Confessions of a Compulsive Sleep Arranger

/ Shane / 5 Comments

Alright, let me start by saying none of this is actually my fault. And I’m not really crazy, as you will soon see. But lately it has come up that I have a bit of a bedtime ritual. It wouldn’t be a big deal, except for the fact that Oliver is sleeping in there, and I tend to wake him up. I wouldn’t really say it is a compulsion; I don’t freak out if I miss a step or something. But it just takes me a little while to get the bed situated in the optimal configuration for sleeping.

  1. All of the sheets and blankets have to be straight. Not like perfect laser-straight lines or anything, but I want the hems at my feet and neck. This isn’t just fussiness or something, I have a legitimate reason for this! I am tall! You shorter people might not realize, but if the sheet is at any kind of angle or anything, my feet will stick out of the blanket, and that drives me crazy. It would be perfectly fine if my sheets could stay tucked in, but that’s another story. And I’m sure as heck not making my bed.
  2. I can’t sleep with socks. I just can’t. Those have to come off.
  3. I have super dry skin, and nowhere is worse than my feet. I get shivers thinking about how my scratchy heels catch on the sheet as I slide them in. Ugh! So, after the socks come off, lotion goes on. My feet sitting down there just…being dry is worse than wearing socks. It’s like wearing skin-tight, sandpaper socks.
  4. Probably because of this, or because of bad experiences with scratchy wool blankets, I can’t stand touching the blanket with skin. So the sheet has to be covering me first, and then the blankets can go on top. This goes back to #1; feet out of all the blankets is the worst, but feet out of just the sheet and touching the blanket is the second worst. DON’T get me started on flannel sheets. ::shudder:: The worst of both worlds.
  5. Right now there are a couple of extra complications. We aren’t using a big comforter because of Oliver, so instead there are several smaller blankets (it’s too blasted cold for only one blanket). This means that each layer has to be arranged properly. And with Evie in the picture, all those blankets are spread to the 4 corners every day, so by bedtime they’re in complete disarray (and not tucked in!).
  6. Ah, the bed is finally prepared! Now, on to the pillow! I’m a pillow flipper. Big time. So the pillow has to be flipped at least once, always, to ensure maximum coldness. If I wake up in the night, the pillow has to be flipped every time. I don’t think this is a big deal, except if I can’t sleep. Then I flip the pillow so much that both sides get hot, making it even *harder* to get to sleep. In that case, I’m not above getting an auxiliary cold pillow so that one can be cooling on the floor and ready to go. I should note however that I almost NEVER have trouble getting to sleep, so this isn’t really a problem.

There are a million other little things too. For example, I am in charge of bringing the baby monitor in and plugging it in at night. This usually means after I get into bed I realize I forgot the monitor somewhere in the house. So I have to get back up, get the monitor, fumble around on the floor in the dark for the plug, then get back into bed (which always requires a little rearranging). Then, of course, I have to sit back up and move the monitor because it is facing in such a way that the giant green search light led is pointing right at my face and I can see green when I close my eyes.

So, I can see how it might have turned into a sort of a ritual, and it might be annoying to some people. However, I have very good reasons for all of the steps, and there really aren’t that many. Quite honestly, I don’t see how people could NOT do these things. Who wants their feet sticking out in the cold? Who wants dry, sandpapery feet sliding all over the place? Who wants blankets that end up in a big pile, so one part of you is too hot and the other part is too cold?

Not this guy, that’s for sure!

Wednesday Calisthenics

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Do you remember the first time you ever did jumping jacks? Me neither, but apparently they are a lot harder to master than I ever knew:

On the other hand, when’s the last time you had that much fun doing exercise?

To trunk or not to trunk, that is the question

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I am a big believer in Heinlein’s rules. According to those rules, once a story is written you should keep sending it out until it sells.

I think this makes a lot of sense. First off, writers aren’t the best judge of their work. So if you think a story is rotten and you trunk it before anybody sees it, then nobody has a chance to see if it is really as rotten as you think it is. Second off, you’ve already done the work of writing the story. That work will certainly never generate any money if the story is sitting in your closet under your dirty socks. Unless you plan to rewrite it at some time in the future (which may or may not violate another of Heinlein’s rules, depending on the context), then it doesn’t hurt you to keep sending it out there, while you are working on writing better stories. Even if it only gets you $10, that’s $10 you wouldn’t have otherwise.

So, by this logic, you should never trunk a story. However, I would like to present a few mitigating circumstances.

First, one of the stories I’m considering trunking is the first story I ever wrote. Even if I’m not the best judge of my work, I think I can say objectively that it’s not my best. I have also received detailed comments in rejections that I happen to agree with. These comments point out some major holes. As it currently stands, this story may never be publishable, at least by the types of people I would like to be published with. And I didn’t just decide that before it ever saw the light of day, I gave it quite a few tries (13 tries at the time of this post, to be specific).

Second, postage is not free. Each (snail mail) submission costs some small amount. If I send it to 20 more places before selling it for $10, then I would have been better off just cutting and running now. Now, money is not the only motivation to sell a story, so just because you might lose money doesn’t necessarily mean you should stop sending it. However, this leads into my third point.

Finally, I have my reputation to consider. Okay, that was sort of a joke. But in reality, there are magazines I would be proud to be published in, and there would be magazines I wouldn’t be proud to be in. My goal isn’t to be published just anywhere; if that were the case I would just put my stories up on my own website. My goal is to get into pro markets. I would not be satisfied if a story garnered 200 rejections before eventually being published in some fortheluv magazine for a couple of contributer’s copies. That would tell me that, at least for that story, it was not good enough. I can tell myself that all day long and save on the postage.

The thing is, if I really believed in a story, I would push forward no matter what. Some of my stories I really believe in. There are a few that I don’t. So that makes it a little harder to keep looking farther and farther down the market list.

So should I trunk it, or not? I’m leaning towards yes, but I might need a few more rejections to make up my mind.

The Sing Off

/ Shane / 4 Comments

I have a confession to make. I don’t watch Glee. It’s not because I don’t like acappella. In fact, I *love* acappella. I’ve even blogged about it before. It’s because I don’t have time to watch T.V.

Or so I thought.

Because now I’m watching The Sing Off (Mondays and Wednesdays on NBC). Who’d have thought that if I were going to watch a limited number of t.v. shows (a VERY limited number…like 4), that I’d include a reality show with the same, tired out, ripped-off-from-American-Idol format. And I haven’t watched a reality show since the 2nd season of The Apprentice.

There’s probably nothing that could make me watch that. Nothing at all except for the fact that they installed Ben Folds as one of the 3 judges. So I was going to watch no matter what.

Despite my misgivings, I am really enjoying the show. There are 3 factors that I hadn’t counted on:
1) The American Idol format works. People keep ripping it off because its effective.
2) I’m a Ben Folds fanboy even more than I thought.
3) Nobody can resist good acappella. It crawls in your ear and tugs at the corners of your mouth until you either smile or your head explodes. The human voice is amazing; it is an instrument like no other.

The thing that really strikes me (compared to other shows in a similar format) is the judging. Most (all) of the reality shows in this format have the most worthless comments from the judges, usually stating that each performance is the most amazing performance ever performed by anyone anywhere. The credentials of the judges is usually dubious at best.

In this case, the judges are the aforementioned Ben Folds, Shawn Stockman (Boyz II Men), and Nicole Scherzinger (winner of Dancing with the Stars and lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls). So obviously Shawn Stockman knows a thing or two about acapella harmonizing, and Nicole Scherzinger knows about singing and also about winning reality shows in this format.

So it would seem that Ben Folds would be the odd man out. What experience does he have? Well, aside from displaying an amazing knowledge of musicians and musical history, he does tend to have a lot of 4 part harmonies in his songs. He also has his own acappella CD, Ben Folds Presents: University a Cappella!, although he didn’t do the singing himself. But he obviously has an appreciation for the art.

So the amazing thing is the insightful, in-depth comments the judges give to each performance. They point out things I never would have noticed. Sometimes they still start with the “ohmygoshthisissoamazing” stuff, but then they roll into a pointed, sometimes rough criticism of the piece. They certainly don’t just give everybody a pass.

So, long story short, I’m enjoying The Sing Off a lot more than I expected to. I think there are about 5 groups left, and they are all pretty awesome, so it’s not too late to start watching. If nothing else, you can watch my man Folds lay some awesome critique without being too mean. Then we can debate over stuff, like who got robbed and who’s totally going to win.

Quote Monday is a Beast

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie, discovering her glow stick was still glowing from the day before: “It’s a miracle!!”

Meredith: “…and then we moved here.”
Evie: “How did you lift the house?”

Evie, on her 3rd doughnut hole: “It’s not dessert daddy, it’s just bread with sugar on it!”

Evie: “You’re the beast, daddy!”
Me: “Raar! My first victim will be this innocent little boy!”
::gobbling up Oliver::
Evie: “No, no! Don’t eat him, that’s my brother!”
Me: “What will you offer me in trade for him?”
Evie: “…my cat?”

Obviously a skilled negotiator in the making.