Multitasking Madness!

My laptop is still out of commission, so for the past couple of weeks I’ve had some serious computer withdrawals. I’ve been able to snag some time for Facebook now and then, but nothing that’ll really let me write, until today I saw my hubby’s laptop lying around and grabbed it! Thanks to the wonders of Dropbox (see my previous post on the subject), I’ve been able to catch up on some badly neglected writing. But, because I’m also a mom and a housekeeper, those little feelings of guilt over many other unfinished tasks start nagging at me anytime I sit down at the computer while the sun is still shining.

So this weekend I’ve been running around like a decapitated chicken, trying to get all the following tasks accomplished, among others I’m sure I’m forgetting but will remember around 2:00 am:

recipe

Homemade brownies! The girls had a few friends sleep over, so I made a quadruple-batch of these brownies, since Mother Hubbard’s cupboard is always bare and I didn’t want the poor girls to starve. (The recipe calls for ingredients that are already present in most pantries.) Then I sent the friends home all sugared up!

Gotta catch up with what my friends are doing! Always a top priority. 😉

These are not my dishes, although they could be. Except I obsessively pile the dirty dishes into categories before I wash them, and I wash them in a certain order. OCD kinda sucks sometimes. (So does having a broken dishwasher, because dirty dishes are a constant affliction!)

I love homemade bread! But last night I forgot to take it out of the bread machine, so this afternoon I discovered the wasted dough and I cried over it. Now I have to make some all over again. (I only use the machine to knead, because I don’t like the shape of bread machine loaves.)

Not having regular access to a computer is seriously affecting a major addiction of mine! I haven’t been able to read and comment on my friends’ blogs like I usually do. So I don’t know what a lot of you are up to right now, but I’m trying to catch up.

This isn’t quite a realistic portrayal of a basket of laundry, for me at least. I have 30 times that amount. (Not an exaggeration.) And my worst habit is washing it all at once, then dumping it in the family room and putting off the folding! At least I have all the clean laundry sorted…

These little weirdos are always demanding my attention as well. Can’t I just lock them in the closet with a board game and some snacks?

I don’t want to think about what I’m going to cook tonight. It’s 5:30 and I haven’t even started. I know I could at least make some chicken stock. We have leftovers, right?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot:

My 13-year-old saved up her money to get bunnies (a neighbor gave us her huge hutch), and we let them out in the living room a couple times a day to get some exercise. While I’ve been working on this post, the cute little piggies have been bouncing off the keyboard, fighting over a carrot, and pooping on the couch. And they’ve just figured out how to escape the living room barricade. *groan*

Also, a guilty pleasure. I watch very little TV since it takes away from writing time, so I’ll give myself a guilt trip if I watch more than I should. Last night we decided to watch The River, which had intrigued me from the first time I saw the trailer at a movie theater – and we ended up staying awake all night to catch up with the entire show! Huge addiction now. The show is seriously creepy and exciting! This season it looks like I’ll be glued to the TV whenever The River or The Walking Dead are on.

And finally…

I love how being a writer comes with these images of fancy pens, candles burning in an inspirational manner on a gleaming desk, and stacks of gorgeous leather-bound reference tomes. I’d rip holes in paper with pens like that! And my handwriting has so gone downhill over the last decade, I get writer’s cramp after just a paragraph…

Anyway, I’ve been writing today too, bouncing between Cobalt and a project I should’ve finished a couple weeks ago, just before my laptop went ptooie. It’s been a lot of fun, but also brain-melting. I think I’ll end with a snip from the latest scene I’ve been working on:

Kate’s fingers scrabbled for a knot in a plank or a bit of broken rail, but closed over nothing but wet air as the ship bucked in the wind. The deck vanished beneath her. Her stomach jammed itself in her throat as she hung in the air for an instant before gravity took over. She could still hear the distant sounds of the fighting crew, somewhere on the other end of the ship. Closer, the sound of a whip crack split the air above her. Or maybe it had been a clap of thunder. Something slapped painfully against her bruised upper arm, jerking her descent to a stop. Her lower body slammed into the ship’s aft end.

Kate shook soaking tendrils of hair out of her face and stared in horror at the rope that had saved her from falling into the Forest – which was not a rope at all but a cold, clinging tongue that wrapped around her arm at one end and disappeared into the wide open mouth of the monster glaring down at her from the broken window high above. Its rows of teeth glimmered white in a flash of lightning.

How often do you guys find yourselves muddling through days of multitasking insanity when you’d rather just sit and write?