Jestablog

Gardening with Friends

2012-01-20T18:41:00.000-08:00

It's seed ordering time!

Yep. It's that time of year when I stop leafing through seed catalogues and actually go downstairs, get online and order what I want.

I've got about an acre of veggie garden, and I still don't have enough room to plant every single seedling that comes up all viable and beautiful from each one of those packets. If you've got gardening pals, you might consider putting together a group order. Everyone puts together a wish list, brings it to a seed meeting, and negotiates with everyone else so that they can split up packets as much as possible. It costs less, and everyone will have more than enough. Why bother? How about this: Maybe you have only enough space for five tomatoes. Seems kind of silly to buy 25 seeds, and be stuck with just that one variety, when you and your friends can pick your three favorites and everyone gets a few seeds of each.

An alternative is to learn about seed storage. I do okay in the seed storage department, but it's a real science. The more you learn, the better chances you'll have of seeds not just sprouting but actually becoming thriving plants. There's still the issue of having to buy in to whole packets of each variety of thing, which can be expensive, but at least you'll be able to have the same sort of garden each year and learn more about how to grow it better. Of course if you chose your varieties poorly, that may mean making the best of an iffy thing. Or you can toss the loser seeds and keep the best ones.

But it's more fun to garden with friends. Check out your local gardening clubs. I found a whole bunch of them in the newspaper without even trying. And Google is your friend, as always. Even if it doesn't seem like your sort of thing, it doesn't hurt to do a little snooping around. You never know. You may discover that there's a local turnip society. It can be nice to know that you're not the only person in town who loves turnips.

My Dream Farm

2012-01-19T21:32:00.000-08:00

This is a special message to those of you who dream about having a little acreage with a few animals and maybe a small garden in which you can grow bountiful and healthy (and hopefully heirloom) produce with no chemicals--

Today, in the rain and snow:

* Started my work day with my work shoes in a bag because I had to walk through a really deep puddle to get into my car

* After I got home, before dinner, shut in the chickens for the night so that the raccoons won't get them, hoping the rat won't hurt them

* Went downstairs and found out water was coming into my office. Again. Put on my boots, went to the shed in the rain and dark and slush (there's spiiiiders overwintering in there!!), got a shovel and began to divert the water coming down the driveway toward the house (again) with no real clue as to whether I was doing any good whatsoever and praying I wouldn't hit the phone or electric line (I think I know where they run ....)

* Found out that the internet was down. Called tech support. The new guy on the other side had no idea what to do with dialup accounts. He tried to look up some phone numbers for me. I fixed the problem myself in the meantime. But he was very supportive! Go him!

* Cats are whining because I won't let them out in the storm where they might get eaten by coyotes

* Checked the garden and discovered that the semi-perennials I planted and nurtured and then mulched against winter weather appear to be dead, and yet I still have hope

* Read an article about winter cleanup in the garden after a storm--picking up broken branches, pruning dreary-looking perennials, snipping off damaged branches and going after dormant insects. All fantastic advice but all I could think of was yeah, right, me and what army will do that over our two acres in the mud, assuming the rain ever lets up before June

* Put cowboy hat on my shopping list because my DH's did a way better job in the weather than my own hats did when I had to drive in the snow to get to work the other day (hmm, could it be that they're designed well for the conditions we have rather than being just a western fashion statement?)

* Start of work day, 7:30am. End of work day, 11:21pm. Time to take a bath and soak the mud ground into my hands by the shovel handle, maybe read a little, hopefully write a few words on my novel, and then sleep. Wake up time tomorrow, 7:30am to go to my day job.

And you know what? I love it, even if it makes me a little crazy sometimes. If this doesn't scare you, then live your dream. If it sounds like a hassle, dream on. Just dreaming is a lot less messy than the real thing.

This public service message is provided to you by your local crazy farm girl.

After

2012-01-18T19:44:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I think about lonely things, especially after someone dies. After Lucky died, along with the sadness and loss I also felt relief for his sake, because dying of kidney failure was no fun. Now that the grief has settled I've had lonelier thoughts. If we really have souls, we're separated from the living. Is his soul afraid? Needing contact? Is there danger? Is there anyone or anything that cares for souls like his?

Sometimes it's not the greatest thing to be introspective. I wrote about stuff like this in a book that hasn't seen the light of day. Maybe it's time to start working on it again (in my copious spare time, of course.)

Not Quite a Cliche'

2012-01-17T20:00:00.003-08:00

It's been snowing buckets. We have a pretty severe storm system passing through (actually, it's probably several storms) and the cold air is helping mitigate it a bit by having it fall as beautiful fluffy frozen stuff. When we warm up the wind will pick up and suddenly we'll have those torrential downpours that sometimes flood my office.

Please not this year, please please no flooding office this year ....

I had fun driving in it (so far--I may not drive tomorrow and call in to work (we'll see.)) I had to leave early and still ended up showing up at the same time at work as always. In my haste to depart I couldn't find my hat and gloves, so I borrowed some, which resulted in:

K driving down the slushy, snowy road in a big blue pickup truck wearing a brown cowboy hat with a tiger-eye chip band and purple sparkly gloves (no, really, seriously) listening to 80's pop on the radio in four wheel drive, bouncing on extra-tight shocks.

Did the same going home, of course. I saw lots of tire tracks in the snow fish tailing all over the place, often crossing the centerline or venturing a few inches into the ditch. Driving up our road in snow ain't for the faint-hearted, that's for sure. But me and my pickup truck did just fine, thank you very much, with Twisted Sister on the radio. Heh. I would have preferred country, but my knuckles were a little white gripping the steering wheel ....

All but finished, and begun again

2012-01-15T22:16:00.000-08:00

I finished the floor upstairs. Well, finished might not be perfectly accurate. I have three transitions and the baseboard thingy/stuff to do. Then I'll be done. We still have to put the ceiling up downstairs, and we have to finish our front porch, but the upstairs will finally be homey again. It's a really good feeling. It'll be an even better feeling when I can sweep and mop the last of the sawdust away. I've gotten about 90% of it, but it'll keep shaking off of furniture and we'll be dusting it off of all the horizontal surfaces for a quite a while, not to mention I have to get all those bits and pieces leftover out of the house and the tools (all sawdust covered, of course) returned to their proper owner or put away. Thanks again to our friend D. for loaning us his very kewl chop and table saws.

I'm writing on the third book in the Masks series again, tentatively titled Innocence and Silence. So far so good, at least as far as I can tell. Writing in series is always a chancy proposition. There are all those details to keep track of, and there's a higher chance that the story will run away in directions that won't work either forward, backward, or worst of all, both. I'm trying not to let it distract me. The most important thing is to tell a good story, right?

Oh, and it snowed today. There's enough on the ground that the steadily rising temperatures aren't enough to melt it. I had that magical feeling waking up with everything white. I don't think that feeling will ever go away, at least as long as we're on the warm side of the mountains.

So it's been a productive, snug, brandy and hot chocolate sort of day. Tomorrow it's back again to the day job, assuming the road conditions are good enough for me to get down the hill. Right now I'd say it's probably fine, but if it keeps snowing all night or the temperature drops, turning the slushy underbelly into ice ... yeah. We'll see. If I can't make it I won't be too sad, though. I'll just spend the day writing.

Housework as Art

2012-01-13T22:41:00.000-08:00

We've been working around the house pretty hard and it's starting to pay off. It's really wonderful coming home to a place that's clean(er) and (more) organized and warm.

It makes me think about the art of home-making. For a long while it became almost derogatory--someone being a homemaker was a person who didn't have a life of their own. It still has that taint. I'm not sure how that happened. Maybe because of it's association with wives and women. That's a really awful idea, that something that becomes associated with the feminine is diminished and derided and considered irrelevant or even frivolous.

My DH has been putting in just as much work, if not more, into making this house a home and now that we're seeing serious progress there's just so much pride and satisfaction in it. It's not just pride and satisfaction, though. It's a form of creativity, with emphasis on the create part. Anyone who has finished writing a book or a painting or has watched a flower bed blossom after all the preparation and hard work understands. And yes, these things are never really completed. Projects aren't finished so much as they're abandoned, or revisited in another form at another time. Just as the cells in our bodies continuously divide and process and breathe, the environments we create are never static. They grow and change and breathe too. With effort, they flourish. With neglect, they decay and die.

Our house is very alive right now. It's beautiful, even with all the dust and ongoing battles with clutter that doesn't have a spot to settle into (yet.) Will we ever finish? I'm sure we'll have breaks from the wall painting and edging and organizing. But I won't sit still during those time periods. I'll have another way of putting my feet up--putting up outbuildings, relaxing while lazing about weeding in my garden beds, eating tomatoes fresh from the vine.

Yep, it's almost that time of year. Mid-February I'll be starting those earliest of seeds. Yikes! That's in about a month. That's all the time I have to polish the work indoors.

I'm already full of anticipation--the garden in our future, the livable house that soon will become present, the sawdust piles and scrap pieces of flooring that will be in the past.

It's a great way to begin 2012. I think it's going to be a fun year. The art of it will be all around us. We'll be living in it, eating from it, and resting within it. It's living as art, and art as life.

Oops

2012-01-12T14:18:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note from my favorite Wifi spot, Papa's Ice Cream. We had a wee accident at the farm a couple of days ago and my office has no power. No animals or people (which in our house are pretty much animals too) were harmed in the making of this accident.

I'll be online only sporadically for the next few days.

House of Goats

2012-01-10T20:24:00.000-08:00

House of Goats by Tammy Owen is up on Amazon and Smashwords.

Tammy's working on the sequel, House of Chickens. It's one of those things where more life has to happen before the book comes together (and yes, it's all based on truth, truth being weirder/dumber/crazier/fill-in-your-adjective than life) but there's enough for a whole 'nother book by now. Pretty sure there is, anyway. Like pound cake, not just made from scratch, but with hand tools. There's a reason why people bought appliances like crazy when they came out. Seriously. And farm wives with big shoulders happens in part because of things like pound cake being mixed by hand. Because, damn, batter is heavy.

I'm still working on how to put more books out more efficiently. My DH is helping a ton with that. I'd like Wyrd Goat Press to develop a reputation for good books, though I doubt people really care about what publisher puts out what books. Do you know who published your favorite books?

In other news, the Mega Floor Project is almost finished! I have the sore knees to prove it. I have about twenty four square feet or so to do. Hopefully I have enough left in the boxes I have. If not, I may have to run to the store and get one more box. Either way it's good. Soooo much better than white carpet. White carpet+farmhouse=sad/disgusted me. Hopefully I'll be able to post pics soon of a fabulous shiny entryway, living room and dining room.

There might be more writing news soon. It just depends on scheduling stuff on their end. I've been waiting a long time to make an official announcement. I hope to make it sooner than later.

Don't Lose Time

2012-01-08T08:23:00.000-08:00

I have a very good friend who sometimes talks about how people wasting his time is a form of murder. Our time is limited. From our perspectives we usually aren't aware of it because we seem to have so much of it.

I didn't always have that feeling of 'almost forever', though. I remember having this fear that the world would end at the end of 1999. That feeling was so strong that even though I doubted anything would happen, I shivered more than once as the year 2000 approached. I had calculated what age I'd be in 2000, and promised myself that I would do everything I wanted to before then so that I'd have no regrets.

I was only 12 years old, but I think I was wiser in that respect than I am now.

Our beloved Lucky, the epileptic black kitty, passed away from kidney failure the day before yesterday. He had about a decade of life. In that time it seemed that he sensed that there simply wasn't enough love in the world, and he craved it more than anything. Epileptics sometimes report a strong sense of impending death just before they black out into their seizure. I think he had that feeling too. He had a seizure just before he died, and I wonder if he thought damn, I've been down this road so many times ....

I had snapped awake about 5:30 am knowing something was wrong. I found him on the floor. Somehow he'd crawled out of the bed we'd made for him. From that point on he got constant love, the thing he wanted, the thing he desired above all other things throughout life. My DH and I took turns holding him in our laps. We gave him what we could, and as he'd always known, it still wouldn't be enough. But it was all the time he had to get attention from us. Death clicked the stopwatch and the race was over.

None of us have enough time to do everything. For Lucky, he didn't want everything. Just one thing. I think that focus gave him the kind of life he wanted.

Do you have one thing more important than the others? Lucky would, if he could, suggest that you pursue that one thing. And if there isn't one thing for human beings, maybe there's at least a concept like I had when I was a child of living life and accomplishing a certain amount in the time that we have. If you had only a decade from now, what would you want to accomplish before then? Chances are if you're reading this, you've already had more than Lucky. Have you used your time wisely, as he did?

If Wishes had Plans ...

2011-12-21T20:06:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wish I was working full time for myself. Wishing isn't worth much all by itself, though. I wish for stuff all the time. I wish I was healthier, slimmer, stronger, that I'll win the lottery, etc.

I can make the working full time for myself work, though. I have a plan. Tomorrow I'll have some time to work on that plan.

A plan makes all the difference. It's like budgets in finance. Want to be rich but living from hand to mouth? Have to start with a budget. It can suck. Adding up expenses and subtracting them from income sometimes points out just how far we're in the hole, but you know, you're in that hole whether you know it or not. I'd rather know it. From there it's just a matter of figuring out how to work with the income you've got and then formulating a plan for decreasing unnecessary expenditures (sometimes that's impossible if you've cut to the bone already) and formulating another plan for increasing income if it's needed (usually it's needed but not always.)

Before I can work totally freelance I have to (on average) have an income of my wages plus benefits. The benefits are the tough things to match right now. I 'make' more in benefits than I do in wages.

But there's that number, and so I can set up a plan and adjust as needed once I put that plan into action. You'd better believe step one is not quit my day job. Good thing I (mostly) like my day job! Step one mostly involves using my free time to the best of my ability, while maintaining sanity. I had a sanity day recently, so tomorrow is a work on my self-employed job day. If I can get eight solid hours in, that would be good. Holiday shopping doesn't count.

Have you got a plan for your wishes?

Music

2011-12-15T22:27:00.000-08:00

My DH will have a DVD coming out soon. One of the questions we got from the producer involved the kind of music he thinks would work well with the DVD.

That's a huge question.

I have these soundtracks I listen to sometimes when I'm writing or as a prep before writing to help transport me quickly back into that world within the story. A lot of people I know have soundtracks for their lives, just like the commercial says. Some songs are so intensely popular that they're used in multiple movies, or sometimes aren't in the movies themselves but are in the trailers. "Ordinary World" is a hugely popular example.

But a bunch of favorite songs is not what a non-fic DVD needs. I'm sure the producer will take our ideas (or leave them) and come up with something practical. As someone who occasionally does creative stuff for other people, I understand the blessing that is a launching point.

I'm so, so curious about the entire DVD but now I'm especially curious about how music fits in. Music can turn a perfectly good instructional DVD and make it corny or unlisten-able. One of my favorite workout videos has such boring, awful music that I turn it way down and listen to my own techno and pop mix instead. There's a lot of pressure placed on the background that we don't think about. Music covers white noise, microphone crackle, and turns those dramatic pauses into, well, drama as opposed to someone standing around while the lights hum.

Which actually all plays into writing (as all things do.) Description is often background. When it's just a dry list of things present in the room and people gesturing, it's substance without the music. Description needs flavor, life, action. Think about it. Why were Tolkien's settings so rich? Because they were alive. They had music.

I'm going to go write some music now, while I eagerly await the DVD rough cut, coming soon (I hope) to a tv near me.

Be Awesome because it's fun!

2011-12-13T21:16:00.000-08:00

Here's me waving to my readers and apologizing if I haven't responded to comments lately. I'm hardly ever online anymore, and when I am I check my email and run away to work on projects.

It's cold out here, but my knees are warm because our bulimic anger management issues kitteh is sitting between them, purring. I have a kneeling chair, which is supposed to be good for your posture but it doesn't work for me--I've just learned to slouch a different way. Isn't that horrible? But she's happy, and I'm happy and now I'm sitting up straight again because I'm all self-conscious about it now.

It's been a while since I've posted about customers. Lately I've been having few to no issues. Everyone's been splendid. There's changes afoot. People aren't as stressed. I see more people smiling. Maybe they've just adjusted to their hardships, or maybe things are actually getting better. Either way, it's been wonderful working retail with upbeat customers.

My favorite is G. He's got a close friend who always comes in and says "hi, I'm G's friend. He's on his way in," so I don't actually know his name. He of course likes it that way. Anyway, G. was in a serious car wreck, as in the paramedics found him dead at the scene and managed to revive him serious. He fights like hell to walk, to remember (he suffered a brain injury, among other things) and to take care of himself but he effing gets it done. That impresses me. Not that impressing me means anything, but I do think that there's a lesson there. Not to go out of your way to impress people. A con artist can do that. But to fight hard to the point where anyone would be impressed if they heard about it. For your own sake. Screw that--do it for humanity's sake. That's what keeps the human race alive and vital. Striving, fighting, excelling is what keeps us strong. The wild critters have constant pressure on them from disease, predation and the elements. We've reduced that pressure greatly. It's still there (I find it a little creepy that our biggest predator pressure comes from ourselves) but it's not what it once was. That's kewl, but doesn't that mean that we need to push ourselves now that clear and present death isn't breathing in our ears whispering that it's coming for us at any moment? If the cheetah doesn't motivate the gazelle to run, won't the gazelles lose their gazelle-ness and become less awesome?

Consider being awesome, not just to prep for a disaster that may or may not come, or to overcome a catastrophe like G. did. Become awesome because you have the freedom to become awesome without a car wreck or a cheetah or cancer or war or your crazy cousin Irvine showing up on the doorstep with a shotgun ready to take you and your whole family out. Do it for fun!

Which reminds me, they found three bodies and positively ID'ed the shooter as well and truly gone, reduced to sooty bones. Unfortunately he shot the twin sisters, one of which was his wife. A family, gone. Details are here (though I noticed that, weirdly, today's update from the paper edition isn't there yet. And yes, I'm one of those people who read the actual print newspaper.)

Fire and Gunfire and Smoke

2011-12-07T13:12:00.000-08:00

All morning I've heard reports and rumors and everything else about a fire and gunshots just a few blocks from my workplace. It's sobering, standing at my station, watching to see if something drastically changes, listening to gunfire.

And weirdly, I could see getting used to it. Not liking it, but figuring I have to eat, I have to shop, I have to work ... and going to work while blocks away people are shooting at each other, be it armies, religious sects, gangs, whatever. What if there's nowhere you can move to? People are struggling everywhere to make house payments or rent, looking for work--if your neighborhood exploded with violence, could you move? Would you?

Because I won't. Obviously I have the fair assurance that this won't happen again, and that after today it's unlikely that I'll hear gunfire and see plumes of smoke and flames and police, or worry about a crazy man somehow sneaking through a cordon and coming into my workplace. But even if I did think this would happen again, would I move? Would I leave work, with little assurance of finding another job ... and where would I go where this couldn't happen?

Because it could happen anywhere. Today it's happening here.

Weird how normal my day is. Weird how I'm having lunch at my second favorite place to have lunch because the first one is closed for everyone's safety. Or maybe not so weird. It's here today, and it'll be somewhere else in the world, maybe several somewhere else's, tomorrow.

I just hope that the wife and sister are okay. The man ... he's in charge. He'll be okay if he wants to be, and apparently he doesn't want to be. Today he wants fire and gunfire and smoke.

The Joy of Interrupted Writing

2011-12-06T21:21:00.000-08:00

I used to get so peeved when I'm writing and there's an interruption. It still gets to me, especially if it's something quick and unimportant that someone else could have handled, but I try to remind myself that my family/friends/job/etc. are more important than writing. If I write well enough, maybe someday the job can be taken off the list as writing will be my full time job. But for now, paying the bills ... yeah.

Today, the interruption in writing proved to be full of awesome.

I write during lunch on workdays whenever I can. When it's time to stop, I have to stop no matter how well it's going. I grumbled (silently) as I closed up my laptop and locked it away.

Fast forward two hours later and I have this genius idea about the scene I've been writing. I obsessed about it whenever I had a no-mind-required moment at work, and now I can sit down and write something much better than what I'd had in mind. Yay! So thank you, job, not just for health care and wages and keeping my family fed and happy, but for the timely interruption. Because if I'd kept on a'goin', I'm sure I wouldn't have thought of this idea.

Wyrd Goat Logo

2011-12-05T12:58:00.000-08:00

We have a great person, T, visiting us so that's my excuse for not posting as much as I'd like. Seriously, when did it get to be so hard to post on my blog every day?

Anyway, it's not finished but I've made some progress on the Wyrd Goat logo. Specifically, the neck's proportions aren't there yet and the horns aren't done and there's no beard yet (gotta have a beard!) but I figured y'all might be curious about what I've been obsessing over the past few. I have to say that working in digital media is pretty fun. I really, really want a tablet, though. I'm doing all this with the track pad and a mouse I got for my laptop. Yowza, it's hard on the hands and wrists! I also don't have as much control as I'm used to.

But!

If I make a line I hate, I just delete it. No mucking about with covering or removing pigment or there's even a technique where you can remove the top layer of paper if you're working on something durable like vellum ... None of that. Just a click of the mouse and it's gone.

Sweet!

Home Town

2011-12-03T19:16:00.000-08:00

My DH mentioned yesterday that I connect our family to the community at large simply by seeing the same people every day. I don't always know their names, but I recognize them at the grocery store, the hardware store, at the Christmas tree stand, and I often say hi when I have time if they don't look too busy.

I want to say that this is important, but is it? Maybe in an emergency a person who recognizes me might be more likely to stop and help, but even in that unlikely situation I think a good person would stop and help regardless of whether they're a friend or a stranger.

Is it important for people to know their neighbors, or at least recognize them?

I don't think there's a clear answer. I just know that I enjoy living in a place where I can go to the post office and small talk about the new building going up with my vet and the person who bags my groceries and the person I helped with a return the previous day.

For my fellow Nanoers--have you backed up your Nanowrimo project? Don't put it off!

Nanowrimo Final Count!

2011-12-01T22:41:00.000-08:00

Last night's total word count was at 59,339 words. I probably could have snuck up past 60,000, but I had a really hot bath and realized that I had a better idea than the one I was working on. So I'm going to unwrite some stuff tomorrow and continue on this new, more exciting track.

In other semi-writing news, I'm reworking the Wyrd Goat logo and putting more serious work into the Wyrd Goat website. I'll let y'all know when it goes live. Hopefully it'll be a fun website with lots of wonderful books, links, and other nifty stuff. Advance thanks goes to Lisa the Awesome who is helping me figure out GIMP while doing some serious heavy lifting with some graphics I need. Yay Lisa!

In other, other semi-writing news, Masks will soon be ready. I have a first reader going through it now.

Tomorrow, more work on the floor in the morning, which may lead to finishing the upstairs which in turn may lead to dancing. I don't know! This may be too much fun in one place. Anything can happen ...

Nanowrimo Count Up--58297 words!

2011-11-30T21:20:00.001-08:00

I gained some weight, but I ended up with about 58,297 words (final count will be posted tomorrow) for Nanowrimo this year and I didn't neglect my house or family as much this year as previous years. I ended up in the perfect place in the book for Nano to end--I'm in the muddle in the middle. Anyone who's written a novel knows that the muddle in the middle can be pretty brutal. The writing can be slow going, or worse, you're doing fine until you realize that you've lost track of everything that's going on and you've dropped three of the eight balls you've been juggling and now you have to backtrack because the character couldn't possibly be on that side of town ... yeah.

Not that I've ever done that, but if I had, I would scream just like this: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh!

Congratulations to all my buddies that crossed the Nano finish line!! Validate sooner than later, because the validator will probably be pretty busy the closer we get to midnight in the various time zones.

Have a cookie. You can always hit the treadmill sometime in December, or if not, January is the traditional time to do that sort of thing, and that's not too far away.

Ack! Is it really closing in on 2012? Time seriously flies. I'd better get back to writing. Until next time ....

Nanowrimo Count Up: 50,536 I Win! and Happy Thanks Day

2011-11-24T09:42:00.000-08:00

Our Thanksgiving celebration is mostly over already. We had a wonderful visit in Bend, OR with family and friends. I drank too much wine (for me, that's 2 glasses) and then after everyone except my DH and I went to bed, I wrote until 2am. (He did too. We're a little bit sick that way.)

Signet is now at over 50,000 words. I've made my Nanowrimo goal! Of course the fun doesn't stop there. I doubt I'll finish the book by Nov. 30, but I'm going to give it the ol' writer's try.

In more serious news, my good friend over at Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is going into surgery. It's my understanding that although this is a serious surgery, his doctors don't believe that his life is in danger at this time. All surgeries have risks inherent to them, so I'll be thinking about him and his lovely and talented wife.

Also, RIP Anne McCaffrey. She created wonderful worlds that I as a young person and many people around the world of all ages loved to explore. My condolences to her family, in particular to Todd.

I have so much to be thankful for this year. My sister-in-law (I love you K!) hit the nail on the head when she mentioned that we're fortunate to have good health. Family, friends, food on the table, a roof over our heads, health insurance, our kids are doing great, and we live in the wonderful Pac NW ... I have no doubt that things can get better than this, but if they stayed the same (which things never do) I would be content.

As soon as the floor upstairs is finished, that is. :P

I wish you and yours a wonderful holiday. If you're going shopping on Black Friday, be careful out there. And remember, it's only stuff. Don't let the crazy people grabbing stuff out of your cart make you crazy too. Their actions and that stuff they need so desperately that they're willing to grab it from your hands will not make them happy, and that stuff can't really make you happy either. There are so many ways to express love that it's not necessary to cling to the idea of one object given to one person or to hoard something in your house in order to feel fulfilled.

With that or some other more wise wisdom-y thingy in mind, it's possible to have a lot of fun on Black Friday. I'll be working, of course, but I might stop by the store before my shift and check out the deal-iest of the deals. Happy Thanksgiving!

Nanowrimo Count Up--45000 words!

2011-11-21T20:06:00.000-08:00

Day five of six days in a row of work. Yes, I'm grateful to be working. Still. Always. But I'm tired, and I won't be any less tired tomorrow.

In writing, I've recently had to remind myself to use all five senses as often as I can. I just had my characters cross a huge common area. Guess what I forgot? Sound! Yeah, I didn't do taste or smell either. I did do a little tactile stuff. But the sound would be as important as the sight. Sound will define what sort of crowd this is, and what the general mood is. Angry crowd give anyone the creeps? Does me! Laughing singing dancing crowd make you want to join in or wonder what the celebration is all about? Busy noisy cranky crowd suggests a typical day in downtown, right? So there we are, and there in the story we weren't. Going generic will allow the reader to create their own stuff via their imagination, but a few specific things will help lead them in a potentially more interesting direction and can suggest culture stuff in the process.

Back to the keyboard-y salt mines. If I don't post before then, I wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving Day. Drive safe.

Nanowrimo Count Up--41032 words!

2011-11-16T22:27:00.000-08:00

I'm hitting a weird point in the book where I feel like I'm racing toward the end, but I'm only halfway, if that.

The ending came to me during a bath. I'm not sure what it is about hot water, but it works for me. Anyway, now that I know the heartbreak and joy that comes at the end, I can't wait to get there. My word count has shot up as a result. I hope to reach the winning count, 50,000 words, by this Friday. And I really hope, though I doubt it'll happen, that I'll actually finish the whole book before the end of the month.

My poor DH has to suffer through me explaining bits and pieces of plot when I finish a particularly exciting scene. He made me happy today by letting me know that he enjoys listening to me talk about my book. Of course he had to tease me after that remark, but we're like that with each other. We like to tease, and tickle, and play. We have a wonderful relationship that keeps us both writing like crazy. Maybe someday we'll both be full time writers. I think that would be awesome. I wouldn't have to guard my writing time so jealously anymore, and when he invites me to go somewhere to Wifi, I won't want to say no so that I don't lose writing to travel, which is followed by feeling lonely and wishing I was with him. And I won't feel harried or like I've wasted my time if I say yes, and we won't play that not-so-fun game where we're lingering longer than we like and trying to find useful things to do while the other person finishes up their latest thing they started when the other wasn't done ... yeah. That can be crazy-making after a couple of rounds.

Oh, and about that flooring project ... what flooring project? I was going to try to finish the living room today, but instead I'm at 41,032 words.

Totally worth it. But the floor needs to happen, so I'll work on it really soon. Not sure when, but soon.

OryCon 33: Word Count 33652

2011-11-13T20:51:00.003-08:00

This OryCon I did more socializing than I have in a long time, and it was glorious. I didn't care that my @ss had flattened from sitting so long or that I wasn't making much headway with my novel.

Free samples:

Dreams and nightmares ... the sensory advantage fiction has over film, though film has some great advantages in pacing and visuals. Also, how kewl is it that although someone can be distracted from a movie and miss part of it, if someone becomes distracted from a book, they pick up where they left off or even go back and reread something to get back into it? Prose is a fascinating medium. And our brains are even more fascinating. You can have lucid dreams, faulty dream paralysis, teach yourself to fly, speak to the dead, have repeating nightmares, dreams with plots, and dreams that are so boring you're glad you can finally stop looking for the darned olives at the grocery store when you wake up. Thanks to Jason Brock and a dedicated audience at a very late panel that wasn't even listed for a fascinating conversation/panel on the subject.

Early attempts at writing fiction ... OMG. Does anyone remember their first efforts at storytelling? I had this thing for long, straight black hair that goes down to the waist (why did it have to go down to the waist?!) and purple eyes and chainmail bikinis on bodies that drove men mad with love. Lust was sort of an abstract idea at the time. And I adored the Monkees (who still perform from time to time--a coworker went to a concert of theirs a few months ago) but not as much as horses, which they would chase through various environments and then the wild buckskin would save Davy Jones' life. Karen and I laughed so hard I'm sure people were giving us dirty looks but we didn't care. I'd tell you her stories but they're so awesome she has to tell you herself. I didn't even get to tell her about all the Battlestar Galactica episodes I made up and then later was convinced that they really aired, only to find out that my favorite episodes never actually existed. Darn it! I think I might have hurt myself laughing. We're still telling silly stories, but now I'm not afraid to share them. Plus, I now know about copyright and won't make the (deliberate) mistake of using someone else's creations to carry my stories.

And I don't care if they're cliche'. I still think amethyst eyes are awesome. I just won't prance a violet-eyed warrior princess riding a black unicorn across any of my stories unless I'm writing a spoof. (Sadly.)

What Violence Smells like, Looks like, Feels like, you get the idea like ... you'd think that this panel would turn into a gross-out contest, but the panelists dug deep and revealed things that were painful and nightmarish to them on a personal and professional level. I was so honored to be there while they shared all that with us. I forgot to ask a question so later I cornered Rory Miller and asked him if he remembered what being tasered tasted like. He said 'it tasted like pain.' We laughed, but you know, it's intense stuff. We're made of meat, all of us, and we're all mortal and sometimes you have to laugh and cry and let it out and let it go if you can because the alternative is to curl up and shiver until you die.

Autism ... I liked when the panel started talking about education, because I don't think our education system is serving anyone right now, bright, challenged, bored or plaid ... our kids aren't learning as well as they could. I have high hopes for remote schools, but change is slow and change may not be for the better if we don't figure some stuff out. My kids are out of school, so I don't have horses in this race anymore, so to speak. But I care about the world's future, and kids are it. What do we do? Pay for more studies? I don't think so. Studies are horrible, and they tend to ask leading questions that have no purpose but to suggest narrow political answers. Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

As far as I can tell the boy and the girl had a blast as well. And I missed so much. Filk concerts. The masquerade. Heaps of panels that I wanted to go to. The art show. The art show! I can't believe I missed the art show. I only breezed through the dealer's room. And I didn't get a triple penetration chocolate donut from the Voodoo Donut van. I had to settle for a (yummy) chocolate frosted chocolate cake donut. I'd say waaaah, but you know, it was a tasty defeat.

Lots more but I'll probably blog about something else next time.

Oh, and I can't forget! In sad fuzzy housemates news, Veronica has made a full recovery, and Finn's scalp wound is starting to heal nicely. It was looking very, very iffy there for a while (I think Brian 'helped' by licking the wounds a bit too much) but the next day Finn had everything scabbed and sealed. And Veronica (Poop!) gets to go outside again, so she's happy.

All in all, a good time was had by all. G'night!

Nanowrimo Count Up--22413 words!

2011-11-09T23:26:00.000-08:00

I have another day off tomorrow, so I'll be working on the floor, and writing.

On a more serious note, Veronica, aka the Poop, is not feeling well. She stopped eating and drinking. I'll call the vet tomorrow. She's moving around super-slow and is sleeping lot, which implies to me that she got beat up by another kitteh and is sore and possibly has a mild infection brewing somewhere. I admit I'm worried, but we've been through this with Wizard a couple of times before. She's young and strong and will probably bounce back without any interference, but I'd like the vet to assess her for dehydration, and it would be nice if she were prescribed something to alleviate the soreness (if memory serves, they usually give a steroid shot) to get her moving and eating again. I'm sure they'll prescribe antibiotics if she has a fever.

Poor kitteh ...

And also (why is there so often an also!) Finn scraped his head up pretty good. We're not sure what happened, but it doesn't look like a bite from the other dogs. Quite a bit of hair is missing around the scrape, and we know it wasn't there last night. Trapped under the porch? Got his head jammed under a tree root while digging? Ran under a low branch? We have no idea. We called the vet, who said to watch to make sure it doesn't get worse/icky/full of pus and basically treat with neosporin. Check, check and check. Unlike the Poop, he seems fine, though his head looks alarming with so much scabby stuff and missing fur.

Sheesh.

Nanowrimo Count Up--13994 words!

2011-11-06T23:58:00.000-08:00

I should be writing my novel ...

My DH and I spent a lot of time working on the floor upstairs. We're now almost done with the living and dining rooms. Seriously. As in, single digit number of feet left to go. Then we get to start on the entryway.

It's an amazing transformation. Already the house looks better, even though everything is in a state of utter turmoil. Even the kitchen looks nicer. Okay, granted, part of that is because my DH hugely cleaned it up. But it's also because of the floor coming up to the kitchen. The cupboards now look like they belong. Before they looked too dark and kinda grungy. I think it was the too-sharp contrast of everything else attempting to be off white, including the carpet, and then the dark cupboards kinda stuck out. Same with our furniture. The roll-top desk I adore now looks almost like it was chosen so that it looked good with the floor. Fabulous!

I have tomorrow off, so we're going to spend part of the day writing and part of the day working on the floor. Hopefully we'll be able to finish things up, if our former-contractor friend D. has time to help us with the transition by the sliding door.

I'm so, so excited! Word count, and house beautification. There's something really wonderful about accomplishing difficult projects. Yes, it's daunting, and yes, it's possible to fail, and yes, yes, yes, it's hard and time-consuming and seems to be a huge distraction from what appear to be more important things. But those more important things often turn out to be busy work. So which is the huge distraction, really? The answer depends on your dreams and goals.

Nanowrimo Count Up--1846 words!

2011-11-01T20:56:00.000-07:00

Yep, it's that time again. Nanowrimo: NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth. The goal--50,000 words by the end of the month, which is about 1667 words a day.

It's always good to get a head start. Stuff happens. Thanksgiving is stuck in there (and for those of us who work retail, Black Friday is shot too.) Offices flood (happened twice during Nanowrimo in the past ten years.) The point is to write every day, and for the days that you know you'll miss, to write extra either before or after so that you make your goal.

For many, this is a fun exercise, and a chance to finally write that book that they've always wanted to write. For a lot of pros it may be a non-event. They may write 50,000 words in three days. (Stephen King wrote a 200,000 word novel in the time it took you to read up to this point in my post.)

Some fun facts:

*Some people clear 250,000 words during Nanowrimo. No kidding. Some of them are even first time novelists. (ooos and aaaahs from the audience.)

*Nanowrimo is organized by the Office of Letters and Light, a charity that does awesome things like provide books for the needy.

*A 'standard' (double-spaced, 12pt. font, 1 inch margins) page has about 250-275 words, depending on writing style. This can vary quite a bit, with some dense pages approaching 300 words, and spare pages with a poetic or spare structure coming in well under 100. These standard pages give an editor a very good idea of how thick the spine on the novel will be.

*Most 'mainstream' novels fall between 80,000 and 110,000 words because traditional paperback and hardback publishing finds that this length satisfies the reader, has ample spine on which to print necessary info like the novel's title, and doesn't have so much content that it requires lots of extra (expensive) paper and ink and binding to produce even if they make the font really, really tiny.

*Lots of incredible books are shorter than 80,000 words and much, much longer than 110,000. Really big ones over 200,000 words are sometimes referred to as door stoppers or tomes.

*Shorter books are often printed with bigger fonts, lots of pictures, or with lots of empty space around the print so that there's enough spine on which to print the title of the book in a visible font. Conversely really long books may be printed on thin paper, in smaller fonts, or have smaller margins. Compare sometime a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare or Stephen King's The Stand with War of Art or Michael Pollan's 64 Rules for Eating Well. (Yes, I really meant War of Art, not Art of War, although that's another book that is often filled out, though more often with commentary and lots of prefaces.)

*Although Nanowrimo seems to be held at a weird time of year and shouldn't offer any tangible benefits, the energy that comes from attempting Nanowrimo has inspired lots of people to meet or exceed their goals year after year. I've tried a year-round goal of 50,000 words, and have also tried it during a more 'sane' and quiet month. Nada. This is the time, the place, and these are the people.

I hope some of you will join me in trying to write 50,000 words (or more!) in November. It's not too late to start! If you do, feel free to buddy me. I'm kzmiller.

Too Much of a Good Thing (again, or is it still?)

2011-10-30T19:36:00.000-07:00

My DH and the kids are coming home tomorrow after a nice vacation on the coast. I so, so wish I could have gone too, but I was at work. Again. Still. Thankfully our store has everything I need. Canned food, microwaves and dishes to cook with, sleeping bags, ammo and firearms, tools, pillows, toilet paper ... everything. I could even keep the animals there, though the goats would eat an awful lot of bags of bunny food. I could set up baby barricades (which we have right at the store!) to keep them penned on certain aisles where they'd in theory do the least amount of damage, or maybe I could keep them in the warehouse area. And of course the kittehs and dogs could roam free, as could the chickens, though it might be a pain to clean up after the chickens. Anyway, I guess I wouldn't actually have to leave work, like, ever. I just prefer to, you know, spend some time at home.

It would save on commuting, though. Hmmm ....

Nah. No comfy chairs.

Oh, wait, we totally do! I forgot! That's hilarious. And we have a futon! But I'd have to move them to be near an outlet so I can type on my laptop.

I am looking forward to having a whole two days off in a row soon. It'll be a little weird, but I think I can adapt somehow.

Not complaining! I am very, very grateful to be employed.

But still. Five days on, one day off, five days on, one day off, and now I'm in the middle of four days on ... then finally, finally, two days off.

I might even get some work done around here. Dishes? I have dishes. I just wash what I need ....

The End!

2011-10-28T18:55:00.000-07:00

I've hit the end of Masks. Now to go back and add a couple of minor details, update some maps, finish the cover, and I'm done!

done done dunny done done I'm done! I'm done I'm done I'm done. Done done done.

Okay, now done looks like it's spelled wrong. But I don't care because I'm done!

I may have to put together a writer's clock. I'm thinking about something like this:

5 Why oh why?

10 I'm crazy

15 OMG, Fun!

20 What are dishes?

25 Out of underwear

30 Screeeeeech

35 Lost ... need ... map ...

40 Researching ...

45 Flying in the dark

55 OMG, Done!

12 Zzzzzz

Too Much Work

2011-10-18T07:55:00.002-07:00

I'm a bit overwhelmed at the moment. Masks is eating my brain and I don't want it to stop until every last cell is gobbled. I've got to get the water sealing problem fixed on the sliding door while the weather holds--when I have no idea because it'll be almost dark when I get home and I can't do it now because it needs to be cleaned up under there first. I have to work on House of Goats, I have to get two book covers done, and I haven't touched my Wyrd Goat website (I have the domain but I'm still working on the bones of the actual content.)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

I wish I could call in sick but I'm too ethical. Okay, that's totally untrue. The wishing part is untrue, not the ethical part, because wishing for it would be wishing that I was unethical, and I don't. Argh, I'm confusing myself! Help meeeeeeeee

There's only one cure. Soup for lunch. Soup for lunch makes it all better. I'll go pack some into my snapware container that I use for hot lunches and just focus on day job work.

Maybe I'll take my laptop with me to work and get something, anything done during my lunch hour. Yeah ....

What do you do to cope when you have too much to do and not enough time?

Masks Update

2011-10-17T20:54:00.000-07:00

My DH is home! He was just gone for a weekend, but it always feels like a long time when he's away, whether it's a day trip somewhere or 14 months in a foreign country.

I keep discovering new things about the universe I'm writing in. Often I'll go back and insert hints and make changes, but sometimes I have to leave those details in my head, ready to unveil at an opportune moment.

One time in my mid-teen years I overheard my father complimenting me. He didn't know I was close by enough to overhear him. What he said astonished me. At the time I thought of my writing as a game, a diversion, something fun that was for my amusement alone. Every so often I'd have an excuse to write something creative for school, and I had a lot of fun with that. I had no idea that my father had read any of it, though I often deposited my papers on the kitchen table in order to show my parents how I was doing academically. What he said to his friends that evening was that my stories were like a flower with lots of petals unfolding.

Boy, I sure would like to live up to that compliment. Anyway, I think what he saw back then was an effect of my writing process, where I race forward and then go back when I get a fresh take on something so that everything is consistent and carefully (I hope) foreshadowed.

I spent much of last night, late into the night, doing just that with a particularly cruel truth that Mark, the pov character, will discover far too late to prevent a tragic confrontation.

I love writing. It's fun. I think the only difference now is that I do think about how I can best help a reader in on that fun. It requires a lot more work, since the reader can't know what's in my head. But that's fun too. I can keep secrets, and then pounce with them.

Floor Hiccup

2011-10-16T17:42:00.001-07:00

I was cruising along, minding my own business, taking bad sections out of the subfloor and replacing them with new particle board when suddenly (dun dun duh!!) I found dry rot. It hadn't worked all the way through the plywood under the particle board, but dang ...

So I have to seal the sliding door inside and out, and fill that depression in the plywood with 20 year caulk just in case the sliding door isn't the problem ...

It's pretty dry there, so it might have been damage from the original door. Just in case, though, I have to do all this stuff because if there's water coming in, even at just a slow drip, it needs to be fixed. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, if more water does come in, it will probably mess up the laminate there pretty badly. Fortunately because I'll know to keep looking for the root of the problem, unfortunately because then of course I'll have to tear up the floor there (again) and replace it.

Ugh.

In other news, Masks is coming along fast and furious. I'm really excited. I have a really good feeling about this book. It's been tempting to spend the entire day writing, but I really do have to go shopping for caulk (ugh ugh ugh!) and various other flooring supplies so that I'm prepped for doing more stuff on Thursday. That's when D. will be over early early in the morning to help me out some more.

Ugh. Whose genius idea was this anyway?

Huh?

Huh?!

sigh

Floor Progress

2011-10-15T09:23:00.000-07:00

The floor is patched. Finally! I've made progress toward the fireplace/hearth, at which point my fabulous retired contractor friend D. will help me figure out how to mate a rhino with a lobster.

This is where super-long movies like Om Shanti Om (highly recommended, btw, and don't let the whole beginning half fool you--it's an intense love story that even my jaded DH enjoys) and the Lord of the Rings trilogy really come in handy. I've seen them so many times I don't have to really watch them. Listening transports me. I do stop and watch favorite parts, like the Pain of Disco. (Seriously, you have to watch Om Shanti Om.) But other than that I can listen to the music and the dialogue and be there while still paying attention to important things like power tools.

I've gotten far enough now that I'm starting to get that feeling that I'm actually doing some good rather than just ripping the house apart chasing a dream. Oh, and the carpet? It's outside killing grass for me so that I can expand the garden space near the house. I have so much pasture grass (far harder to deal with than tame lawn grasses) that it overwhelms the large sections of garden I've managed to create from blackberry zones. Finally connecting the garden to the proximity of the house will do magical things to the way the garden appears overall. It'll also be easier to manage.

That carpet stinks to high heaven, and the rain has actually improved it by rinsing out the worst of it. I'm once again reminded why I loathe carpeting. Seriously, it's disgusting stuff. Unless you have the money to replace it fairly often, like every five years or so, it just becomes a haven for dirt, dust, dust mites, fleas, stains and general filth. No amount of steam cleaning will get that stuff out. I know. I kept up on the steam cleaning, and it was still vile underneath when we pulled it up. Ten years of grime percolating down through the pad, permeating every layer in between, will do that.

I'm glad to be rid of it, but boy is it a lot of work to go to laminate. It's worth it. The house is tons better already, and we haven't even got a tenth of the surface area covered yet.

Okay, maybe it's over a tenth now. I've got two empty boxes, and three mostly empty ones out of thirty-ish.

And now, I must go back to work. Part two of Fellowship awaits!

Floor Drama

2011-10-13T18:50:00.000-07:00

It's such a simple little thing.

You know how you'll be plugging along on a project just fine until you have to stop and do something you haven't done before in order to continue, and you resist because you have to get a bunch of materials, and then you finally get them, but then you have to read the instructions and they sound okay ...

... and before you know it three days have gone by and even though you know what to do because the instructions are simple, you feel like you have to prepare yourself and you just don't have the emotional energy after a day of work ...

... even though you figure it'll take you a half hour at most ...

... and you can't get back to doing the thing you know how to do really well until you do this little thing?

Yeah.

Day four today. Patch a dip in particle board. Really similar to stuff I had to do to prep for tiling, with similar materials but suitable for use on subflooring.

Should take a half hour or less, including mixing it with water.

Is it done?

Of course not!

Will I do it tonight?

For pity's sake, I hope so.

If not, I've got the whole weekend.

But how much more productive would the weekend be if I just got this

one

little

thing.

Dammit.

More Flooring

2011-10-09T23:30:00.000-07:00

Here are my kids, helping with the never-ending parquet. It's everywhere! It's in my kitchen under the linoleum. It's in the bedroom under the carpet. It's in the closet. (Seriously.) Everywhere we pull up flooring upstairs, there's more parquet. It's kinda creepy, actually. Parquet isn't easy to install.

I'm sure it looked fantastic back in the day. Unfortunately it doesn't look very fantastic today. Mysterious stains, bleaching, water damage and odors that have permeated what little finish remains on it have made it pretty icky. Maybe the stuff in the bedroom isn't too bad, but I'm not about to pull up the carpet in there to find out. The bedroom carpet is in halfway decent shape. At this point I'm all for the if it ain't broke don't fix it philosophy.

After all the prep (which is ongoing, btw) I finally got to lay down a wee bit of floor with D's help. He did all the brainy stuff, and I just kept going after the hard part was done. And I hit my first milestone. First empty box! Awesome, but scary. Will I have enough of this stuff to complete the project? Did I measure everything right? The conflicting info online and other places is crazy-making too. Everyone insists on poly film of various grades over cement. Everyone also insists on a vapor barrier in crawlspaces under the house where you're putting in floor 'at grade level.' But this is neither. This is my upstairs, with only downstairs rooms beneath all the upstairs rooms. In addition there's alarming warnings pertaining to putting film over wood, as it will cause mold and mildew problems.

But nowhere does it say what specifically to do in my situation. Seriously, people, who wrote the technical manuals for these things?

If I have to I will pop the floor apart and put plastic under it if the 800 number people tell me so when I have a chance to talk to them on Tuesday. But I have a feeling that they'll say it's not necessary.

Is that so hard to say, folks, in your very, very brief instructions in the teeny, tiny print?

So I'm in a holding pattern for now. But it's a pretty holding pattern. And the kitties love it. I have a feeling they'll love it a lot less, though, when they go charging up the (carpeted) stairs and hit that first stretch of slick new floor.

Weee!

Upstairs floor redo ... ongoing stuff

2011-10-06T22:23:00.000-07:00

All my great plans are shattered, but in a good way. It turns out, after consulting the amazing D., that I don't have to tear out a bunch of stuff to put in my new floors. Just a little stuff.

Unfortunately that little stuff breaks up into little pieces.

So I'm yanking up all the parquet floor after all instead of pulling up the particle board underneath and replacing that. It's sort of satisfying, in a violent OCD kind of way where I rip out exactly 3 rows and then sweep and I try as much as possible to rip out each 4x4 section whole. (It's not possible as often as I'd like it to be.) D. suggested that pulling up the parquet will go about as fast as I can get pissed off, but I just can't seem to get pissy enough for it to go really, really fast. At least it's happening in a relatively clean fashion. The floor isn't pretty, but I can walk around without it going crunch crunch crunch.

The best news in all this is that the floor will be done much sooner than expected. Way before Christmas. Hopefully before Thanksgiving. Possibly (!) before Halloween.

We'll see.

D. said something awesome that's keeping me excited about this project. He said his father told him that when you complete something like this, it makes a house more into a home. You'll always be able to look at it and say to yourself, I did this, and it's beautiful.

I'm really, really looking forward to the first time I see and think that.

I'll try not to look in the direction of the new hole in the wall so that moment can come sooner. I didn't do it! And I don't want to know who did it. I just hope nothing broke when it happened.

Argh. Construction. Argh argh argh. But it will be over sooner rather than later. Yay!

Farms are Fun!

2011-10-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

There are some things about owning animals, especially farm animals, that people don't think about.

The goats don't just graze endlessly in a picturesque manner in their pasture, and you don't just pet them over the fence. You gotta get in there. I posted fairly recently about giving them wormer. The other day I had to trim hooves. At one point Snowflake had the girl down on the ground (ground covered in goat poo, I should point out) and the girl was yelling "I'm okay, I'm fine, keep going!" It's like a funny little rodeo, but icky.

Chickens can be incredibly cute. Again, you don't just toss scratch grain to them at a distance while they peck at the ground in a picturesque flock. You have to walk (carefully because they get underfoot just like cats do at feeding time) among them to change water and to fill the feeder and find eggs. Sophie is particularly cute. She knows that treats come from human hands, and she doesn't mind being petted. When I bend down to pet her she isn't sure what I'm going to do so she spreads her wings a little (she squats low and spreads her wings to get petted and when she gets picked up) but keeps her neck stretched as long as possible and twists her head around hoping to spot something yummy among my fingers. When I pull my hand away she does a cute little leap toward my hand hoping to find grain there. Leap!

Too many cats ... it's normally a good thing to have cats all over the place to keep the rodent population down. (It's also awesome to have a little dog like Chase to kill rats because only a few cats are tough enough to take on an adult rat, though they bring home babies from time to time.) But you'd better not get caught near the sliding glass door. Think it's a chore to let one or two cats in and out all day? Try five or six. It's the worst in the morning on a rainy day. The whining begins as soon as the alarm goes off. I let them all out, and then some want to come in again five minutes later, and another ten minutes later and by that time one of the ones I let in wants out again, and the barn cat Tom Riddle sees me and freaks out and sprays to mark his territory. I retreat, but inevitably I pass by the sliding glass door again and there's a kitty out there in the rain with its ears folded down and the silent meow, and one of the ones inside sees me heading for the door and races to be let out .... All. Day. Long.

Dogs and coyotes. Ah, the eerie and beautiful sound of coyotes in the distance. Guess what? The dogs hear them too. The leader of the pack begins with rapid-fire barks. The little one yips and runs up and down along the fence, then races to the back, back to the front, bark bark bark. The leader slows down just about the time the big back-up base starts in with his steady, monotonous barks. Oh yeah, eerie and peaceful and off in the distance. Not! At least our dogs don't howl when they defend their vocal territory, though sometimes I wonder if it might not be better than the barking. There's something about that staccato that's a little like getting jabbed with a fork at the base of your neck every second or so at 3am when you're trying to sleep. Besides, if our dogs howled I'd probably join in.

Maybe just the first thousand times. Then it'd be back to me stumbling to the front door, ripping it open, yelling "Hush!" and then shutting it again before they can all charge into the house and fill it with fluff.

I think living on a farm is a lot more fun than most people realize. It's just not the kind of fun they imagine. It's somewhat like having kids. Before you have them, you have all these dreams and a pretty good idea that it'll be hard too. Then you have them and wham--it's everything and nothing like you expected, and so much more.

I Wanna Be a Loose Woman

2011-09-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been so quiet (too quiet.) I've been working, writing, reading, and practicing brush calligraphy.

Boy does brush calligraphy reveal in painful and obvious detail my shortcomings in brush control. Yikes. And I'm not talking about control in the normal sense. Artsy stuff requires looseness and relaxation. Anyone who's practiced a signature knows what I mean. There's a point where your brain has it down auto-magically and you relax and just sign. I aspire to that with brush calligraphy, not because I want to achieve a zen state or anything. I just want the letters to flow so that it looks natural. Right now most of the letters have at least one awkward point. When it's the same one, I can work on that section by itself, but most of the time the awkwardness wanders, like an awful conversation that you desperately want to go well.

Anyway, I've been listening to music and watching dvds (thank you, DH, for the Castle Season 3!!) and practicing with the brush, hoping that when I look at my collection of letters the next day I'll think wow, that's the one. That's the keeper.

And then I'll put it on the cover of a book.

Speaking of books, I'm on a couple of serious deadlines, so I'd better get some done before I crash tonight. Gotta write every day a little bit.

Moments of Happiness

2011-09-19T21:43:00.000-07:00

I'm catching up on paper-worky stuff, and I got about 3000 words written today.

But the really, really good thing that I did today was go for a walk with my DH, my daughter, and our dogs.

We have two big white dogs (Brian and Finn) and our recent adoptee/ranawayfromotherfamilywhodidn'twantherback (Chase) and they are quite the pack. Brian and Finn take up the entire back seat, which makes things a little crowded for our daughter. I don't know how she survived. And fluff, white fluff! was flying everywhere. We had our window rolled down and the fluff was blowing thicker than Colorado snowfall. Seriously.

But we managed to get to the river despite my DH having to drive in whiteout conditions.

At the river ... (skipping the part where we were all tangled up in dogs at one point)

Brian and Finn, being veterans of this thing called going to the river for a walk, waded right in and picked a direction to walk. It was even the same direction. Meanwhile, Chase was frantic. They were in the water, the danger water! She didn't dare stick a toe in. Hilarity increased when she discovered the true evil lying in the depths (3 inches) of the evil water. A stick! A stick with algae and mossy-looking water weed on it. Oh. My. GAWD!

And then, suddenly, something in her snapped, as if the string that kept her high-strung stringy snapped. She pranced in, lifting her feet excessively high at first. Next thing we knew she was darting in and out of the water with the other dogs, and the darting became casual wading in and out as the mood took her.

The dogs calmed, we turned around, and we started walking the other way and we had one of those incredible moments. Soft breeze, soft sunshine, sparkling river, the dogs calmly exploring at the water's edge, and we were together in a time and place of complete peace.

It didn't last, but these things aren't meant to last. Three days from now I probably wouldn't remember the herons, one circling and one waiting patiently in the mud, unless I wrote about them. It wasn't a big deal. But that's part of what made it beautiful.

On the way home Chase sat in my lap, all tuckered out. She rested her chest and neck on my arm for a while, while I cradled her body with my other arm. And then she lifted her head and rested against my chest like a child, her soft ear tickling my cheek, her chin on my shoulder. I wondered if she had moments at her other home like this. It doesn't matter anymore, I suppose. But I hope so. I hope she had, and always will have moments of happiness wherever she may be.

I hope we all do. We need them. Just for the contrast, you know?

Finished a Book, Wrote a Lot. Good Times.

2011-09-18T20:18:00.000-07:00

I've been writing for most of the day. This is a good thing, but it's physically demanding for someone who is accustomed to standing for the length of a working day. It's also really, really not good for me. I've been snacking more than I usually do, too, which does not help.

In the new stuff category, I read a really kewl book. And yes, I know, it wasn't on my reading pile but I sometimes add to my reading pile without finishing what I've got. (Ahem.) And start reading the new stuff before I finish the old stuff. (Ahem ahem.)

Highly recommended: Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. One of my DH's awesome friends gave him a copy. Don't let the mere four star out of 320 reviews fool you. I'd give this one five stars. And yes, I may quibble about some of the minor details, but they aren't important. What is important is the message and the way that message is very easily digested. Unfortunately it has more than five ingredients, but remember, moderation in all things, including moderation.

I'm working on a book cover as well. I think I've got more than two full time jobs going here. Will the universe kindly slow down so that I can finish some stuff and gain some ground on my to-do list?

You will!?! Really?!! Sweet!!

I'm going to get some work done while the getting is good!

Sickly

2011-09-15T07:46:00.000-07:00

I called in sick today. I very rarely do that ... and then I overthink it and wonder if I do really very rarely do that, or if I only think I rarely do that. I don't want to be the person who's always calling in sick and screwing it up for everyone else.

Calling in sick causes problems for my employer. It's a small enough place (35 employees-ish, with quite a few of those being part-time so that we have considerably less than that working on a given day) that losing one person really mucks up the schedule. It's most likely that the bookkeeper will have to fill in my spot at least for some of the day. Not good.

There's the possibility too that I won't be the only one calling in today.

Business will be done, and the customers probably won't notice except maybe in the form of longer waits, but my fellow employees will really feel it. Since I like my fellow employees a lot, I don't want them to end up harried and stuck in spots doing work that I ought to be doing. On the other hand, I don't want to spread this plague, assuming it's contagious. A couple of people have already called in sick this week, and what I'm feeling now sounds something like what caused them to go to work thinking they could pull off another day and then sent them running to the restroom followed by leaving work sick. On the other, other hand, since it's already going around, my showing up or not probably won't affect who will get sick. The plague is in the building ... it's all up to everyone's individual immunity now. And of course on the other, other, other hand, I have to think about our customers, some of whom are elderly or in poor health. They definitely ought to be protected.

So I'm staying home, even though at this point I think I can push through without emptying the non-existent contents of my stomach on them. (Breakfast may or may not get eaten today ... water is an iffy proposition at this point.) I don't like to call in sick. It makes me feel like I'm letting everyone down. I hope my coworkers don't have a really crummy day because of me. And I hope I didn't unwittingly spread this yucky feeling to others yesterday. I sterilized my whole area with wipes. Twice! I'm sure the bookkeeper will do that again today. And I hope my previously-ill coworkers are feeling better, not just for their own sakes but because that makes it likely that I'll be back at work that much sooner too.

Stay well, everyone, and have a good day.

Twins and Other Surprises

2011-09-13T18:06:00.000-07:00

We had a few surprises over the last week. First came the cute little twin tomatoes. So adorable, and tasty too! They weren't just attached by the green. The skins were connected too.

Then we had a double yolker egg. These actually happen pretty often. Grandma House (my mom) got a double yolker in the last batch of eggs we sent her. Young hens tend to make mistakes like that while their bodies learn how to make eggs. When Chihiro laid her first egg, she forgot to put the yolk and the shell on it. The result looked like a weird white waterballoon. The membrane was really tough, strong enough to bounce on pavement without breaking. The second egg was better. Still no shell, but it had a yolk.

And now she appears to be sharing a nest with our best egg-hider, Sophie!

We were looking for the hens. We lost our rooster to a predator (probably a raccoon but it might be the return of the super-bold coyote) and we were worried when the hens didn't come running up for their mealtime. I don't usually go all the way to the NE corner of the pasture because I can see pretty clearly if there's a chicken there, but this time I went to see if the predator had dug a hole under the fence.

And that's when I found thirty eggs all cuddled up together in a chicken-sized nest.

The girl, when she put them all in a basket, found that some of the ones on the bottom were actually partially buried and had to be dug out.

Sometimes living on a small farm can be painful, sad, frustrating, and even scary.

But some days, a lot of days actually, it's a lot of fun. I'd even go so far as to say hilarious.

I love living on a farm.

Now, the girl and I have a lot of eggs to float-test.

(If you're not sure about how good an egg is, just submerge it in water. If it lays flat, it's fresh. If the nose tips up a bit, it's good to hard boil. Super fresh eggs don't hard boil well because the whites stick to the shell. If the nose points straight up, it's iffy. I might still hard boil it, but I'd probably give it to the dogs all chopped up rather than feed it to a human being. And if it floats--run away! If it bobs on the surface of the water, don't even run. Just carefully--very, very, very carefully--pick the egg up and dispose of it somewhere where the evil smell when it inevitably breaks won't foul up the whole neighborhood. Yech!)

Rage at Work

2011-09-12T21:55:00.000-07:00

I had a horror movie moment at work today. The customers usually stand pretty close to the counter, and I have to use the lower part of the counter to do paperwork. So there I was, paperworking away, while the customer was talking to me, when bam! I got splashed in the eye by a tiny ball of spit. Tiny though it might have been, I felt changes going on inside of me. And I thought, this is Rage. Soon now, the zombie virus will take over and I'll be infected. I'll have to take out as many of them as I can before they come after me with baseball bats!

I paused, considering my first move.

My fingers

twitched ...

But then the moment passed and I realized I wasn't infected with Rage. I was just grossed out.

So I completed the transaction.

Of course, I might simply be resistant. Perhaps, over time, the virus will overtake me and then, at my next day at work, I'll start making strange noises and grunt at the customers. And then, savagely, I will feast!

Feast I say!

On the paperwork that inspires such Rage in me.

The horror ....

Moving On

2011-09-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

I'm not-so-secretly transferring my accounts out of one of the big banks to a credit union because there are new scary headlines about those big banks every day. I know that those scary headlines won't affect my personal accounts at my branch (or so I hope) but they are constant reminders that I don't like the way the big banks have been doing business.

I like the way this credit union does business.

Hence, I move my stuff. No one will care. No one will be sad that I'm no longer a customer there (except maybe for the two totally awesome employees I've gotten to know over the years that work there.) But I'll feel better about where I keep my money, and how that money is looked after.

In case you're wondering, yes, the only reason this is noteworthy is because I'm one of those sad cases that hangs onto a certain amount of loyalty when it comes to doing business. I don't change banks often, and I usually visit the same businesses over and over. I get to know the people that work there, and I learn what they do well, and what they stink at, and conduct my business accordingly.

So although this isn't a huge deal, it's still something that goes a little deeper than doing the paperwork and jumping through the hoops. It's an emotional step as well. Big bank used to mean big safety to me. Now it feels like a big risk, not necessarily because the banks are in any real danger, but because I don't think they're dealing with their customers in a professional manner. I don't need to be taken care of. I do require some frickin' standards, though. Maybe even a little pride. Sadly, I fear that the line staff doing the jobs of four people each don't have time for pride. They're just trying to survive. Is it a management issue, or just more fallout from risky behavior? I have no idea. Knowing the answer won't change my decision.

Bye bye, big bank. Hello local credit union. I have a feeling we're going to get along just fine.

Currently On My Bathroom Bookshelf

2011-09-05T08:13:00.000-07:00

What I'm reading right now:

The Godforsaken Sea

I've just started this gem of a book, partially for research but partially because I'm just a wee bit obsessed with the sea and sailing. If I was really, really obsessed I'd be sailing right now and hardly anyone would hear from me, but I'd rather be writing and gardening (though doing those things near enough to the ocean to go play in and on the waves daily would be ideal.) Anyway, the author is doing a great job so far of trying to explain to landlubbers why the Southern Ocean is so friggin' dangerous. I've never been very far from the shore--out of sight of shore, but still pretty darned close. I've also sailed in a notorious boat-eating area where we lost a kayak we were towing to some pretty powerful wave action. So I have a basis of comparison. I'm not sure that someone who hasn't been on a boat small enough to be overshadowed by a waves and completely surrounded by water with no sign of land can get it. If you're one of those folks, I'd be curious to hear if this book would do it for you. He's already referred to my favorite-est book on the subject, Heavy Weather Sailing. Wee!

The Murderer Next Door

I'm poaching when I read this book. I have a habit of picking up stuff that my DH is reading and then getting sucked in. Every time I read a book about crime and human nature that starts to break the barriers between what we think criminals think and do vs. what they actually think and do, I can't help but get the feeling that our legal system is screwed up. I think the checks and balances work okay, but the actual laws and stuff--it's like trying to run a space program using only Newtonian physics, a 1950's machinist shop and a bank of calculators. You can hobble along, but it becomes impossible and overwhelming very quickly. Anyway, this book is no different in that regard. Where it is different from other books I've read on this stuff is how it connects murder back to me, personally. Some of the insights so far are depressing, but most are extremely enlightening. This might end up on my list of highly recommended books. We'll see how it pans out.

Lieutenant Hornblower

'Cause I need some salt sea in my veins. Always good to remember each ship is a small community connected to a larger community of many ships, and that gets political fast, and that's without taking the navy stuff into account. I'm loving the way the author uses characters to describe his protagonist in extremely immodest ways. After reading more subtle prose for a long time, it's a lot like having someone shout in my face that I must love this character he's so awesome! I don't care, though. The story is good, and besides, reading prose like this is it's own fun. Just like I enjoy a really broad range of music, I enjoy a broad range of writing styles.

The Vegetarian Myth

Talk about courage. A former vegetarian (20 years of the life choice, so we're not talking someone who dipped their toes in) exposes her throat and her research on what plant-based dietary choices actually do to the planet, with an occasional mention of what it does to the human body long-term. (I had no idea there are doctors that specialize in treating former vegans.) I know that just the idea of this book will earn her death threats and the undying hatred of lots and lots of people, and yet she wrote it. Bravo. Also, unbelievably fascinating. I haven't checked up on her research so I can't comment on that, and sometimes her feminist views set me back on my heels a bit (and I consider myself a feminist--but yowza!) but I'm not caring about the details and whether she's right or wrong on a given point. I'm not trying to save my friends, or even save the planet, though I care deeply about both and take care of them the best I can. Nor am I trying to prove or disprove anything to anyone. It's just an incredibly entertaining book. It can be mind-bending, in a good way, to read a call to arms in the name of environmentalism to start eating responsibly-raised meat. It's also a scathing criticism of current agricultural methods, including so-called organic agriculture. Another potential book for my list of highly recommended books.

I've also got a couple of technical manuals on gardening that I'm paging through, a book on architecture through the ages, and a dictionary of architecture. I read them, but I'm not reading them end to end like a regular book, so I'm not technically counting them.

That reminds me, I need to pick up that Acorn book again. I got sidetracked by other stuff.

So many books, so little time ...

Money Growing on Trees?

2011-09-02T17:19:00.000-07:00

We had a fun time at our local fair. One of my favorite things was the Pirate Parrot Show. If they show up at a fair near you, be sure to go.

I totally have to train my animals to bring me money like this.

Totally.

Oh deer ...

2011-08-28T13:55:00.001-07:00

Just for fun ...

No, it's not photoshopped. This is just life on the hill.

WorldCon Reno: Renovation Memories

2011-08-23T23:52:00.001-07:00

Fast forward to my first day of work after Worldcon, and then going home to zucchini sauce on squash ravioli (delicious, btw.) I'm really tired but I want to spend all my spare time either writing or gardening, preferably both. What I really could use is a way to dictate stories while I'm gardening. There are ways to do it. I just can't afford them (yet).

I learned a lot from the panels I attended at Worldcon, and I got to talk to some really fabulous people. I'll write about highlights in no particular order on the blog until they no longer seem interesting to anyone, even me.

Convention Highlight One

I went through the art show early on. I was impressed by the quality and quantity of art, so much so that I suffered a kind of burn-out thingy that made me feel like I was skimming Shakespeare and not getting the important parts. And then I reached the Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell panels, and realized I was looking at cover art. Something went ping in my brain.

I'd been looking at cover art with an artist's eye for composition, rather than a graphic designer's eye for where the hell will we put the title and author's name.

I'd just about finished processing the wow moment (it took about 48 hours) and I thought I had it all figured out, when I attended a panel about book covers.

Naturally, my world flipped another 180 degrees, and because art is magic, I didn't end up in the same place I started. It was like coming home after a few years and finding that nothing is quite as I remembered it.

If you can imagine this (assuming you care): You can plan your art to include the title and author sections and get a really nice, capable and striking cover, or you can compose a spectacular piece of art and in the process of trying to figure out where to put the damned title and byline, do something really creative and get a spectacular cover.

There's also plan C, where you leave opportunities for text on the cover, but do whatever you want to make things full of awesome, and then place the text in creative and unexpected ways that will often make people take a second look as much if not more than the art itself.

Part of it is luck, and part is design, part is time constraints and part is what energy you have to devote to this stuff. I took notes in the form of sketches because I couldn't write adequate descriptions fast enough, but I can do a halfway decent 30 second sketch thanks to life drawing.

Personal convention highlight one: Having a double hot chocolate with the extraordinary Chris York and her wonderful husband. Good times, good conversation, fun, learning, sadness (I didn't let her know at the time that I still feel pain at my father's passing after almost twenty years) and much talk about Sydney, literary agent.

Non-convention highlight that's conceivably anyone's business but my own: playing in a warm pool with my DH, remembering what it was like to pretend that I was a mermaid.

Good times. I could have stood for at least one more day in the area.

Alas, now it's back to work, and double-alas, not the work I want to do. But it's necessary.

Gambling with Life

2011-08-19T23:49:00.000-07:00

Naturally, my ideas about what I'd be doing today went out the window (which opens, but not wide enough for someone to defenestrate themselves) starting out first thing in the morning. But it worked out great. Tomorrow I'll have to do some careful picking and choosing--lots of panels and events that I'm interested in are going on simultaneously. We all try to make the best use of our limited as we can, but just how limited our time is becomes highlighted when we're at a multi-track event. Or, more grimly, when we get bad news at the doctor's office. I can make myself crazy trying to make the 'best' choice, so I just try to go with my gut. If that fails, I just pick and hope it works out, knowing full well that I might have spent my time better doing something else. You've got to live with what you choose, and live with what you get from what you choose.

The casinos highlight that, in a way. Choosing to play one more game, hoping for a better outcome than the last dozen. Choosing to play one more game after a win, hoping for a 'winning streak.' Either way, the day is spent in a chair while waitresses feed you cocktails ...

I'm not judging, though it may sound that way. Our everyday lives are often just like that, even though the setting is the same. The daily job grind. Commuting. Doing the little daily things that make you happy, like having sex or eating dinner in front of the television or surfing the web. The only thing that makes the ritual of daily life bad is regret. There's a balance between pleasure/contentment and consequences. For me, I wouldn't get enough pleasure from gambling to balance against the pain of losing precious resources that feel tighter than I like as it is. As for the time I'd lose--that's a no-brainer. I don't value gambling enough to spend the time to engage in it.

Well, maybe a dollar and a few minutes.

But I do value sitting in on panels, and wandering through the art show, and swimming and hot-tubbing, and drinking exotic, silly drinks. For someone else, these would be a total waste of precious time and resources. I can't say that they're wrong--for them. The best thing, I think, is to occasionally check with yourself to make sure that the equation truly balances the way you think. And if you're wrong, well, that's life. We can't always be right, and we can't always win. But we can learn, and maybe even change for the better if we think it's worth the effort.

It sounds like unusually (silly) philosophical stuff considering I started out talking about what I'm going to do tomorrow, but it isn't. It's pretty simple, actually. Too simple to be wise. I don't think it has enough elegance to qualify as common sense. If choices become too much of a big-deal, then the joy and simplicity of daily life gets bogged down by too much weight. But I think that choices are best if they're active and awake choices, rather than wishful-thinking and passive. Either way, though, once made, those choices lead to experiences that are dictated in-part by chance. And that, my friends, makes gamblers of us all.

Roughing It

2011-08-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

Here we are at Worldcon in Reno, Nevada. So far I've gone for a swim, ate dinner, and met a couple of great friends in the hallway. We got to the convention center too late to pick up our badges, so I have a temporary Thursday thingy. Not that I'll use it. Exhaustion has set in.

I love our room. It's so ... tacky. Normally I'm all over the gilded mirror, elaborate tile and big beds but partly because it's squeezed into a relatively small space and partly because it's not very well matched up stuff, I feel like I'm staying at a Victorian-meets-pseudo-Roman bordello. It's wonderful. I especially like the huge jet tub (almost as big as our bed) that's right next to the bed. And the jet tub has a mirror over it--gilded (of course!) Our shower doubles as a steam room.

I would love to peek into their giant suites like the bridal or presidential just so I could giggle. And yet, in its own tacky way, it's almost kinda gorgeous.

If you've stayed in this hotel you know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not going to out them, though. I don't want even the slightest chance of anyone feeling bad, though I'm sure they're not exactly blind to the shortcomings of their decor. And those shortcomings are offset by the fun.

Tomorrow: more pool time, silly drinkies by the pool, meet-up with some wonderful writers, gawking at art, writing, etc. But first I have to go to reg and pick up my badge. I come all the way out here and it's nothing but work work work ....

Slowly Getting Weirder as Exhaustion Sets In

2011-08-14T22:46:00.000-07:00

I have three days off in a row, so naturally I'm working hard enough that I hurt all over. All in the name of getting the house into some sort of decent shape. I'm so tired, though, that I'm not even sure what that means anymore. Maybe I just want to get the walls painted (ceiling all done, yay!) and the floor put in upstairs so that I can pretend that from here on out all I have to do is write, show up at my day job, and eat bon bons.

But of course there's always one more thing. For example, I'm totally ignoring the fact that our deck is in dire need of maintenance.

La la la I didn't just type that I'm ignoring everything else that's languishing because of this dumb floor-replacement-turned-upstairs-remodel project.

After tomorrow I'll start setting up to do the floors and then everything will be unicorn farts and fairy dandruff. Yay! I'll never have to work on the house again. Weeee!

It Can be Good when a Kitteh Sprays

2011-08-11T21:39:00.000-07:00

Tom Riddle

We have this cat that hangs out around outside.

I refuse to adopt this cat.

This cat is an unaltered male and sprays everywhere. This is extremely helpful to me, as I'm far less likely to let this cat that I absolutely will not adopt into the house. I mean, I'm not even thinking about it, although it would be easy to do, since we're feeding him.

But we're not really feeding him that much. Just a wee bit. He catches rats and mice in the barn, and that's what I'd like him to do--to remain healthy and happy catching rats and mice in the barn, as opposed to hanging around so much on our deck cutely touching noses with the Poop and napping on the deck chairs.

Not that he's cute. Well, okay, maybe he's a little cute. But he sprays! And, I haven't named him, so we're safe.

Actually, he has a name but we did not name him. I was telling my friend R about him (not that I'm interested enough in this cat to actually talk about him to my friends that much--just a couple of mentions here and there) and she said, so you're not naming He Who Shall Not Be Named.

So I blame R that we call him Voldemort and Tom and Tom Riddle--which, I should mention is particularly fitting, him being a tom and all.

But we didn't name him. That was R. Just because he has a name now, it doesn't mean we like him. We don't. We just like what he does. And I don't (usually) talk nice to him or anything, nor do I take any pleasure (well, okay, some) in the fact that I can get closer to him now before he runs off.

But, in the highly unlikely event that I put hands on this cat, he is not coming into the house. Because, yay!, he sprays. And even if we fix him, assuming we can put hands on this cat, it would not stop him from spraying.

So we're never adopting this cat. He'll stay outside, un-named (by us), forever.

I really, really mean it.

Even if it starts to snow really hard and his ears are folded down and he's staring in outside and we have a snuggly fire.

Because he sprays.

Thank gawd he sprays.

Raccoons

2011-08-07T18:54:00.000-07:00

The dogs were going bananas and they just wouldn't quit. I looked outside. All their noses pointed in the same direction--the veggie garden. Oh noes! The young doe who's been nibbling on my trees and grapes was probably brazenly flicking her tail at them while decimating something even more precious, like my three small blueberry shrubs.

I dashed out and--

It wasn't a deer. It took me a while to count them all. Six raccoons--two adults and four older babies--had made themselves comfortable in one of our silver maples.

I got the girl and we snapped some photos before I let Chase out so she could sniff around the base of the tree and bark at them. Then I sprayed them all with water. We waited about a half hour--shower, rinse, repeat in another half hour. One of them actually hissed at me. But soaked raccoons are so cuuuute! We brought out a stick and a sword just in case they attacked us, but although they were peeved, they didn't get riled enough to want to come down and teach us a lesson.

The next night, about 3am actually so I guess that would be dang o'clock in the morning, the dogs started up again so I went out. Just one adult raccoon, as far as I could tell. I got the hose and sprayed him good.

I haven't seen the raccoons since. I hope they stay away. The hens are safe at night in the coop, but our neighbors have their chickens loose and I don't want another slaughterfest. Cute, but very, very destructive.

And darling when wet and hissing.

I may add pictures to this post later. (Posted 8/8/2011)

Soon Now ... WorldCon!

2011-07-31T12:25:00.000-07:00

My DH, the girl and I are all sick. Being the last holdout (I really thought I might skip this one) I of course am getting worse about the time that they're getting better. I don't feel too sorry for myself. So far it hasn't been that bad, plus I wasn't ill all winter and spring, so I guess it was about my turn. If these things take turns. Who knows.

The real news, though, is that I'm going to Worldcon in Reno. I've never been to a Worldcon. I've been to a few different ones, namely Norwescon, OryCon, Radcon, Potlatch and a few others, but I have a feeling that this one will be different. First of all, I've heard of all of the GOHs (Guests of Honor) including the musical special guests. That's pretty rare for a con for me. Also, I idolized one of the GOHs since mid-high school. That would be the incredible Boris Vallejo. I greedily absorbed news about him the same way normal people today follow the dramas of rock and movie stars, complete with commentary about artistic choices and yes, I blush to admit, even a bit of his romantic life (to be precise, rumors thereof--there was no Snopes back then to confirm or deny urban myths.) But mainly it was about his art.

My interest in collecting his books, scanning new books at the bookstores searching for his latest covers, buying posters and calendars waned over the years, but the admiration never flagged, so I'm excited to see what's been going on this past decade or two that I've been utterly ignorant of. I'm sure he's grown and changed, as artists tend to do, just as I've watched in awe as the core skills I coveted now carry through with even greater refinement.

Some of you might have caught that 'decade or two' and may be wondering just how old this guy is. Well, for your info he's been amazing the world with his work for a looooong time, well before I became aware of him. In fact, his career began before I was born. His entire family, including his wife, are all creatively talented. It's pointless to be jealous of him, though now (and correct me if I'm misusing the slang) I can say his art is sick and mean what I really mean--that it's beauty is beyond what I can describe in non-slangy terms without using terribly purple prose.

Will I walk up and say hi, or ask for his autograph? Heck no! Well, maybe, if I don't actually have to say anything. He's one of the few people that can easily turn me into a stammering idiot, so I won't even try to speak if I bring one of his books with me to sign. I'll just put a post-it note with my name spelled correctly and hope for the best. I think I'd have a better chance of saying hi to Johnny Depp than I would to Mr. Vallejo. It would probably come out mmmgggnnn-eep-myfriendwasyurbiggestfan-er,I mean metoo, ImeanIwas except I lost track and I don't have all your books or anything-- and then I would have to hide for the whole rest of the con to avoid the possibility of making eye contact with him thereby reliving that awful awkward moment.

I like the post-it plan. Let's go with that. I might even dare to put a smiley face on it.

I'll probably go through a dozen post-it notes before I make a smiley face worthy of him. Argh!

Being Weird

2011-07-27T19:34:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while I'm reminded that I have a weird brain. I've had a couple of reminders recently.

A group of young adults who'd just gone through a survival course were on their last leg where they had to survive on their own without adult supervision. The party was attacked by a bear. Four were seriously injured, including one person who had a punctured lung and bite marks in his skull. The other six managed to escape without injury. They turned on their emergency beacon at 9:30pm, and were picked up about 3am. They used their recent skills to perform life-saving first aid, including dealing with the punctured lung. No one died. My first thought was, wow, that's an amazing survival school--they really taught them some serious skills! I think most people will react with how irresponsible the instructors were to leave them alone out there without proper protection. I expect the school will be sued and will fold as a result. sigh

Today I had one of those moments when I couldn't wait until the end of my shift, and as often happens when I wish the time would fly by, I reminded myself that I wouldn't want to rush through the last hour of my life. If anything, I would hope that the hour went by long and slow and among loved friends and family so that I could be with them and hold them until the hour stretched into infinite. So why the hell would I want to rush this hour? I made the most of it. Yes, I was at work, but we have great customers and a great team and I tried to enjoy my time at work as much as I could before I clocked out. On my way out the door, I wished my coworkers a good night, and that I looked forward to seeing them on Friday.

I don't mind being weird. And I bet there are other weirdos out there just like me, so maybe I'm not all that weird. I wonder how many offbeat ideas are out there that people never voice, because they're afraid that everyone will think they're stupid or morbid or naive ...?

Thunder, Lightning and Yum

2011-07-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

I woke up early this morning to lightning and thunder. I love thunderstorms, but I couldn't keep my eyes open long enough to see a flash except through my eyelids. I still got to listen to pounding rain and the thunder, and listen I did for probably far too long.

So I was groggy woman at work all day today. (Totally worth it, btw.)

I dragged myself through with memories of that storm, and of our first garden soup--cream of zucchini. Here's the recipe for the curious:

4 cups of water (ish--I don't usually measure.)

3 cubes of chicken bullion (or slightly dilute chicken broth of your own.)

1 medium or 2 small zucchinis, sliced

1/2 of a small onion

1/4-1/2 cup of heavy cream

butter

flour

seasonings

In a small sauce pan, gently brown seasoned zucchini and onion (I like a wee bit of salt, pepper and dill) in a dab of butter. Don't use too much butter here, you'll use more later. When the zucchini starts getting golden edges, add the water and bullion (or broth.) Add seasonings if you like, but be careful with salt as the bullion is usually plenty salty. Bring to a boil, then allow to simmer for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, in another small sauce pan, melt about 3 tablespoons of butter and add about 3 tablespoons of flour to it. Brown the flour until it smells warm and toasty (as opposed to the raw scent it initially has) and is lightly browned. Remove from heat. Add the cream and quickly stir until it's uniform and pretty thick. Add the soup to the flour/butter mixture and stir. You may need to use a whisk to get lumps out, but as long as this operation happens off the burner you should be okay. Place the combined mixture back on the heat and gently warm until it's barely begun to boil again. Add seasonings if necessary. You can run it through a blender or strain it if you like, but I like the tender chunks of zucchini as they are.

Great garnishes: sour cream, chopped tomato, fresh parsley, fresh ground pepper.

Remodeling the House of Pee Pee

2011-07-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

Remodeling is always rough, whether you do it yourself or get a contractor. And I've got to quit fooling myself. The "oh, I'll just paint the upstairs and put in laminate floors" is a remodel.

Because doing work like this is never 'just' anything.

So I got myself a crew of hapless teenagers (no, really, we'd love to help! they cried when I told them that they couldn't come spend the night because there's too much work to do. Bet they're not coming back any time soon) and we painted the ceiling. So far so good. Then I started pulling stuff off the walls, filling in holes, moving furniture, you know the routine.

And I thought (this was perhaps my second mistake, the first being that I should start do this as a DIY project in the first place) since I'm moving all this heavy furniture anyway, why move it again when I have to rip up the carpet? Besides, I'll just have a little peek at the dining room floor and see why it's a little higher than the rest of the floor.

And it was wood. Not nice, no, not anymore anyway. So I thought (argh) that I'll just pull up the dining room rug before I put the gigantic table back, and we'll still be in livable space.

I had forgotten something important.

We have six cats. At one point, before all these six cats, we had a geriatric cat who decided that the far corner in the dining room was actually a cat box. I'd cleaned up as best I could back there after she passed away (RIP, China kitty) and I figured the scent would have faded. And it had. When I pulled up the carpet there, the pad underneath was stained, but it didn't reek.

I'd forgotten, though, that the people before us had all kinds of dogs and cats.

And the wood floors under the pad were, well, odiferous.

I didn't notice at first. No, it wasn't until I got the idea of first sweeping and mopping and then scrubbing the floor against the back wall that it became eye-wateringly clear.

OMG.

Stay tuned for the continuing story when, after Kami sprays with first enzyme cleaner and then bleach, she says to no one in particular, "does the smell in here just keep getting worse and worse, or do I just have really bad BO?"

"Hide and Seek" Wins 3rd in the Long Short Story Contest

2011-07-15T21:55:00.000-07:00

It feels so wildly inappropriate to post this now, but at the same time ... the story is a story about grief and anger and loss and the mysteries of death and life--some coincidences don't feel like coincidences, you know?

I'm very honored to have won third place in Wayne Long's Long Short Story Contest. You can view "Hide and Seek" for free through the link on the contest page or on his blog. Check out the website, and if you get a chance, take advantage of a free offer good until July 25th, 2011. Read Wayne's blog for more details about the free offer.

There are so many wonderful short stories out there, and I think it's worthwhile to look for them. Yes, I love looking at YouTube videos of kittens too, but there's some amazing content out there that isn't visual. Some folks have picked up on it, while others have yet to discover the incredible wealth of quality writing now available on the internet. Learn, discover, and enjoy!

And let me know what you think. Don't worry about hurting my feelings. Sure, it's possible to do that, but it comes with the territory. Besides, it would be dumb and narrow-minded and crazy to insist that everyone like everything ever written ... and that's what would be required for writers to never hear a bad word about any of their writing. I believe in the power and beauty of individual preferences and opinions, even when they're opposite of mine. Maybe especially. They help define my place in the universe. How would I know I preferred fresh fruit if I'd never tasted preserves or artificial flavoring?

Share the wealth and explore the diversity. There's plenty of fun for everyone.

I Stretch My Arms and Reach This Far

2011-07-14T22:59:00.000-07:00

My great aunt passed away.

There's so much I want to say, and all of it feels inadequate. More than most people, my Teta Maria was a complicated woman with a rich history. I didn't expect to lose her so soon. She'd had health problems for a while, most recently an amputation, but she seemed to be doing well ....

I have some wonderful pictures of her while she recovered in the hospital from her surgery. I'd ordered the girl's graduation photos and had planned to send them to her, along with our most recent family photos (and pictures of the animals--she was always a fan, especially of cats.) For a while I was angry that they hadn't arrived in time for me to send her a photo album (she didn't use computers,) and then I realized it didn't matter. After we die we miss so much, but what we miss isn't important so much as what we do, and what we experience in our lives. She didn't miss the birth of my children, and she got to spend time with them. She didn't miss my childhood or my sister's--in fact she got to experience a lot more of that than most great-aunts do. She traveled the world. She did charity work alongside Shirley Temple Black, and went to state functions in Europe. She survived a war, and married an amazing and complicated man who I adored and who I still miss very much. And people loved her.

Her life was too short, but longer than many. We stretch our arms as far as we can, but they only reach so far .... I'll miss her, and my children won't really know what they're missing without her in their lives, but that's the way time works. It goes forward with or without us, and we can't go back. I'm blessed that I got to spend time with her during her span.

I hope you're safe with Strejda and everyone you've loved who has gone on ahead on the Long Road, my Teta. Your angel baby loves and misses you so much. She wishes she could hug and kiss you again, and show you how wonderful life is in part because you were in her life.

Blessed be. May we meet again.

D*#% Ink!

2011-07-09T21:50:00.000-07:00

I ran out of ink--the same ink I always run out of--and so I had to change the cartridge. I'm already annoyed because I can't use my new laser printer because the toner cartridge ran out and the new toner cartridge is giving me error messages. I'm additionally annoyed because I like buying ink in bulk so that I save, but the only bulk ink I can find at my favorite savings store sells one of each kind of ink jet ink cartridge instead of sensibly offering two (or three, please!) of the ink I'm always running out of.

And then!

And then I start trying to pry the ink out of the nuclear-bomb-proof packaging without damaging the cartridge, and I have to fight the impulse to tear at it with my teeth like a wild animal out of frustration. The way the edges and the extruded parts where the ink sits interplay make scissors almost useless, knives dangerous to use, and argh!! My teeth aren't working!!

The scissors finally do it for me, after prying and some ineffectual cutting and forcing blade against seams, and I extract my cartridge.

My nerves, however, are frayed to bits.

And the worst part?

On the front, images of smiling, happy people are mocking me.

But maybe that's not the worst part after all. You see, I only managed to open one area, which gave me access to two cartridges (one of which I don't need, of course.) When I next run out of ink, most likely I'll have to open the other area to get to the cartridge I need.

Expletives don't cover it. I just have to put it away and not look at it anymore, or I'll do something rash like write an angry letter.

Argh.

I bet they're punishing me for trying to save money.

Argh times infinite. Poopyheaded packaging designers ...

More Work Means No Time to be Bad, Right?

2011-07-03T18:32:00.001-07:00

My DH and I found a great deal on just the kind of flooring we wanted, so we bit the bullet and got it. Now I've got thirty (30) boxes of flooring sitting in my living room. And you know, it looks kinda intimidating.

I remember this feeling. This is the same feeling I got when I bought I don't remember how many boxes of various kinds of tile, tiling equipment, backboard, grout, grout sealant, a new toilet seal, paint, a new cabinet and sink and faucet, a new medicine cabinet, and completely redid a bathroom for the first time. I may have even changed the light. It's been a while.

I remember ripping out the floor and old tile with glee, stripping off the old wallpaper with slightly less glee because it didn't want to come off nicely, pulling out the toilet and then looking at the mess and thinking OMG what have I done.

I'm sure I'll have a similar feeling after we take out the old carpet and pad. Not only will it be dusty and stink to high heaven (I remember this from when I had a contractor put in laminate floor downstairs) but then I'm sure we'll discover something. And the something will require more work than anticipated. I figure that something that ought to take about a week will end up getting finished, oh, just in time for Yule if I'm lucky.

About the time that we start really moving on it, though, I know the excitement will carry us beyond the exhaustion to a spectacular finish. I remember that too, when I rented the tile cutter for the finish work and got it all done in two days. Not only did I see that the light at the end of the tunnel was not in fact a train, but at that point the project was so close to being finished that it really, really looked awesome.

I have a few tricks ready in case we need them, like varnishing over pet stains so that the scent is sealed in, and painting the walls the color I want before the floor goes in because after, when you've got a new shiny floor you don't want to scrub off all those little pinpoint speckles that rain down, and you don't want to leave the walls the way they are because all that perfection on the ground really makes the marks on the walls and stains on the ceiling stand out ...

I'm tired already, and we haven't even started yet. Wish us luck!!

Happy Eighteen

2011-06-29T21:06:00.002-07:00

Happy Birthday to the Girl. She's eighteen! Long after all the cake is gone, I'll still be happy at how well she's turned out. So far so good ...

The girl says: The cake is gone. Why is the cake always gone?

We're very proud parents. She makes it easy to be proud.

Research

2011-06-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

My DH is coming home today after a long absence. I love the work he does, but I love having him home more. The relatively quiet winter spoiled me. He'll be globetrotting most of the summer, and he'll be away more than not.

At least I'll be able to go with him for some of it. We're going to Worldcon, barring unforeseen circumstances. I hope we'll see some of you there!

In writing: I'm researching architecture. Not just for Masks, but for a bunch of books. The books I own on it (I hadn't gotten around to reading them yet) are fascinating and easy to understand, at least so far. I'll review them when I'm done.

Anyway, research is a dangerous thing. It can halt a project dead. Research and writing have to balance in favor of the primary task. In other words, the writing still has to go onward somehow. I try to get the 'short answer' quickly (as in within a couple of hours) so I can move onward, and then in the evenings I read up on the subject so that I can embellish the section later. After all, though I love setting-heavy books, my main focus is on the human characters and what they're doing. Unless one of them is an architect, I shouldn't have to know everything there is about architecture of my period (or fantasy setting) in order to complete a paragraph.

There's always a chance that my research will lead me to changing whole aspects of the book, but I don't think it's wise to stop the writing process just because there's a chance (not a certainty!) I might have to rewrite some stuff (or all of it). If the book really was that dependent on research, I should have done it up front ... and while I'm researching that book, I can be working on another. I also have to entertain the possibility that if research may change a book that much, there might be a vision issue. If the book relies too much on things that I don't know, then how do I know my overall concept is sound? It would be like trying to write a book centered around a dinosaur planet without knowing much about dinosaurs. If I knew what I needed to know about dinosaurs in the first place, would I really choose to write my book around a dinosaur planet? Maybe it would be a better idea to write a book set on a world with dinosaur-like creatures, but they're alien enough that they behave like I imagine them to behave. As our adventurers get into more and more trouble, maybe scientists back home trying to help them keep throwing their hands up in despair because as far as they knew, dinosaurs aren't like that. And it could work as a story. Isn't the story the point of writing in the first place?

Some books really do require research, and I wouldn't dare write them without. But if all my book concepts require massive amounts of research, then I should ask myself if I'm ready to write books. Maybe writing short stories in the meantime will keep my writing skills honed until I'm ready. But isn't that a trap? Maybe I'm not ready to write those stories either because they need research ... and I'd end up being a researcher, not a writer.

There's nothing wrong with being a researcher. I could put up an amazing website about my research. I might even be able to make money through a donation button, or through selling articles as my knowledge grows. And then I'll really be writing, though maybe not the way I'd planned.

It's all good. Writing. Research. Reading. Lots of reading. I just have to make sure that I'm doing my primary thing, um, primarily. Because, in theory anyway, that's the thing I really want to do. Right?

On A Lighter Note ...

2011-06-24T23:10:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what this cat is doing, but whatever it's doing, it negates all my thoughts and makes my head kinda cock to the side and then I want to take even more pictures.

And no matter how many pictures I take, even though I use the flash every time ...

freakishly ...

... it just keeps doing it.

And her eyes follow me around the room.

Weird.

Medicine

2011-06-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened in the past week, and some of it has been terrible stuff.

I hate to write about it because I don't want to attract sympathy, and I certainly don't want to cause my family additional pain. But I think I need to write about one of the things because it might save someone some pain and agony.

A relative of mine passed away suddenly. She'd written off doctors a long time ago ...

I'm so sad for her family and closest friends. And I fear there are thousands of people out there who are going to die from treatable, even preventable illnesses because they have a thing against regular doctors. There are so many people who have no choice at all, and wish they had access to a medical doctor. It might seem like madness to them to reject water from a pump when you're dying of thirst because you refuse to drink from anything other than a stream.

I have to be okay with it, though. People have to make their own choices, and it may be that my aunt was willing to die this way rather than see a doctor. I have to honor that choice, because it is her choice, and I wouldn't want to take that away from anyone. In the end it was her body to do with as she wished to do.

Having said that ....

I'm well aware of a doctor's limitations, and the dangers of going to a hospital. You can come out more ill than what you came in with. I don't think going to the doctor should be done frequently, or lightly. On the other hand I think it's foolish to refuse things like antibiotics or blood pressure medication or insulin when it might save your life, and it seems very strange to me to take these things without a prescription on your own by borrowing someone else's medicine or getting it on the black market or making it from scratch on your own, as if that makes it better.

I believe that real naturopathic medicine can be extremely effective, but it's not the only way, or even the best way in a given circumstance. And I believe that there's a lot of misinformation and delusion in regard to naturopathic medicine out there. There are bad doctors too, I know. But clearly, avoiding all doctors to avoid the bad ones is not a path toward superior health.

I hope my aunt lived happily and well and fully, and my heart is with her immediate family. They all did what they thought was best, and I refuse to point fingers and blame and be angry. This isn't about me anyway.

What I don't want to see are people convinced that their chosen alternative form of medicine is the only and best option, and that things would have come out far worse if they'd seen a doctor. If they choose to limit themselves, I hope they do so accepting the fact that it is a limitation in some situations. Limits can be good, and honestly we're all going to die anyway, so I'd just soon people live the way they want--as long as it really is a choice, and not delusion. Because, we all know deep down, that living naturally doesn't make us immortal, or better, or cleaner. And a long, healthy life isn't truly natural. It's a combination of luck, and resources, and wisdom, and genetics, and ... medicine.

I urge everyone to make these choices in an informed way, and to really study all aspects of their health and well-being from a variety of sources. Health is one of those incredibly valuable things that many people take for granted, and not always in the way that you'd think. Ill health can be taken for granted just as easily as good health. Health is not obvious, or automatic ... it's a gift. May it be yours to hold and keep as long as possible.

Thought and Action--Infatuation vs. Love

2011-06-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

I've had lots more fun/progress with Masks. I never have enough time to write, or garden, or do art ....

Sometimes what I pick shows how much of a priority that takes above the other things, but sometimes it means the opposite. When a project gets too overwhelming or goes too deep or takes me to scary places, it's funny how important my other stuff becomes.

Which works okay, but I have to be really careful that I come back and finish what I began. Otherwise, eventually everything that I care about will be put on a backburner until that fictional time period where it will no longer challenge me. I can't live and create in fictional time. I have to do that in real time. I have to work hard and get my hands dirty in the garden. I have to sit my butt in the chair and write. I have to get out my ground and my medium and work them together until I finish (or give up, more likely, but at least I'll have gotten to a place where I'm doing more harm than good and I can set it aside satisfied that I've taken it as far as my skills allow.)

And now I really do have to find out why my dogs are freaking out. Could it be a deer eating my roses? Time to get my flashlight (wah, it's all the way upstairs!) and go outside (but it's cooooollllddd out there!) and check it out.

'Cause intent without action means all the roses will be gone tomorrow. I love them too much to let that happen. I guess that's the difference between infatuation and love. Follow through.

She did it!!!!

2011-06-14T22:03:00.000-07:00

Congratulations, my daughter.

Your teachers and every member of the tribe is so proud of you.

Especially your dad and I.

Bravo.

Love, Mom

Work and Play

2011-06-06T15:32:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to set up a new business and the details are crazy-making! I think I'm going to have to do a lot more research before I can figure out what it is *exactly* that I'll be doing with this.

Advice is welcome.

I had a wonderful time in Seattle. Our hosts were amazing and extremely hospitable. I had some amazing conversations over the weekend, and met a lot of fantastic people. Which reminds me: thanks to everyone there for weathering my sugar-crash on Saturday. I forgot what they felt like.

Note to self: No donut for Kami when she's hungry.

We have ongoing good weather, so I'll be out in the garden a lot. Good grief, the garden ... it either rains too much or not enough. I'm sure the seedlings are very confused, what seedlings I have. It's late, it's late, I've missed my very important garden dates, but it doesn't bother me. I'll plant anyway at this inauspicious time and see what happens.

Gardening would be boring if it turned out awesome every year. I guess that makes gardening something like gambling, and maybe that aspect is part of what makes it so addictive. The other parts? I can go on and on about how huge the peony blooms are this year, and the taste of fresh tomatoes and snow peas, the pleasure of picking fresh herbs to season our meat for dinner, etc.

Besides, I like playing in the dirt. It smells nice.

Tangential Thoughts that don't lead to anything but more thoughts

2011-06-05T20:00:00.000-07:00

Long but good day. I had a lot of great conversations during breaks (my DH was teaching and no, I didn't have to be his button monkey.) Some were intense and got me thinking about things I haven't thought about in a long time.

Mostly I had a really easy life, but there were a few hairy patches and some rough and sad times. Who hasn't? I think that it was those hair, rough and sad times that shaped me the most. And people who don't have it tough, who seemingly have everything (nice house, plenty of money, access to good food, medicine, the best education, etc.)--are those of us just misinformed about their behavior or are the privileged kids creating their own problems to weather?

Do we need a certain amount of pain to grow through, and does pain we generate for ourselves actually grow us or is it a sad substitute that doesn't work but is better than nothing?

Stuff to think about.

In which Kami gets Long-Winded

2011-06-04T20:00:00.000-07:00

Stress.

Not mine, at least not directly. The girl is experiencing unprecedented levels of pressure, and it's starting to really get to her. Luckily she's got a nice weekend ahead of her with nothing more to do than pick out which book she'd like to read in the shade under our trees.

I only vaguely remember that kind of pressure. It's not a success thing, at least not in the usual way I think of success. When you've been living under the protection of adults all your life, it's hard to trust that you've got what it takes to make it on your own. Add to that the sense of permanence to those early decisions ...

I decided that I wanted to be an engineer like my father. I didn't do very well in college in that first year. Better than some, in that I didn't completely flunk out, but my grades reflected my complete lack of preparation for attending a university full time.

It was the end of the world, or so I thought. I bore up well on the exterior (I think) but deep down I felt like opportunity had come knocking and I'd opened the door and accidentally shot it dead.

The girl is trying to decide whether to work, where to work, how to focus her learning and efforts, how to do the college thing both financially and also mentally/emotionally, and I know she feels like whatever she decides in the next couple of months will either make or break her.

Well, yes and no ....

Because all of us who've been there know that things like college and first jobs and where we choose to live when we first set out on our own is just a beginning. That beginning could be really short and actually not affect the rest of your life at all.

My father died. I married and had children. I started writing. I took more college courses, toyed with finishing my degree or maybe starting a new one ... and that life-and-death freshman year in college turned out to just be a brief testing ground. I learned important stuff about myself, but in the grand scheme of things, I doubt that completely flunking out would have broken me. Completing school and getting an engineering degree didn't guarantee success either. I'd have a different life ... but better? Worse? It think that would have depended on me more than what I achieved, if that makes sense. I think that one way or another, wherever I ended up, I'd be happy only if I figured out how to be happy, and I'd be miserable no matter how cushy a job I landed with my fancy degree if I never learned how to cope with failure, and cope with partial successes, and appreciate what I've got no matter how things are going.

That's a really long-winded way of saying, basically, that I think that no matter what the girl decides, she'll be all right. Even if she's not, it may not have so much to do with being stuck with what she decides as being in a particular place at a particular time with a particular skill set. I wish I could help her understand that it's okay, and that sometimes mistakes aren't mistakes, and sometimes the right choice turns out really crummy, and we just have to adapt. Stuff happens. Part of growing up is learning how to take that failure or success or weird switcheroo and make it work out for you, or at least laugh and move on and keep being happy.

As long as there's life, there's hope. Not hope for a happily-ever-after. Just hope. Hope that there's going to be a good day, or hour, or minute ahead, or if not, hope that we can at least say it was all worth it.

Good luck, my children. It's a big world full of lots of things, and I hope you can shake off the stress long enough to appreciate how much of a privilege it is to try, and choose, and be.

Appreciation

2011-06-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

I'm on my way to Seattle with my DH. It'll be a working vacation, with lots of writing for me and lots of teaching important stuff for him.

Before we left I took a shot at putting in some veggies. It's so late in the year I don't even want to think about it. Ugh. It's not the latest year, though.

I remember the year we moved to the area. Wind tore the gutter away from the roof on our first night. I'd wondered what the banging outside might be--I was unfamiliar enough with the house that I didn't think it was abnormal.

That year it refused to stop raining, and I didn't know enough about how the planting season worked in our area, or that it would have been better to just turn the sod over rather than try to dig up the grass (which was really more like bamboo at that point) and shake off as much topsoil from the roots as possible--I didn't know anything, actually. I thought I did. I was about to learn that I was a lousy gardener ill-equipped to deal with a large property.

I don't remember if I actually got anything out of the garden that year. Probably not. But I got started. Every spring since then I thought this year the garden is going to be really spectacular. One year it really was, but I didn't realize it at the time. I was too busy battling blackberries.

I don't think this year will be very good, but it may still surprise me. What I have learned, though, is to appreciate the progress. I might never think the garden is really good in a particular year, but even on a cruddy year with mostly cloudy skies, low temperatures, the ground too saturated to dig and/or too cold to plant until June, I can take a look around and think 'this is the best year yet.'

So here's to the best year yet, in gardening and in life. Enjoy the sunshine if you've got it!

Exciting Times

2011-05-26T08:14:00.000-07:00

Masks has taken a strange turn thanks to a book I'm reading.

I love it when that happens. And I love strangeness, especially when it feels familiar despite the fact that it's bizarre. Stuff like this encourages me to play with my brain.

I'll review the book that upended Masks and sent it spinning into unforeseen directions when I'm done.

In other news, the boy is home for a visit. I'm always happier when he's here. He has a project he's working on and I'm hoping to guide him through the process of creation. I know how hard it can be to begin something creative. When we face a blank page, we're really facing ourselves. It's weird but true that when we're faced with ourselves, we don't feel up to our own challenge. You'd think that hey, it's my challenge and I want to do it, what's the harm in trying? And there is no harm ... just terrible, nasty doubt and that doubt knows all your buttons and switches because it's you.

Anyway, I have to go to work now. I wish I could stay home, but I'm just too darned ethical to call in sick, even when I'm feeling sick-ish, since my malaise is entirely my own fault. It's not a cold, it's not a broken bone or a severed artery ... it's called insufficient sleep after a huge day and then waking up before first light to take my DH to the airport. Thank you to all the folks who turned out for my DH's first-ever book signing and reading at Cedar Hills Powells last night. I had a ton of fun before, during and after, and I'm all right with feeling dragged out, headachy and feeling like I want to eat nothing all day today because my tummy is unsettled. It was totally worth it.

Totally.

Bits

2011-05-20T14:00:00.000-07:00

Just a quickie before I head back to work ...

I've been writing on Masks again. My writing process changes all the time, and sometimes that scares me. I think a lot of writers are afraid of doing it wrong. Change doesn't always mean you change for the better.

I have to keep writing and not judge myself. I'll let others judge me. It's better that way.

Also, I'm getting closer to putting House of Goats up for those who'd like to read the kind of stuff I write but aren't into fantasy/sf. I'll make a big announcement when it happens.

Lastly, the girl is working on finishing those critical senior year requirements before she graduates. The pressure is up but she's hanging in there. I'll try to get her to send out her graduation announcements soon. I think she's a little worried about jinxing herself, when she has time to worry!

Proud to be a Mom

2011-05-08T12:12:00.001-07:00

Wow. It's a whole new month!

Here, at last, are pics of the girl just before she went to the prom. The extra string by her neck is from her purse--I couldn't get her to hang out for pics very long because she was in quite a hurry to get out the door. I think I may have overdone it in the fussing department.

She had a wonderful time, and even danced with a boy.

I don't know who will look back on this night more fondly--the girl, or me.

The boy is visiting for Mother's Day. I sure miss having him home. I love having him here on Mom's day, and I feel totally pampered. He helped me a ton around the garden. The girl helped too, but not much. Rain and thunder drove her off and she never came back.

Peas are in, artichokes and cardoon (hardened off seedlings that are under a protective cover until things nice'n up) and the onion sets which couldn't wait any longer. I think the onion sets will be fine, since some onions that overwintered have plenty of green on them.

Cake, gardening, crystalline gifts, and a good talk with my mom this morning. Awesome day. It'll be hard to go back to work tomorrow after being spoiled rotten all day. I'm so proud of my kids, and spending time with them was a huge treat.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! I hope you had a good one.

Waiting

2011-04-16T22:51:00.000-07:00

Still @ McMenamin's, waiting for my daughter to call us to pick her up from the prom.

Happy, excited, apprehensive, watching the minutes tick closer to when the prom is officially over. Can't wait to grill for details.

I'm such a mom.

The Milestones are Getting Bigger

2011-04-16T21:19:00.000-07:00

My youngest child is at her senior prom. I'm at a local pub not drinking, eating good pub food and I'm desperately hoping she's having fun.

She'll never know how beautiful she is, not just to me but to everyone who sees her. I wonder if it scared her a little to see herself in makeup, with her hair up, in a formal floor-length gown. It didn't scare me. I see her as a incredible young lady whether she's dressed up or she's in grubby jeans and a stained sweater.

Meanwhile my eldest child is finding out about the work world in a way that no one likes to learn--through the frustrating process of endless job hunting in a bad economy, where people with no experience are forced to compete with people who are overqualified and desperate for any kind of income. And he's met someone his age. A couple of years older, actually, but how different she must seem from his high school friends. She has a job, is old enough to drink ... yeah.

I seldom thought this far ahead when I had kids, and I only could think that way in unfocused abstracts, especially since we had autistic kids. I think that turned into such a blessing in so many ways. I was never tempted to pigeonhole them or force them onto a track. Everything was up for grabs. Would they go to college? That was nothing--I wondered if they'd be able to make friends. Would they participate in team sports? Let's just worry about whether they would be able to stay in a mainstream school.

I don't think I ever set the bar low, or decided that they couldn't do anything they wanted. They did surprise me a lot, but that doesn't mean I didn't think they were capable. It was always about what they wanted to strive for, and I was never sure what they would want to do with the resources they had within themselves physically, mentally and emotionally.

My kids taught me how to be a supportive parent by unveiling the difficulties and exceptional capabilities given to people born with autism-spectrum stuff. If they'd been born 'normal' I wonder if I might not have turned out to be a crummy parent, that terrible combination of helicopter and controlling that only allowed them to be all they could be as long as that being was within the realms of my vision for them. I did too much of that as it stands. But they didn't, and I had to immediately let go of any kind of planned future for them.

And that turned out to be a very good thing. I'm not going to stress about my daughter going to the prom without a date or a gaggle of friends. She wanted to go to the prom, and she went by herself, and I did everything I could to make her prom night special within the context of her desires. Just between us, I'm proud of her, because I wanted to go alone but I chickened out and went with someone I didn't like so I could conform. Unlike me when I was her age, she is a true individual, and her high school class is full of like-minded kids. Amazing. I doubt they will bat an eye at her showing up by herself.

I'm not going to stress about my son not finding work either. He's taking a community college course on his own dime and looking and learning and discovering so much about what happens to a plan when it meets up with the real world. There's time yet to learn about how to work at a real paying job. Right now he's in the middle of plenty other lessons, and I can see his mind spinning and working and going into overdrive trying to figure out how to make things work. Part of that learning will involve trying to hold onto or fall back onto old habits that made life comfortable for him at home, and figuring out how well those habits serve him now.

None of this is about me, of course. But I'm going through a process too, not so much of letting go but seeing my children in a whole new way. Not as independent beings--they've always been that--but as rapidly changing beings. Like seeds growing into trees, they stay little for such a long time, and though they're growing at the same rate on a cellular level they seem to suddenly explode into so many branches and leaves that it's beyond counting.

I finally get to see them as the trees, and not just an assortment of leaves and twigs that I feed and water and nurture as best I can.

And that's a very awe-inspiring thing.

Good Friends Gone

2011-04-02T23:19:00.000-07:00

These weren't the pics I originally planned on posting. I've been going through my pics and I found these. I'd forgotten that I took them. The top one is of our beloved Nikita and goofball Beast, and the lower one is of our sweet girl Dakota who passed away so recently.

Good days, gone but not forgotten.

Day Two in Chickville

2011-04-02T18:46:00.000-07:00

We still have six baby chicks.

The kewl thing about chicks is that no matter how wound-up you are when you get home from work, they're reliably themselves. They live their lives under a warm red light eating, pooping, and sleeping. Oh, and peeping, of course. They peep in a similar fashion to sparrows, a very sweet, uplifting sound that relaxes me unless they're peeping in my bedroom at 2am, but we're not raising them in the master bedroom this year. I do vaguely remember how that peep cut through layers of blankets and pillows like well-aimed bullets. In a sweet, uplifting way, of course.

I'm still concerned about their health, but the fact that they made it through the night and they're all active is encouraging. They're also all eating. And eating. And eating. I think they're in a race to see who doubles their weight first.

I'll post pics soon--possibly tomorrow. This may be as cute as they get, though you never know. They may turn out to be very beautiful birds despite the rather plain-looking pictures I found on the web of their adult forms.

The new flock

2011-04-01T22:52:00.000-07:00

We have chicks.

We got three black sex-link chicks and three barred rock chicks today. No ameraucanas this time, but they may have some next Friday, at which point we may pick up three more. We'll see. We didn't pick out the prettiest chickens in the universe, at least to my eyes, but they're tough, reliable breeds and they'll be good layers. Not that we need a gizillion eggs.

I still miss my original birds desperately, especially Cleo and Hero, and Henry, and that may be why I didn't decide to wait for ameraucanas and get only that breed. I don't want to think of these as replacements--they're their own birds with their own lives.

Of that original flock we still have Beatrice and one of the Wyandotte roosters. They're doing very well, although they're a bit perturbed about not being able to roam around the garden freely like they used to. Beatrice lays one lovely pink egg every day, despite having a mere quarter of an acre on which to roam. She's good at making due. The rooster seems more surly lately, and attacks me when I start to leave. I figure he's trained himself not to attack when we come in, because that might deter us from providing treats ...

I'm really anxious about introducing our babies to the older birds. In theory they'll all be hens (the feed store changed companies after customer complaints about having too many roosters) so the rooster probably won't object to them, but still. Fortunately that's a long ways away. They have to get all their outdoor, grownup feathers first. They'll still be peeping, though, when they move into the big coop, and I hope that will help the adult chickens look at them as non-threats. They'll look almost grown-up, but they won't really be mature birds until winter has come on, at which point they should be completely integrated into the flock.

They're fast asleep right now. Why is there always one that has to sleep with her head over the edge of the waterer? Her beak isn't dipped into the water and she's breathing fine, but still. Sheesh. That can't be comfortable.

We have a better chance of having all females this time around thanks to the change in company, but I don't know if the quality of bird overall will be better. I'm having my doubts. I've had to clean up two pasty butts already. I had only one sick bird last time out of the seven, and she ended up doing famously. I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope that these all survive to become big, healthy, happy biddies. It's not all hope, though. We'll take the best care of them that we know how. So far, so good.

Writer's Block

2011-03-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

I think I've got writer's block.

I'm not sure, because as far as I remember I haven't, at least, not a full-blown-can't-write-squat. That isn't to say I haven't had writer's block before. I just don't remember. My mind is like a sponge that way. When it gets full of water stuff drips out the bottom.

The best cure for writer's block is, of course, to write. So I'm going to be taking down notes today at work and really try to put myself into that opening that I want. And then, tonight, I'm going to write. Even if it's crappy. Even if I'm sure it'll never see the light of day. And I'll keep going.

I know I've got something going on because the last few things I've tried to write were short stories and I didn't finish them. The idea of working on novels ... I put them off. I make excuses. But I know intellectually that I've written more words into novels than anything and it's novels that keep me writing, so novels should get me writing again.

In the meantime I'll try to write some articles and maybe have another go at short stories or whatever. Whatever keeps me occupied when I put my butt in the chair. The only rule is that if I start a short story or an article, I have to finish it. All the way to the end.

The End

Tis the Season of the Goaty Worms

2011-03-26T22:52:00.000-07:00

Recuperating from a long week.

The goats were looking kinda wan, so I decided to worm them even though the weather hasn't warmed up much.

Springtime is worm season, and we've gone through worm overload problems before. Anemia, bottle jaw, hypo-proteination ... yeah, I've learned it all the hard way. But do I remember worming itself accurately?

Hell no.

I bought the wormer goop in an appealing-sounding flavor. Apple cinnamon. Sounds great, right? And I head out to the barn. Here goaty goaty goaties! I waved the no-needle syringe in the air. The goats come running. Oh yeah, way easy. I squeeze out a little and wave it in front of Scooter's nose. His nose wiggles, then wrinkles. Aw, come on! You know you like it ...

Five minutes later I'm winded and astride Scooter, prying his mouth open with one hand while trying to push the syringe in his mouth with the other while squeezing the stopper. White goo, scented pleasantly of apple-cinnamon, drips onto the ground and foams in his mouth. I get most of it in and let him go.

And he was the easy one.

The white goat won't even let me get near her. I lure them into the barn with grain, and then the rodeo begins. She's good with her horns ...

A couple of minutes later I walk out and they follow me, bleating for more attention. I've got goop on my pants, on my hands, on the grain bucket, and I've stepped in some. Fortunately I got close enough to a full dose in each of them that they should be safe.

Next month, maybe it'll be as easy as I remember it being. You know, as easy as trimming hooves. The way I recall it, hoof trimming isn't so bad.

I have no idea why I keep putting it off.

Farewell, Dakota

2011-03-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

On St. Patrick's Day, we had to put Dakota to sleep. This morning, like yesterday, my first thought was to get up to let her out. Every time I hear something like a dog panting, I assume it's her needing attention. And I still try to step over the barrier to the staircase that's no longer there.

We adopted Dakota as an (approximately) eleven year old geriatric Irish wolfhound/lab mix. For many years she lived with a homeless man, but the man died and she ended up at a shelter. Another family adopted her, but discovered that their daughter was highly allergic to Dakota. They tried everything else first--meds for the daughter, ripping out all their carpet, keeping Dakota out of the daughter's room--but to no avail. The little girl's allergies got worse. The last thing they wanted to do was take Dakota back to the shelter, but they asked everyone they knew and found no one willing to adopt a geriatric dog.

A friend of ours heard about Dakota's plight and knew we were looking for a dog for our girl. I was envisioning a small dog that the girl could have sleep on her bed in the room. The first time I saw Dakota, though, my first thought wasn't 'too big.' She was funny-looking, to put it politely, but her extremely calm demeanor won me over. More importantly, she stole the girl's heart. We took her home.

Dakota had some serious allergy problems from the get-go, but once she settled and her stress-level dropped, those allergy problems eased and she led a normal, if sleepy, happy doggy life. It took her a long time to accept us as family. Her deep sense of loyalty had been wounded by the loss of her first master, and then being adopted for only a short time by a second family, only to be let go ... I wasn't surprised that it took her a while to get used to us. But she did learn to trust us, maybe even love us.

At first we tried taking her on walks with the other dogs, but we learned that although she loved the walks it was too hard on her joints. So instead she walked herself around outside in the garden on sunny days, and in the dog yard whenever I had delicate seedlings in the veggie garden. She was able to make her way up and down the carpet-covered stairs inside and even made it with ease up and down the deck stairs. We trusted her not to wander, and she never went too near the road when she went on her walks.

Whenever we came home after being away for a few hours, we could see her in the front window, smiling, and often she'd let out a little, girly 'woof!' of delight. After months of stress-panting and anxiety-related allergies, it made me so happy to see her experience joy when we came home to her. She always came to see me when I came home from work, and I often took her with me when I worked in the garden in summertime. She sat in the shade and made sure I wasn't attacked by evil squirrels.

Those joyful years passed too quickly.

About six months ago she started having accidents in the house. I also had to bar the way on the stairs because she took a couple of bad falls while going down them. We tried different medications to keep her hips flexible. Some of them worked for a while, and she'd have several great weeks, and then she'd be worse again. Mostly, though, she was just stiff and not in any serious pain. Every so often she'd get stuck in a hole that one of the puppies had dug, but we'd get her out and she'd hobble into the house on her own legs and sleep it off.

Then a little over a week ago she could hardly get up, and she couldn't bend one of her hind legs very much anymore. She started pissing herself in her bed. I had to give her daily baths just to keep her relatively clean, which dried out her skin and made her hips sore from the stress. We took her to the vet, changed meds one more time, but she rapidly got worse instead of better and started to vomit and have serious bouts of diarrhea. When she stopped eating for two days we made another appointment. It was to be her final one.

We'd hoped there would be one more possible route to go, but the vet, a vet I trust, gave us the 'maybe it's time to let her go' talk. We could have given her maybe another 24 hours with a steroid shot, but that shot could have also given her more complications and caused her more pain, not less. And it was clear to the vet that Dakota's atrophied hind legs were not numb like they are in many cases, but causing her a lot of pain. Despite our care and washing and everything else, she was getting bed sores on them, and the joints were very inflamed. One joint was completely frozen. She would never walk again.

The vet warned us that Dakota might hang on for a while, but Dakota let go surprisingly fast. We held her and stroked her and told her what a good dog she was. And she really was a great dog--loyal, gentle, protective ... so much more than I can describe.

Maybe she'd seen her old owner and had run to him. I know she felt safe and happy with us, and she had some really beautiful days with her new pack, but I'm sure to her last breath that she missed the man who'd raised her from a puppy, who'd taken care of her and died with her by his side. I hope that if that was her heart's desire that she's found him and is with him again, living a gypsy life on the Long Road.

It still doesn't feel like time to put away her dog food bowl. I know I should. Maybe tomorrow.

The Other Side of the Hill

2011-03-15T07:26:00.000-07:00

Just so you all know ...

Dakota, our Irish wolfhound/lab mix (a 'mini' wolfhound at 75 pounds) is very ill. Mainly, it's old age. Arthritis is kicking her butt, and her incontinence is getting worse. Also, something is messing up her digestive system. She's gotten sick a few times (even before we switched meds to try to help her) and things are not good at the other end either.

For now we're waiting and hoping that the new medication will help her. If not ... her quality of life has plummeted. She can still walk on level surfaces, but she needs big time help on the stairs, often wets herself in bed, and needs a hose-down bath every day, which she hates, because she can't squat even when she makes it outside. She just sits in the muck and ... yeah. If that was all, I'd just deal for an indefinite period of time, but she's having more and more trouble getting comfortable. She gets up and wanders and tries to lay down and gets up again, stress-panting. Unfortunately it's impossible to ask her what her pain level is like. Fortunately, once she does settle she seems to sleep very deeply and peacefully, so I'm guessing/hoping that it's low enough still that she can get good rest and isn't in continuous pain. From what I can gather, it's very bad after she's gone outside, and then eases up enough after about a half hour to an hour that she can settle and relax. As long as she can get good rest for the majority of the day and isn't actively complaining with whining or crying (though I wonder if she ever will) or reeling with severe pain, I'd rather wait than act too soon.

It's so hard to judge these things.

The girl adopted Dakota when Dakota was already eleven years old. Adopting a geriatric dog has been a wonderful experience so far, and I would highly recommend it. From the very beginning, Dakota has been loyal, sweet, obedient, and very well-heeled. We never had to go through the chewy, messy, rowdy, destructive (although cute and yes, I love puppy breath too) puppy stage with her. I hope Dakota will be with us a while longer, but at this point it's not looking very good. We still have some good times of the day, but those are getting shorter.

Where do I get my ideas? Customers return them to me.

2011-03-11T21:35:00.001-08:00

I got a new story idea joking around with my coworkers today, and another (partial) chapter idea for the Financial Guide from the Retail Side from customers being weird.

If I ever have to give up my day job, I'll miss these sorts of days. Sure, there are lots of ideas that come to us through dreams, conversations with friends, travel, walking through downtown, etc. but they're not quite the same as the ideas that come from work stuff. Whether work means sweating under a hot sun or shivering under the blast of a cranked-up air conditioner, you're in a very different (but still creative) headspace than when you're doodling.

Although they suffer from being overdone, some of our richest stories are about writers because the people who write those stories are writers laboring with their fingers and hunched spines in seats that become increasingly less comfortable over the course of a long work day.

That state of working as a physical body is a source of real richness that complements and enhances their stories.

When a story is all pure imagination without that inclusion/acknowledgement of the sweatiness of things, there's something missing. I can't always pinpoint stories that are lacking in that element. They feel flat, but there are lots of reasons why a story can read flat. Lack of life experience is another big one. Anyway, writers that write about someone who is a writer can sometimes tap that physically-engaged labor monster within them even if they haven't had work experience beyond writing for a long time. It's neat when that happens. The writer's work feels more real to me. I like that sense of realness whether I'm reading about early fifteenth century soldiers, waitresses solving murders or unicorns rampaging through moth villages.

I think that when both kinds of states of being--the doodle, and the labor monster--are employed in story creation, the story is much better than stories that are spun entirely from one side or the other.

Naturally there also exist stories that are entirely labor-induced and have very little doodling in them. A classic situation is where a doctor or lawyer or somesuch writes fiction as a thinly-disguised vent about the day job. But I don't see as many stories that lack doodling as I do stories that lack that element of work in them. Maybe that's because work is something we do to survive, connecting us to our flesh and bone and blood, and there are more writers who neglect that physical connection to the world than there are writers who embrace and even incorporate it into their writing. Maybe they consider that aspect of existence lowly or unimportant, or maybe they just don't give it enough importance in their lives. Isn't working an eight hour day at the diner, after all, getting in the way of their writing? Well yes, but ...

Doodling is dreaming, and that connects us to our souls. Souls are cool and all, but I like sensory detail, and danger, and victory. For a story to really connect to me, flesh and bone and blood have to be a part of them. Like a building, I need both the concept and the materials to come together before I can step inside and marvel and what human beings have engineered. I won't just congratulate the architect, either. That building wouldn't exist without the people who poured the foundation, pounded the nails and joined and wired and plumbed the thing. The architect may be the artist, but the workers are the heroes that make hopes into reality. The best writers are both artists and artisans, and their stories shine because of it.

If I leave the day job (and I won't be doing that on purpose any time soon!) I'll run the risk of losing that meat-and-bones force in my life (again.) I'll have to find it in other ways, like putting in extra time with the garden and livestock, or start losing it gradually over time as my work experience fades into increasingly pastel memory. In the meantime, I'll enjoy playing with my new ideas.

The Other Kind of Painting. In the Office. With Stencils.

2011-03-10T20:54:00.000-08:00

I'm back to working on the office. For a while it housed a very special house guest, and so the office got moved into the family room. This turned the family room into a bit of a mess. As accustomed as I am to messes, I don't like them to hang around forever. Spiders (eeee!) like to make nasty little spidery nests in undisturbed, messy areas. The ick is icky and creepy--a bad combination.

First, I have to finish painting. I could have opted for plain walls and a plain ceiling--the condition in which it existed as a guest room--but nooOOOoo, I had to start looking through books. Of course I found a great paint scheme which involved stencils. I have a laser to help me mark straight lines, so putting stripes on the walls was only somewhat arduous.

Stripes and stencils?

It gets better.

Because of course stenciled leaves (I had to pick something with delicate details, naturally) within broad, widely-spaced stripes wouldn't look as nice without some sort of border highlighting the closet and window.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. For now I'm just going to go into that darned office so I can start stenciling the stripes I've got on the wall so far. I've got about half (maybe more) of the stripes filled with their background so I can put some of the furniture in its proper place. I only want to do that so that I have room to set up the laser so that I can stripe the rest of the walls, but getting the office furnished even that little bit more will be an added bonus. I might even go a little crazy and put some books on the shelves.

Clearly, life is one big adventure. Now, to have at, with paint brushes, sponges, and latex.

One step forward, unknown # of steps back

2011-03-05T18:30:00.000-08:00

@ McMenamins w/the girl and DH. Love.

I worked out really hard today, so naturally I had to have a big piece of cake after my salad lunch (I was all puffed up with virtue until I ate the cake) and then I had a pint of hard apple cider.

Getting in shape balance ... I figure I'm about even, but only because I sweated extra hard.

Actually, my waist measurement has improved, even if my weight hasn't budged.

That's enough whining for now, I guess. I'll try being good again tomorrow, maybe by eating another salad for lunch. This time I won't have cake.

Maybe.

The milestones, they are ganging up on me

2011-03-03T07:48:00.001-08:00

We had the boy overnight for the first time since he moved out to the big metro area (to look for work.) So of course he gets his first call for an interview ...

First real interview. How kewl. Wish him luck! If he gets this job it'll be a great entry-level one that will teach him a lot about working and wages and all that good stuff. It's a huge step, even bigger than living someplace other than home. There's so much stuff about working for someone that I take for granted that he's going to have to learn for himself.

Assuming he gets the job, of course. I'm really proud he even got an interview, considering how the economy is these days. I don't know how many places I applied for and got nada, even though I have quite a bit of retail experience.

Another milestone. They're coming in faster these days. And soon now, the girl will be graduating. Eeeeeeee!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One

2011-02-27T21:43:00.000-08:00

I just saw the latest Harry Potter movie in a second-run pub theater. Great company, good food, but the movie didn't work very well for me. I'd read a little about pacing issues, so I didn't go in with high expectations. Even with that in mind, though, I had serious trouble with the way the story moved. The elements were mostly there--fine actors, beautiful special effects that didn't distract from the story, etc. But I kept wondering what happened to the dialogue, to the ideas, and most of all, to the charm.

I was charmed by the books, and I was charmed by many of the movies. I don't think it was a case of no-surprises. I enjoyed watching the story I knew come to life on the big screen in the other Harry Potter movies, as well as other movie-from-book films I'd seen. But life is precisely what was missing here, at least for me.

For example, I delighted in the derigible plums. At that point I reveled in that little taste of what had been omnipresent in the books and most of the other films--the color, the environment, the quirky things that belonged there despite their often unusual character, and the sometimes awe-inspiring beauty. These things convinced me of the existence of another world as marvelous and complex as the real one we live in every day. I had little to nothing except those plums to convince me of another world this time.

There's an important lesson here for storytellers everywhere. The 'telling' details often mentioned in writing courses and critiques and in criticism are really important. They ought to be called the 'showing' details, though. Because they show us so much, without saying a word.

Bravo to actors, special effects folks, camera men, makeup artists, costumers ... and bravo to the writers, director, producer, etc. for all the hard work, but alas, I can't recommend this movie, and I'm likely to buy it only on discount in order to complete the set after the next movie has come out, assuming this next, and last, movie doesn't do the same or worse as its brother.

Would You Like Some Help Out?

2011-02-21T00:40:00.000-08:00

Sorting through paperwork. Zzzzzzz ...

Today I had a customer buy a bunch of stuff ...

"I'm going to need help to carry this out," she said.

"Yes ma'am. There's C right now." C ambled over. "C will help you carry this stuff out."

"I want those things from outside. I'll need help to carry that."

"Yes ma'am. C will take care of that as soon as she takes this out for you."

"Where is that help you called for? I need help carrying this."

"She's right here, ma'am."

She looks right at C. "Can you get someone to help me with the things outside?" she asked C.

"I can take care of that," C said.

"Thank you. Can you carry this?"

C accepted the thingy. "Where is your car?"

"First I need help with those things outside."

Realizing I'm spinning my wheels ... "C can take care of that once you're out there."

"Where is she?"

"She's right there." C already had the one thing that needed to be carried and had started to make for the door. "She has your things, and she can carry the rest to your car."

"Yes, but I need help with those things outside."

"Yes, ma'am, C can do that. She's on her way now." C, meanwhile, edged closer toward the exit door.

"But I need help carrying those things outside."

headdesk

I noticed C had given up edging and had bolted outside. "She'll meet you outside."

"Shouldn't she go out this way? It's closer." She headed for the entry door.

"If you'd like to, you can go out that way." Even though it's narrow, awkward, and the door opens the wrong way because it's the entry door.

The customer proceeded to wrestle her way out the 'closer' way, hauling the cart along with her. She expended so much effort it's a wonder she didn't hurt herself.

Closer is not always easier.

And I thought that was the end of it.

But guess what? She came back.

I saw her park in the fire lane. She got out of the car and started to wrestle about half the things she'd just bought less than an hour before. I went over and held the door, as she had things well in hand. You know, the things she needed help carrying out before.

"I need to return these."

Mmm hmm. "Was there anything wrong with them?" I carefully accepted them.

"They're not what I wanted."

headdesk

I started filling out the forms.

"Can you just put this back on my card?" she asked, setting her credit card on the counter.

"Certainly. I just need your help to fill out this form and the cashier can take care of you."

"I'm illegally parked."

Yes, we know.

"Will it take long?" she added.

"Not long. Hopefully it'll be fine. We're not responsible for the parking per se. As long as a fire marshal or policeman doesn't see, I think you'll be okay. If you're worried about it, you're welcome to move your car. I can work on this return in the meantime." You define entitlement, madam. What makes you so special that you can park in the fire lane rather than a handicapped spot? Oh, and fyi, I have a customer who really ought to be in a wheelchair who parks in a normal parking spot and painfully, slowly, makes himself walk to the store and shops all by himself. Granted, you don't have to do the same thing he does to prove anything to anyone, but would you mind not parking in the fire lane? Please? Do you think you can achieve that? Is it within your ability, considering that you walk without the cane that you tote around and that you carried all that stuff you made C carry out for you all by yourself?

Meanwhile, I scribbled on the form with a customer-service-smile on my face.

"My daughter-in-law is insufferable," she told me. "She's such a snob. Do you know what she said to me?"

I had to admit to myself that I was interested in an awful, uncivilized way. "What did she say?" I was also a little worried that she had taken exception to the manner in which I suggested that it's okay to park in the fire lane (sort of) and will now tell me how I, er, I mean how her daughter-in-law is terribly snobby about people who do that.

She went into detail about how she was invited to a party, not by the snobby DIL but by her brother, who likes her, no, adores her, and how it was on a house boat. And then she told me about how the handicapped parking was too far away from the dock and she would have never made it, so she parked illegally.

Meanwhile, I handed her the form and had her fill out the proper lines. She stopped the narration briefly to ask me what her address is.

I'm not making this up.

So she arrived at the party and mentioned that she hoped the police wouldn't ticket her. And her (apparently) snobby DIL told her not to worry, that they own all the surrounding land.

Either she has just equated me to being snobby because I'd figured the chances were low that she'd get a (well-deserved) ticket just like her DIL did, or I've missed the point. Entirely.

"I can't stand her," the woman added.

I'm sure she's not terribly fond of you either.

"I'm sorry," I told her. I couldn't think of anything else to say. "You're all set. Thank you for coming in."

I'm done ranting now. Vent over.

I really like most people, and I enjoy my job, even when I have challenging customers. Sometimes I enjoy my work especially when there's a challenge, because often I can fix things and make everything better. Sometimes, though, things bug me, not because they're not fixable but because they're easily fixable only if the person could just see themselves clearly. The problem wasn't so much the carry out or the DIL. This customer got in her own way and it obviously made everyone around her crazy. I only had to work with her for about twenty minutes. What would it be like to be related to her, to associate with her all the time?

At least I get paid to help her. Maybe she just had an off day. We all have those. But damn ....

Writing as Therapy

2011-02-15T20:49:00.000-08:00

I believed, and still partially believe, that writing for entertainment shouldn't be mixed with writing for therapy. I'm slowly changing my mind.

I wrote about what happened with my birds during a marathon writing session late the night before last. It wasn't easy. I was still grieving. I think, though, that what came out was some pretty powerful stuff.

Part of me wants to defend my original position, or parts of it, by saying that the entertainment portion of writing gets left behind when a person turns their writing into a pulpit, or a confessional, or whatever. But I should have been the last person to say such a thing. After all, I'm one of those sad cases that turns to the advice column in the newspaper. I'm entertained, sometimes enthralled, sometimes appalled by the drama.

And when I griped about one of my favorite authors turning his fantasy series into a venue in which he explored his divorce, what I ought to have realized was that although it wasn't my thing, it may well have been great for someone else. Maybe there were heaps of people in the midst of ugly divorces that liked the way the series went. Since my gripe about that series, my favorite example of how not to include your life experience in your writing, turns out not to be valid, I can't really hold any kind of writing-as-therapy work as a mistake.

I do think that it makes the writer vulnerable. Sometimes opening the soul publicly can be good and fine thing, but it's not something I could undertake lightly. Rape victims who write rape scenes ... what would criticism of that book, especially that scene, do? On the other hand, writing about trauma might help people own it. I know I felt better after I wrote. It might even help someone else in a similar situation feel better too.

So maybe it just boils down to this: recognize the level of exposure, and remember that once the story is published, it really isn't the author's anymore. It belongs to the reader. If the story is too personal to be given to someone else to do with whatever they want to do ... then maybe it needs to remain private.

There's definitely a skill to it, though. I've heard that editors and agents dread 'divorce novels.' That's just a rumor, but I do think that it's a valid caution. In order for a story to be emotionally satisfying for the reader, they have to be allowed to connect. I think that's why the fantasy series ultimately failed for me. The author wrote it in the midst of something I had never experienced, and interjected all kinds of stuff from his life I couldn't identify with. If he'd set me up from the beginning, maybe it would have been brilliant. But I came in at the middle, or maybe even toward the end of his personal drama, and he poured out those personal feelings in the middle of a series to boot. With no groundwork, with nothing explained, all I knew was that the characters I'd loved started to go crazy for no apparent reason.

I think it would be easy to over-think and doubt and all that--and that can destroy a story too. So I've thought about it, and in time I'll internalize it into my writing. The one thing I hope I won't do is start worrying about it every time I sit to type. In the end, it's all about the story, whether its the story of my dreams, or the story of my life. I hope both will be rich and wonderful things.

Sometimes Farming Hurts. A lot.

2011-02-13T20:13:00.000-08:00

We are down to two chickens: Beatrice and the Wyandotte rooster, who now needs a name because we'll be keeping him.

A coyote, we're pretty sure, did the deed.

I've learned how to clip wings. Our chickens are restricted to the lower goat pasture until further notice. I hope the coyotes don't dig their way in.

This has been a really awful day. Tomorrow will be better. My DH will be coming home.

The Chase Saga continues

2011-02-11T20:30:00.000-08:00

Funny Boy thing said today about a lying cowardly character on tv: "He's not manly enough to be a weasel. He's a marmoset."

And now for our apparently regular programme: More stuff about Chase.

Turns out, after talking with the Humane Society, that we're within our rights to claim the dog after 30 days because she's never been licensed, microchipped, or otherwise officially owned by the so-called owner. In order to do so we must microchip her, register the microchip, and license her. Easy peasy.

It comes down to this. We've reasonably tried to contact the owner, we have witnesses (our neighbors) who'd be willing to testify she's been in our possession this whole time, she's been to the vet the previous time she was lost by this same owner so there's a physical record there ... We can easily prove abandonment, not just once but twice. Sobering, isn't it? Think you 'own' your dog or cat? If your pet has been missing for over 30 days, and there's nothing to prove your ownership if you locate that animal, you may be out of luck. So, seriously, microchip your animals and license them. Today. And don't rely on the goodwill of neighbors to basically babysit your animal for free while you're on vacation or working out of the state/country/whatever. Show some basic effort to compensate them for food and care, even if it's a token thing like a card with a heart drawn on it. Otherwise, if it happens again as it did in this case, the people who are once again stuck with 'your' unlicensed, un-microchipped dog may not be inclined to give it back. And they won't be required to.

When we lost Brian, he'd been missing for weeks (I think it was three) before the extremely awesome people down the hill from us saw a sign posted at the vet. They kindly contacted us. At that point they'd fed him, sheltered him, loved him ... and they gave him back to us without even a thought to keeping him. (Well, the boys were really disappointed and whined a bit ...) I gave the family a huge gift basket filled with about $100 worth of stuff as a thank you, and still felt that it was inadequate thanks to Mary and her boys. Thanks (again) guys for the return of our dog, and for taking such awesome care of him.

You can bet that if Brian ran off again, not only would we check there first, but we'd do it within 24 hours. And if they called us, we'd answer within 24 hours.

The first time we had Chase/Decker, the owner showed up after over a month, and I never even got a card or a follow-up thank you call. Not cool, considering the dog would have wound up in the shelter, or shot, or runover and the owners would have never known about it, never mind gotten their dog back. And now Chase has been with us for almost a month again and we've been calling the owner ... with no answer. At all. No visit either. No one has given us any sign that they're looking for this animal. Does he even know his dog is gone? If he's away, who is taking care of the dog, and why aren't they frantically looking for her? If they don't care, then exactly how good of care is this dog receiving while the owner is away? Because the responsibility must ultimately fall on the owner. If the caretaker is supposed to take the blame for the first lack of care, then that caretaker shouldn't be taking care of the dog a second time.

Oops, that came out kinda ranty. Nonetheless, I'm not feeling very inclined to honor his 'ownership' at this point, should he show up again, which I'm beginning to doubt he will. Maybe it wasn't even his dog in the first place. Maybe he mistook her for his dog. After all, 'Decker' is not really a girly name (but I guess Chase isn't all that feminine either ...) Maybe he's embarrassed to have taken this strange dog home to his kids (who'd seen her when they passed our place on the bus--that's how he found her in the first place) and then they said 'But daa-aad, this isn't our dog! Our dog was a boy and didn't pee himself when we petted him!' I'd hate to think he'd just turn her loose again in that circumstance, instead of bringing her home to us.

I dunno. It's not an easy thing for me to claim her, despite my bold words. I assume that dog owners love their pets and I wouldn't want to separate a beloved pet from her owner just because of some rule of thumb (it's not a statute as far as I know) and the fact that the owner can't prove ownership (which, btw, we could have with Brian and all our pets because they're all microchipped--I'm thankful to say.) But I'm leaning that direction because I'm just not seeing the love here. I'm seeing a big, fat, nothing. There could be love, unseen love, that will manifest sometime soon. It just seems less and less likely as the days wear on.

In the meantime Chase is healthy and happy. That's the important thing, at least to those of us who care about her. She's an awesome dog. She could be an incredible dog, with love and much-needed socializing and training. I bought her a collar and leash the first time round. I have to admit I get a little thrill thinking that hey, maybe we'll get to use them as her forever owners sometime soon.

What do you guys think? Does the owner, who told my DH that he works out of town quite a bit, need more time? What would you do?

Animals, Customers and Other Stuff

2011-02-08T12:59:00.000-08:00

@ Papa's Ice Cream, drinking peppermint/spearmint tea with my DH. Love.

Guess who's back? Chase/Decker.

I've been reluctant to mention this because it's a sticky situation. We've been calling the owner and have had no response for over two weeks, maybe three, even four--I haven't been keeping track, honestly. We've left our phone number on an answering machine. Nothing. Nada.

I've been reading statutes for our state and the closest thing I can find about this is that if an animal is deliberately left with you, 15 days after the first notice to the owner to claim the animal, the animal is considered abandoned. There's nothing about found animals that you know who the owner is (vaguely) and can't get hold of them.

So we're stuck in this awful limbo. Can we adopt her? What's the deal? I'll be calling the humane society about this. Maybe they'll be able to shed some light on it.

Meanwhile--

We've got our first blue egg! Yay!

The hen (I'm not sure which one did the deed yet but I suspect Beatrice, our blonde) actually produced a beautiful hybrid between a light brown egg and a blue one. It's also big--almost as large as a store bought extra-large egg. I have pix but they're not on my machine yet.

I'm soooo happeeeeeeey!

I haven't done a retail story in a while. There's a reason for this--I'm putting together a financial guide book from the retail employee's pov, and so most of my material is going into that lately. But I'll start posting those again soon just because a lot of them are repeats as far as the book is concerned and some of them aren't really related to financial sanity anyway, or are just common sense. I will, right now, post a free sample in the way of a super-short chapter (assuming that it doesn't get cut in an edit.) It goes something like this:

Under the Influence

Don't shop drunk. Or high. Think about all the stupid things that inebriated people do--and by people I mean you. I know that you pretend that you aren't like everyone else and you're special and totally cool when you're drunk, etc. but let's be real. Add the expenditure of money to the stupidity of public inebriation. And the beauty part? It's all on camera. Just think. You could be on YouTube buying that stuff (and paying for stuff you broke and the part where you flirted with me) and then tada! you get to be on YouTube the next day returning it. I would never post such a humiliating moment in someone's life, but I have coworkers.

They have a darker sense of humor than I do.

On the other hand, if you're shopping high you're probably driving high, and if death and/or jail doesn't stop you, embarrassment probably won't either. Disregard. I don't mind.

Just think, you could be like the guy who staggered in the other day. He took one of our plastic-encased signs and hung it from the counter by its feet. "Wow, look at that!" he said.

"That's impressive," I assured him.

"You're always so nice," he said, swaying.

In your case, because I have to be, dude. "I'm glad," I told him. "I like our customers to be happy."

"Well I'm very happy," he slurred. I thought he looked like he would puke any second.

"Can I help you with something?" I asked.

He stared blankly at me for a moment. "Do you sell ... stuff here?"

Why yes, yes we do. We're a store. We sell stuff. "What are you looking for?"

He stared at me for a moment longer, then walked through the swing door. On the second try.

Sad case. I wonder what he bought. I'm sure he wonders too. But that's cool. It probably didn't hurt his beer budget.

Next time it'll be you, and you're gonna be awesome. The Numa Numa Dance guy and whoever posts that video are gonna be like this. Maybe, if you have the means, you can sue like the Star Wars kid's family ... but that video will never go away, and neither will your fame.

Writing in a Weird, Unsafe World

2011-02-03T13:59:00.000-08:00

I'z in ur library, on ur internets ...

I'm gradually getting back to actual writing. Scheduling around work is tough, but it's gotta get done. Working retail is paying (some) bills but it's not going to cut it long term, at least not until the mortgage is paid off and that's far enough away that I only see the little bitty flag on the topmost mast of the Ship of Yay We're Paid Off.

So I have to keep writing. Have to. Not to make it big, but to survive doing the job I love. Which, btw, I have a minor rant here. For those of you waiting for Obamacare or something to save you ... don't. Don't wait. Even if a healthcare rescue train arrives sometime soon, you can't count on the government (and I mean any government) to save you. You gotta save yourself, and save each other. Worry about the details later. I have a good friend who almost died, went to the hospital even though the family couldn't afford it, and lived. They'll work out the details as best they can. Whatever they have to do, it's a darn sight better than funeral arrangements. Just saying.

Moving on now. Take care of yourselves and each other out there.

I've also been producing ebook covers. I'm getting better, I think. Hope. Maybe. I'm learning new tricks every day. I'm also learning to keep mucking about until the visual response is Yeah! instead of that'll do. At times it's hard to tell a Yeah! from a breakthrough. When I make a design breakthrough it's so much better than the previous that it can feel like a Yeah! So I'm still working, still striving, still learning. Like every other skill, it takes time, effort and education to getcha where you're going.

House of Goats is about as good as I can make it. Only a real editor can make a difference now. Going through it one more time made me feel more confident about it, but honestly, it was all a hindbrain ploy. As long as I was looking over the manuscript, I didn't have to deal with the cover letter.

The anti-marketing hindbrain is so insidious and clever, sometimes I can't help but admire it. Why can't it employ its powers for good?

In other news, I've been watching the mighty Borders as it begins its tilt into the sea ... it may yet recover, but I fear it's as doomed as the Titanic.

The doom of the actual ship the Titanic, not the movie which made gizillions of dollars.

Back to marketing now. Let's all us writer-types wish each other luck in the new weird world of publishing.

Books of Retail

2011-01-23T07:37:00.000-08:00

I'm going to shorthand a few things here:

Whining about technical difficulties (primary--can't upload pics from camera yet)

Whining about soreness from gardening. Garden is looking better w/o blackberries

I've been writing on a book of financial guidelines and wisdom as seen from the point of view of a retail clerk. I've seen people do this stuff. Yeah, that's you I'm talking about ...

So far I've got a chapter about how people really don't know or don't seem to care about what they're buying, and a chapter about how I'd love to be on some people's Christmas lists because dang ... I'm not talking so much about overspending but an increasing trend where it's all about the recipient's happiness and the unintended consequences of that belief.

I'll most likely epublish this book, but I may send it around to some publishers after it's done because I think people will learn and enjoy at the same time. I'm still groping for a title. Tales of Retail Shame and Redemption: A consumer's guide? I just kicked that out there. I haven't given it very much thought.

BTW, if you like fun retail stories, one of my favorites is The Acts of Gord. Even my DH who has never worked retail enjoyed the Acts of Gord. It's not about financial advice. More along the lines of things some retail employees wish they could do.

Looking Forward to a Great Week

2011-01-11T00:04:00.000-08:00

I started a new book a couple of days ago. This one will be a WIP between bouts of finishing a couple of others.

Working on multiple projects again is a breakthrough for me. I feel like I'm making progress, though toward what, I don't know yet. It's certainly not technique-based advancement. But I do know that when I was at my most prolific, I was working on multiple projects at a time. I had to let that go for a while. Coming back to it feels like coming home, but to a bigger house so that all my stuff doesn't feel like clutter. If that makes sense.

Anyway, I feel like I've found my groove.

In gardening news, I pulled up a bunch of blackberries. I have a lot more to pull up, and mulching to do. While cleaning up, I found a lot of daffodils nosing through the ground. Too soon, my darlings, too soon! I made sure they got covered up again with mulch, not so much so that they don't freeze, at least not in a direct sense, but to make sure they remain dormant.

One of the kewl things about living in the Pac NW is the long growing season ... and one of the disadvantages is the long growing season. We're very prone to early warm-ups followed by late frosts. We often have a warm stretch in February, and snow as late as April. Fruit trees? Sorry, they have to take their chances. But the bulbs I can do something about without a huge investment or time-consuming intervention. It's just what I did ... mulch.

Cleaning up the last of the leaves mid-winter, especially in January, doesn't just dislodge pests camped close to their spring food source. It can retard or halt fungal disease and/or rot. And if you manage to do it on a very cold day (preferably windless so that you're not too uncomfortable) you can seal in cold around those bulbs. That means they'll stay colder longer, meaning they'll stay dormant longer ... and hopefully they'll stay dormant during that weird 50 degree F weather in February and come up at just the right time, instead of getting frost damage or dying altogether in early March when the temperature drops hard and the earth freezes up and all moisture is sapped until your skin cracks.

I would have been gardening today in the beautiful sunshine, but I had to work. We've got snow and possible freezing rain forecast in our area. Being one of those weird people who won't kill themselves trying to get to work, I may very well end up working in the garden unexpectedly, cutting back weeds, pruning roses, and mulching like crazy during the freeze. And, of course, when darkness falls, I've got projects to write on.

Sounds like a great week ahead. If I get a chance, I'll post a pic of our giant, fierce snowbunny and the boy's twisted snowman.

2011

2011-01-01T01:24:00.000-08:00

Lots of new stuff this year. New car, bought with cash--first new car bought with cash. Highly recommended, btw, because there's no interest to pay. New cat (the Poop, aka Veronica.) New chicken coop. New (sort of) job, but with the added newness of being my first full time job since, oh ... let's see ... the early nineties. New friends, too. And our house has new paint on it. Speaking of which, we'd better get that new porch finished soon.

Lots of old stuff this year. Old clothes sewn back together. Old vehicles carefully maintained to continue running for years to come (we hope.) An old blanket with a new shell, now a favorite blanket that everyone wants to snuggle in. An old dog who survived serious surgery and is even now snoozing under the dining table. Good times with old friends, and visiting old haunts. Cleaning out old, dusty corners and rediscovering new living and storage space.

Mostly, though, 2010 was a lot about survival, and returning to a wilder, more insecure lifestyle. It's a lot scarier to rely upon self-employment when you have a mortgage and kids to take care of than the last time we did this way back in our college years. I have the easy part of the deal: I trust and believe in my DH to continue to succeed, and I believe we'll thrive with him at the helm. I'm the backup plan, the supplemental income person, the fill-in-the-gaps gal. I have a lot less pressure on me, but I think that my DH is happier with the very different kind of pressure that he's under, as opposed to the daily slog kind of pressure he had before where the future looks pretty much the same as the past. We're bailing like crazy, but our boat is afloat and we don't appear to be sinking. I don't think our goal is some distant shore. I think it's to put our boat into order and keep sailing on.

For now we're all healthy, including the animals. I'm grateful that we have even more than health. We have shelter, food, clothing, clean water, beautiful skies, and good earth. I'm even grateful for the stupid blackberries.

Here's to health, and life, and most of all, to hope. It's the beginning: time to dream, to plan, and to strive.

A Holiday Tale

2010-12-25T21:51:00.000-08:00

Is it just me or has this holiday season been really quiet? Dare I say subdued?

And yet, I had a really wonderful time this year. Maybe the economy helped people remember what's really important. Or maybe it's always like this, or I'm seeing things from a skewed perspective. It's not like that would be a shocker ...

I do miss our little stray dog, who we named Chase. Turned out her name is Decker, and she lives up the road. We experienced the reverse of what we went through when Brian went missing. After having Chase/Decker in our lives for a month, the owner found her. After bonding with us, she seemed confused and wasn't really ready to go with her owner, but then he triggered her with a familiar phrase. "Come on, let's go for a ride in the truck!"

And like that, she was gone.

I'm hugely comforted by the fact that she was part of a family with kids, and that those kids got a fantastic gift--a reunion after most of their hope had fled of ever seeing their dog again. I remember how I cried sometimes weeks after Brian went missing, and how much I laughed, and cried again but this time with joy, when we got him back. When I come home and Chase isn't there, I'm so grateful for my own dogs being home that I linger with them, letting them know how much I love them, and how awesome they are. We have great dogs. We really, really didn't need another one.

So, that's it, I guess. A winter story with a magical ending and a little hint of sadness. It's quiet here, and subdued, but good. The days are finally getting longer, and before I'm ready for it, spring will be here.

Food as Bonding

2010-12-22T13:08:00.000-08:00

There's something awesome about making cookies with family. It's a chemistry lesson, experimentation, an exercise in making-due, and playtime all wrapped together ... but there's so much more to it than even that. It's as if we're participating in an old family tradition, even though we do it very, very seldom. We're linked by sticky ingredients all over our hands and patches of flour on our noses where we've scratched.

There's something deeply bonding about sharing food, and even more bonding by making food together. For all I know it may be written into our DNA, helping us love to be together since alone most of us would die. Many others have remarked on how families and friends become closer through cooking. I'm just another voice among many saying oh heck yeah, it means so much more than working so that you can stuff your face.

I've been looking forward to making cookies for weeks, and it's everything I could have asked for and more.

Plus we get to eat our creations. Yum.

Stuff

2010-12-18T09:39:00.001-08:00

Just a quickie before work ...

We have snow again. I'm not deterred from driving. Work isn't that far away, and now it appears to be above freezing and raining. It's very likely that about 200 yards down from our place there isn't any snow at all.

Sure was pretty to wake up to, though.

Made a little more progress on the porch yesterday. Sunshine, freezing winds ... sure, why not? The boy actually suggested it. I didn't want to, but I recognized the wisdom in seizing the non-rainy day. So we got about another 16 square feet or so done on that. Not much, but the way we have to put it together--that's about 3 hours of work.

I planted (just in time, it turns out) some daylillies donated by my mom for the great multi-acre garden cause. As the average temperature continues to drop, the danger that the extremely hardy roots might succumb to freezing damage rose. They're safe and snug in the earth now. Also joining them: crocosmia and bluebells.

I'm really looking forward to the show next year, assuming that I get all the blackberries beaten back in time.

And our stray foundling, Chase, is slowly learning the house rules. No news yet as far as whether we're going to keep this beautiful, young female herding dog who weighs in at a mere 28 pounds. We have a few days to decide what to do.

Three more days until Yule! Weee!

Attack of the Poop

2010-12-10T14:58:00.000-08:00

We have nicknames for almost all of our animals. Veronica also answers to 'Poop!' One of these days I'll have to have the boy video one of my exchanges with Veronica, which is probably only entertaining to me. It goes along the lines of:

"Poop!"

"Meow?"

"Poop!"

"Mrrow!"

"Poop!"

"Mmruw?"

"Poop!"

"Mow?"

On and on pretty endlessly. I only really want to document it in case anyone tries to attribute any sort of decorum or fussy propriety to me. I'm a kites-with-pictures-of-my-goats-with-wings-on-them, chocolate-cake-smeared-on-one-cheek kind of gal.

Just sayin'.

Not that it's ever likely to be an issue.

But I'll be watching, so you better not do anything too toward in my name out there.

Veronica originally got the nickname 'Poop' because I thought her coloration is reminiscent of bird poop. I'm also a fan of Winnie the Pooh, and therefore I'm perfectly happy with silly, somewhat inappropriate cutesy names for things. I know, I know, blame the innocent Pooh for my weirdness--how gauche. But there you have it.

Anyway, the Poop is spoiled rotten. She gets away with all kinds of stuff.

Brian is so sweet and patient.

Plus, he's a total attention hog, so as long as he's getting his pets, he doesn't care.

Yay Beach Trip

2010-12-06T09:25:00.001-08:00

We went to the coast yesterday. It's been a long time--too long. I've missed the salt-damp air that soothed my skin (local desert winds have sucked the moisture out of everything.) Seeing the gentle curvature of the earth from a high clifftop as I scan the blue horizon in a sweeping glance at an ocean view so broad you can't see from one edge to the other all at once. Marveling at the power of a sea lion as he leapt from the water onto a rock six feet out of the water. Creamy clam chowder with little puddles of butter swimming on top and home-baked bread. The thrill of not-quite-surprise as a wave surges into a narrow channel and then drills water up through a spout hole where it shatters into a glassy rainbow. Dancing on ice cold sand and barnacle rocks in tender feet while the waves tickle up the shoreline pushing foam over my toes.

My DH and I fantasized about making a life at the coast. Spending the day there made me feel young again as I relived a thousand memories, and at the same time I saw so many things through new eyes as our guest saw the ocean up close for the first time in his life--recanting old rules and warning about the dangers of our wild coast reminded me that I've learned a thing or two over the years about the melding place of land and sea.

I miss sailing too.

Spending a day at the coast is always wonderful. Spending it with family and friends--yeah. It was a really good day.