Beady Evil Eyes

By Jan Verhoeff

Starting the day with a computer failure is not my idea of fun. But, it happens. On the day in question, I’d opened my eyes to a glorious sunny morning, cold and clear, with fresh snow on the ground (though it was limited – this is southeastern Colorado in a drought – you know), and just the slightest glimmer of Spring in the air. Despite these wonders, a shower, dressed in my favorite off to the office wear of jeans and sweatshirt – highly appropriate in my home office with four children running about in various stages of dress and school projects, breakfast in hand; I switched on the computer.

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With a buzz and a burp it announced it’s confusion and inattentive response. The monitor came up with an interesting screen arranged with blocks and lines of permeating color. Needless to say, this day was going to be interesting. I immediately turned off the computer and tried again. I didn’t hear the resounding blurp, and the buzz sounded a bit foggy. What I specifically did NOT hear was the fan inside my computer keeping it cool.

I personally didn’t think it was hot enough to ‘get warm’ but – I knew the computer would disagree with me so I turned it off again and proceeded to search out the necessary tools to revamp my computer – hoping all the while that it was fixable without parts. After clearing all the necessary office supplies off my desk, stapler, note pads, pens, etc. I noticed ‘tracks’ on my desk. Interesting ‘tracks’ in the dust.

Hmmmm… and beady little eyes peering out at me from under the base of my monitor. Momentarily, I lapsed into the scared homemaker version of me, who was very much afraid of mice. I screamed. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, I lapsed back into the more professional version of me. I screamed even louder, but in a more professional ‘blood curdling’ manner. Then, a calm took over and I got myself back under total control, sanity regaining it’s hold. I screamed again, this time without the professional tones, without the fear, and without the calm. A resounding, reverberating scream of horror that such a creature could be roaming freely on the top of my desk.

As my children gathered round, restrained laughter, more screams as the varmint appeared again, and offers of protection from my sons (who obviously found great joy in my tormented state) were proffered. Not so restrained laughter followed as I continued reacting with screams of fear as the beady eyed creature kept repeatedly poking his nose out from under the monitor attempting to find a way out of his hidey hole. Regaling laughter from my daughters was closely followed by giggling appeals for the rat’s life, whines for saving the rat, and ultimately, the worst of all appeals, from my son, “Mom, can we keep him?” Needless to say, the answer was, “No.”

Eventually, someone came up with the idea of placing a box under the edge of the front of the desk, pulling the monitor off the desk over the box, and letting the mouse fall into the box. Then they came up with the idea of ME lifting the monitor… uh, no. So, as we stood there discussing the options and possibilities, a delivery arrived from FedEx.

A momentary lapse of memory amid peals of laughter as I opened a box labeled ‘mouse trap’ (a game my son had ordered for the computer), and I innocently sat down in my office chair to contemplate the repair of my computer, forgetting about the terrifying rodent that shared my imminent domain. While focusing my attentions on the computer problem, which still included a tower that I wasn’t turning on out of fear of burning up some preciously necessary component, I grasped a screwdriver in one hand and pulled the tower onto my lap.

Needless to say, it was a grievous error in judgment.

I pulled various plugs from the back of the tower, removing most of the dust with my denim clad leg and the sleeve of my sweatshirt as I worked, I also removed the covering from the unitized form of my computer core. It was then I discovered, much to my chagrin, the problem with the fan on my tower. Mr. or Mrs. beady evil eyed mouse had built a nest overnight in my computer fan – and delivered a tower full of beady eyed baby mice in between the fan blades. As I sat there again screaming out my dismay (see earlier paragraphs in reference to nature of screaming dismay), the thought came to mind that there must be a ‘momma mouse’ somewhere, excitedly upset about the fact that I was dislodging her babies from my computer in a far less than humane manner.

Still periodically screaming my horror at indiscernible decibels ranging from outrageously blood curdling screams to inaudible wimpy gasps of air siphoned over the voice box, I continue removing baby mice from my components. At one point, I’m systematically blowing the residual residue from the screen covering my fan with canned air, when I heard a resounding THUMP and felt teeny tiny claws grasping the denim on my leg. Somewhere between the act of throwing the computer into the air – attempting to catch it – swiping the mouse from my leg – throwing it out the open front door – and the realization that I’d just TOUCHED a mouse, it dawned on me that the reason the front door was open was because my son was asking a friend into the house.

Standing frozen in the sands of time, I shivered uncontrollably as I lifted the computer tower onto the desk, sat it there and walked to the other room to calm down. When I returned the monitor and tower had been removed from my desk and any other debris had been cleaned off the desk, including dust from the monitor. The tower had been put back together, and the friend was sitting with my son chattering about the rigors of dealing with women and phobias, both were wearing these interestingly non-innocent type grins, and neither spoke a word about the mice, or parent mouse that had been removed from my computer, however, I did notice that the trash can had been emptied and all debris had been cleaned up from around my desk area.

Little did I understand that each time my son and friend come into contact with each other, I would be constantly reminded of the scenario that day when the beady evil eyed critter invaded my work space.

Persistent and driven marketer with over three decades of experience, Jan Verhoeff packs high-impact solutions into your marketing endeavors. Verhoeff generates targeted traffic and explosive wealth building potential into your Internet Business.

I have a lot of fun on my blogs, and sometimes I take off on a different direction without thinking much about it. But seriously, when you take those detours, you should have a plan.

You really and truly should have a plan before you take off on those detours, but if you’re ultra spontaneous (like me) you might have to know how to cover your tail to maintain the integrity of your blog and keep your readers happy. I know there have been a few times when a few readers have contacted me and said, “Jan, what the heck are you thinking?”

Tangents

You can have a tangent and still maintain the integrity of your blog. It’s easy, rant about your primary topic, go off on a burning rant and tell everything you absolutely hate about writing, for instance. Get down and dirty and whine a little bit. Don’t curse. Enjoy the rant, and share it. Your readers may actually respond with solutions or helps. Or they may join you.

Leave it with a bit of humor tacked on at the end.

Lists

I love a good list of things I need to do, things I need to get, or things that would make your job easier. These are the same kinds of lists other people would have if they did what you do. This article is a list. I’m listing all the things you can do to maintain your Blog Integrity. Write an intro paragraph, and follow it up with an odd number of specifics, then offer a tag paragraph that includes a link to something else you’re doing.

Have some fun with lists. Don’t make it all business. Sometimes, you just gotta have fun.

Videos

Popping a video into the blog now and then shores up your image and gives you a bit of magic. Remember when you were little and first started watching TV. Did you think there were itty bitty people in your Television set? I thought the cowboys and Indians lived inside the TV. When I was about 13, I met Roy Rogers and told him that, because by then I thought it was cute. He said I wasn’t the only kid that wanted to take the TV apart to snitch his horse.

Ya know, he eyed me a little differently after that…

Humor

Sometimes I use humor that sounds a bit sarcastic. That isn’t my intent, but it comes across wrong. I try to fix that and make it sound right and it doesn’t work, then I’m left with a blog post that just didn’t work. I delete those. But humor is good. If you can pull off a good joke, on the blog, and make it relevant to your topic, do it. In fact, I’d say do it more often. This world needs laughter.

I listen to the radio a lot when I’m blogging. There’s just something about listening to Dolly Parton spiriting out “Nine to Five” that inspires me. The humor of it, alone, will give you an inspired thought on any topic. Seriously, humor is a good thing. Use it.

Reviews

Reviewing products is a great way to add a blog post and market a product. It doesn’t have to be a full blown detailed review of a product, if you’re using something that benefits your family or business and is relevant to your blog, write about it. Give your reader a quick recommendation in the middle of your blog post about your favorite keyboard. I’ll tell you, nothing is more important on my desk than my logitech keyboard.  I use it every day. Okay, maybe my philips mouse?

Reviews offer people a chance to glimpse you beyond the black and white words.

Marketing is the name of the game. No matter what you’re blogging about, you’re most likely blogging about something with the intent to make a profit from your blog. Decadent Marketing offers you important details about the marketing aspects of blogging and creating documents online. For more information go to http://decadentmarketing.com and sign in for your FREE Gift.

(c) 2009 – http://janverhoeff.com

When the title “Expert Author” showed up on my mouse pad a while back, my son asked, “What’s an Expert Author?”

“It was a gift,” was my answer.

Somewhere along the past year, I realized I hadn’t answered his question, either to him or to myself. So, I started thinking about what being an “Expert Author” means to me.

The title is earned from a site where many of my articles are published, once you publish 10 articles you gain Platinum Status and are labeled an “Expert Author”. It’s a nice honor. It does have meaning as far as the site is concerned. The implication is that you have a field in which you excel and write specific content.

The title for me needed to have greater personal meaning. I wanted to know what the title meant to me personally, before I tried to explain it to my son. That concept of knowing meant I had to delve into my own psychic and determine the value and meaning of the word “Expert” to understand.

To me, the word Expert means someone who has specialized training, or long term experience in a given field of interest. Looking back over my life, I realized that I have expertise in several areas of interest, given my own definition. To state how many would appear like a resume, and who wants to read a resume on a blog?

Then I realized I really don’t need to write about myself to tell anyone the purpose of the Expert Author title. The meaning of the term came rushing in and I understood, after spending an evening with friends explaining and answering their questions about writing.

An Expert Author is a writer whom people seek out to ask more information of, when they want to know more about any given topic.

Being an expert author isn’t about anything I do for myself, anything I actually know, or in any way a skill or position I’ve taken or learned, but rather a status others give you when they ask you to provide information for them. For all those who call and ask my advice, or email and ask me questions about writing, Thank you for giving me this title.

Now that I understand the meaning of the term, I’ll gladly acknowledge and appreciate the title (and hopefully, wear it with grace and appreciation).

The articles and posts here will be written responses I so often give when writers contact me and ask my advice and information about writing.