Diana Rowland — Writing, Life, and the Stuff in between

I warned you that this weekend’s entries were going to be short and sweet.

So, I’m going to cheat a bit and give you a video of Anna at the playground.

Shockingly enough, Anna slept until 7:30 in the morning. I’m still stunned that the child slept 14 hours.

Don’t get me wrong–I’m not complaining.

This morning, after Anna’s dose of milk and “Wiggles”, she grabbed my hand and dragged me into the dining room, whereupon she plopped down onto her stomach to peer under the christmas tree. A few seconds later she got up again, a pitfully forlorn expression on her face. I had to explain to her then that she had to tell Santa what she wanted for christmas, and then had to wait for Santa to come and bring the toys.

See, I want her to believe in Santa, at least for a few years. I don’t ever recall really believing in Santa. It’s not that my parents ever actively disabused me of the notion that Santa Claus was real, but at the same time they never really tried to make me believe that there was a fat guy who lived at the north pole and delivered toys in a sleigh pulled by reindeer.

But I want her to believe. I want her to experience–even briefly–that pure acceptance that there is magic and wonder and incredible stuff in the world. I’m hoping that when she gets older and has to give up that belief, that maybe that acceptance of wonder and magic and special will linger, even though she will have to accept that there is no fat guy at the north pole who rides a sleigh.

We took her to see Santa today, i.e. we took her to get her picture taken with the mall Santa. It was worth paying $25 for one 5×7 and 4 wallet sized pictures, though, because this is one of those mall Santas that really is a big white-bearded guy, not just some teenager in a fake white beard. I was expecting Anna to freak out at being put on the lap of a total stranger, but she didn’t. She just looked at him in awe and wonder and sat quietly with a small smile on her face as the picture was taken.

After the picture Santa asked her what she wanted for Christmas. She got a coy smile on her face, looked at me, then looked back at Santa and said, “A PUPPY!”

A puppy.

Then again, her belief in Santa may not last past this christmas morning.

I darn near forgot to make a post today. It’s not that it’s been a terribly busy day, but it has been one where I’ve had about zero free time to myself. Jack had a ton of errands to run in the morning, so I was on my own with Anna. I can get housework-type stuff done when it’s just the two of us, but it’s not great for trying to sit down at the computer. Then the afternoon was tied up since we had to go to the first birthday party for my youngest step-grandson. Anna never took a nap during any of this time, instead waiting until 5:30pm to crash. Usually once it gets past about 4pm I don’t bother with a nap for her, but tonight I had sat her down in front of the tv to watch the “Wiggly Wiggly Christmas” DVD because I was just desperate to get some time to finish reading an article, and when I looked back at her she had her head on her little stuffed chair and her butt up in the air and she was out cold. I transferred her to the couch, and then tried to wake her up about 45 minutes later in the hopes that I could still get her to stick to her normal bedtime, but she wanted no part of being conscious. By this time Jack was home from his second round of errands, and so he just took her upstairs and put her to bed.

I fully expect her to be wide awake at 4am.

I wasn’t paying attention yesterday when I posted my first Holidailies entry, and thus completely missed the fact that there are daily “prompts” and that yesterday’s prompt was to introduce ourselves and our blogs/journals/whatevers to our new readers.

So, I’ll just do mine a day late.

Name of the blog-thing, as you can see, is “Writing, Life, and the Stuff in Between.” I’ve had an online journal type of thing since 1996, though I’ve had a couple of hiatuses in there due to various Life Crap. It used to be called “Contradistinctions” mostly because I thought it was a cool word. But the new title seems to fit me a bit better, I think. I’m a writer, but I also have a life outside of writing, and there’s a lot of other stuff that happens to me as well. Though with my present job I’ve been tempted to change it to “Writing, Death, and that Life stuff too.”

The basic facts about me: I turned 40 this year, which really doesn’t bother me since I kinda like the whole bit about being taken more seriously. I’ve been married twice, still married to #2. I’m #3 for him. We have one daughter between us, Anna, who is a bit older than 2 ½. He has five other kids ranging in age from 30 to 18, as well as four grandkids, ranging in age from 5 to 1, with another on the way. I get alone really well with all of the kids, probably because I never tried to be their “Mom.”

I have a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Georgia Tech. Completely Useless Degree.

Back when I was still married to my first husband I worked in the Casino business, working my way up from dealer to Pit Boss over the course of about six years. After I divorced #1, I finally got tired of dealing with drunks and assholes and doing nothing to make the world a better place, and finally quit and became a cop, taking a 60% pay cut in the process. I still dealt with drunks and assholes, but at least then I was able to do so with the aid of a gun and pepper spray. And, I could do my little part to make the world a slightly nicer and safer place. I was a street cop for a few years, then a detective for a few years, then I worked in the crime lab doing computer forensics, digital analysis and video enhancement, as well as the regular crime scene investigation type of stuff.

This year I was approached by another agency, and after a short period of “wooing” I left policework and went to work for the Parish Coroner’s Office to do their IT work and forensic photography. For a lot more money. And less micromanagement. So I STILL deal with drunks and assholes, but now they’re dead.

I attend every autopsy and take pictures and fingerprints, and I’ve also been learning the basic morgue tech stuff which I will go into more detail about later on since that definitely merits an entry of its own.

I write as well. Mostly Science Fiction or Fantasy, though the novel that I’m clawing through rewrites on right now is a paranormal mystery. (Gee, it’s not like I have any practical experience for writing mysteries, y’know?) I’m in the last throes of this novel with probably a month of serious work left on it before it gets sent out to some first readers. I’ve made two professional short fiction sales as of this date. The first was a story called “Extant” that was published in the anthology The Age of Reason–Stories for a New Millenium, and it earned an honorable mention in the 17th Annual Years Best Science Fiction. The other sale was my story “Schroedinger’s Hummingbird” which won first place in the 3rd Quarter of the Writers of the Future contest. Writer’s of the Future Vol. XXII is out in all of the stores now, and my story starts on page 235.

So, there you go. I think that’s more than enough to get you started.

The Kid is sick. She’s had a high fever the past two nights and her nose is running like a faucet. After speaking to the sister-the-ped I decided to go ahead and take the Kid in to get her plague diagnosed in case it was the sort that needed antibiotics. Turns out that Anna has the flu, but since she had her flu shot two weeks ago we’re all hopeful that it’ll be a nice light fast case. (Which was the case last year. I swear that kid had the flu for a whole day. I’m not complaining!)

Anyway, during one of the high-fever nights I had to get up with her in the middle of the night, and took her downstairs to get some meds for her. Luckily she’s really good about taking her little chewables and muching them right down. So, I gave her a chewable Motrin, and then pulled out a chewable Dimetapp. “What’s that?” she asked. “It’s medicine for your nose,” I said. “It’ll make your nose feel better.”

You can see this coming, can’t you?

Yes, she took the little pill from me and promptly stuffed it up her nose. Fortunately I managed to grab it before it was irretrievable and managed to get her to self-administer it into the proper orifice on the second try.

I’m just glad it wasn’t diarrhea medicine.

Quick pic of Anna in her pirate costume on Halloween. She had an absolute blast going Trick or Treat, and in fact has bugged me darn near every night since then, wanting to go Trick or Treating again. I don’t think she quite grasps the concept that Halloween is only once a year.

Last night I gave Anna her usual bath before bedtime, and when I took her out of the tub I grabbed a white towel off of the rack and wrapped it around her. “Anna,” I said as I toweled her down, “what color is this towel?”

She answered with total confidence. “Grey!”

Conversation with Anna after picking her up from daycare:

“Mom! I’m hungry. Want some milk!”

“Okay, we’ll be home in just a few minutes and you can have some milk then.”

“Mommy! I want to eat pancakes!”

“Yummy! Do you want to eat waffles?” [note: we have waffles at home, but no pancakes.]

“No waffles!! Mom! I want to eat cars!”

“Okay. What color cars?”

“Brown.”

“With tires or without?”

“No tires. Mom! I want to eat a fire engine!”

“What color fire engine?”

“RED!” [note: there is an unspoken “Duh!” here.]”Mom! I want to eat a house! Mom! I want to eat a dump truck! Mom! I want to eat a chair!”

(When we got home she drank 2 big cups of milk, ate three pieces of cheese, a bunch of grapes, and a big piece of avocado. And the night is young. I think maybe she’s going through a growth spurt.)

Anna makes muscles.

Sunday I was playing with Anna, the game where she says, “Go to sleep!!” and I put my head down on the couch and pretend to snore for a couple of seconds until she shrieks, “Wake up!!” Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum. Finally, after about 376 rounds of the Go To Sleep Wake Up game she got really close to me, put her face a couple of inches from mine and said with a grin, “Look at me!”

I obliged and looked at her. She then continued, lifting both hands in front of her for emphasis, “Don’t hit Miles!” (Miles is one of the kids in her daycare class.)

I busted out laughing, since it was painfully obvious that she has been told this far too many times.

She is, alas, at that age where she expresses discontent, frustration, hunger, love, thirst, boredom, joy, and every other emotional state by taking a hefty swat at whatever/whomever is closest to her. She swatted me (hard! Jeez, that kid has a mean right hook!) the other day and I put her in timeout. (I’m really trying hard to not hit her back since I don’t’ want to reinforce the action of hitting.) It used to be that I could stick her in the corner for timeout and she’d wail for the two minutes and then I’d go pick her up and she’d be all sorry and she’d be reformed and she’d behave herself for a whole six minutes. But now I think she’s become far too used to the whole timeout scam, and now just sits there, banging her feet on the floor, and after about a minute starts calling, “MOMMYYYYY… WHERE ARE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.”

So after her two minutes were up, I went over to her and crouched down in front of her and quietly explained that hitting was bad and it hurt me when she hit me and I didn’t like it at all. All during this she nodded sagely, saying, “Yeah. Yeah.” But I know she was thinking, “Yes, you weak pitiful creature, I hear what you are saying, and I’ll put up with this pacifist crap for now but in just a few years I’ll be bigger than you and I’ll lay you right out.”