Feast or Famine

Monday, October 29, 2007 at 10:30 am (Hack for Hire)
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I don’t know if all free agents experience this, but I’ve found it true for myself and many of my writer friends: The work is feast or famine. You’re either sitting around uneasily waiting for your next project to surface, or you have 5 people calling you at once, 4 of them after you committed all your time, with a sigh of relief, to caller 1.

It wasn’t any different when I worked at a “real” job. I was always either crazy busy or twiddling my thumbs and trying to LOOK busy — much harder when you have to be in an office for 8 hours or are expected to produce X hours of billable time. It was excruciating, and such a waste of time. But then, I still got paid. So in a way, it was all in a day’s work.

What do I do now when it’s slow? (I think my husband is dying to know.) It depends on how panicked I am about knowing there will be no money coming in 30-60 days from now.

I often check out Monster or the local want ads (maybe that dream job is just waiting for me — yeah right), clean out my e-mail Inbox and Sent folders so they’re under 400 each, maybe clean my desk (but not usually — it’s the one place where I thrive in clutter). I might send out some feelers to get in front of clients who might have work. Or if I’m convinced no one will call and suddenly need me, I tackle any of a thousand house projects (from the mundane laundry, cleaning, and grocery shopping to the latest torture-du-jour — paint scraping, mortar chipping, wall sanding — fun stuff like that).

And lest you think I’m a saint, I do sometimes take an afternoon nap, tune into HGTV, or go for a walk. (I always ask the boss first to make sure she says it’s OK.)

Now, of course, I can add blogging to the list — more fun than any of the above and even like working … for free … so it’s like volunteering … or doing pro bono work … so I should feel good about it. Right?

Fortunately, my current mini famine comes without hunger pangs. I have 4 or 5 projects hovering out there, including a couple of white papers to write (major deals — a bit intimidating), an article, a bulk of editing, an internal safety campaign, another editing project…all committed to and all obviously conspiring to strike at once.

The feast is coming — better tighten my thinking cap and get those fat pants ready.

The supreme accomplishment is to blur
the line between work and play.
                         ~ Arnold Toynbee

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All in good fun of course.

Friday, October 26, 2007 at 5:58 pm (Youngest of Seven)
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You know that wedding song, “Whenever two or more of you are gathered in His name, there is love.” At our house, it’s “Whenever two or more of you are gathered in a room, there are games.”

Board games, card games, word games, sports games, outdoor games (even Jarts…don’t tell) — we’re a family of players. We come by it honestly, from my mother’s side. Card playing especially. My great-grandmother, grandparents, and great aunts & uncles were all card players — mostly a game called 500 (something like Bridge). I started early, with Gram patiently teaching me Crazy 8s or Rum, playing through the bars of my crib when I was sick in bed one time (no kidding, I was 3 or 4 — too old to still be in a crib, but I shared a room with two of my sisters and beds were at a premium). To us, playing is like breathing. At 89, my mother still plays cards with “the girls” at least twice a week. And she can still beat me at Scrabble (as can any of my siblings). So much for being the wordsmith of the family.

In my experience, a family either plays games or it doesn’t. You are either a player or you’re not. My dad married into a card-playing family, fathered 7 little players, endured 50 years around us, and never succumbed. He was probably thrilled that we were all out of the way so often and he could lie on the couch in peace.

Non-game-playing guests/spouses/significant others get that uneasy “Oh God, here they go again” look in their eyes when we start to clear the table. The excuses fly: “This is my favorite episode of Bonanza. You go ahead.” Or they feign napping. Or yesterday’s newspaper becomes fascinating reading. The smart ones learn to ask before even coming, “There won’t be any games, will there?” Pity the uninitiated or weak, whom we lure in like lambs: “It’s OK, we play teams. You can be on my team. We’ll play a few practice rounds. It’s easy. You can go first. Here, have a drink.”

The drink usually gets them to the table if nothing else.

It can get a little cutthroat at times — all in good fun of course. Be prepared to get the Jeopardy theme hummed at you if you take too long. Never lead your 10s in 66 or trump your partner’s trick in 500. And expect a lifetime of ridicule — all in good fun of course — if you stumble like this (you know who you are): 

Clue given: “I don’t know who this is, but he’s Chinese.”
Answer clue was supposed to elicit: Robert E. Lee.

Clue given: “Goldilocks and the Three…”
Answer clue was supposed to elicit: Bears (leading to Bear Bryant).
Answer given: “Stooges!?” (in such a hopeful voice).

Clue given: “kenTUCKY” (rising intonation that indicates “opposite” in Password)
Answer clue was supposed to elicit: Tennessee

I can’t begin to count the hours we’ve spent (or the calories we’ve consumed) sitting around the table playing, kibitzing, drinking, munching, and laughing endlessly. It’s the beauty of being part of a big family — there’s always someone to play with. So if you’re a player, or think you could be, come on over. We love new blood. All in good fun of course.

We do not stop playing because we grow old.
We grow old because we stop playing.
                                               ~ Anonymous

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Bubble, Bubble, Toil & Trouble

Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 5:36 pm (Cottage Industry)
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Well, might this post be about the upcoming Halloween festivities? What if I said “Clang, Clang, Hiss & Bang”? Or “Drip, Drip, Basement Trip”?

Yep, it’s heating season again, or as I like to refer to it, “6 months of 62.”

Let me start by saying I’ve always been a forced air girl from Furnaceworld. Getting heat there meant simply walking over to the thermostat, kicking it up a notch (a la Emeril), hearing the click, and a minute later feeling warm(ish) air flowing out of those inconspicuous grates in the floor, wall, or ceiling. You’d change a filter once in a while, call the guy to check the works every year or so, replace a part now and then. That’s about it. Oh, and a bonus: You can also get air conditioning with very little trouble.

Now I live in Boilerland. It’s a cold place, where valuable square footage is eaten up by hulking cast iron radiators lurking under pretty wooden covers (that, of course, reduce heat flow). In this land, due to some quirk understood only by my husband and other HVAC aficionados, upping the thermostat more than 2 degrees at a time causes water to spew out of the “pressure relief valve” onto the basement floor and whatever is stacked there. Any maintenance involves a task called “draining the system,” which in our case means hooking up a garden hose out the basement window, as we have no working floor drains (which makes any water spewage even more fun). The reverse of this, “filling the system,” means pulling off the pretty wooden covers (and the pictures, books, plants, lamps, vases, kleenex, and other tchotchkes displayed on them) in every blessed room in the house and “bleeding the radiator” with a little key and an old margarine tub. Then running back down to the basement every 5 minutes to make sure no water is spewing out anywhere. Oh, and there’s still the mysterious “thermocouple” that goes bad when it’s -3 degrees on a Sunday, leaving you heatless — Boilerland doesn’t have anything over Furnaceworld in that respect.

“But hot water heat is so nice,” you’re thinking. “It’s not so dry as forced air. And it’s less dirty — no dust blowing around.” Yes, that’s what I’d always heard. However:

  1. 62 degrees is 62 degrees — cold enough for your hands and feet to go numb. You can pull the cover off and clutch the radiator to get a little warmth, but that only goes so far. Why 62? Well, getting a $450 gas bill is a good reason. (I’ll save the discourse on uninsulatable [I made that word up] “clay-tile-over-brick construction” for some other time.)
  2. We still get shocked whenever we touch anything, and the cats’ hair all but leaps from them to us, so that “less dry” stuff is bunk, too, as far as I can see.
  3. This is the dustiest house I’ve ever lived in. Some of it is because we are always sanding something, but even when we’re not, the place is a dirtpile. I just can’t keep up.

But it’s not all bad. We’ve supplemented with lovely little ceramic cube electric heaters. You walk over to one, kick up the thermostat a notch, hear the click, and warm air starts pouring out. It’s a beautiful thing — almost like being back in Furnaceworld.

May you have warmth in your igloo, oil in your lamp, and peace in your heart.
                                                                             ~ Eskimo proverb

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