At my day job, projects are often called by code names before they receive their final (marketing approved) name. These names are assigned when the project is started for internal use only and sometimes even linger long after the project gets a final name in places like bug databases, specifications, etc.

A LOT of thought should go into giving a project a code name but, honestly, some names should really get a more careful look and some names should just never be used. Call me a bit superstitious but I really don’t like working on project where the name seems to have some ill portent attached.

This came up with a project code name I heard yesterday (the second project at my day job with this code name). The project is called “Alchemy.”

Even seven or so years ago when I heard the first use of Alchemy as a project code name, I was boggled by the choice. They really wanted to name a project they wanted to succeed after a field of study that never succeeded in turning lead into gold but instead succeeded in poisoning most of it’s practitioners to death or at least insanity. Really?

So I humbly submit an off-the-top-of-my-head list of project code names you should never use:

Alchemy – I still say it was an unsuccessful project that destroyed those that tried to work on it.
Chernobyl – Destroy not just itself but make a huge margin around it a disaster area also.
Columbine – I know it’s a flower but I think the high school massacre trumps the flower petals.
Donner – I don’t care if the other projects are Blitzen or Rudolph. Think Donner Party.
Earhart – I know she was famous but she took a lot of expensive technology and disappeared. Didn’t end well.
Hindenberg – Crash and burn. Enough said.
Loki – Somehow the Norse god of Mischief is not what you want to invoke.
Pompeii – Buried alive where you fell with little or no warning.
Titanic – Crash and sink.
Tungusca – Blow up in the air and knock down everything for miles.
Vesuvius – Explode, burn and bury.

I’m sure I can come up with others but you probably can too.

I will freely admit that I was one of those people who use food as a comfort. When I was having a crappy day, chocolate was always there. When I was angry, a good bowl of ice cream was the cure. When I was tired and feeling down, maybe some kids’ cereal and milk would help.

I can see this pattern back as far as I can remember. I clearly see it in my own mother to this day. I can remember some of it in my grandmother. She’d sit me down with some milk and cookies for a chat when I was upset. She taught me how to cook, so I still think of her whenever I cook.

Face it, feeding someone is a form of nurturing. It conveys care and concern. It fulfills a very primitive part of our psyche. Later on, we may use it to try to show love to ourself when we need that part fufilled again. The bad part is when it gets out of hand, for a variety of reasons.

But I’m dealing with the other side of this coin these days. I was used to this comfort mechanism but now much of it is denied to me. Food has gone from being the stalwart companion to always being suspected of treason. Food must be proven innocent before I can consume it and, even then, it can make me sick either through error, mislabeling or just a mistake.

My comfort has become discomfort and distrust.

This has been one of the hardest things to deal with since I was diagnosed with celiac disease. I can’t decide my crappy day entitles me to stop for a small shake on the way home. I can’t grab a quick candy bar from the bowl outside a co-worker’s door. I can’t even have a small chocolate milk from the refrigerator at work.

I miss more than the flavors and textures. I miss that primitive soothing that comes with comfort food. I do have some substitutes but it’s honestly not the same anymore. It can’t be the same anymore because there is no longer the loving and accepting relationship between myself and my comfort foods.

So I think I need to find a new way to feed that part of myself when I need nurturing and soothing. Some people successfully substitute things like manicures or pedicures, shopping, etc. but I’m trying to stay away from spending more money and I already am devoted to my manicures (my long nails are one of my few vanities). I definitely don’t need to accumulate more stuff.

But what does comfort food DO to me as I indulge (or used to). It would make me step back from whatever was troubling me for a small amount of time. This seemed to give me time to make a decision, recover and even subconsciously find other ways to deal with things. It forced me to take some time for myself, purely for myself. It didn’t take too long. I wasn’t a burden. It was always nearby. It wasn’t something I felt I had to share. It reminded me of my grandmother and my childhood. It required me to focus on it for a little while.

Thinking about this today, I realized that I have another thing I’ve enjoyed all my life that requires a minimum of items but that I remember even my Grandmother commenting on. I know it will strike a lot of you as really strange but hear me out.

Penmanship.

When I was a child, I had a teacher complain that I needed to improve my handwriting because it was too dark and unfeminine and she took points off on a pretty decent essay because of my handwriting. This got my stubborn on (have I ever mentioned how very stubborn I can be?) and I decided right then that I would get my own back :) I spent an hour or more a day practicing my handwriting until I wrote about 1/2 size on college-ruled paper, very lightly and very well-formed. The next report I turned in to that teacher was (if I say so myself) beautiful.

Of course, she then marked me down because it was too faint and hard to read, but when I complained to my parents about her, they took my papers and complaint to the principal and got my points back for me. Let’s just say that teacher and I were glad to part company at the end of the year.

But for many years I had the best penmanship of anyone I knew. Slowly over the years I got more and more sloppy and now it’s merely adequate. I miss it, though. I really do hate sloppy handwriting – moreso when it’s my own.

I’ve wanted to learn Spencerian script for years. Spencerian is the handwriting of the 1800′s and is written with ink and a dip pen. It’s a beautiful script and not as chunky as some types nor as complex as copperplate or ornamental script. I put a small sample at the top of this post but you probably can’t see it too well. You can google it to see more examples, though.

Although the final execution of the beautiful letters requires the pens and ink, learning the shapes and practicing them doesn’t. All it really requires is a pencil, paper and a guide sheet. And some time and focus. You can’t practice quickly and you have to take it a little at a time. It also needs regular practice so I can’t merely binge and then ignore it and expect any improvement.

It’s a bit frivolous, not necessary for my daily survival but it’s also beautiful and unusual to see. I’m going to try it for a while when I feel like I need comfort or grounding and see if I can put it into the place where my comfort food used to be.

And, hey, no calories or allergies (that I know of)!

Wish me luck!

On the weekends, I try to sleep in a little or at least laze about in the bedroom before coming down to face the many chores that Must Be Done. This is great for me but my cats are not at all pleased with this plan. I have seven (yes, seven) indoor only cats–the perils of cat rescue–but four of them are the demanding ones. These cats meet me at my bedroom door every morning to let me know they are starving and in dire need of sustenance.

They also try to conveniently forget that they have an entire HUGE bowl of dry cat food at all times. That’s not real food, after all–or so they claim.

Now the indoor cats are banned from the bedroom due to some bad behavior and they are Not Amused by this. Even though it’s been almost a year since they were banished. I’m not sure they will ever accept it as the new “normal”. When the start to hear Mr. Maura and I stirring in the bedroom in the morning, they take up their stations right outside the bedroom door and commence meowing to try to hurry us along. I’m not sure about anyone else’s cats but mine are decidedly un-musical. A cowbell would be more pleasant, actually.

But today we didn’t emerge within a short time of there being talking and noise in the bedroom and the cats commenced their pestering with even more vigor. As best we can tell, they have set up an S-Con system.

S-Con 5: Cats are hungry but assume the humans will quickly perform their feeding duties. Meowing at the door at moderate volume is sufficient.

S-Con 4: Cats are even hungrier but the humans have already taken longer than a typical lag time. More incentive is needed. Meowing shall increase in volume and cats must thump shoulders and hips on the bedroom door to encourage you to move faster.

S-Con 3: Cats now feel actual hunger pangs. Humans are unresponsive or have begun meowing back or laughing. Mocking is not a satisfactory response to cat misery. Meowing shall become yodeling and scratching at the door shall commence.

S-Con 2: Cats now despair of actually getting two servings of squishy food during this day. Humans are definitely mocking or have become unresponsive again. Meowing is no longer sufficient and cats shall begin yowling and stage gladitorial combat outside the bedroom door to illicit appropriate level of urgency from the humans.

S-Con 1: Cats give up on food and commence retribution. Hairball barfing may commence with effort made to place mess in traffic path and if any shoes are left accessible and unguarded, they shall be peed in.

Cats – who knew? LOL.

I can’t help it. I write. I must write. Apparently when that switch got thrown and I decided to put effort into writing something (a business paper, I think, was the first thing), I started something I cannot stop.

Not that it’s a bad thing, really. But it is something I don’t think I control. For a Type-A control freak, that’s always a bit worrisome.

I’ve been writing a lot on my fiction recently and I told my husband that I thought maybe I’d broken my dry spell and was writing again. He looked at me, obviously confused, and said “But you never stopped writing. You just were writing other things instead of fiction.”

That stopped me in my tracks and I thought about it a bit and, you know, he’s right. (Don’t tell him, we don’t want it to go to his head.) I’d had a really long dry spell in my fiction world but my creative juices had merely re-directed themselves to my non-fiction world. I’d written many business documents and helped revise a publishing strategy while I was lamenting my lack of writing.

I’d been told for a long time that writers write. It was one of the signs of being a “real” writer. I suddenly realized that one of the ways I kept self-sabotaging my belief that I’m a “real” writer is because I felt I didn’t HAVE to write. I could turn it on and off and no harm done, no twitching, no big deal.

I would like to state that I was wrong. Apparently I don’t turn it off as much as re-direct it. I express myself a lot through writing and words and, when blocked in one direction, apparently my brain finds another avenue to go down. The written word is as natural to me as oxygen and I can’t actually stop writing SOMETHING.

This realization has actually helped me break free of my block, too. Now I can direct my desire to write toward what needs to get written instead of letting that energy and drive be sucked up by a class or whitepaper.

So writers write. Guess I’m a writer :)