In the betting of names on gold to rust

Woke up entirely too early this morning, to the crash of an 18-wheeler slamming into my house, or that's what it sounded like. Coincidentally, an 18-wheeler was involved in a catastrophic, power pole-smashing wreck about a block away, knocking out the electricity for a bit and causing traffic to be rerouted even as I type this ... nine hours later.

Not the finest way ever to begin a Monday.
In case you were wondering.

Anyway. My mom was here in the guest room - and since we were all up and around (like it or not), I walked the dog, helped Mom load up her car, and gathered my grandmother and aunt from their hotel. Then I took everyone to breakfast.

I'm making this sound simpler than it was, because in fact, it took about five hours. I'd go into it, but I don't have the energy to write another post like this one.

Suffice it to say, it's never dull with this crew. (Furthermore, a weekend in their presence largely explains my damn near obsessive need for planning in my personal life. I bet.)

* * *

I didn't get home from all of this jaunting about with the ladies until this afternoon, at which point I stripped down the guest bed and started a laundry marathon (we're also out of clean towels) ... and then I played email catch-up, including a round or two with the Marvelous Liz (my editor at Tor) re: the flap copy for Fiddlehead.

Then I spent awhile on the phone doing Grown Up Things. Ergo, tomorrow morning a guy is coming over to take a look at our HVAC unit (installed in 1987, and literally rusting where it sits - when it's not losing stray panels or making weird noises) ... and come Monday, a different guy will be here checking out the awful den/guest room carpet and the tragic disco parquet, with an eye toward removing both and replacing them with wood to match the rest of the house.

I've been bitching too long. It's time to take action.

Besides that, I spent a very frustrating hour negotiating with our alarm system. It felt like I was trying to talk a bank robber out of a stand-off, and the bank robber just kept BEEPING WILDLY at me when all I wanted him to do was shut up shut up shut up for the love of God and you know what? Just kill all the hostages, I don't even care because I CANNOT TAKE THE BEEPING ANYMORE. The violent power outage this morning had sent the alarm haywire, and it took a lot of manual perusing, swearing, and button-mashing to finally reset it properly.

Frankly, I'd like to have it removed and replaced with something better. Hell, if anyone in the Chattanooga area can recommend a company that can extricate a system like this, by all means let me know. It's annoying as shit.

I guess what I'm saying is, the day has gotten away from me.
Tomorrow, we try again. But this afternoon, we nap.