And so it goes

Like Problem Child, I too take my blogging duties seriously, but sometimes...

My foot is doing well after the surgery nearly two weeks ago. I had the stitches removed on Monday and aside from it looking like an experiment straight out of Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory, the foot looks and functions pretty well. I won't gross you out with any foot photos. But here's the Buddha I found for my foyer. I rub his belly whenever I can.




But apparently I didn't get Buddha soon enough. Late Sunday night, when I was really in the writing zone and the words were just flowing onto the page, I heard a drip, drip, drip, drip and went into my living room to see water dripping from the smoke detector mounted on the ceiling.

I put a plastic trash can under the drip and immediately called the emergency maintenance number and waited for their return call. When they didn't return my call I called again and then had the maintenance guy show up with some garbage about the wrong apartment number. Whatever. Let's deal with this water. He went upstairs and discovered a pipe had burst in the bathroom and the unit above me was about two to three inches deep in water, which by now was coming through the ceiling in a steady stream. Then it started coming through the ceiling fan. I grabbed more trash cans and buckets and pots and pans and tried to catch as much water as I could, but I had an area of carpet that was pretty well soaked.

All I could think about though was, "If this messes up my new sofa I'm gonna kill somebody." I know that's selfish. Children are starving all around the world, people die from cancer and other diseases, families are losing their homes to foreclosure, workers have lost their jobs and Marilyn is whining about her sofa.

Meanwhile, the carpet people have shown up and begun to vacuum extract the water from the upstairs unit (which I have learned is a corporate rental and that's why I only see the tenant every couple weeks). Slowly the dripping stops, but by now I'm seeing water stains in the ceiling and on some of the walls. The sofa is safe though.

After he's sucked about 100 gallons of water from upstairs (and that's not an exaggeration; the carpet guy said his truck holds 100 gallons and it was almost full) carpet guy comes to my place, sucks up the water in my carpet and then brings in a big air blower aimed at the ceiling.

By the time he left, it was nearly 2:30 AM, I was absolutely exhausted from dumping cans of water and soaking up the carpet with a Sham-Wow (which actually worked pretty well) and my foot hurt like bloody heck because I'd been on it too much dealing with the water mess. So I took a pain pill and went to sleep.

At 10:00 yesterday, two other carpet guys showed up, and using some little gauge thingy, told me I have a lot more wet carpet than I think. I have to move everything off the floor of my bedroom closet and they move all but the big furniture out of my living and dining room areas. I told them to put stuff in my guest room/office but to leave me enough room to get to my computer since I need it to work. Then they pull up the corner of the carpet in the closet and position a blower so it blows under the carpet. Likewise in the living room. And I have a dehumidifier sitting in the guest bathroom, sucking humidity from the air and generating an enormous amount of heat.

I'll have this machinery for two to three days they tell me. Oh joy. I can't hear the TV over the roar of the blower (but on the plus side it's like having a big white noise machine for sleeping). My teensy kitchen is filled with knick-knacks, a floor lamp and my dining room chairs. I can't get to my stove to cook. I'm arguing with the apartment management about their responsibility for my inconvenience (and I'm gonna win that battle, trust me).

So I'm going to continue in PC's vein.

I declare today to be Whining Wednesday.

What's gone wrong in your life? Who's ticked you off? What idiot nearly ran you off the road talking on the cell phone? Which of your creditors made a mistake on your bill this month?

Tell us! Whine all you want because what good is life if you can't whine once in a while? Getting junk off your chest lowers your blood pressure and reduces stress. Consider today a free visit to a shrink.

* Whine graphic from Tracey Buchanan Studios website. Go look at her website because there's some really cute stuff there. I may have to do a little early Christmas shopping.

What Knots

My minister recently completed a three-week trip to Bangladesh and India where he and a group of other clergymen visited various sites and spoke with members of the predominant faiths in that part of the world, one of which is Buddhism. I’m not going to delve into Buddhism. You can Google it for yourself, but I did want to touch on something he mentioned in last Sunday’s sermon, which was titled “Untying the Knots.”

When most folks think of Buddha, the picture that comes to mind is the laughing Buddha like the photo at the left. I have been looking for one of these jolly fellows for my apartment as part of the feng shui I’ve been working on. Having Buddha face the main entrance to your dwelling helps revitalize dead or negative chi (energy), relieves tension and summons fortune and riches. Rubbing the Buddha’s belly is supposed to bring good luck.

Call my crazy, but I’m very open to positive energy, good fortune and riches and less tension.

Here’s a different image of Buddha the minister used in his sermon last Sunday. Take a close look at the hands. Without an explanation I might have thought it was some sort of far eastern gang sign. However, the pundit who took their group to the site of Buddha’s first sermon explained this is the position one’s hands would be in to untie a knot.

The good reverend went on to say "the way of Buddha is about untying the knots in our lives." In our western world, we often use the expression that we’re “tied up in knots” over something.

Included in our bulletins Sunday morning was a small gift from his trip – a piece of red thread a little over three feet long with a knot tied near the middle. We were invited to put the thread on our wrist as a reminder of our faith. He also told us the Dalai Lama distributes red threads at his public audiences.

As I wrapped the thread around my wrist, I thought about all the knots I’ve had to untie over the past year. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know what I’m talking about. If not, I can sum it up in one word: divorce.

But I also started thinking of the red thread in terms of writing. When we craft a story, our characters have something they want (a goal), a reason for wanting it (motivation) and a great big knot in the red thread of their lives that keeps them from that goal (conflict).

As writers, we want to have good GMC in the story, but we also want a satisfying resolution to the story. In other words, we want that knot completely untied so our hero and heroine can live happily ever after. I'd even like to take the red thread and tie my characters together with a nice, neat bow. How we untie the knot depends on our skill as a writer and also the circumstances of the plot. But until the thread is un-knotted, the story isn’t complete and we can’t type “The End.”

With regard to the synopsis and three chapters requested by the Harlequin editor at the RWA conference week before last, I haven’t begun working on that yet. I’m still a little fuzzy from the anesthesia from my foot surgery last week, and I do not want to send off anything that could be classified as “writing under the influence.” Aliens don't need to show up in chapter fourteen.

But with regard to the other parts of my life, the untying is a work in progress. My fabulous fellow Playfriends and the Mavens have been an invaluable part of this process. My family has been behind me one hundred percent. And I leave church every Sunday with my bulletin filled with notes I’ve scribbled in response to the sermons. I like that my minister makes me think. I even appreciate that sometimes he makes me cry because it means the knots are untying and another part of my life is working through to a good resolution.

I have an extra red thread from Sunday and one lucky commenter today will get it. I don’t want you to feel like you have to bear your souls today and talk about the knotted parts of your life, so just tell me about a good book you’ve read lately and what made it so good.

I’ll go first. I’m reading RED’S HOT HONKY-TONK BAR by Pamela Morsi, which is about a woman whose life suddenly gets turned upside down when she has to take responsibility for two young grandchildren she hardly knows.