Nibbled to Death by Ducks

You know that saying, right? About being nibbled to death by ducks, where all the little annoyances and irritations just seem to add up and up until they’re one big collective frustration?

You’re probably looking at your screen right now and thinking “Liz, it’s 2020. OF COURSE I KNOW THIS FEELING!!!”

We all know this feeling. We’ve been living with hypothetical carnivorous ducks for six months now, and it’s HARD!

I have my coping mechanisms to deal with the stress. One of them is exercise — getting the endorphins flowing. It’s why I exercise like a beast — I tell people it helps control the brain weasels.

Another one is my writing. I will take my frustrations out on my characters. It’s cathartic, but it also means that I would not want to meet any of my characters in a dark alley!

And… well… chocolate. Can’t lie. There’s chocolate.

What do you do when it gets to be too much?

Writing last week was slow. I got a chapter finished in both Wings of Air and John Zebedee, which is my new goal for the week. One chapter is a win. More than that is gravy.

Did rather a lot of RWA stuff. We’re getting the new Board up to speed. It’s weird being one of the experienced Board members, when I’ve only been on the Board five months.

And we had our other weirdnesses — last Monday I ran out to pick up groceries. When I left, the house was FINE.  When I came back…

That piece is called fascia, and it’s thin aluminum. We’re not sure what exactly happened there — it looks like someone tried to rip open the roof the way you rip into an envelope with a pull-tab. I made some calls, set up some estimates… and we discovered the problem with dangly,  thin aluminum.

It swings.

Not into the window, thank goodness. It swings laterally. Now if you look close at that picture, you can see the edge of the window well that sticks out of the house, right behind the tree. That window well is the Teen’s room.

Now imagine, if you will… a quiet Sunday morning. A tropical disturbance pops up just off the coast of Florida, right about between Titusville and Daytona Beach. Marches inland. High winds…

WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM.

It’s stopped banging against the house now. But that’s only because it twisted in the wind, and is now sitting on the roof. Not entirely sure how that happened either. Also not complaining, because it’s not banging into the house anymore!

We’re getting this fixed, because it needs to be fixed. But really….

Carnivorous ducks. Carnivorous ducks EVERYWHERE.