Moment of Aargh (Glasgow series, Part 0001) and introducing Odin.

One thing definitely hasn't changed since moving to Glasgow. I am still the queen of WTF Did I Just Do? moments. I've managed to get to the train station in my slippers at least once in the last month.

Stace is on a baking kick, which is so awesome: I come in, and there's cake. And it's good cake, which is even more important.

This means that the butter, eggs, etc get used up pretty fast, so the other day when I went to make some toast, the butter was pretty much done. No problems - we have more in the freezer, one of those lidded little plastic tubs with an inner foil seal under the lid. The plan was to take it out, nuke it for 30 seconds so I could scrape enough off the top for the toast, and leave it out to defrost thoroughly, because in Glasgow you don't need to keep butter in the fridge come November. Hell, you could probably safely leave your milk out for most of the week. Our kitchen is the approximate temperature of a walk-in fridge anyway.

So, I bent down to the freezer, hauled the frozen tub of butter out, turned around to walk away, and promptly tripped over my own two feet. I didn't quite face-plant (Wahey!), but I flung out my hand to catch myself, and of course I used the hand holding the butter. It slammed off of the wall and escaped, sailing across the kitchen like The Little Butter Bar That Learnt How To Fly.

Me: Oh, crap. Not to worry, the lid's still on-

The lid must have been loosened during the bash against the wall. Half a second into the flight, it spun off of the top of the butter and tried to imbed itself in the microwave door.

A half second later, the inner foil fluttered gently down to the floor tiles.

Me: Aw, come on.

The butter, now lidless and foil-less, bounced off of the spare utensil drawer and whirred back at my face. I ducked. It slammed into the wall beside me and sailed back across the room.

Me: Holy sh-

The butter, which by all rights should've been firmly fixed by its own weight inside that bloody tub, separated from the container and dropped. On my foot. Frozen butter hurts, by the way. The container landed completely upright on the kitchen counter, spun twice, and stopped.

Me: Oh, fuck a duck.


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Shortly after we moved into the house, we noticed a gorgeous black cat wandering around. The neighbour told me he's lived in the area for years, and the woman who had him died some time ago. One of her neighbours took him on. Unfortunately, I have no idea who, or if the person is even still in the area.

The cat I saw the first couple of times was desperately stalking pigeons. He caught a couple, and ate most of them. His coat was dull, and watching the way he walks makes me think there's a good touch of arthritis involved. Our bunch aren't allowed out without a harness or going into their outdoor pen, so the old boy spent a lot of summer sitting on the deck looking in at them, with Bast in particular watching him back and chirping. He was extremely skittish around humans, though.

Then he started coming to the front door. We have a couple of spare cat bowls, so I started putting a bowl down for him. (I later found out Stace was doing the same thing. There's a reason my cousin and I get on pretty well most of the time.)
On rainy, cold days, we leave a bowl of food in the front door alcove for him and leave the one door closed so he gets a bit of shelter and a place to sit while he gets his food.

His coat is starting to shine, and he's put on a bit of weight, but he's still pretty jumpy. We've called him Odin because his one eye tends to close slowly while he looks at you. I'm not sure whether it's a medical issue, but there seems to be constant clear discharge, and he won't let me close enough for long enough to get him into a carrier. I'd like to get that looked at, because it's bugging the hell out of me. He also has an overbite, which seems to be a thing with black toms in the UK. It is pretty freaking adorable, though. He'll let us stroke him, briefly, before settling down to eat.
He missed a couple of visits during the big storm we had last week, and we were both very relieved to see him one morning, waiting patiently for the doors to open so that he could get his breakfast.

We can't let him in the house because we have no clue whether his shots are up to date (Sheba got taken to the vet the day after I adopted her and was all up to date by the time the other two met her) and I won't take a chance with my three. Introducing a new cat can also be a tricky business, and it's almost impossible to turn an outdoor cat into an indoor cat and have a happy animal. Three indoor cats with no road-sense and access to a cat door would have the life expectancy of a soft-boiled egg since we live on a very busy road. It's a dilemma I can't see a way around just yet; any ideas that are feasible would be great.

Bast desperately wants to meet him. If he knows Odin is in the alcove, he hurls himself at the door chirping frantically. There's no hissing or growling, and knowing Bast he wants to play with a new friend, but since Odin could probably dismantle him in three seconds flat, that door is staying firmly closed for the meantime.

We're planning on putting a box and blanket down for him so if he wants to snuggle up for most of the day he can. It would be good to know he has a warm place when winter hits.

What not to do to coffee : Moments of Aargh

So I discovered how to make a migraine (yep, it came back. Week 3 and counting, though not the same levels as hell week) back off temporarily. Unfortunately it involves destroying a perfectly good cup of coffee and a certain degree of pain all by its little self.

Step 1: Do the zombie shuffle to the kitchen and make your black coffee as per usual.
Step 2: Place the coffee beside your bed the way you've done every morning for several years.
Step 3: Put your foot down and place it in the mug. (I have small feet. Some of you may need bigger mugs.)
Step 4: Make a noise like a cross between a wounded buffalo and a whistling kettle.
Step 5: Remove foot and hop to freezer. Swearing is optional, but highly recommended. Realise coffee is now undrinkable, because feet.
Step 6: Stick foot in freezer. Drop lid on ankle.
Step 7: Sit on floor with bag of peas on foot. Text boss to explain what happened. (He may need valium by the end of this year.)
Step 8: Lurch around on very tender toes for rest of day.

Bonus points if you:

1) Get your hair caught on the bathroom stall coat hook at work. Emerge looking like a deranged troll doll. With a limp.

What not to do on a Pilates Ball (Moment of Aargh)

So to fully explain this, I need to rewind a little to when I got back to London in January. I trudged through my front door, lurched up the stairs, staggered into my bedroom - and found a fairly impressive, anatomically correct (kinda) blow-up pool cushion on my bed, with a welcome home message from Stacey introducing me to Darryl. The anatomical part made a fairly convenient handle to carry it through to the lounge and sling it on top of the bean bag pile, although if the neighbours across the road were watching I predict a certain amount of eye-watering and leg-crossing.

I decided it was time to get back on the Pilates ball a few days ago. What I didn't realise was that at some point, Stacey had wedged my ball against the giant bean bags (now proudly topped with Darryl, in all his glory) to the point that it was holding them up.

I discovered that the Pilates ball had been performing a fairly useful function when I was half-way through the second exercise, which is a backwards stretch. What this means is that I was curved backwards over the bloody ball, finger-tips touching the carpet on one side, toe-tips on the other. This is not a position conducive to rapid movement.

Something shifted in the room. There was a gentle croaking, the whisper of pleather moving against itself. Darryl's pertinent bit (which was all I could really see from my position) wobbled. Then it wiggled.

I froze, trying to figure out what what make a six foot pile of giant bean bags and a blow-up male doll lilo thingie behave like this. My inner voice, which seems to catch on quicker than the rest of me in these situations, whimpered. Then everything happened very fast.

Me (starting to sit up) : Eh?
Beanbags: *Shudder*
Darryl: *Waggle*
Me: What the -
Inner Voice : OhCrapOhCrapOhCrap
Beanbags: *Slow Motion Avalanche*
Darryl : *Target Locked. Hey, babe.*
Me: OH YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!

At which point the ball moved. Since I was totally unbalanced, I moved with it, back to the original position of being upside down. My toes left the ground. Somewhere, the gentle shifting of pleather turned into the silence you get just before everything really goes pear-shaped.

About three seconds later I was enveloped in two very large pleather beanbags, and Darryl.  I missed receiving a black eye from a blow-up dong by about six centimetres, and sheer luck.

And then I fell off the bloody Pilates ball.

Moments of Skedification, and the weekend roundup

Let's start with the good and exciting, shall we? (Never fear, we'll move swiftly onto my weekend moments of WTF, of which there were a couple.)

Allegories is garnering great reviews, and stormed up the chart in the first week of release on Amazon. Hitting the top 100 is nice. Hitting it in several categories transfers into dreamlike. I think I can safely say all 22 of us made hysterical cooing noises over on Facebook.  (I re-read it this past week.Those stories rock.) If you want your mind blown, check it out on the Amazon site - and there is a paper edition available as well. I got the Moon card, and I came up with something a lot gentler than I normally do. (I've also been told I made a few readers cry, and THAT is a very strange feeling.) Anyone who jumps from that to House of F.A.R.T. is probably going to go into literary shock, though.

I (finally!) have an author page at Facebook, all thanks to Anne Chaconas at Badass Marketing. With my usual wonderful techie talent, I can't get the link to work, but it's JHSked, Author. (I suspect Anne is equally horrified and fascinated by what I do to tech. I'm pretty sure I reduced her to helpless gibbering at least once in the past week or so. I'll update on writing stuff over there as well, but since the general consensus was that the wall should be "Skedified", some of the strangeness that is life as I know it will end up there as well.

I have an interview with Eden Baylee, where she crawled into my mind and encouraged me to swear here: http://edenbaylee.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/get-inside-the-mind-of-author-j-h-sked-jhsked.
Eden is one of my fellow authors from the Allegories, and she's brilliant - head on over and say hi.

Moving swiftly onto the Skedification parts:

1) Zombie ribs. Not quite as horrifying as Zombie Duck was - I still haven't gathered the courage to attempt cooking a whole duck again, but it was bad. It was back to Chinese take-away since everything was still frozen.

2) Moment of Aargh, porn style: I should know better than to attempt opening yoghurt one-handed, I really should. On the bright side, I missed the ceiling, and actually got some in my mouth. It was actually good. The rest of it made friends with my ear, the fridge, the floor, and my trousers. Not a good look.

3) The lamp incident, which involved going for a two hour nap, and waking up with my floor lamp in bed with me. Said floor lamp tops out at 6 foot. I have no clue. None.

4) Forgetting to remove the seeds before roasting chilli peppers. Roast chilli is lovely, but forgetting to deseed meant trampling over Stacey on my way to stick my face under the cold tap because I thought my lips had caught fire. It is, however, an EXCELLENT way to clear your sinuses.

5) Walking into the lounge and nearly face-planting because I tried to miss what I thought was a large dog lying on the carpet. We don't have a dog, and there was nothing there, just my cousin, who closed her eyes and shook her head.

6) Near miss house fire. The plug is a twisted hunk of metal and plastic, and the socket is as scorched as if our local Conservative politician had farted at it. Both of us in the room; neither of us heard or smelled a damn thing. Get your fire alarms checked, guys. That one was too close.

So far, no pigeon sightings to be reported. Also a lack of SOS (Spawn of Spider, for any new readers), which I'm very happy about. There's something very unsettling about realising your carpet is moving towards you. (It's ALWAYS towards you.)

WTF Wednesdays : they're back! (Moment of Aargh Part 789200)

My strange day of the week has defaulted to Wednesday again.

I started off with a stabby duvet, when my knee brushed against the cover as I climbed out of bed. After screaming and clutching my knee, I pulled the feather out of it (zombie duck's revenge, I reckon), and lurched downstairs for coffee.

An hour later, as I swung back into my bedroom to get my boots on and leave for work, I discovered what happens when the shopping bag hanging off of the bedroom door lays a snare trap.

One of the handles had drifted down from the door knob, and was resting at ankle height. I stepped in it.

About five seconds later, I was dangling from my bedroom door with a mouthful of fluff that was partially the top of an Ugg boot, and partially carpet. It took me a few minutes to extricate myself, mainly because my legs had decided pretzel twists were fun, and I wasn't entirely sure which one the bag handle had wrapped around. I was also seeing stars since I head-butted the carpet, the other Ugg boot, and a random sock that had escaped from the hidden lost sock dimensional black hole. My bag had fallen off the bed when I landed and bounced off my neck. 

(It should be noted that I may have dropped a bra size. Repeated bouncing is not good for the girls, and they have felt decidedly unperky since this episode. If I thought it worked on tummy fat, I'd still be imitating a baby seal instead of writing this.)

I got myself off the door eventually, without bringing it down on my head. I stood up, brushed myself off, said a number of the rudest words I know, and kicked the sandals I'd been yanked out of across the room, and left.

When I got home I couldn't find find my sandals anywhere. I eventually found one under the boots (no clue). The other one was under my pillow. (Really, truly have no clue, and am nervous about speculating).

Considering last week contained the highlight of the toilet seat moving out from under me like it was greased at four in the morning, it could have been worse. And I will keep telling myself that until the next moment of aargh happens. But still, WTF, Wednesday?

Wednesday Travel Woes, with WTF, Universe as added bonus

Exactly one week after my first disastrous attempt at this trip, I set off again. I'd checked my email ticket reference repeatedly, so I knew I was headed to the right city.  I checked the weather report the night before - sunny, a mild 22C. (HAH!)
I timed my journey so I'd have half an hour to spare at the station, so I could grab a coffee, and I ended up leaving slightly earlier than planned because I was ready.
Things went great, right up until the Victoria line ground to a halt with me in it.

We had a fun time not moving in a tunnel, with an increasingly apologetic driver telling us someone had pulled a passenger alarm in a train ahead. By the time we pulled into Seven Sisters, I was twitchy. My half hour lead time had dwindled to ten minutes, but if we went to schedule from here on I'd make it.
And then they closed the station, and kicked everyone out. I stood on the pavement and watch the road fill up with police cars, which isn't something they normally do when someone gets sick on a tube train in the morning. Not even puking on a senior member of the CID is likely to get that response in London morning rush hour.
With the line now suspended until further notice, I grabbed a taxi. I had fourteen minutes before the train left London, so it was now a case of trying to get the next train. Seven sisters to Kings Cross in fourteen minutes could possibly be done if you closed every road and stopped traffic, and figured out how to beat the sound barrier. It cannot be done on a Wednesday morning at 08:42.

I watched the clock on the dashboard flick over to my departing time, and texted my boss. (Deja vu is only fun when it happens to someone else, and it isn't work related.) Thankfully, he'd been on the Vic from the other direction, so he knew I wasn't trying it on. Plan approved: grab the next train and head out. I'd be late, but better than cancelling again.

The taxi fare spanked me for just over £20. I fed my card into the machine and watched the rail service rape it to the tune of £105 (and if you think the barrier staff would let me on with the previously booked ticket, I want to live in your world), lurched up the escalator as the next train was called, and dropped into my seat. I left London coffee-less.

My destination (weather forecast, sunny and mild) greeted me with a great deal of rain. After the work stuff was done, I headed back to the station. I'm sure it's a lovely city, when it isn't raining on me; I'd worn a dress and crochet style slip on shoes, and I squelched onto the train back to London doing a passible imitation of a half-drowned rat.

The girl who sat next to me clucked her tongue and issued long, dramatic sighs for two and a half hours. I reached London damp, cold, and inching towards homicidal.

I still hadn't had any coffee.

Kings Cross is a big station. The overground section is massive, with a hall full of shops and boutiques; St. Pancras is just across the road and has a daily influx of European tourists. The loo's are free - the only place I've come across in the UK on a major station where you don't have to pay - and when you head down to the tube section, you walk for a while before you hit the branch you want.

I finally lurched onto the Victoria line platform to head for home. Ten seconds after I got there, someone slammed into me from the side and behind, and I landed on my butt. The bruise that was fading from last weeks falling off the seat incident flared to sullen painful life once more. I looked up to see who had just knocked me off my feet, and watched a little person marching down the length of the platform at a fair speed.

I had just been knocked on my ass by a dwarf.

Short of a meteor strike (NOT AN INVITATION, UNIVERSE), I'm not sure how Wednesday will top this one, so maybe my strange day of the week is about to change.

A bad day in London - Moments of WTF, universe.

It's been quiet in my little part of the world. Head down, busy writing, busy working, busy trying to figure out whether spraying someone on the train with my deodorant would be considered assault - that kind of thing. (And the guy on the train was pretty rank. He smelt like a refugee from the Mines of Moria had shacked up with that cave troll, and made a baby, and it was on my train. And it hadn't been potty trained.)

Yesterday made up for it.

Yesterday going pear-shaped started around midnight, when the assignment I was working on evaporated as I started the last paragraph. I can swear in several languages, and I pretty much used all of them, treated Stacey to a non-stop litany of curses as I lurched up and down the passage, shaking my fist at the ceiling. I'm STILL fuming about it.

I decided to have a bath. There was a spider in it, dancing around on thin, spindly legs like an elderly ballerina. I threatened it with death and went back to my room.

I was supposed to be heading out of town for the day on work stuff. I got to Kings Cross, got my ticket, got on the train, which for once was ready to board early.

I settled in, decided to read until the train left, yanked out the kindle, and crossed my legs, and promptly fell off the seat. This is what happens when you sit too close to the edge of a train seat with no arm rests.

I caught my elbow on the down and stripped about half an inch of skin off of it, which I didn't notice because I was rolling around on the floor, holding my elbow and making little squeaky noises. Since I hadn't let go of the kindle, I slapped myself on the ear with it.

After I picked myself up and sulkily sat down again, I checked my bag to make sure nothing had fallen out during my encounter with the train floor.  I pulled the tickets out and checked them.
My stomach lurched.
I checked the address I was going to, and felt the prospects for the day nose-dive sadly into the tarmac in front of me.
Wrong city. I had tickets for the wrong city.

It isn't payday yet. I can't afford to buy new tickets because buying them on the day means the train company bends your credit card over a chair without the benefit of KY.

I texted my boss. No response.

I phoned the place I was going to and rescheduled for next week.

Texted my boss again. No response, which is not surprising since neither one of those texts has reached him as I write this. (With my luck, they'll beep through at around 3am on Sunday morning. That should make for a super start to my Monday.)

Then I headed into the office. Sitting down was painful due to large, strange shape bruise I now have on one of my buttocks, and every time I rested my elbow on my desk it screamed at me and called me names.

I can't talk about work, but suffice to say I've attempted to wipe yesterday from my memory banks. When I got home I re-wrote the assignment, realised that my right eye was swelling up (allergies. Yay!), and the left had a couple of burst veins.  I looked demented.
My hair had decided to channel the Bride of Frankenstein, my elbow was stinging, and my butt was throbbing. And then I got dive-bombed by a daddy-long-legs, a flying ant, and a mosquito, in rapid succession.


Wednesday, I'm not talking to you anymore.

Bath Time Blues (Moment of Oops, part 3679)

Bath time is sacred. It's one of the few times in my life I can just chill, surrounded by warm water and soapy things and bubbles. It's been one of my favourite things since I can remember, and retreating into warm, chest deep water with a book and a beverage and an hour or two is my kind of heaven.

It is not the place I expect to be assaulted by my own bath mat.

One of the first things we discovered when we moved into this flat is that the bathtub is slippery as hell. Getting in and out of it for the first couple of days was the equivalent of strapping bacon rashers to your feet and trying to stroll out over a frying pan; somebody was going to get hurt.

So we toddled across the road to the little corner shop, which sells everything from carpet shampoo to little wire baskets, and got a bath mat. It's cute. It has little dolphins on it, and three shades of blue, and a whole bunch of suckers, to stick to the bottom of the bath.

Tonight's bath was no different to start with; I spent a happy forty minutes or so splashing around, giggling quietly over the story idea that hit me earlier tonight. The usual. Then I pulled the plug as the water was cooling rapidly, and stood up.

The bath mat came with me.

Remember those suckers? Those multiple, strategically placed, ultra-suction cups that are intended to stop people like me cracking their skulls in their own tub? Turns out that when you don't check to make sure the bath mat is the right way around, and spend nearly an hour sitting on the damn things, they attach just as efficiently to the human body. 

It also turns out that because of the way I'd managed to get the bloody thing stuck to me (there are parts of my anatomy that were never intended to have suction applied, dear readers. Tonight I found them all), I'd no sooner get one part loose than the next section would clamp down again.  Standing in the bath means I have a great view of the vanity mirror. There is something incredibly disconcerting about watching yourself frantically shimmy around the bathroom with a dolphin stuck to your pertinent bits.

I finally got the wretched thing off by lining up with the edge of the sink stand, and rubbing against it like a small, grumpy, hairless bear trying to scratch an itch against a tree. It puddled around my ankles in a heap of blue plasticy dolphins, leaving my rear end looking like I'd been groped by a very enthusiastic and amorous octopus. 

I took my red, throbbing behind to sulk in my room, and write my blog. I guarantee I'll check that mat tomorrow night, and at least for the foreseeable future. 

How to Destroy the Prince of Darkness (Moments of Oops, Aargh, and Possible Conversion)

Before we enter the latest saga, a quick heads up on the Allegories of the Tarot project. My gorgeous Moon teaser card is up there, and will be up here, just as soon as I can get the file to save. Me and tech, folks. It's like putting a chicken on roller skates. We've hit the $2250 mark, which is amazing. Thanks to everybody who's spread the word, donated, or simply encouraged us. It's been a hell of a ride, with more to go.

Anyway, returning to our previously scheduled programming, I present the following guide :

1) Climb onto crowded tube car for trip home after long,looooong, day. It works better if your nerves are already frayed. It makes the shrieking more effective.

2) Feel something with eight legs scuttle over your throat. It helps to be severely arachnaphobic for this part.

3) Bitch-slap yourself, hard enough that other passengers turn to stare at you. (Do NOT miss this step. It is crucial.)

4) Hold your hand out to your fellow passengers, with shaking fingers lightly smeared with ex-arachnid, and screech "SATAN!".

5) In the sudden, stunned silence that descends over the car, think about what you just said, and realise there is no conceivable way of explaining you meant spider, and you really aren't dangerous, and can the guy with the briefcase edging carefully away from you be any more obvious? Really?

6) Wait out the ride to the next stop in an ever-widening space, which is actually quite pleasant. Usually at this point you're wedged under someone else's armpit, with a baby stroller trying to climb your leg.

7) Watch about 80% of your fellow passengers dog-pile out of the carriage at the next station, and stand staring at you from the platform.

8) At this point you actually have a seat. (To be honest, you have most of the tube carriage to yourself.) Waving at the people who got off as the tube pulls out is an optional extra, but shouldn't be dismissed for the sheer enjoyment factor.

9) Spend the rest of the trip thinking the little bugger that started all the trouble has revived and is now zombie-spider, because it feels like you have legs all over your throat, even places it didn't touch. As a result, you end up frantically patting yourself every 8 seconds or so. The remaining passengers get off at the next stop.

10) Realise that this being London, there is a very good chance that someone in that carriage believes you really DID just kill Satan. At this point, it would help if you actually believed he existed, but hey. Slaying the Prince of Darkness got you a seat on the tube. You can't really top that.


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You can catch up with my fictional worlds on kindle at  Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. So far, nobody has been attacked by any spiders in them, but we do have lots of violence, snark, magic, and strange events.

Strange Day of the Week - Moments of aargh!(again)

Anyone reading this blog regularly know that strange things tend to happen to me. Occasionally they involve pigeons. Every so often I have a day where so many moments of WTF occur, my brain shuts down trying to process it. For your reading pleasure, I present : Thursday. (Note - although weird stuff happened during the day, it was mainly job related, so not included. Although threatening to head-butt your PC screen gets you very disapproving looks from IT.)

Moment 1 :

Reaching the train station, looking down, and realising I'm wearing my new slippers. These aren't the type of slippers that can pass as shoes if you squint either; they have fluff. And ears. Go home to change into actual boots, and realise that I can now feel every stone, slimy puddle, and bit of nastiness that doubles as a London pavement, even in this little outpost of the city. The slippers are unsalvageable.

Moment 2 :

Get home from work, and can't get my key to turn in the front door. This door has been a pain since we moved into the flat; the wood swells and warps every time it rains and I've had a few moments of struggling to get it open. Choice: call a locksmith (mucho, mucho money would go winging it's way out of my bank account. I can see the wingbeats when I think about it) or call Mandy and Tim. Tim is a big lad - I'm five three by the skin of my teeth, and the top of my head doesn't quite reach his chest. Mandy send Tim thundering down the road to my place, and I spend the time waiting visualising what sort of superhero cape he'd wear.

Tim crosses the road, rolling his shoulders in anticipation; I need in that door. My bladder is singing Ave Maria, my feet hurt, and my Nando's is staring up at me. Either we get that key turned or the door is saying fare-thee-well to this world. Tim shoves the door a few times. He doesn't want to kick it in and turns sad, puppy dog eyes on me. Then he reaches through the letterbox, pulls the door in, and turns the key in one easy motion, opening the door. I feel remarkable stupid at this point in time. My bladder thinks he's a god.

Moment 3 :

I climb into bed at the end of a long day and hear a ping. Followed by a clunk. Then another ping. When I turn on the light and look under the bed, there are a couple of bolts lying on the floor. My bed base appears to be dismantling itself. As I watch, another washer answers the call of gravity and drops, missing my nose by an inch. The bolt that follows doesn't miss at all. At which point I utter a phrase that would have my mother reaching for the soap. I picture myself trying to fix it, and decide that if the bloody thing does collapse, it's not that far to the floor anyway. I put a plaster on my nose and get back into bed. Every couple of hours I wake up to a creak-ping-clunk noise, although the bed is still standing in the morning.

My theory? Thursday was the day this week that the Universe made itself some popcorn and settled in to watch me, while pointing and laughing. The Nando's was pretty good, though.

How to get stuck in your washing machine : A guide for the beginner

About thirty minutes before I was due to leave the house for a visit to Tim and Mandy (my guest stars from the day at the funfair a couple of posts back), I went to haul a load of washing out of the machine.
 I'd climbed out of the bath, thrown a long button down shirt on so's not to flash the guys working in the garage at the back, and realised that I needed to hang the stuff up otherwise it would reek by the time I got in.

To put things into perspective, there's a running joke about the washing machine at my house being possessed. It has moments, like trundling halfway across the kitchen floor during the spin cycle, or rocking gently from side to side, when I wonder if that's really a joke.

I got most of the load out. Stuck my hand in for last little bundle of socks and realised I couldn't pull it back out.

One of the buttons on my shirt sleeve was just the right size to fit into those funny little circles punched in the drum of the machine, and it was wedged very firmly in.

I wiggled. I waggled. I manually rotated the drum, which was a mistake. Fifteen minutes later I was lying on the floor, staring glumly at the ceiling with my cuff still attached firmly to the washing machine, and very happy that I hadn't actually dislocated my shoulder when the drum moved.   

Thankfully the shirt is loose-fitting, so at this point I gave up and wriggled out of it, then ended up squatting on the floor like a morose chimp plucking at the sleeve still stuck to the machine. Due to the layout of the kitchen, even duck-walking would have shown the mechanics a few things they don't normally see while working on a faulty battery, and army crawling would probably have given them the ultimate come-to-Jesus moment, so that was out.

I had to get the shirt out. Of course, since I was no longer attached to the bloody thing, it popped out without a problem, so I shrugged back into it, sulked back to my room, and texted Mandy to say I was running late due to an argument with the washing machine. (I have no idea what she said out loud when she saw that text, but I'm pretty sure she was giggling.)

The evening was great - Tim is the burger king, and I got devils food cake, and we watched Cockneys vs Zombies, which is one of the best giggles I've had in a while. I knocked over my first drink, quite an achievement since it was in a cup holder built into the arm of the chair I was in, and fell over my own two feet when I attempted the couch.

Then I got home, and part of the ceiling grew eight legs and dropped onto my shoulder. Being arachnaphobic, my first response was to punch my own shoulder repeatedly, so I now have a sore hand, a sore shoulder, and no clue where the Spawn of Satan actually went to.

I'm never bored. I'd like to try it sometime, preferably in a non-painful, spider-free environment.

Moments of Aargh (part 782) or How to Kill a Mouse (PC, go away PETA))

I haven't had a serious "tech hates me" moment for a while. This week has made up for it in a serious of short, sharp electro-static shocks on everything. 

And by everything, I mean EVERYTHING.

It's a standing joke on our team that I can't touch my manager's desk (laminate; no metal surfaces) without having my fingertips fried, but this week stepped it up a notch.

So far, the tally is:

Elevator door x 1
iphone x 1
PC Monitor x 2
Kitchen sink tap x 5 (I now tap the counter before I touch the nozzle of doom in the office kitchen)
Lavatory flush handle x 1 (Seriously, universe? That one wasn't funny)
Desk surface x 2
Colleagues x 2
Mouse x 1. But that was the really impressive one.

I came back from lunch, sat down, and grabbed my mouse - and promptly yelped loud enough to have heads turning from across the office. The team mate standing next to me had wide eyes, she'd heard the discharge. And my mouse was dead.

I unplugged it. Plugged it in again. No little red light. No movement on screen.

Me: *Assorted naughty words*
Team mate: Are you serious? You just electrocuted your mouse? (Technically, the mouse tried to electrocute me. Karma hurts like that.)

Eventually I found an unused port and tried the mouse on that side, and it worked. The port it was plugged into initially appears to have gone the way of the dodo. 

I'm not sure if it's more or less impressive that a static shock fried the port itself, and left the mouse working. Judging by the looks on the IT guys faces, (weary resignation from the ones that know my effect on tech, stunned horror on the new boy who hasn't had to deal with any Janet-caused issues yet) I'm going for more.**

Twenty minutes later, my team mate had his PC freeze on him. I wiggled my fingers at his screen and said: "Work. Or I'll touch you." 
At which point it promptly started the page scrolling once more. Since I was kidding around, and didn't actually expect the Voice Of Doom to work, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. (Team mate laughed so hard he nearly choked.)
This does, however, bear out my theory that yes, tech is sentient. And it bloody hates me.

**I've also been banned from touching anything expensive and electrical, and threatened with Dire Consequences if I touch personal electronics. At this point, I can't blame them. 

Special, special snowflake moment of Aargh

Every now and then I manage something so spectacularly crazy that it goes past a moment of oops, and into the Special Snowflake category.

Going through the wrong door in a hotel bedroom wearing nothing but a towel was one of them. Getting whiplash from a boiled egg was another. (It's complicated. Let's just say I now have an aversion to microwave egg boilers, and leave it at that, shall we?)

Everybody has their ritual for getting ready for work. Mine involves lurching down to stick the coffee on, often passing Stacey in the passage doing her own Morning Zombie Shuffle.

Then I lurch back to my room, coffee in hand, to start the underwear-deodorant-clothing process. Then I have half my coffee as a reward for not putting anything on backwards and still being upright.

My deodorant sits on top of a little plastic chest of drawers. At the moment, there are two bottles of the stuff on there, as well as eyedrops, face serum, a really cool little oriental pot that I toss my spare change into, and a bottle of liquid black shoe polish, which is pretty handy when I grab my boots and realise they need a touch-up on the way out of the door.

Until yesterday morning, this was never an issue.

I realised I was running a bit short of time, and started rushing. I grabbed a bottle from the dresser, whipped the top off, and started frantically dabbing under my arms. Then I noticed that there were two little bottles of spray deodorant still lying on the chest of drawers, and that they were spray versions. I haven't used the roll-on stuff in months, since the last one I got felt like it was gluing my armpit shut. Also, there was a strange smell coming from ... me.

I peered down at the bottle I was holding, and said a very rude word. (Actually, I said several of them, some of which haven't been used since my last spider trauma.) About twenty seconds later I was frantically lathering up my armpits in the bathroom, trying to remove the black shoe polish I'd liberally applied.

Just so you know, that stuff is a mother to clean off when it dries, and it dries pretty damn fast when it's on skin.

Eventually I gave up, used quite  bit of perfume (this was not a good idea) and left the house.

For the rest of the day, every time I moved I caught a slight whiff of shoe polish. Combine this with perfume, and the results are pretty bad.

I've rarely been so grateful to get into a bath at the end of a day.

Moments of Aargh

Murphy's law is alive and well and inhabiting my universe again. Let's just say things are a little ... tense ... on a personal level. Someone I cared about a great deal has lost most of my respect, I feel miserable about it, and I had a bloody pigeon dive-bomb me on the way home. (At some point I need to do an update on the Leicester Pigeon Wars, which have now moved to anywhere in the UK I seem to find myself. Watch this space.)

Times like these means my writing, and to a lesser extent my painting, become lifelines. I step into the page and fall into a different universe and I live there for as long as I can, and the arbitrary bull that I've been dealing with falls away.  Paper demons are easier to exorcise than personal ones, but strangely enough they also help with the personal ones. Just for a little bit, I can live in wonder - and that is why I write, and I will probably be writing until the day I am incapable of banging words out on a keyboard, or what ever the next step in tech is.

Entertaining moment of the week: watching some poor chap in business suit get chased around St.Enoch's Square in Glasgow by a flock of seagulls. The enjoyment came more from the fact that it wasn't me getting targeted by them, plus you haven't lived until you've heard a Glaswegian really swear while dancing around with his arms wrapped over his head. I've memorised some new and effective phrases; if I figure out a way to get one of the Celtic gods into the Blue Moon series, they'll be coming out to play.

So far the feedback on the new Blue Moon cover is 100% positive, so I reckon I'll stick with that style going forwards. Now I'm eyeing up the WolfSong cover again, which I think needs a re-work. I'll leave it alone until the follow-up is done though, and change the cover when I release the new one. I'm about 90% inclined towards a Celtic/symbolic design with a few extras - just need to work those out. (The other 10% is just confused, and needs sleep).

And on that note, let's call it a night. My MC has just caught someone going through her pack, and I'm wondering what she'll do about it; so looking forward to the next couple of writing hours tomorrow. I've learnt to expect the unexpected from her.