more than one person can actually be useful, so we are in floor mode for sure.

Here is the thing about floors: it is very hard to fall down from a kneeling or sitting position on the floor, and if I do, there's not that far to fall. So really this is an ideal project for a vertiginous person, as long as there is a non-vertiginous person (in this case T) to run the circular saw and stuff. So I have been hammering happily away with my bottle of Gorilla Glue by my side, so if you ever need a glue a gorilla, ask us, we know where to get the stuff. (If it's a wood gorilla, I mean. Apparently the kinds of gorilla take different glues.)

Other than that, and other than the insight I put on Facebook, that this is very much like a Girl Scout project, it is not the kind of work that lends itself much to chatter. Put in some flooring. Yep. Sure did. Oh! One of the tools we have is for hammering in things on the periphery where you can't fit the usual thing, and we have been referring to it as the shoehorn with teeth because of the They Might Be Giants song. Only in the original they sing, "People should get beat up for statin' their beliefs," and around here this year we sing, "People should get beat up for skatin' like the Leafs." So many of the teams I like are so bad this year: the Leafs, the Wild, the poor dear Oilers who are so obligingly keeping my Wild out of the basement. It's very sad. But with a perky beat and a little bit of gratuitous triangle! Thanks, They Might Be Giants! You are not the designated band to make me feel better about hockey, but hey, if it works.

Comments

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is hard to fall and hurt yourself when you are already on the floor. That was a breakthrough for me with the bikram yoga. The first few months, I had tons and tons of trouble with dizziness from the heat and general low blood pressure. The second half of the series is done lying on the floor, and one day I realized that it didn't matter how dizzy I got in a lying position, because I didn't have anywhere to fall. Then I was able to really focus on the yoga and ignore the dizziness. It helped a lot. LOL.

My boss ...

[freelikebeer.livejournal.com]

suffers from vertigo. Started about a year ago after he had a virus of some sort. Doc thinks its from head trauma as a child but has no idea why it has reared its head forty years later.

Re: My boss ...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear it. It's no fun at all, really. Not recommended.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Ah, my brother is also a BIG FAN of gorilla glue.

Maybe hammering and floor installing will help with your prose.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Maybe; or maybe just the time away from it will. Or maybe we'll finish with the floors and I'll still have to slog through some days of bad prose. We'll see, I guess.

The nice thing about the floors is that the progress is really clearly visible. This is not always the case with writing.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

that is the nice thing about floors, or building a house or a deck...you can SEE what you you did almost immediately.

You have inspired me for a poem. Thank you.

[lthomas987.livejournal.com]

That is in fact the reason I love laying floors. Because my job never has visible output. Flooring is just so satisfying.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For me it's usually baking, but Things With Wood are also in my blood, just less so than baking. (Hemoglobin may be less in my blood than baking.)

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Randomly asking - what is that beast in your icon? (Besides indecently cute, that is.)

-Nameseeker

[lthomas987.livejournal.com]

It's a spiny echidna. I stole the photo from some news article on the internet years ago.

[rosefox]

The Da Vinci's Notebook cover of "Shoehorn with Teeth" includes the "skatin' like the Leafs" line.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Good on 'em! I approve.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

This is in fact from whence we acquired it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah. I acquired it from you.

[pameladean]

I was going to ask, plaintively, "Why do hockey teams have such weird names?" But then I thought, yeah, right, compared to teams playing other sports? And yet, somehow, the names of hockey teams seem weird in a different way. Why is that?

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I cannot explain this to you, because they sound very normal to me, except the Wild, which is a very weird thing to call the team, being only a collective noun with no singular form. And the mascot is a...thing of some sort. We're not sure. I keep calling the mascot, "Goldy No Wait That's The Other One."

It is very curious that the team down in Texas is called the #$@%&* Traitor Stars, I suppose, but once you know the team history it makes more sense. Also the team in Colorado being the Not The Real Nordiques is odd and hard to fit on jerseys.

Seriously, the Leafs are actually the Maple Leafs, in case that helps. The Habs are actually Les Canadiens, but "hab" is short for "habitant," which is what les canadiens francophones are sometimes called, so it makes sense. And the Pens, the Sens, and the Caps are really the Penguins, the Senators, and the Capitals.

I have myffic theories about team names and how they tie in with the magical support for each team, which is why the Wild Hunt makes so many appearances in The True Tale of Carter Hall, being set in Minnesota as it is; if it was set in the Carolinas it would be an abomination and no true hockey book feature the power shift between the whaling industry and global warming crazy weather. I can send you the snippet that talks about this with other teams if you like, but it might be incomprehensibly sportsy. It's not going in the actual book. I just wrote it for laurel when I felt like she needed someone to write her a bit of thing just for her.

[redbird]

I think the collective noun thing is the fault of either the American Basketball Association (about all I can say about "the Utah Jazz" is that it made a little more sense when they were in New Orleans) or the North American Soccer League (where my local team was called the Cosmos, and at least that wasn't an era where that would have been assumed to be the plural of a cocktail).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I can easily imagine a sports league where the teams were the Cosmos, the Manhattans, etc., but the NASL is not that league.

Also, I can see why you'd want to name your team the Cosmos. It encompasses everything. Then you could sing "Particle Man" as your theme song: "Universe man, universe man, size of the entire universe man, USUALLY kind to smaller men..." with ominous intonation on the usually.

[brooksmoses]

The Stanford football team name is sort of in the same category as the Wild, being the Cardinal -- the color, mind you, not the bird. Having the whole team named after a single bird would be a different category of odd.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I hate that thing where I feel like I'm not justifying my oxygen usage and carbon footprint if I do not write and write well.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ayep. And it is what we do. It's just that we do other things, too.

[zeborah]

The novel I'm currently working on has been like that for two and a half years. Occasionally I'll manage to write a chapter or two within a month; and then it's back to painstakingly writing several hundred words over several weeks, and then having to delete them all and start again. Some parts I've written five or six times before they finally stuck. I've now reached the final chapter, and am on the third version of this part of it; I'm really hoping to finish the book by Easter.

The previous book, I wrote the whole first draft in four months; I really hope the next book will behave even half as nicely. If I didn't believe these things come in phases it'd be impossibly frustrating.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh uff da, how frustrating. I'm sorry to hear it. I hope this phase ends soon for you.

[zeborah]

Ah well, at least I can tell I'm learning a lot from it, so I guess I can't complain, not that I let that stop me. :-)