The Unholy Terror of Screaming Proportions

Posted on by Beth Hull

Just when you think you’ve got a good rhythm going, when the routines are working okay, and there’s an occasional night when she sleeps in her crib until five or six in the morning. Just when you can do some dishes without her affixed to your shins like a Mighty Leech, and you can run outside to water the plants while she watches contentedly from the window. Just when you let your guard down…

The Unholy Terror of Screaming Proportions attacks.

With a vengeance.

It’s teething. Right? I mean, it’s the perfect excuse. Now we’re onto the molars, and yeah, extra painful probably. They’re the perfect scapegoat, as no one is brave enough to stick a finger back there and actually check (the UTSP bites). Teething mysteriously comes and goes, and it gives you a chance to pity the UTSP instead of resenting her (sometimes. Maybe not at 2:55 in the morning).

We’ve always done “the co-sleeping thing.” Not because it’s trendy or cool, or so down-to-earth. But because we’re lazy. L-A-Z-Y. Why rouse ourselves in the middle of the night, spend fifteen to thirty minutes soothing a child to sleep, and then try to get back to sleep? Why not just zombie-walk to the kid’s room, pluck her out of her bed, and snuggle up next to her in our own?

I’ll tell you why not. The two reasons come with five toes apiece. The UTSP has been armed with a Mighty Kick and instructed to fire at will. By employing strategies of random, rapid fire movements she has almost shattered my cheekbone and nearly ensured, via a lucky strike to a certain sensitive area on Husband, that she will be an only child.

So now: not only am I rethinking every single aspect of the beginning of my novel, but I’m currently reevaluating Child Number 2. As well as making decisions on cellular blinds, granite countertops, and paint colors. Because, of course, we couldn’t be content with only 30 pounds of upheaval in our lives. We had to go ahead and add some remodeling to the mix just to see how much we can take.

On the very bright side, our new soon-to-be-installed kitchen faucet comes with a built-in soap dispenser. I am Over The Moon about this soap dispenser. It will solve All Life’s Problems and Bring Me Happiness. As my mother-in-law said, “It’s the little things.”

And Z, our UTSP, is a little thing. She is charming, intelligent, and has a great sense of humor. And when she isn’t demonstrating her finer qualities?

Well, I can just run into the kitchen, squirt some soap from our built-in soap dispenser, and life will seem fine just fine.

New Look! Same Great Taste!

Posted on by Beth Hull

A Friday Free-for-All…

I’ve been hating my old theme for awhile; that narrow strip of text stressed me out. But what doesn’t these days. Anyway, still working out the kinks with this new theme, so I apologize if you visit my website and are greeted with life-sized images of Z’s Entourage of stuffed animals.

Speaking of new looks. I need a haircut. Or,  like, a tattoo or something. Things are getting desperate, the elliptical machine is not working its magic, and I’m ready to take things into my own hands (or the hands of a talented hairstylist or tattoo artist). Z just noticed Husband’s tattoo for the first time the other day, and her delight was infectious. I’m ready to impress her with my own tattoo.

But you know, a haircut might do the trick.

Actually, she’d be thrilled with goldfish crackers.

And if I got a tattoo of a goldfish cracker!? I’d have myself a new 21-month-old BFF.

The thing is: I want a good haircut, and those aren’t cheap. At the same time, getting a real style seems sort of pointless, as I’ve worn my hair up every single day for the last fifteen years. Actually, I think I was born with my hair in a ponytail. (Total lie; I was a baldy just like Z was.) All I know is I’m ready for less hair. Something between what I’ve got now (down to middle of my back) and what I was born with (nada).

I’m adding a new feature to my blog: interviews with UNpublished authors. If you are a struggling writer, or just a writer who would love to be published someday, don’t wait for fame to come to you! Tackle fame through my obscure website, where I will treat you as a guest on my very own imaginary talk show. Which means: without the makeup and hairstyle, and without a studio audience. Leave a comment if you want the glory.

I promise I won’t make fun of you. Much.

Since what the world needs now is Clark, sweet Clark, I end with this:

If You’re Happy and You Know It

Posted on by Beth Hull

First, two cute toddler things:

1) Z has been dancing and trying out hand motions to songs for awhile now, and I believe this is a result of a couple of different factors: the Music Together program, and the fact that I often sing to Z and recite nursery rhymes and poems instead of suffering through enjoying her scintillating conversations about whether the dogs next door are awake, asleep, eating, wearing diapers, singing, or barking.

Of course I’d like to believe a huge part of her love of music and dancing is due to a) her inherent genius-ness and b) an inheritance of my own unrealized talent for singing and dancing (I can hear family and friends laughing aloud at this. Shut up. I’m totally talented as a singer/dancer. Chicago NEEDS me, and everyone would love Cats if I were cast as Grizabella and warbled out “Memory”).

Whatever the reason for the dancing and accompanying hand movements, it’s pretty cute.

2) Another cute thing is her Entourage. This is the name I’ve given her stuffed animal friends. Not all of them are animals, though. We have Mr. Penguin, Talula (a cat), Noop (a doll), Doggie, Giraffe, Giraffe (again), Bird, and…Necrotizing Fasciitis. Necrotizing Fasciitis is a giant stuffed microbe holding a fork and knife, a joke gift from when Husband did lab work in school.

Z carries her Entourage around the house. Usually she only has three A-listers, since that’s all she can manage to carry, and she switches it up a bit (perhaps Z, too, notices that conversation can get dull when hanging out with the same person day after day after day).

The cute things are totally necessary right now, because life has not been serene or happy in my house lately. I have to steal these cute moments when they come, because at naptimes and most of the night she has been an Unholy Terror of Screaming Proportions (UTSP). The UTSP is not happy, and everyone knows it. Including the neighbors, their dogs, and the people one county over. There has been so little hand-clapping, foot-stomping, shouting-hooray fun here that I even -gasp!- considered getting a job and sending the UTSP to daycare just so I don’t have to deal with her anymore. Last night I was about to give Husband my formal resignation.

But then, she was falling asleep in her enchilada at 6:30, so we (er, Husband, that is, since I was still busy sulking) whisked her off to bed, and she didn’t wake up until 6:30 this morning. Which for Z, and by default, me, is sleeping in.

I don’t know if the sunny disposition will last, for either of us, which is why I’m going to clap my hands, stomp my feet, shout hooray, and let my face show the tiny, stolen happinesses I find.

Unnecessarily Redundant Overkill

Posted on by Beth Hull

And…a writing update. Um, about my writing, people. Because one six-hundred-billionth of this is about me. (It’s a bumper sticker.)

First: House Red (a.k.a. the Vampuscript) is done. Finished. Shelved. To Be Forgotten. There are some cool scenes that I may resurrect later, but HR functioned as some solid training wheels and I’m ready to move on.

Second: Savage Autumn has undergone major surgery, to use a metaphor that is quickly becoming a cliche. The first five chapters have been amputated and now I’m in the process of constructing a prosthetic. Some bones and skin grafts of the amputated limb are still part of it, but showing up in funny places. Like a toe sticking out of the knee.

An agent is waiting for the first three chapters, and believe me, I want to send them so bad. But this is one of my dream agents, and I don’t want to mess up my chances by sending something that is less than stellar.

Third, which is not related to my own writing at all (I used up my one-six-hundred-billionth space): And if you’d like a little humor today, a friend of mine pointed out a funny writer who reviews romance novels on her blog. I’ve only read the D+ reviews, since the first one I read had me in stitches. I am not nearly gutsy or, I’ve gotta say it, mean enough to post such scathing reviews on my own blog (except with hmm hmmm hmmm, which just, you know…deserved it).

And I’m off to the library so I can read a book and write my own (much nicer, I hope) review for Monday.

My Suit of Armor

Posted on by Beth Hull

Cowboys wear tight jeans, boots with loopy embroidery, and giant silver belt buckles. Corporate executives wear suits and ties. James Bond wears a tuxedo and looks mighty fine. Chefs wear white hats and white aprons and wield spatulas. Superheroes sport spandex and capes, doctors don lab coats and stethoscopes, construction workers wear t-shirts and hard hats, and I? The writing mother?

I wear sweats.

Z knows when we’re going out because I finally put on jeans. And for some people, jeans are like, dressing down. Whenever there’s a wedding to go to, or a writer’s conference (like last Saturday and this upcoming Saturday: SCBWI Spring Spirit Conference for Nor Cal!), I’m left with a closet full of question marks. “Does this even fit anymore?” I wonder. For last weekend’s writer’s conference I must have tried on fifteen different outfits. And then, taking the all-inclusive trip into Nerdy Obsessive Land, I even got out my digital camera and took pictures of myself in the mirror. I was thisclose to uploading them on Snapfish and sending an invitation to two close friends for help in deciding what to wear when I finally got over it and figured out, “You know, I’m 29 years old. I think I can choose a professional-ish outfit. Even though none of them make me look 15 pounds lighter.”

I know that looking professional is a good thing. At least, I think it is. I actually had some success experimenting with this idea when I was a grad student at UC Davis. I’d go in for my office hours most days in jeans (sadly not sweats), a tank top, and some flip flops, and I’d do my lesson planning and work on my exam papers, and I’d play a bit of Spider solitaire here, a bit of Spider solitaire there. Towards the second half of my second year, I decided to up my professional-dress factor, and began to wear the occasional skirt. If I wore jeans, I’d top them with a blouse instead of one of my left-over-from-high-school tank tops. My Spider solitaire habit might have declined (luckily, I never kept a log of hours or games so I can’t be embarrassed now). But I noticed the change in dress, and a change in attitude. And other people noticed too. Like one of my advisors. It was a good feeling.

These days, I don’t have much reason to get dressed up (and by “dressed up” I mean something above sweats on the formal-wear continuum). I’ll toy around with some jersey dresses and leggings, just to mix things up a bit. But honestly, it takes so much more effort than grabbing the first pair of yoga pants and natty old sweatshirt I can find (usually these are the pants and sweatshirt I took off to take my shower). If we go somewhere, like the grocery store or library story time, I’ll feel like I’m exceeding expectations by swapping those yoga pants for jeans.

And as soon as we get home? Z has to wait for her milk and snack while I change back into the yoga pants.

It’s a sweet life, comfortable. But even I am starting to feel a little grubby.