I am choking on the writing thing lately, am I not? Suddenly I have more drains on my energy and have been writing offline A LOT more. I know, I know, less fap, more rap. I hate blog excuses. It’s just this thing that is happening on the internets, you know?

If I don’t write for online for a few days I start to choke and block up, so I need to bite the bullet and give you disjointed updates that will pass for writing. Once Shauna said that the longer you go, the harder it is, and that is so true. At least my blog is like 3% better now. You can now click on my banner and it will take you home, and I got a shiny WP upgrade. Candy Mountain, bitches.

I should tell you what happened with my blog hosting that made me look like a motherfuckin 404in deadbeat. I got a bill for my yearly hosting, which I paid before the due date. Okay, cool times. I got no receipt, which I promptly forgot about. A couple of weeks after the due date, I got a late notice. Hmmm. I replied. No response. HELLO? Anyone home? Then I got a 48-hours-you suck email. HEY, I paid this, and it posted to the bank even. No reply. A couple of Sundays ago I went dark, which, thank you alert readers and emailers. A friend pulled me over onto his server and I was back up.

Days later I get a reply from my old host. “Sorry, busy, how about a free month?” Man, for serious? You cut me off like that automagically? Too little too late, I said. Refund PLZ. I am still waiting for a refund. I suspect I will be waiting forever.

My friend, with the goat essay? I am sorry to say that the contest she entered was made of fail. Instead of narrowing the entries down to a readable amount, the woman who runs the site merely threw them all up. All 60+ of them. There was no consideration or judgment of merit or anything. Who has time to read and judge that many essays? NO ONE. Of course it becomes a zerg rush of how many people each entrant knows on the internet. Far better would have been for the goat giver to form some kind of panel of judges. I have not seen a more poorly planned contest in quite some time. Would I be complaining about any of this if my friend won? No, I would not.

Franny is getting into a routine of sorts with public school. Homework is still fairly perplexing to her, but with a lot of handholding, she is getting there. There were things I absolutely hated about private school, but this school is a different world in a lot of ways. They have weird meetings where they compliment each other. Yes, that’s it. They say nice things to each other. What a fucking load of crap that is.

Franny now has two banes in her life: homework and dishwashing. I told her that if she finishes her homework and does a nice job with it well before dinnertime I will let her off the dishes hook.

Last night she was sitting at the table cranking about her subtraction homework. Carrying the one is a torture device sent from hell to torment her.

“I hate this, Mom. I HATE HOMEWORK.”

“Well,” I said, as I chopped onions, and then stopped, reconsidering.

“WHAT?”

“I was just thinking, if you lived in parts of Sudan, you would not have to go to school.”

“Really?”

“Yes, they stick an automatic weapon in your hand and you go to war killing people. If you are lucky you just end up missing some limbs.”

“…”

“How’s that homework?” I said.

“AWESOME I LOVE MATH.”

“Want to look at pictures of limbless children after dinner?”

“No thanks.”

P.S., In case you missed it, here is FYCL #8, Embarrassingly Fertile.