2017 Resolutions

How best to sum up 2016?

It will be a while before this image gets old.

Since I fell off the keep people informed of what’s going on in my life goal, I’m going to go through 2016 in personal events for an overview to figure out my 2017 resolutions and plans.

Back Bedroom Remodel:

Started in December 2015 after my new roof was installed. I figured it would be finished in a few months. Now it’s January 2017 and I still don’t have a back bedroom or a living room. 2017 Plans: Finish this project.

March 2016 Flood:

This event has been overshadowed by the August flooding. Personally, I found my back porch still leaked with the new roof and raked out the ditch in front of my house to help the drainage, which was then attributed to the hard workers who maintain our parish roads. (Thanks, Mom.)

Mustard’s eye:

In May, Mustard’s eye got scratched and then infected. There was only a thin bit of membrane holding it together by the time I got him to the veterinary ophthalmologist, but he saved his eye. By the end of June, the cone was off and his eye is fine.

Front and Back Porches Refresh:

So this spring I discovered the carpenter bees drilling nests into my new back porch rafters. They had also drilled into my front porch ceiling and rafters. I got the back porch rafters painted by May 30th, but painting the front porch got delayed due to summer monsoons and smaller projects to make the spaces pretty and functional multiplied every weekend. In October, it finally dried enough for me to finish the major painting (front porch ceiling and the columns on both porches). Poisoned the carpenter bees and then spray foamed the holes. Finished trimming the spray foam snot and painted over that in November. Then I moved onto refinishing rocking chairs. 2017 Plans: Finish this project.

August 2016 Flood:

I watched the waters rise and finished insulating the back bedroom. Luckily, my family and I were not affected. However, my mother’s friend Irene was flooded and was then put on hospice. My parents took her in and we rallied to work on her house in spurts.

Irene’s House:

We cleaned everything in the house, but not before Irene died on November 19th. The clean-out officially ended December 4th when All Hands Volunteers showed up and gutted the house. 2017 Plans: I’ll be roped into dealing with the contents of the out buildings, but I don’t forsee having to take off work again.

Money Annoyances:

So Mustard’s eyes surgery and two unexpected car issues pretty much tapped out my savings and left me in debt to my father (buying building supplies didn’t help either). So this weekend found me very disconcerted about my finances. The money I earn means I shouldn’t be in a mad, penny-pinching scramble every payday. The next step will be to analyze my spending habits to see where I can cut back. 2017 Plans: Stick to my budget, pay off my debts, reward myself when goals are met.

Basically my 2017 plans are to finish the outstanding projects I have started. Of course once I wrap something, a new project will take its place. For example, when I move the back bedroom stuff into the finished back bedroom, I have a new TV to mount on my wall and must replace the entertainment center to do that. By the end of the month, we’ll see how much progress I’ve made on them.

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The BookWorm

Not Time to Build an Ark Yet

This was not supposed to be my next free weekend.

Why do I bother making plans some times? I was supposed to go to Lafayette this weekend, but that was planned before Mother Nature unleashed severe weather to cause flash flooding and regular flooding on us. The paying job sent us home early Thursday and told us not to come in Friday, I canceled my plans for the weekend and treated myself to a normal bedtime. Meaning I set up Brain.fm on my cell phone and tried to go to sleep.

Only for the flash flood warnings from the National Weather Service to keep interrupting the program. Don't get me wrong, overall I like the warnings and think they are an excellent idea, but not when I'm trying to sleep. Not only did the emergency signal wake me up most of the time, it also just stopped the Brain.fm music. When my regular Friday alarms went off, I still had half of the eight-hour session to go.

Most of the major rain happened overnight and the system didn't stall over us like it did Texas and north Louisiana. The bad news is all the rain that north Louisiana got has to come down through us. Places that usually don't flood flooded this time and the rivers have just gotten started.

Unfortunately, I found leaks in my new roof. I called my roofers, but they're all flooded in too. They'll probably reach me Monday or Tuesday.

The rain eased up and I hit the yard to see how bad the water is around me. These two pictures show how high the creek and Natalbany River are behind the house. It's hard to see through the undergrowth, but the water is right there.

I had to rake out the ditch before I hiked down to see how bad the bridge was. It counted as my workout today. The black mounds are the leaves and pine straw that I pulled out of the water's way.

After that was done, I hiked down to the high water blocking the bridge and chatted with my neighbors down there and the DOTD worker and State Trooper that also swung by to check on us. The neighbors had used their vehicles to block their driveways because stupid motorists keep driving until it's obvious they can't go any further and then they peel out trying to turn around. That's bad enough, but they always fly down Pumpkin Center Road like it's the Interstate. Even with weather like this, even with knowing everything is flooding.

The water wraps around the back of the yellow house until it ends up across the street from my house.

My parents kept their weekend plans so now I have to take care of Mom's chickens. My dryer died last weekend, so that's going to make doing laundry interesting if it keeps raining. I need to pick up a few supplies and I hope I can reach a store tomorrow. And then I get to concentrate on Zy's Universe and the computer upgrades I need to do all day.

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The BookWorm

Skinny Little Book Got Me Thinking

So it's been a weird time at my house. Writing went kaput about mid-February. I sunk a lot of energy into the back bedroom demolition project, so I figured I just needed to recuperate from that. I learned from the 21 Day Primal Challenge in January that I wasn't getting enough sleep, so I figured writing energy would come back once I got that back under control. The low level stress from testing computer changes/updates at the paying job is having more of an effect than I thought but that can't last much longer, please deity over computer stuff. Between Mardi Gras and my birthday, I made poor food choices and that's why I feel like sluggish crap and don't want to write.

Of course NOT-writing leads to all the crappy feelings too. I did get one day of rough draft writing this past Wednesday. And it's possible that I've piled too many changes on myself all at once. Any ways, I came across some writing advice to churn out a smaller project when you're feeling stuck on the big one and that seemed like an excellent idea for this weekend. So I started a few blog posts to update on life things.

The shipments from my Amazon shopping spree have almost all trickled in (I'm still waiting for the most expensive book to come in next week). My new full spectrum sun lamp came in right before the box of a lot of new books and I switched it out for my regular lamp on the timer February 22nd. The idea behind it is to get 15 minutes of full spectrum light within two hours of getting up so you reset your circadian rhythms, which people who don't arrive at their paying jobs before dawn can get from the sun. I think it's helping me be sleepy at 8:30 p.m. I also started Brain FM to help me get a deeper sleep through the night and hopefully be able to use the Focus tunes to help me concentrate on writing. Only I lost the time to turn that on, lost the time to do chores, and have confirmed that I only have one pair of earbuds that do not fall out of my head when I sleep but still hurt after so many nights using them consistently. This weekend includes a trip away from home and without the stress of housework I'm hoping to rest and relax away whatever that has led to me yawning my head off all week. At this point, I don't know what it is but I'm yawning now so as soon as the focus music ends I'm going to bed.

Moving on, since I couldn't find any time to write and the paying job went through a deadline so I had more to do and couldn't use it to catch up, I pulled out one of the books I had bought on the Amazon shopping spree to read when I had some free time that wasn't getting spent on the manuscript: The Pursuit of Perfection and How It Harms Writers. I don't have a Kindle and just got the Kobo app for the new actual smartphone, so I bought the print book and was perplexed by the end product. "Ten bucks for a fifty page book, really?" It had been raved about on the Creative Penn podcast and my issues with perfectionism are plentiful, but I thought I got cheated.

I was wrong.

I ended up highlighting so much in this book, and I'm planning on prettying up some of the quotes with graphics for some motivational posters. But what I highlighted on page thirteen gave me a new spotlight on my writing issues.

Many writers don't believe what I just wrote, and that's fine. You need to define it four yourself. Set a limit on revision, set a limit on drafts, set a time limit. (My book must be done in August, no matter what.) Then release your book on the unsuspecting public. … At some point, you must simply let go of that book or story or play and move to the next. – Kristine Kathryn Rusch page 15

If you're following along on Discipline Under Fire you know I'm still working on the first draft of Strix: Forget the Sun. Stellar Gift of Death is waiting for edits, which it needs. So why did this piece speak to me so strongly that I needed to post about it? It brought into sharp focus the issue between my original fiction and my fanfiction.

Unleashing what I've written onto the unsuspecting public, I've gotten that down cold with fanfiction. When it comes to original fiction, I freeze up and go let it sit until it can become perfect and I move onto something else and just forget about it and all the anxiety buttons taking the next step hits. I've got plans and know the next steps I need to take, but I haven't forced myself into the stairwell yet.

The biochemical causes strengthening the Jerkbrain and how it relates to writing I identified already, but I didn't make any headway on my publication goals last year despite learning this information. So what else is under all this? Kristine Kathryn Rusch had this to say about my degrees:

So if we're not training writers to be professionals who make a living at their chosen career, what are we training them to be?

Critics.

We're training critics and editors (kinda, but there are actual degree programs in editing/publishing) and professors. – page 26

After I became the ask-first-on-computer-issues-before-going-to-I.T. girl at the paying job, I made a joke of the situation. "If I had a time machine, I'd go back to tell myself to go major in computers and be making a whole lot more money now." Too bad Rusch published this analysis after I went back for my M.A. because not only would it have me consider a different major and keep writing on the side without Jerkbrain strengthened with critical tools, there's a few classes I may have performed better in knowing that they wanted a critic not a writer.

*Snort* I came to the same conclusion as Rusch back when I was in the thick of the classes. But I thought I would shake off that training because it didn't help me write. Well, it's obvious how well I did that by how much publishing success I've had since I earned my M.A. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret my education but I will have to work harder to overcome the mental blocks I have to releasing my words on the unsuspecting public.

It's not just the training of critics that is a problem. Rusch identifies two levels of harm done to writers; personal is "a God-given right [talent] versus a craft that can be learned [skill]" (page 39) and professional is concentrating so much on producing perfect work that a career in writing isn't possible due to a lack of stories. "Writers with this attitude never try to have a career because they believe a career is impossible. Therefore, the writer will do stupid things they would never do in their real life." (page 40)

The silver lining to my stalled writing output (measured by novels and stories out there to read) is that I haven't signed horrible publishing contracts or gotten scammed by a con artist posing as an agent or publisher.

So how does this change my plans for the year? Double checking my business plan on a page, I found that writing Strix: Forget the Sun was set as a secondary priority. First priority was establishing a dedicated writing hour, which has fallen apart and it's just now March, and establishing Zy's Universe as a series with new stories and editing what I already have written. I've ran across a new strategy for managing my writing time (fortunately because the paying job decided to get really strict on what we're doing in our cubicles so I can't count on making up time during their time), so I'm going to start implementing it next week. Next free weekend I have, I'm dedicating a day to Zy's Universe.

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The BookWorm

Back Bedroom Rehab Project Progress 3

I took a long break before I got back to the back bedroom rehab this weekend. In between posts, my new actual smartphone arrived so I took pictures with it. These were taken after cleaning everything off the ceiling and vacuuming the debris off the floor but before taking off the wall sheet rock. So you can see why I put the paneling up in the first place.

Here's some shots of the termite damage I found on the ceiling.

Started ripping sheet rock off at the door and found a few surprises. Surprise number one, the boards lifting the sheet rock off the flat pine boards. Surprise number two, was there a door into the kitchen? This piece of wood doesn't match the pine boards surrounding it and at the floor the 2"x2" that the sheet rock rested on is missing just at the spot. I questioned the parental units and neither one of them remembered a door or heard about a door. Surprise number three, an old termite nest in the corner.

Moved onto the back wall and that's where the termites had a subdivision. According to my parents, my great-grandmother had an issue with termites when she lived in my house that was treated and never had another issue. She died when I was eleven, so this damage is decades old. Luckily, the termites didn't want to eat the pine boards so yeah, I don't have to rebuild stuff holding up the roof. But they did eat off the paper-backing of the sheet rock, so the only thing holding this stuff together was the paint. It crumbles as soon as I pull it down.

I yanked out the spray foam repair I had made because a squirrel was pulling out all the insulation and found they had a back door into the room. I blocked it with cardboard for now until I can buy some wood to patch it properly.

Once I cleaned the back wall of sheet rock and termite dirt, I realized that I had planned to put my sewing machine against this one when I move back in. There's no electricity there. The only outlets in the room are the one under the window and one someone put in the light fixture. If you can tell from the photo, it looks like the fixture should hold three bulbs but only has two. The third prong ends in an outlet; never seen that before. I'd rather not have multiple extension cords, so I need to add more outlets. The sheet rock had been put flat on the back wall without any spacers and had been given a funky angle where the ceiling met the wall. New idea: put up a new wall in front of the outer back wall to get rid of that angle and to give me room for the electric. Plus I can add insulation against the back wall that nothing will want to build a nest in.

The last wall proved interesting. The window trim had been installed properly on top of the sheet rock, which surprised the hell out of me. I managed to get off without damaging it. The spacers behind the sheet rock turned out to be 2"x4"s. And there was this lizard creature that wasn't having any luck running away and hiding from my destruction of its hiding places. But I got it off before full dark. At this point the lack of interior insulation wasn't surprising me; the back bedroom and kitchen were never constructed with the same care as the rest of the house. See the visible gold between the pine boards?

That is the back of the aluminum siding that covers my house. The exterior of a house is supposed to be wrapped in a vapor barrier or some kind of moisture protection. I was thinking tar paper, given how long the siding has been up. No such luck.

So insulation of some type all around the room is now added to the rehab project. Since I have a lot of weekends already planned with things that are not the rehab project, I'm guesstimating my finish time for the end of April. Depending on how much supplies cost.

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The BookWorm

Happy Mardi Gras 2016

This was the parade I got today when I left the house around noon.

Our flock of wild turkeys! They nest in the creek bottom behind my house and have been coming up in our yards to eat grass or bugs in the grass. For those not familiar with these birds when they're alive, the tall lean ones are the hens and the tom is the one with the spreading tail feathers. And my cat Mustard stalking forward, the idiot. And then standoff in the third picture, which soon had four of the hens watching my cat. I finally got him away from them before bloodshed.

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The BookWorm

Back Bedroom Rehab Project Progress 2

I didn't keep great notes or photos for the work I did in January. I do remember doing an Internet search to learn that once paneling warps there is no way to flatten it back out. All of it was covered in mildew, so yanking out was the way to go. I started with the sheet rock on the ceiling and got what was left up there down.

And then the camera started being a butt again, so I didn't take any pictures of tearing off the paneling. But I found old termite damage on the ceiling, so the scope of the project expanded. The rest of the sheet rock need to come down so I can see if there is any structural damage to the wood holding up the roof.

Plenty of nasty stuff hit the floor, so I borrowed my parents' shop vac for the duration. Oh boy, I'm going to be so spoiled going back to the regular vacuum cleaner. I'm so tempted to clean the whole house with the shop vac.

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The BookWorm

Back Bedroom Rehab Project Progress 1

I finally went down the aisles in Lowe's. Sheet rock is my cheapest option compared to everything else. So the plan currently is sheet rock on the walls, Styrofoam ceiling tiles, press-and-stick tiles on the floor, and paint what needs painting.

Everything that usually lives in the back bedroom has been stacked into the living room and the hall. Luckily my house was originally built as a double-shotgun, so the four original rooms have multiple doors to the other rooms. I left myself a path through the living room to my bedroom door. Actually, the living room photos are missing one element. I first hung up the clothes I'm not wearing on the shower curtain pipe, but that lasted until I needed to shower. I borrowed a closet-on-wheels from Mom and squeezed it into the living room. The only things I left in the back bedroom was the extra mattress and box springs, which blocked the closet doorway.

The furniture I didn't want to drag too far ended up in the hallway blocking my bedroom door there, but the path is clear to the bathroom and back bedroom.

Once everything was out of the way, I took the Closetmaid shelving system down after taking plenty of pictures and measurements so I can put it back up in the same configuration. It works well in the room. The plastic-coated wire shelves went to the back porch so I can scrub the mildew off when the weather warms up enough for the job.

Remember when I said the mattress and box springs were blocking the closet doorway? The doorway is taller and Mustard climbed up them and got stuck in the closet last night. The only other way out of that closet is over the wall between it and the bathroom's closet that doesn't reach the ceiling. While there's nothing in the back bedroom closet for Mustard to hurt—I'm tearing it out to enlarge the bathroom so I never got used to using it as storage—I do store lots in the bathroom closet.

Mustard decided that my hands, the towel, and the broom were all evil enemies that must die while he had the high ground. I got him down without major blood loss and remembered I have an extra door, currently stored in one of the sheds. Went to bed planning to pull it out and use it to plug the closet doorway.

The next morning I figured out how to get everybody to leave me alone while I'm working on this project: get up early in the morning, find the door at the rear of the shed, and pull it out without taking out anything else all by myself. Trust me, I didn't want the help and the aura I put out compelled everyone to leave me alone.

The door needed scrubbing once I got it out in the sunlight. It was warm enough to not turn my hands into bleached-icicles and the mildew died. While the door dried, I trimmed the spray foam snot off the siding wall. I still need to clean off spots where it dribbled with some acetone, but that can wait for later.

I thought I'd have to hang the door but it didn't fit well enough to hang by the hinges. Propping it in the doorway blocked the top above the mattresses. WIN!

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The BookWorm

Usable Space vs. the Dream Plan

Date: 12/13/15

New roof has already improved the temperature in my house (yeah for more insulation!), so today is trying to get everything inside the back bedroom out for a while, scrub the back bedroom, and reorganize everything I keep in there. The leak encouraged mildew to grow so scrubbing. The leak also encouraged me to toss things away from getting wet so reorganizing.

Mom peeked in while I moved things and suggested laminate flooring to put on the ceiling once I finished tearing off the sheetrock. I gave a despairing look at the paneling I put on the walls to cover the nasty sheetrock (a job finished back in 2006 when I tore out the built-in closet). It has all warped under the leak's humidity and as I move more things out of the way, the warping goes all the way around the room. It all needs wiping off with bleach and nailing down and securing parts of the Closetmaid system again. "I haven't made plans yet," I tell my mother just so I can keep working without her in my hair.

But the having no plans isn't exactly true. I have made plans. This plan in fact:

This plan calls for the horribly constructed back bedroom and kitchen to be torn off and rebuilt, better, stronger, faster (cue the Six Million Dollar Man's theme song). This plan is also somewhen five, ten, maybe twenty years away.

Since I know this plan is so far away, my unthinking response is to keep the back bedroom shut off so I don't have the constant desire to go get a wrecking ball right now. Out of sight, out of mind.

And right now as I move things out of the way to clean the room, I recognize that is dumb, wasteful idea. I'm already using it as a giant closet. That is storage I must have. I have sewing I'd love to have a more dedicated space for. Ignoring the room is more wasteful than spending a little money now to spruce it up.

Ideas

• A real file cabinet for sewing patterns about 48-inches tall.
• Move all the Acadiana Faire stuff to the C-can. More floor space after that.
• The butcher block table I put the sewing machine on in the living room will fit under the bottom shelf on the west wall next to the fourth stud.
• Fix mission chair and move to the living room.
• Dresser holds keepsakes, garb props, and magic gear and is doing a great job.
• Need to rip out paneling but replace it with what?
• Like doubling up the pine shelves for deeper shelves.
• Use the big storage totes that were under all the Closetmaid shelves to keep the mattress and box spring propped against the wall.
• Will the hats and wigs fit on the shelf above the long closet rod?
• Put medieval bed together again. Medieval bed needs sanding so the pegs will come out easier. Add medieval bed to the C-can.
• I really like the Styrofoam ceiling tiles that look like pressed tin that Epbot used for their ceiling. I need to take better measurements of the back bedroom for ceiling, floor, and walls.
• Small boxes and craft projects go on the Closetmaid shelves.
• The tub I was keeping weight plates in glued itself to the floor with mold. Buy a plate rack.
• Chalkboard paint on Gram's old slate so it's functional again.

Date: 12/21/15

So what's the progress a week later? Not much. Truth is, I don't want to do heavy demo after coming home from work and the weekends have been booked with other things before the holidays.

I still don't know what to put on the walls and ceiling. I haven't been on that aisle in a home improvement store for over a decade and there are a lot more products available. The websites would be helpful if I had a clue what I want to put up and what will let me install my Closetmaid system without destroying it. So I have to make time to go look in person.

What I do know is I want to work in purple in the room and the walls are what I have to work with. So what I buy needs to be paintable and cheap because I don't mind spending money to make the room usable, I don't want to go over $500 in total. That's including flooring and ceiling rehab too.

Mom's first suggestion: laminate flooring. The con she stated a week ago: "You'll be looking at more wood."

Like my house really needs more wood on the walls. In fact, the back bedroom has a focal wall that was the back siding of the house. Okay, the mattress and box springs covers half of it, but it is there! Yeah, there are some cheap options in laminate flooring, but the colors I like are more expensive. And then drilling screws through it will be difficult and painting won't happen, so next choice. Oh right, I need to see other choices in person.

So before Dad and I left for his Christmas present, I mentioned how my house doesn't need more wood and I need to find cost effective solution because the paneling must go.

Mom's next suggestion: "Pallets! You can go to the local paper and get them for free and people on TV do beautiful walls."

"I just said the last thing my house needs is more wood. Let's go to Star Wars now."

Half the things destined for the C-can are inside it. I ran out of daylight Sunday before getting the rest and I have another box to pack. At least I hope I can fit it all in one box. Heavy storage totes had to go back into the back bedroom to hold up the mattress and box springs. I hadn't wanted to put stuff in until after I got to do some demo. :p Not that it's made a difference in how upside down my house looks with the stuff that's still out.

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The BookWorm

New Roof!

I started the year with plans to blog about other things besides when I spend a lotta money and what I bought.

Well, that didn't go as planned because this post is all about how I took out a loan, and then dropped almost all of the loan money onto a new roof!

But first, pictures of the old roof.

Lighting isn't the best; the sun wasn't even fully up yet. And my trusty camera is showing its age by saying I have no power when brand-new batteries are in it. So this in-progress shot is from my uncle's cell phone camera.

Anybody in my neck of the woods who needs a roof, I can't recommend Roof Crafters enough. Professional job, was upfront about my costs and what they couldn't do. I was upfront that I needed a new back porch because of decades of carpenter bee action had made it unsafe.

Boy, was that proved when they hit the porch rafters and the wood splintered. The whole job was finished by 3:30 and here's my new roof!

Sunday's weather forecast is 100% thunderstorms so yeah for a quick test of it, but boo because I wanted to catch up on my DVR watching and the satellite may mess up.

But new roof, no leaks! SQUEE!

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The BookWorm