How Apple Destroyed My Day

It’s Friday and I can’t keep my eyes open. 

And it’s all Apple’s fault. 

No, really. It is.

See, Apple didn’t let me sleep last night. In fact, Apple sabotaged my ability to sleep on a number of fronts. 

First, and let’s be ABSOLUTELY CLEAR, I am in no way responsible for the fact that I stayed up late reading a book on my iPhone. That’s right. Apple sabotaged my brain. If I hadn’t had that book on my iPhone, I would have gone right to sleep, like a sleep-loving baby (said no parent of a baby EVER).

Second, Apple did a truly heinous thing. It released its new version of the iPad for sale at midnight on FREAKING PACIFIC TIME. 

Dear People of the West Coast, Please get it into your heads that we on the East Coast run the time clock. Quit this uppity nonsense right now. The United States of America can’t base their time schedule on a portion of the country that could fall into the ocean at any moment. Sorry. 

Why did this new iPad release time suck hairy goat balls you ask?

Because my husband had to get up to order a gagillion iPads at 3am. Now, WHY he had to do this, I have no flippin’ clue. It was for work. Apparently, underlings cannot be trusted to order iPads. You need a junior executive to this. At 3am. 

The ways of corporate America are mysterious indeed.

Of course, he was also out late for work last night, so he was worried he would not be able to wake up to complete his onerous late night shopping task. 

This required alarms. 

A LOT OF ALARMS.

Guess what we use as alarms in our house?

That’s right, Apple products. 

He set his alarm on his iPhone(some horrible dinging sound noise)--apparently, for multiple times, so that he could not be bamboozled by snooze.

I set my alarm, a happy, gentle harp sound. We hunted up the family iPad to set an alarm. We tracked down the daughter’s iPod to set an alarm. 

(Now, just three days ago, I had a flash of evil insight and changed the daughter’s alarm noise to “My Girl” from The Temptations. Little did I know that this piece of parental sadism would come back to bite me in the ass so soon). 

All of the alarms duly went off and were silenced or snoozled. Repeatedly. 

At some point, in a fit of complete disorientation, I bolted upright and looked around frantically for the source of my torment. There were so many damn Apple products in the room I couldn’t figure out which one was torturing me. 

At some point, around 3:30, after hitting and swiping at some sort of electronic screen, I reached over my soundly sleeping son (go figure--he’d been awake from midnight to 2am) and smacked Chris on the shoulder.

Me: “Did you get up? Did you order the stupid iPads?”

Chris: Mumble, mumble. “Mhhhm.”

Me: “Yes? Does that mean yes?” Smack.

Chris: “Ahh!” He shoved my hand away. “Yes! Yes!”

Me: “Then turn off the DAMN ALARMS!”

Him: More mumbling.

I looked around the room one more time, darting suspicious glances at all the corners where possible Apple predators lurked. “Those things had better be ALL TURNED OFF, DAMMIT.”

Finally, I drifted off towards sleep.

And then the strumming of a harp started next to my head. 

Do You Plan Your Menus?

So, last night on Twitter, I mentioned I was menu planning, and a couple of folks asked me to share, so here it is! 

I used to do this all the time, but after the second child was born, our lives went CRAZY and I rarely could plan anything more than a day ahead, let alone a week. 

My daughter and I are working on keeping a calendar so everyone can have a clue what the whole family is up to. It's a work in progress. -------->>>>

Now, some of these recipes will not be eaten this way by the whole family. Spicy chicken cakes will have a plainer kid version. I fully expect the children to eat plain focaccia, with raw spinach dipped in dressing and plain feta. My daughter will eat deconstructed fajitas, with raw red peppers on the side. But at least there's some food here that I can get excited about, because I've been in a huge food rut. 

We'll see how it works out. More labor intensive meals are for Sat and Sun night. Simple stuff is for crazier weekdays. 

So, do you plan YOUR menus? What factors influence what you choose?

MENU

Spicy Chicken cakes with horseradish aioli

Spinach and Feta stuffed Foccacia

Cheeseburgers, roasted potatoes and green beans

Salmon burgers, steamed broccoli

Slow Cooker Thai Chicken with Edamamame & Rice

Slow Cooker Fajitas with spanish rice

Leftover Fajitas salad

Greek salad with chicken

OTHER

Breakfast--eggs, toast, fruit, whole grain pancakes, homemade waffles, bacon, canadian bacon, milk, 

Snacks--fruit, cheese, quickbreads, cookies, veggies & dip, yogurt, fruit bars, smoothies

Lunch--sandwiches (pbj, turkey, ham, grilled cheese, veggies, fruit), salad, 

Shopping List 

(I have some things on hand, like potatoes, lime juice, fresh ginger, soy sauce, olive oil, minced garlic, salad dressing, mayo,  and dried spices. I also have frozen organic burgers from Costco, as well as frozen salmon burgers, and a huge bag of whole wheat sandwich buns). 

Steam in the bag broccoli

Steam in the bag green beans

Edamame

romaine lettuce

cucumbers

1 jar pitted kalamata olives

3 packs baby carrots

3 packages romaine

4 cucumbers

3 red onion

large bunch bananas

big container strawberries

blueberries

cantaloupe

2 lemons

2 (6-ounce) packages baby spinach
1 bunch fresh oregano

2 bunches cilantro

green bell pepper

3 red bell pepper

1 pound fresh asparagus

1.5 lbs sweet potatoes

1 bunch fresh chives

peanut butter

jam

bread

Fat free milk

Whole milk

Lactaid

Cocunut yogurt

plain  greek yogurt

turkey

ham

gouda

brick cheddar

Feta

Eggs

Bacon

2.5 llbs of chicken pieces

1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast

1 flank steak

Rice milk

Almond milk

1 (13.8-ounce) can refrigerated pizza crust dough
1 package golden raisins
1 can mandarin oranges

large jar medium salsa

flour tortillas

Rice

OTHER

swim towels

sunscreen

dog food

toilet paper

pullups

Blogging at #Amwriting

I'm over at #amwriting today, blogging about Grief and the Writer. It's not all rainbows and butterflies, but there are puppies! (Sort of). Seriously, though, it's a topic close to my heart, and I know too many writers going through this. Let's take this topic out of the closet. You can find the post here.

Lucky 7, take 2

Just for Julie Butcher, because I LOVES her (even if she is the THIRD person to tag me in the Lucky 7 game) I will do a second posting. This one is from page 7 (rather than 77) of Mage Fright.

“A grip of what?” The effort of injecting such sarcastic sweetness tugged me further into the present.

Van stayed silent, spritzing the last flaming bits of paper and wood. He never did reply when I used sarcasm. It was beneath him. 

Heaven help my witchy heart, the synapses in my brain weren’t functioning properly. Otherwise, I would surely have spouted something dreadfully witty, lines worthy of a Noel Coward play at the very least. Some people call the numbness dissociation. Whatever you call it, I could vacillate from panic, to numb, and back to panic again until the world recovered from global warming. 

It sounds like more fun than it is.

Van then aimed the extinguisher at the photographic remnants of our shared past, which still supported a few rebellious flames. The foam sprayed out in a loud rush. He kept his attention on the fire, but I heard him all the same. “Tia. Get drenched.”

Even shaking my head, the cobwebs wouldn’t clear. 

Drenched. 

The Lucky 7

Yes, I've been tagged in the evil Lucky 7 meme. I was tagged by the lovely Kerry Schafer who has obviously decided to torture me for Easter. (FYI, in future, I'm a Cadbury Creme Egg whore. Ahem).

The rules for the Lucky Sevens Game are these:

*Open the document for your current MS/WIP

*Go to page 77

*Go to line 7

*Copy the next 7 lines (sentences or paragraphs) and post them exactly as they are written. No changing or cheating!

*Tag 7 authors and let them know.

So, aren't I lucky? I opened my ms, which is supposed to be pretty polished. Um, except wouldn't you know? Page 77 is a new scene I added.  Ah, well. Here's to giving fear of a failure a kick in the teeth.

He shrugged, distinctly uncomfortable, like he wanted to shake off the question. “We talk. Sometimes. You know.”

“No. I don’t know. Dory and I barely talk and I’m her sister.”

“We have a lot in common.”

Now there was a shocker. “You do?”

He folded his arms and looked over Dory’s head at me. “Yes. Now let it go, will you? It’s not important. Do you understand now? Your family is in danger, too. Whoever wanted Bridget’s power to begin with, still wants it. Somebody wants my family’s power. They’ve got Sorcha. Now they want the rest. The rest is me. And you.”

“And your Aunt Sabita.” I couldn’t help reminding him.

“Different power source. Besides, Sabita’s in India, and she can watch out for herself.”

So, there it is. Page 77. The Lucky 7 meme.

And now, Wendy Sparrow, Jill Estabrooks, Layna Pimentel, Ann Marie Gamble, Lady Hawkins, Keri Stevens, and Christine Fonseca...you're up!

Yes, I know your all busy, so don't worry. It's not a chain letter. You won't die or have any important bits shrivel off if you don't participate. I'll just wallow in misery on the couch and eat chocolate. And I'd do that anyway!

At #amwriting Today!

I'm blogging over at the #amwriting site today on "Why The Hunger Games Caught Fire," relating Donald Maass's The Fire in Fiction to story elements of The Hunger Games.

http://amwriting.org/archives/10475

Come over and say hi!