Writer’s Cafe is a nifty little program that lets you storyboard and brainstorm. It also has a random name generator and a random plot idea generator. There’s an in-program journal as well. If you want to practice writing under a deadline, there’s a timer thing available as well. All in all, it the demo looks to be a nifty little program. The full one is about $60, but it looks to be a good deal for a serious writer.

About ten, fifteen years ago, my mother, brother and I lived in a tiny apartment complex. There were all of six units. The apartments were laid out in a U shape, so that four of them faced inwards towards the driveway and the two at the end of the U faced… the street, more or less. We lived in the middle one on one side, so that we faced the driveway.

This is where it gets tricky to describe… When you entered our apartment, from the door you could see into the dining area (just a vague ‘arch’ there, no real door) and then the sliding glass door into the backyard. The majority of the living room/dining room was to the left of the front door as you entered. The living room was small, so you had to take a detour around the television and turn right to get to the hallway. There was a bathroom to the right, and a bedroom to the left, almost at the end of this 10-15 foot long hallway. At the end of the hallway was the second bedroom. This bedroom had a large window that faced into the ‘backyard’, about four and a half to five feet off the ground. I was somewhere between 4th and 6th grade when we lived there and I couldn’t see out without standing on something.

As for the ‘backyard’, it was little more than a back porch. Every apartment had its own carport (the ones facing each other shared with the apartment next door). So there were wooden gates that led from the carport into the backyard. One side of the gate connected to the apartment wall, the other to a storage area that was outside. So you go through the gate, you’re standing on the back porch, right next to the sliding glass door. It’s not more than 3 feet from the door to the end of the concrete slab. Then another foot or so and then the six foot tall wooden fence that surrounded the backyard. The horizontal slats for the fence were all on the other side, so that there were none on the ‘inside’ where we were.

If you stepped past the sliding glass door (on the other side of the door from the entrance gate), just beside it were the washer and dryer side by side. They barely fit on the ‘porch’. Stepping beyond the dryer, you were now on dirt with a few stepping stones placed (got horribly muddy when it rained) ending at the square clothesline. This thing sat right beneath the second bedroom window and spun so that you could stand in one spot and get all the clothes on the line; or hang them up. The bedroom window was even higher from the outside than the inside.

Now that all those boring details are out of the way…

One evening, we’re watching TV in the living room (from which there’s a clear view of the porch, remember?) and my younger brother wandered off for some reason. Suddenly, he comes back from down the hall and reports that he just saw ‘an alien’ in the back bedroom window! My mom scoffs and sends me to investigate. As my brother seemed genuinely scared, I’m not exactly thrilled with this task. But I eventually go look and see… nothing.

Now there was a neighbor kid who lived across the street and didn’t like us. He did various things, including stealing something from us at one point; I think it was one of our bikes. So my mother said it was probably him, playing a joke on us, wearing a Halloween mask. With the two of us being somewhere between 7 and 13 (I don’t remember the exact date…) this explanation satisfied us.

But, thinking over it now, there are a few things that don’t add up.

1. If it was the neighbor kid, he had to get in the backyard somehow. The gate was not at all quiet. It creaked and banged whenever anyone used it. It creaked and banged whenever there was a storm, too, even if it was fastened shut.
2. Assuming that someone went in that way, they’d have to go past the large sliding glass door. The curtains were sheer, as nobody could see into the backyard in the first place and nobody was supposed to be there besides us, so we should’ve seen… something.
3. There was absolutely nothing to stand on back there that wouldn’t have made a loud racket from being dragged about. The neighbor kid was a year or so younger and slightly shorter than I was. If I couldn’t see into the window, neither could he. Nor could he have hung from the clothesline. Not only did my brother only see ‘a face’, but the clothesline spun and was generally unstable. True, he could’ve held a mask up to the window, but then he wouldn’t have been able to tell when my brother saw it and left.
4. A burglar, “casing” the place? My brother was adamant that it was ‘an alien’ with big eyes. What would a six foot tall man be doing wearing an alien Halloween mask? And, again, how did he get into and out of the backyard without anyone seeing or hearing? The fence surrounding the backyard area was certainly not new and not in the best of shape, had anyone tried to climb it.

My brother couldn’t have gotten the idea of ‘aliens’ from TV, since my mother absolutely forbid any ‘scary’ shows. Shows about aliens, ghosts and magic were all out. She let us watch the original Star Trek, but that was about it. And the ‘monsters’ on there don’t resemble what my brother claimed to see. I don’t even remember seeing any alien Halloween masks at that period of time. We lived there for several years, through several Halloweens, and I don’t remember seeing any of the numerous trick or treaters wearing an alien costume. Nor do I remember seeing any in the store before Halloween, though I’ve seen alien masks for sale in the past two or three years.

Whatever it was; prank, burglar, alien or simply an overactive imagination… My brother never saw it again. I never saw it.

And my mother? She never said anything about seeing anyone leave the backyard when my brother and I went to ‘investigate’. Even though the sliding glass door curtains were sheer and the back porch light was on.

Now that I’m writing it out, over a decade later, it gives me the creeps again. I severely doubt it was a kid and, if it was a grown-up, were we about to get robbed when my brother scared him off by spotting him?

Or was it… something else?

Apparently, there were nearly 26,000 cases of Pertussis in 2004. And there were two bad outbreaks in Arizona 2001 & 2002. But I don’t remember ever hearing about these. It’s a terrible illness, why don’t we hear more about it?

That site says that they guess that only 12% of cases of whooping cough are diagnosed and reported. That’d mean that there were about 220,000 total cases in 2004. But I read on another site that the numbers could be as high as one million per year.

Most adults think they’ve got a cold and, if they bother going to the doctor, the doctor is likely to just tell them that they’ve got an ‘upper respiratory infection’. Doctors don’t diagnose for whooping cough as much as they should, apparently.

So pertussis goes undiagnosed, untreated.
It doesn’t help that the symptoms can vary from person to person. One website says that you’ll cough up lots of mucus, another says you won’t. You may or may not get a runny nose, a fever, sneezing. Your cough may or may not be severe.

My brother got it, he’s still coughing but barely. My mom got it, a bit worse than my brother. I got it the worst. I still can’t lay down to sleep. Fun.

Dang diseases.

No sleep at all. After about 24 hours or so (things are a bit fuzzy) it gets so bad that my chest feels tight, like there’s a rubber band around my ribcage. Not full of fluid, though. My ribs ache from all the coughing. I’m so worn out from all the coughing that I can’t breathe.

At one point, I was literally gasping for breath. Not because my lungs hurt, but mostly because my rib muscles hurt so much from almost constant coughing. If I really tried, I could take a deep breath, and hold it, without coughing. But my muscles did not like this. It felt like I had been running and running and now I had a stitch in my side and couldn’t catch my breath.

I kept telling my mom that I didn’t want to go to the hospital. Hospitals are cold, which is no fun when you’re sick. I didn’t need to be shivering in addition to coughing. Plus, they’re crowded this time of year, with cold & flu patients, so it’s a long wait. Unless you come in on an ambulance, you’re likely to wait at least an hour for diagnosis and treatment. Fun. So we didn’t go to the hospital. Probably should have.
I stayed up all night, dozing a little but mostly being wide awake. Every time I tried to lay down to sleep, I’d sit back up coughing and choking. But choking on nothing. No phlem, mucous, whatever. So I got maybe an hour’s worth of sleep that night.

Gradually, I began to feel slightly better. Somewhat less coughing and my ribs stopped feeling like they were in a cast. But still coughing! And still out of breath in between coughing episodes. At least it didn’t hurt to breathe any more. Definite improvement, but still not healthy.

So about 48 hours ago, I finally got on the computer. But I didn’t feel up to doing anything important. So I browsed around, finally ended up somehow on one of the many doctor/medical websites out there. To amuse myself, I started reading the questions and answers section, where people wrote questions and a doctor would give them answers.

I don’t even remember what the particular question was, but one of the answers mentioned something about whooping cough. Pertussis. Oh, hey, I remember being vaccinated against that! So I went to read about it on Wikipedia, since you don’t hear much about it these days.

Until I hit the checkout. I felt a slight tickle in the back of my throat, but forced myself to keep from coughing on the cashier. Tickle is okay, I could drink the orange juice I bought and everything would be fine.

Finished checking out and paused inside the store at the front to try to adjust the bags of groceries. I didn’t want things to fall out when I was walking through the parking lot. Then… I had a coughing fit. After a few seconds, I managed to stop coughing. I try not to get other people sick when I’m sick and coughing on all the healthy people in Target didn’t seem like the best idea.

I grabbed one of the cartons of juice as I was putting the groceries into the car, so I could drink it on the way home. So I did. Which, etiquette-wise, I know is not proper. But I wanted to get better and orange juice always helps! Almost always. Anyway, on the way home, I had a couple more coughing attacks. Nothing serious. Just needed to drink more juice. Or so I thought.

Get home, unload the groceries while managing not to fall over coughing. Was starting to feel not-so-hot by now. Dang, this is the weirdest cold I’ve ever had! Feel better, then a couple hours later, start getting sick again. More juice.
I tried to sleep, but ended up not being able to sleep for more than a couple hours. Woke up, coughing, couldn’t get back to sleep. More coughing. So I sit up, drink more juice. Take a couple Airborne tablets, make myself some tea. I hate tea, so I try to avoid it unless I’m really sick.

Of course, I didn’t know all this at first. So I ended up going onto the roof several times. Unfortunately, the ladder I had did not QUITE reach up to the roof. Boy, did I wish I had one of those little giant ladders. But I didn’t, and I still had to go up there. So, disregarding ladder safety, I used the short ladder.

I made it to the roof alright, several times, and got everything fixed just fine. But I did not like it one bit. I was always afraid I was going to miss the ladder and fall. Or that the ladder would fall over just as I was stepping down (yes, I did have someone holding it, but still…). It was not fun. Hopefully, if I have to climb anywhere again, I’ll be able to get a good ladder like one of the little giant ladders. If not… I want to stay firmly on the ground!

Shirley Temple’s father (only her name wasn’t Shirley Temple in my dream) dropped Shirley off at my place so I could babysit her. He didn’t return when he was supposed to and a search was started to look for him. He had turned into a centaur and had been wounded while doing something or other. Shirley was summoned to see him, the father said he was ‘going away’ so said goodbye to Shirley. Shirley left and her father died. I ended up adopting Shirley or something. Then things get even stranger… Captain Janeway, from Star Trek Voyager, was in my dream at some point. She was going off to do something and I was going to be left in charge. In charge of what, I don’t remember. But I still had Shirley at that point.

Silly weird dreams.

Normally, going across train tracks is nothing. Especially in the daytime. Tonight, however, just as we were approaching the tracks, the lights on the crossing signals started to flash. The arms slowly started to swing down.

My mom didn't seem to be stopping.

I said, “Stop, stop, stop.” and she finally hit the brakes, just as the bars finished coming down. A couple seconds later, the train started going by. My mom commented, “Oh. I was wondering what all the blinking lights were.” Now, she might've been joking. And we probably could've continued before the train went by. But I'd really rather not find out either one.

So, here I am pushing this brand-new cart around. It rolls marvelously. Perhaps too well, actually. As I got to the end of an aisle, there was a mini-display of A-1 steak sauce. Two flimsy cardboard displays, actually. So I turned slightly to read the aisle markers to figure out where I wanted to go next. As I did so, I inadvertantly pushed the cart, just barely. Literally. I didn't even realized I'd pushed it.

The cart swung to the side and hit the corner of one of the displays. DOMINOS! The first display hit the second and A-1 bottles went tumbling and sliding across the floor. Luckily, I think they were plastic. They didn't sound like glass, and none broke, but I didn't know A-1 was packed in plastic. Then again, I can't remember the last time I actually bought any.

Every other time I've gone shopping, the store's been nearly deserted of clerks. But I usually go shopping in the afternoon. Yesterday, I went in the morning. The morning before the new ads come out, prices change, etc., etc. Of course, the store was full of clerks and not 10 seconds after I ruined the display, one came running up and said “It's okay, we'll get it.” I apologized profusely and fled off to another aisle. When I went back the other way about 5 minutes later, the bottles had been picked up and put in a shopping cart. The clerks were just finishing collapsing the display that I had run into (which remained standing while the other did not).

The ironic thing here? I had coupons for A-1, though I wasn't planning on purchasing any. Maybe it was some strange magnetism that attracted the cart to the display. I still have the coupons, though.