Patti O'Shea's Blog

Here it is, almost 5am and I’m just getting around to blog. This is like 20 minutes later than I like to get over here, but I couldn’t get up this morning which pushed me late on everything.

Actually, I’ve been really tired for the last couple of weeks and I’ve been trying to think of why because I have been going to bed early enough. I think I came up with the right answer. I’ve been waking up several times a night for the last few weeks. I don’t know why. Sometimes I’ll be having some vivid dream, and when it ends, I’m awake. I look at the clock, see I can sleep some more and do until the next dream wakes me up.

Then there’s the lose all sense of time thing. I’ll wake up, sure I’m late for work. I look at the clock and it’ll say 10:00. You’d think that would reassure me and that I’d realize it was 10pm since no light was coming in around the shades, but for some reason, I’m uncertain whether it’s morning or not. I’ll consider it for a moment, then reach for the television remote, trying to verify if it’s AM or PM. Does this suck or what?

So I’m tired, and when the alarm goes off in the morning, I can’t get out of bed. I hate that because I get stressed when my morning schedule gets pushed like this.

The most interesting thing that happened yesterday was that I was nearly part of an accident that would have encompassed 3 lanes of traffic on the freeway. Some kid who looked to be about high school age when I glared at him after the fact, was speeding. I mean really, really, really speeding. Faster than most people speed. And because the other lanes weren’t going fast enough for him, he decided to shoot up the right hand lane. Unfortunately, someone was merging on, thought they had enough room and pulled into his lane. This is where it starts to involve me. The kid began to swing into the middle lane to shoot around the merging traffic, but there was a car there and he began to swerve into the left lane where I was. Me? I’ve got a cement barrier to my left, so I’m slamming on the brakes. By some miracle, though, the kid changed his mind and stayed in the right lane and the driver next to me stopped only partially into my lane. Whew!

Do you think that teenager learned his lesson and slowed down to the usual 10-15 mph over the speed limit that most people were going? Of course not. He continued on going really fast, cutting in and out of traffic. I rarely wish a traffic ticket on anyone because I drive fast myself, but this kid was unsafe and he needed to be pulled over.

There were a lot of idiots on the road yesterday. I wonder if it’s because of the holiday that so many people were driving like bats out of hell? And like I said, I don’t drive slow, so these people must have wanted to go 20-25 mph over the speed limit. Ah, tailgating on the freeway. Ya gotta love it.

Yesterday morning, I was running late, but not so late that I shouldn’t have been okay on getting to work. Except I got stopped by the train. I hate the train. It’s light rail–Minneapolis has one line–it goes from somewhere in the city down to the Mall of America, which of course, takes it right past the building where I work. Because of how I come in, I have to cross the tracks twice. Once when I get off the freeway and once when I turn onto the NWA property.

One of the things that doesn’t help is that there’s also an airport terminal on this road. Not the big MSP airport, but the Hubert Humphrey Terminal. It used to be just some charter airlines that flew out of there, but now some discounters do too. This means we have people driving others to the airport who are absolutely clueless about where they’re going. It makes me insane when they don’t turn left, just kind of sit there. “Turn!” I scream in my car, “Damn it, turn before that %$&# train comes!” Because you see, it’s all about that stupid train.

If my timing is off by just a couple of minutes and I get stuck by two trains, I’m late. One morning, I even got stopped by three! That’s never happened again, thank God. What makes things even worse than the actual train is the fact that the traffic lights are hosed. For some unknown reason, at some places, the light will turn red on all sides when the train light starts flashing. Even the traffic running parallel to the train gets stopped. Then, when the train goes past, the lights resume their normal cycle. Which can mean that the light will turn green just long enough to let one car through. Argh!

So while traffic can end up backed up onto the freeway from the off ramp, the train goes by with two or three people on it. It’s much busier later in the day, but before 6am when the mall won’t be open for hours yet, no one has any real reason to head that direction. But of course, the train runs with the same frequency it does later in the day anyway–and it royally hoses up traffic.

But back to yesterday. Despite the people afraid to take the left hand turn onto the street, I made it off the ramp. One barrier overcome. But these same drivers go like 25 mph on the road and the speed limit is 40. This slowed me up enough yesterday that I couldn’t make the left turn arrow onto NWA. I was the third car in line when the train light started to flash. I think I turned the air inside my car blue with profanity. I really hate that train.

I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it on time, but I rushed across the parking lot anyway (on foot!) and almost got run over by a car who was racing in while I was rushing. The lights were out in the parking lot (again) and I wear a dark jacket, but the point is that the train hoses up a lot of people, and depending on who your manager is, you could be forced to take a tardy. Pfft!

I ran into the hangars to punch because it’s faster than waiting for the elevator, riding up to my floor and punching in. It’s 5:59, the absolute last minute I can punch in and still be on time. I swipe my badge through, being quick, but not too quick because if you go too fast, the time clock won’t read your magnetic stripe. As I’m swiping, the clock turned to 6:00. I have no clue whether it recorded me at 5:59 or 6:00.

When I got logged in to my computer, I checked. 5:59. Whew!

Have I mentioned how much I hate that expletive deleted train???

I have to be brief this morning because I’m really running late. It’s all Joely’s fault. She posted a great de-motivational poster on her blog and I had to go over and read what else was available from this place. This poster is so darn perfect for writing. Too bad it doesn’t go a little farther and talk about what happens after our hearts have been cut from our bodies, but then I think these are geared for business, not for authors.

Yesterday was a pretty decent day. I got a lot of writing done and a lot of cleaning. That basically means that while the writing didn’t come easily, at least something came out on the page. Hopefully, today will go well too.

I’m running a contest right now for people on my newsletter list as of Saturday. It’s a simple contest. To enter, all the subscriber has to do is tell me which one of my characters is their favorite and a sentence or two why. I know there are some people on there who are from a sweepstakes site back a couple of books ago and I thought they could at least figure out how to cheat on this contest. All they have to do is go to my website, pick an excerpt and read far enough to get a character’s name and some reason why they might like them. Less than five minutes worth of work. I’ve already had a couple who haven’t bothered to put in that much effort. It’s a sad world when people can’t even bother to spend the time to fake it convincingly.

My parents returned from Chicago yesterday and I had to drive to the airport to get them. It was early-ish in the morning, just about 9:30, and the freeway traffic was still fairly light. Normally, I’m racing to work and I thought, you know, I’m just going to have a nice, leisurely drive to the airport. A couple of extra minutes isn’t that big a deal. I hardly had that thought when on the other side of the interstate, I saw a cop in an unmarked SUV had someone pulled over.

I timed my ride, BTW, and I discovered that driving just a few miles over the speed limit only put me 1-2 minutes behind Patti’s Wild Weekday Ride. Makes me rethink how fast I drive into work. If it’s only saving me a couple of minutes, is it worth the stress? If I can leave the house just five minutes earlier, I can shave a lot of tension off the commute. The problem will be getting out of the house earlier. No matter how hard I try, my time to get ready always expands to fill the time I have left. If that makes sense. :-/

But I digress. So as I continue to the airport, traffic became really heavy and I’m like, whoa! Then I had an epiphany; the Mall of America. And it’s almost Thanksgiving, which is the start of the holiday shopping season. I was right. Once I passed the two exits for the megamall, traffic dropped right off again and there was hardly anyone at the airport. I love that. The airport is often a hairy snarl that leaves me tense and using profanity.

I made the return trip at a leisurely pace too. And you know what? At the on-ramp right before the one where I get off, there was an SUV parked on the side. I glanced over and I saw the police patch on the driver’s left shoulder. Yep, the cop was still there. I’m amazed, though, that he hadn’t pegged any of the drivers that had zoomed past me. They were driving 10-15 mph over the limit (like I usually do. blush.), but maybe he was waiting for bigger fish. Minnesota drivers do go really, really fast and I’m sure it was just a matter of time until he found someone going even farther over the limit.

After trying to write all day (I got stuff done, but it was a struggle. But then this whole story has been an awful fight from day one. ), I put Rome into the DVD player. It’s my latest NetFlix rental and a television series from HBO. I was sure I’d enjoy it and it came recommended to me from someone who had HBO, but I didn’t like it. I held on for about 15 minutes, waiting to become interested and I just never was. Finally, I decided there was no point wasting my time watching this and I stopped the disk and watched a repeat of VH1′s Top 100 Songs of the 80s.

Yesterday morning, just like I always do, I locked the door between my utility room and the garage, turned off the light, stepped out into the garage and pulled the door shut behind me. I walked to the driver’s door and reached into my jacket pocket for my car keys. They weren’t there.

I think I was stunned immobile for a split second. I always drop my keys in my jacket pocket. I have another split second where I realize the door to my house is locked. I try desperately to remember if, for some odd reason, I’d put the keys on my counter in the utility room or somewhere else. Nothing is coming to me. I dig deeper into the pocket, sure I must just be missing the keys. It’s a deep pocket.

Nada.

Now panic starts to set in. OMG, my parents are out of town! They have my spare set of keys, but my keys to their house are on the same key chain as my house keys and my car keys. It’s not like I can just call them on the cell phone and say, “Help!”

I frantically begin searching my purse. Maybe I stuck them in there for some strange reason. I try to remember the last time I had my keys. Thursday afternoon when I unlocked the door to my house. After that? Who knows?

They’re not in my purse. I begin thinking of what the heck I’m going to do because OMG, I can’t find my keys.

I don’t know what prompted me to check my left jacket pocket. I’m right-handed, and while I do a lot of things with my left hand that most righties don’t do, using my keys aren’t one of them. The panic immediately deflated as my fingers touched metal.

I have absolutely no idea why I put my keys in the other pocket, but I was so happy I had. From now on, though, when I step out of the house, I’m going to have my keys in my hand. That was too big a scare to go through again. And the thing is, if my parents had been home, it wouldn’t have been that big a deal, but they weren’t.

Somehow, despite this panic, I did manage to make it to the day job on time. I had to punch in the hangars because the damn train messed up traffic back to the freeway and only one elevator was running, but all that matters is that 5:59 badge swipe.

Thankfully, after one day of chatter, my Polynesian heroine has gone quiet. She intrigues me, though, and so does her hero. Of course, characters from the book I’m not working on are always more interesting than the story I’m writing. For one thing, they require no work and have no stress involved. I like the lack of tension. But for now, I’ll just not play any Polynesian music and focus on the WIP.

I discovered that my home page when I logon to the net, will give me news about the baseball teams I follow. How cool is that? So now I can keep up with the off-season trades and other stuff. Although Atlanta doesn’t seem to be reporting anything. Oh, well, at least I have the Cubs and the Twins on there. I didn’t realize the Cubs were for sale. When I have time, I need to read that article. I just looked at the headlines.

Speaking of articles, one of the guys at work posted an article on our bulletin board. It was mostly about the proposed US Air takeover of Delta Airlines, but there was some speculation in there about NWA. This is from the Star Tribune:

Not everyone believes Northwest is vulnerable to an unwanted takeover, however. Airline analyst Michael Boyd, based near Denver, said the reputation of the Eagan-based carrier’s executives could scare off anyone they don’t want in the room.

“These are people who don’t cook their meat before dinner,” Boyd said “You don’t mess with them. You leave them alone.”

Want to bet our Execs were proudly beating their chests over this quote? Anyway, I’m hoping that if there is any taking over to be done, that it doesn’t involve my job moving out of state. Before I got my house, I wouldn’t have cared too much, but now I’m rooted. :-/

Last Saturday, I got up early, made coffee, and as I was standing in the kitchen, I looked around and I thought, you know, I really like my house. And I do. I’ve done some of it slowly, but now that all the curtains and drapes are up, it’s nice and it feels like home. I guess that’s what really counts.

My Polynesian heroine–whoever she is–showed up again yesterday. One minute I was minding my own business, the next she was there. I know how it happened. I hit “play any track” on my MP3 player and it chose a track from Horizons. I bought a CD of the music from the Polynesian Cultural Center on my last visit to Hawaii. I can’t remember which song it was or which island, but it was enough to bring her back.

Her. Sigh. I still don’t know her name. I’m not sure if she’s from a story I already know about or if she’s from a brand new story. I keep seeing this one scene over and over–her with her hero. He’s part Polynesian as well, but for some reason I don’t know about, he insists he’s American. I’m guessing there must be an interesting reason why he denies his heritage, but I don’t know it. He–whoever he is–hasn’t talked to me or bothered me in any manner. BTW, he’s pretty hot.

But back to my heroine. She promised not to interfere while I write the WIP, but she’s already disrupting me. I know her book has some paranormal elements, although I’ve no clue if it’s a straight paranormal or a futuristic story (or some other subgenre). So there I was last night, searching Amazon for books on South Pacific mythology. I found one that looks like it might have the information I’m looking for and I also found a big book that covers the mythologies of the world in an encyclopedic fashion. I figured that might be a good reference as well. I also spent the entire afternoon at work listening to Horizons.

Do plotters have people show up out of the blue like this and start talking to them? Disrupting them when they’re trying to write about different characters? If not, then being a plotter is starting to look a little better. Just a little. I mostly love the voices in my head–even when they get in my way. I wish, though, that I had a little bit more control on who was talking loudest.

One of the things that I found interesting was the way the heroine was goading the hero about his denial of his heritage. Not so much that she was doing it because she struck me as having an edge, but the fact that she pointed out that he’s hotter for her than he’s been for any other woman and it has something to do with the fact they’re both descended from the same people. I don’t get that, but I think it might have something to do with the paranormal element–whatever that is.

See my frustration? Not only do characters continually do this to me–pop in when I’m working on another story–but they give me just enough information to tantalize me and not enough to satisfy that curiosity. Argh!

Progress slowed down a bit yesterday because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in the chapter and I had to feel my way into it. This would be one of those days where I wish I was more of a plotter with a nifty little outline of what I want to do and in which chapter. Of course, plotting that minutely would leave me completely bored with the story and be frustrating beyond belief for me, but it’s getting to be just as frustrating to have these fits and starts. There has to be a more efficient way to balance plotting and pantsing than what I’m doing now, though.

This is where I need a clone or two. One that can go to the day job, one that can clean and unpack the boxes which are starting to drive me nuts, one that can do family stuff and take care of other errands. Oh, and one that knows how to do scarf valances! This would leave me to sleep and write, the two things I need to do.

Checkpoint Charlie was dismantled at work on Monday. During the mechanics strike, we had to stop and show our badges before we could get onto company property. It was kind of a pain, and during shift change, could back employees up on to the road. Sometimes even back onto the train tracks, which is dangerous because that damn train comes through constantly. Anyway, now that the mechanics have ratified their contract (more than a year after they went on strike), we can drive right into work again. Now if they’d just open the side gate to relieve some of the traffic from the ramp guys.

Yesterday, I also lost time playing travel agent. My aunt died (my dad’s sister) and my parents need to head down for the funeral. They haven’t been flying on my passes for a while because they have a very low boarding priority and they actually want to get where they need to be without being bumped. (Ah, the joys of flying standby.) But a last minute fare is double what they were paying when they advance booked, so I checked flights and they were open enough to risk it. Of course, the lovely service fee (plus tax!) my employer charges us for the privilege of using our passes and being bumped really drove up the cost. But I’m not going to get started on that.

Wrote lots. Stayed up way too late. Drank too much coffee yesterday evening. Am dead tired this morning. Creed’s finally talking to me, so I guess we will have some scenes in his POV after all.

I thought about ending it here because I really am tired and I’ve forgotten what I thought of last night to talk about here this morning, but I can report a few things. Yahoo Groups finally coughed up a lot of my digests last night. These were from Friday and Saturday. I don’t know if I received everything, though, because one of the notes I know didn’t make it through was lecture five from my online workshop. I ended up going to the site and forwarding it to my email so I can have the complete collection.

I was strenuously cursing dial up last night. I had to research two quick items and the connection was taking it’s own sweet time which left me frustrated. I did eventually prevail, however, and came up with some stuff I needed. The computer, I guess, had the last laugh since I ended up crabby. I have to wait till I finish this book to get the high speed thing, but I’ve definitely got to do it–for my sanity if nothing else.

The times they are a’changing. I remember back a few years ago when one of my coworkers gushed on and on about her vacuum cleaner. I thought she was nuts. Who cared that much about a vacuum? Well, apparently, now that would be me. Last night, I saw a demonstration on television for an 8 pound vacuum that came with a hand-held unit that weighed 5 pounds. All kinds of cool attachments. I stopped writing and turned up the sound. I was literally glued to the television for the length of the demo. Sigh. Curtains, valances, pots and pans and now vacuums. What’s next? Am I going to get all excited about cleaning products or coupons? Shudder.

My parents came over again yesterday to help me hang the scarf valance in my bedroom. I actually wanted to wrap two of them–one raspberry and one orange, each 216 inches long–around the pole to add a little more color to the bedroom, although there are no doubt people who believe I already have too much color. Anyway, it didn’t seem like that difficult a proposition. They do it on HGTV shows all the time and it looks simple to do and very cool.

We started by putting the two valances back to back. My mom and I tried winding them together before hanging them up, but that didn’t work very well, so we undid that. My dad had ladder duty and he wasn’t following instructions on the wrapping around the pole so I got up there and did the end. Not great, but it didn’t look too bad.

It went downhill from here.

Wrapping around that pole was hard, especially when I wanted the fabric to swoosh in front, but only so far down. I made it to the middle portion and around the center support before it started looking really, really, really bad.

Okay, pull everything we did and start over.

This time, I thought, why don’t I start at the middle and work my way to the two ends? 432″ of slippery fabric didn’t want to cooperate. My dad’s trying to hold the fabric on the pole so it doesn’t slide off, I’m trying to keep my balance while standing on my bed, and my mom is offering suggestions from the floor.

What if we did one valance at a time instead of working with both of them? That didn’t work any better. After fighting with all this fabric for nearly an hour, we conceded defeat, folded the valances up, and I put them in the linen closet. Clearly, I won’t be trying out for HGTV’s next Design Star competition. So we moved my bed back against the wall where it should be and called it a day. Foiled by two pieces of fabric. Sigh.

At least the writing went better yesterday.

Yahoo Groups is driving me mad this weekend. I’ve had all kinds of notes not show up. I know I’m missing a digest from one of my groups because I have the one before it and the one after it. I could be missing from other groups as well. Either that, or they are very, very quiet. I’m doing an online workshop right now, and I had to go to the group home to get one of the lectures that never showed up. I checked and I’m not bouncing according to Yahoo Groups. I also checked my spam folder and nothing was there that wasn’t really spam. I’m hoping all these missing emails show up.