Chera Hammons: Poet and Writer
"…a slow shutter on ambulation…"Archive for Amusant
Mom Blurbs
Hello, readers!
I know it’s been a long, long, long time since the last post. I’ve got all the energy of a hibernating bear, and I’ve mainly been working on getting my two books– Maps of Injury and Monarchs of the Northeast Kingdom— ready for publication next year. I can’t even explain, really, what all this involves. A lot of reading and proofing, for one thing! And I didn’t have any energy to spare to write interesting blog entries possibly no one would read. But things are winding down a little bit now. So how about something kind of funny to get us going again?
I was telling a couple of my friends about some comments my mom had made about my novel after she read it, and one of them said, “You should put those on the back of the book!” I loved the idea of mom blurbs. I totally used my parents as scapegoats for this blog entry, because I’m pretty sure they’ll forgive me (I do know I’m lucky to have truly supportive parents who are still around, so here’s a shout out to you, Mom and Dad). For the full effect, just picture all of these on the backs of my books as endorsements. Enjoy!
“I stayed up all night reading your book. So today I’m really tired.” – Mom, author of Things You Didn’t Ask Me to Do But That I Did Anyway: Budget Guilt Vacations to Tropical Locales
“Other people won’t get what this means. I only do because you’re my child and I know you so well.” – Mom, author of Remember: I Made You
“If you can’t find a publisher I’ll just start my own press and publish all of your books. Could you help me find out how to do that?”—Mom, author of Blood Type: A Story of Family Ties in Small Presses
“Why did it end that way?”—Mom, author of New York Times Bestseller Reading Into Endings
“When are you going to write a sequel? Are you going to write a sequel?” – Mom, author of The Nuances of Indirect Messaging
“Okay, okay. I won’t tell people the ending.”—Mom, author of I Probably Won’t Tell People
“You know, people don’t like to hear about horses as much as you like to write about them.” – Mom, author of I Thought That One Weird Hobby Was Only Going to Be a Phase
Announced proudly to the author’s relatives: “I already know what it is because she let me read it.”—Mom, author of Pride and Prejudice and Thanksgiving
“I don’t get to read the poetry before it gets published. But she let me read the novel.”—Mom, author of I Noticed You’re Trying
As told to the writer’s dad: “Read your daughter’s work! Just read this one part!”—Mom, author of Family Glue Sticks
“Has it come out yet? Have you won any awards? I never find out anything about what’s going on in your life unless I read it on Facebook.”—Mom, author of Logging In: A Digital Guide to the Digital Parenting of Adult Children
“Will you sign my copy when I get it? I’m going to ask you to sign it. Will you?” – Mom, author of Ink Pens and What to Do With One
“I couldn’t put it down! But sometimes, I had to.”—Mom, author of Matter of Fiction or Matter-of-Fact
“Yes, I saw it.”—Dad, author of Sports or It Didn’t Happen
Take care of yourselves, lovely readers! More entries will be posted soon. Really.
A Page from my Days in IT
I don’t know of many poets who work in Information Technology, though I have run across bios of that nature every now and again while reading literary reviews. I thought I’d share a page from my “IT Diary” that I ran across recently. It reminded me of the things I taught myself to view as amusing rather than annoying (that was often my coping strategy, and I highly suggest it). So, without further ado, I give you a slice of my life in 2012:
July 9, 3:05 PM. A downstairs employee comes by my desk complaining that her printer isn’t working. I go downstairs to fix it. It is out of paper. Once it has paper it prints as normal. I go back upstairs.
July 9, 5:07 PM. The employee emails to say that her printer has stopped working again.
July 10, 7:50 AM. I receive the email and go downstairs to check her printer, but the computer is locked and nobody is at her desk. I go back upstairs.
July 10, 8:03 AM. I see the employee come in and follow her back downstairs to her desk. She says, “Do you need me to log in?” I concur. As I stand near her computer she slowly unloads her purse on her desk and proceeds to walk to the refrigerator to carefully deposit a bag of breakfast foods. She then returns to her desk to log in. When I look at her printers I find she did not actually send her documents to her printer, but to an old one still in her printers list, which is why the documents did not print to her printer. I delete the unneeded older printer so that she will not be further confused, then return upstairs.
July 10, 9:12 AM. I am paged by the employee. She says that her printer has once again stopped working. On returning downstairs and checking the printer, I find that a thick plastic reusable cup has fallen over on her desk and rolled to the printer, hitting its large power button. Upon correcting the cup’s orientation and turning the printer’s power back on, it once again functions normally. I go back upstairs and cancel my gym membership.
There you have it, friends. I must say, while working in IT didn’t give me much good material in the way of poetry, it did give me plenty of slightly amusing anecdotes. And hey, while we’re in a discussion about both computers and poetry, check this out: a code poetry slam!
Chera Hammons: Poet and Writer 