Every two to three years, I experience Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. During the rest of my existence, I consider myself a fairly easy-going, fun loving person. When there is an incredibly difficult task to do, I usually either procrastinate or decide it is not worth my effort. Realizing my priorities in life, I usually choose the family over my insane projects. But when I have my neurotic binges, I am not to be reckoned with. My whole world falls to the wayside. No friends, no family, no exercise, no showers. Just give me coffee and I am embedded in attacking the task at hand.

Hootie-Hoo hit four and my latent creative desires have been emerging full throttle. I have no control over them. Baddy came home, exhausted from dealing with the pain from his cracked scapula, hoping to find me as he usually does on Fridays, on my second glass of wine. But alas there was no spread of crackers, cheese and pepper jelly. The hearth was cold, and his wife was fuzzy, not from wine but from having been in website hell. He remarked that the scene looked exactly as it did when he left eight hours earlier in the morning. There I was, wearing the same headset, waiting the expectant six minutes for a web-site technician to try and walk me out of my misery. He laughed and commented that he could see how this was how it was going to be now. Hello honey, glad your home, just talking to my Publicist. He was ready for a fun evening spent lounging with the children in front of the fire, maybe next Friday!

Poor Baddy, the week he cracked his scapula and needed intense nurturing just happened to also be the week I decided to take my writing online. I should have heeded the warnings. When your server says that they have technicians on 24/7 it means that you will be entrenched in hell, devils and all, trying to design your own web-site for 24/7. Dont even try calling those technicians at the witching hours, it will be the closest you get to talking to “the other side”. Shrouded in cigarette smoke, wearing eau de Cafe, their skin an opalescent green they will smoothly convince you that everything will be ok, as long as you sell your soul to the internet. They repeat everything you say and leave you with long, impending sighs. Just get me on the right track and eventually I should be able to figure out the *&*%in program by myself, one would hope.

I contemplate my options. I could start from scratch and erase the past one hundred hours of pain I have endured or I could hire a website designer for a mere few thousand dollars. Ill keep plowing forward. I must remember that my goal is to make money, not to plunge us into further debt. When I call for the umpteenth time, I am grateful to receive a real technician on the other end of the line. I tell him to look at my past calling record and treat me with kid gloves. Ouch, he comments. I see that you really have been having a rough time. You called, waited the usual six minutes, got disconnected, called again and six minutes later got connected to billing instead of technical support, they put you on hold for another six minutes and now you have me. What can I do for you? You can take me out to the pasture and put a gun to my head, is what you can do. I have been trying to create my website by myself for five days. Three of those days I have slept a maximum of four hours obsessively trying to get website savvy. Give me an expert!

My friend suggested that I take a web-site design course at the local college. Others have suggested that I can now start teaching web design. The pitiful truth is that I am no closer to understanding the HTML or CSS language than I was five days ago. My brain is not made for technical knowledge. It is amazing that I can replace the windshield washer fluid in my Vini-Man. There are other people much better designed for designing than me, I just wish that they would focus on what they are supposed to be designing and stop reading those geeky manuals!!!