Hey – hey! Guess what day it is?

July 22, 2020July 26, 20209 Comments

You know what day it is – it’s Pepper Day! Woo!

And that’s about all the excitement I can muster right now. Because it’s also Hump Day and, well, I’m awfully glad we’re on the downhill slope of the week.

See, my job was another victim of Covid, but I was super fortunate to find a new job in only a couple of weeks. Fourteen years of experience, plus my pretty new(ish) English degree, landed me a job in another law firm, and I started on Monday. While it feels good to be working and having days filled with adult conversation again, and while I’m glad that my younger kids are getting some social interaction with other kids (and trust me, the kids are just as happy about that as I am), it’s been three days of hard mornings. It’s hard enough to go back to work – even at a job you love – after having a couple days off, but after having four months off? Let’s just say I wasn’t sure I’d be equal to the task.

But everything is going well so far, and everyone has been super welcoming, which is wonderful. It’s been a great three days.

And I really don’t know what I was going to say just now. After months of late nights followed by late mornings, I’m exhausted, and I’m pretty sure my brain stopped working for the day somewhere around 3:00 p.m. this afternoon. But I guess this qualifies as a peppery post, because it is, in fact a post that I have drafted, even if it really isn’t very good. But that’s okay because it means there’s room to grow, and if you’re looking for something worth reading, then click here to find some great reads by writers who are more with it today than I am.

And if you’d rather be chatting than reading, then tell me – are you working? Not working? Somewhere in between? Let’s catch up!

If 2020 was a sound…

July 14, 2020July 14, 20204 Comments

Hello, all! What’s new with you? Anything?

No?

That’s okay. Maybe right now, we don’t need new. Maybe right now, we all just need a good laugh. Lord knows I could use one. So with that in mind, I’ve got some memes to share with you today because that’s just about all the brain power I’m able to muster right now.

I hope they make you smile…

MBS strikes again

July 9, 2020July 9, 2020Leave a comment

It’s been rainy today.

Not the kind of steady rain that makes me long to curl up with a book and a blanket and a nice cup of tea, but the kind of deluge that makes me begin a mental inventory of everything in the basement that might possibly be damaged if the sump pump breaks down and the water begins to rise. It’s not been the kind of thunderstorm that me long to sit and watch roll by from the comfort of a swing on my front porch, but the kind of thunderstorm that makes me turn on the TV so I can catch the latest weather updates, even as I compulsively check my phone for the same thing.

The power flashed here, but didn’t completely go out. The wind howled as if a blizzard were on the way. The rain hit my windows with such force that I wondered if it wasn’t hail instead. And in under an hour…

Fun in the sun

June 11, 2020June 11, 20204 Comments

That’s right – sun! June is nearly half over, but it doesn’t feel like it. We’ve had so much rain the past couple of weeks that I was beginning to think bright, bright sunshiny days were a thing of the past.

But today…

Scan City, Population: Me

May 19, 20202 Comments

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write. I have. It’s just that, well, I feel like I don’t have the words, or the brain power to form them. I could try to explain it, or you could just go read this post from Rarasaur, which says exactly how I’ve felt the past couple of weeks much better than I could.

So what have I been up to? Well, I’ve been scanning a lot of photos. I’m hoping that the process will be a little less time-intensive from here on out; I’ve finished scanning all the photo albums that my grandparents kept for me when I was growing up. My grandma wrote who was in each picture, the date it was taken, and what the event was (birthday, holiday, concert, etc.) on the back of every photo in those albums. I wanted to keep track of all that info, but…

Day 28: Focus

April 28, 202012 Comments

It’s really hard to focus on anything other than zoning out in front of the TV right now. I have photos to scan, videos to fix, poems and stories to write, and an anthology to edit, and I can’t seem to focus on any of it. Sunday I had a movie marathon with the kids, and yesterday morning it continued, and that was all I could summon the mental energy for.

I want to know when I’ll be able to go back to work. I want to know when my kids will be able to go back to school (not this school year, but the beginning of the coming school year is up in the air at this point). I want to know when things will return to some semblance of normal.

But the answers to those questions are…

Day 27: Team

April 27, 20202 Comments

I rather miss being part of a team. I’m not athletically inclined, so with the exception of a couple summers spent playing softball in early elementary school, I was never interested in playing sports. Band, however, is just as much a team event as basketball, baseball, or football, and as I’ve written before, I desperately miss being in band.

In order to succeed in band, you have to listen to the other musicians around you (it’s the same for choir, but I was a band geek and not a choir geek, despite my affinity for singing). I miss having a goal to work toward. Well, that’s not true…

Day 22: Tempo

April 22, 2020Leave a comment

When you have four kids and a job, life moves at a pretty fast tempo. That tempo usually looks a little something like this:

Picture, if you will, a bumblebee as you’re listening. Or even a hummingbird. Actually, a hummingbird might work better. Especially when I was in college and working and dealing with all the kids’ stuff, I kinda felt like this melody line. Even without the added pressure of college coursework, though, there are times where my life feels like I have to move at warp speed in order to keep up.

Or, you know, at ludicrous speed. Whatever.

But lately…

Day 19: Three

April 19, 20202 Comments

Today’s prompt is supposed to be about things that come in three parts. Since I’ve spent the past two days marathoning Voyager, the first thing that popped into my head was Captain Proton. It’s a very silly holodeck program that Tom Paris runs as part of a historical study on how ancient people thought about the future. The Captain Program features in three episodes: “Night,” as mentioned yesterday; “Bride of Chaotica!,” which I watched this afternoon and which is among my favorite episodes; and “Shattered,” which at this rate, I’ll be watching sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Captain Proton, Protector of Earth

Honestly, it’s been so long since I saw “Shattered” last that I only vaguely remember what it’s about, and even then…

Day 18: New

April 18, 20209 Comments

Not much is new here, except that the news keeps getting worse, which is why I’ve been avoiding it. In the meantime, I’ve been continuing my rewatch of Star Trek: Voyager. I’d put it on for background noise when I was working from home, and it kept me awake through forty long hours of assembling my annual family photo album, and I had hoped it would have a somewhat comforting effect. This show got me through my particularly turbulent teen years, and given that this particular moment in time is nothing if not turbulent, I had hoped…