Musings on my life as a parent, teacher, and writer

The imp has gotten very territorial with his room, the furniture, his rock box (sand box--but with gravel, which he prefers), and the swing set.  Any time the pixie (his little sister) goes anywhere near anything he considers his, he snarls, screams at her, and charges.  I've tried time outs.  I've tried confiscating whatever he's trying to take away from her.  I've pointed out we don't let her take toys from him.  He's gotten swats on the rear over the pants.  Nothing is working.  I don't know what I'm doing wrong, or how to get him to stop being a territorial little beast. 

And when she's not around, he's completely angelic.  When someone else is picking on her, he's getting into the mix-up to defend her.  It's just when it's the two of them that he gets like that.

The pixie has been wearing her little heart on her sleeve, lately.  Speak to her even a little sharply, and she starts crying, runs to whoever scolded her, and puts her head on their knee.  She's teething, but that's still not really normal for her, even when she's not feeling good. 

I'm toying with the idea of switching the class blogging from Blogger to WordPress.  I'm going to have to try blogging with WP and seeing which is simpler.  God knows my students aren't capable of independent thought or reasoning, much less experimentation to figure out how things work.  Especially not the Comp I students like I'll have next fall.

Any case, I also need to start working on rewriting/revising the Comp I textbook to include screen captures to help show the students what they can't seem to comprehend in my written, step-by-step instructions.  I might see if I can find some other material--since I don't charge for my textbook (and plan on giving full credit where it's due), it falls into fair use.

As for my fiction writing...I've been reading back through the anthology of short stories I've been writing on--the one written around the old Greek and Norse gods--and realized there was a start of a overarching plot tying all the stories I had in mind together.  I'd nearly finished the stories around the Greek pantheon, and realized that the Norse ones would work in and make the anthology/novel stronger.  So, I'm writing the rest of the stories, and working out where to work them in.  Right now, there's about 50,000 words/100 pages single spaced.  There's probably another 30,000 to 50,000 words in the works.  A short novel is around 80,000 words, so I'll definitely have at least that on my hands.

I will likely have a draft finished by the end of summer.  I might have a draft of that finished, and a draft of one of my other novels nearly finished by the time the fall semester starts. 

I will have self-published via Amazon's e-publishing an anthology of short stories I wrote while in college within the next month.  I'll let y'all know when I actually publish, and I'll have a link to it for the curious.

Damn all idiots driving down residential streets after 8:00 in the evening, leaning on the horn.  The pixie has been down about 45 minutes, and the imp just went down (but isn't asleep, yet).  Wake up my kids--I dare you.  I'll fucking cut you, bitch.

I'm going to go meditate tomorrow.  It was a long, frustrating Spring semester, and I need a good, long afternoon during which to put earplugs in my ears and engage in some lead-based therapy.  And I've got a new aid for that--one I haven't had a chance to try out, yet (and Odysseus never did write a review over it, did he?).