Transitioning into Full Time Writing, Pt 2

I've now been a full time writer for a little over three weeks, if you ignore my son's wedding and then going to Canada for a week.

Weird incidentals:
The indoor dog, Chase, is flipping out. She's now realizing that I'm going to be home all day (for the most part, except shopping excursions), every day, and it's turning her into a hyperactive maniac who now races back and forth wherever we go. Going to the garden? She runs the ever-shortening distance a dozen times to my one, ears laid back for extra streamlining, mouth open for more air, tongue inside mouth to reduce drag. Going back in the house? It's up and down the stairs and then back and forth across the deck and then she leaps and bangs her feet against the sliding door because it needs to be opened! Oh, and she scratches at the door not only to be let out, but to let me know that one or both of the cats need to be let in.
Because apparently that's why I'm staying home. To play with her and the cats and to let everyone in and out. It's Chase's job to make sure I stay on top of that.

I'm organizing stuff at home to make things more efficient so I can maximize my writing time. It's true! Weird example: now that I'm home I scoop the litter boxes at least once, if not twice a day. It makes the house more pleasant and makes the litter last longer. (I have decided this is true. Don't burst my bubble!) I realized it would be so much less tedious if I had one of those flip-top garbage cans, just a wee one, right next to the litter box. Then when it's full, I can take the used litter out. Found one with a little bucket inside, handle and all. Mine! Litter stays clean, and I can scoop right after I feed the chickens (and steal their eggs) without having to hunt for a garbage bag. Now I know why some housewives are so organized. It's not necessarily because they're OCD or obsessed with cleanliness. It's because having things unorganized is super, super annoying when you have a lot of things to do.

When our kids were little and I was a stay-at-home mom, I didn't have a lot of things to do except keep up on laundry and make sure that there was food, a lack of medical emergencies, and minimal squalor (was not super good about that last part.) Now that I no longer have a day job and I have no kids, my expectation is that I'll have all kinds of time to write, right? Well, except that clutter is distracting, and dealing inefficiently with the clutter is annoying, and laundry and dishes still need to happen, as does shopping and cooking, and I have to feed the farm animals and get the garden ready for spring and all at once I became aware that TIME IS LIMITED, even when, in theory and barring accidents or illness, you have lots of it. And when it comes to chores, I want to minimize them to maximize this work time thing, and you know, we all know, that if I let things pile up deeper and deeper I won't write, I'll dabble at writing and fret and putter. Which is awful and inefficient. Besides, if I ignore chores too long, suddenly I'm looking at six weeks of solid cleaning and zero writing time to get my environment to the point where I stop looking over my shoulder to see if the laundry is sneaking up on me, preparing to leap and then smother me. This versus an hour or two each day for a couple of chores, which I rotate through, and maybe I can squeeze in a little extra once a week so that you make overall headway (it can be done! I'm proving it to myself!)

When I started this journey I thought I'd be writing all day and writing all night with the occasional foray into book and cover design. Then I ran out of underwear. Which might not have mattered except that all my most comfortable jeans were also dirty. And I ran out of bowls. And suddenly taking a break to have a meal turned into a travesty, and showering in the morning and getting into real clothes turned into a chore, and so I wore pajamas until I had to feed the farm animals and I did that in sweats with a sweater over my sleeping shirt and I thought this is not what I envisioned my dream job to be, where I have to take over an hour for lunch because I have to clear the counters and wash a bowl first. People posted that image of a writing nook with the huge windows looking out at a winter scene, with the comfy chair and the floor lamp aimed just right, and a tidy bookshelf and I thought there is no reason why I have to put up with drifts of dog hair on the floor and stacks of papers that need to be filed all around my computer that I have to shove aside (guiltily, worrying that I might forget to pay that bill there) so I can take some quick notes which I'll immediately lose. No more! No more. I will take time to tidy. I will have my desk set up so I can find things. I will.

I'm getting there. Happily, more writing is getting done. And happily, my house is cleaner. Except I have no bowls again, but that's okay. I'll take care of it tomorrow before I start to write. Easy peasy.

Creation and Destruction

Another brilliantly gorgeous day. I'm listening to Lindsey Stirling, and I'm debating whether I want to clean up around my desk area, do artwork, write ... might have to just do it all today.

I think the thing that makes me most resistant to cleaning is a close relative of what makes me happy when it's done. Sometimes the clutter is incredibly overwhelming, and it feels like clearing a small part of it does so little good that I might as well spend my time and energy on something that has a more significant impact, or gets me closer to my longer term goals. Cleaning is an endless battle and I get emotionally worn out even before I begin.

At the same time, when I do clean even a tiny bit, I get a disproportionate sense of pride, and a little burst of hope. If only I did just this little bit every day, my home would be so fantastic!

But I don't do a little bit every day, and I lose whatever progress I've made in the days that go by.

That's one of the many things I love about writing and art. If I dilly dally too long, I might forget what I was doing in a book, but other than that, I can't 'lose' progress on a work of art or a book through neglect. Once the colors or the words are there, they're there until they're actively destroyed.

Of course, now that I've said that, is adding clutter to a clean area a form of destruction?

Stuff to think about. Like writing and art, keeping house requires developing good habits and rooting out bad habits. That requires long practice. Think that after almost thirty years of keeping my own house, I might learn how to keep it neat?

That would be nifty.

Review: The FURminator: My Hero

Not that long ago I had lunch with a writer friend of mine, and we got to talking about my ten thousand animals.  She suggested that I use a furminator on our dogs to help strip out their winter coats and help prevent mats that might form too close to the skin and eventually cause serious sores.  She used a big one on her horses, and extolled the virtues of the might furminator to me while we had salad.  I was intrigued, but her description of the price tag made me flinch and file it under the category of pipe dream/luxury item.  I was under the impression it was an electric thingy, too, for whatever reason, and decided that I'd just shave the dogs if needed.

Then yesterday I ran into a friend of mine at Petco and she recommended it too (she uses a small one on her cats) so I caved and looked at them.  They're not electric.  I got a medium one for long-haired dogs for my dogs.  I'm glad I didn't get the large one partly because of the extra money, and partly because although it might have been worth it on the big sections, the larger comb would have made it harder to work on their legs and stuff.  And I was happy that it wasn't as expensive as the one my friend used on her horses.  Size makes the difference, it turns out.

Finn had way more undercoat than I realized he had.  Working with the regular undercoat puller I use, I would have cleaned up his hindquarters in a few minutes and considered my work done.  But running the furminator over his supposedly-clean back was enlightening.  Yikes.   I pulled almost as much undercoat off of him as I did Brian, Brian the Fluff Generator, Brian the Puffy Source of Endless Hair, Brian the ... you get the idea.  

For full-time (or in our case, mostly full-time) outdoor animals, pulling out the undercoat isn't just a matter of neatness or appearance.  Those old undercoats hold a lot of dirt, and way too much insulation value for our increasingly warm temperatures.  I'm really glad I helped Finn rid himself of it before August. Heck, if I hadn't pulled it, it might have hung around until his winter coat came in and shoved it off within reach of our normal brushes, and by then the dogs would have been dangerously filthy, even with baths.  It's just too hard to wash that stuff out, even using the awesome rubber brush to help work the suds in down toward the skin.  

Brian had some mats in his fur that I buzzed off so that I could save him some tugging prior to using the tool.  He hates having his mats pulled.  (So far I haven't let them go so long that they end up matted close to the skin but they are clingy ...)  It turns out that I shouldn't have buzzed them after all.  The furminator pulled out the remaining smaller mats very easily and Brian never gave me the 'owie mommy' look he does so often when I'm using a standard undercoat puller.  I ended up not shaving much around his seat and pulled the mats with just the furminator with no trouble at all.  It's kewl, though.  His tail looks a little funny right now, but he'll be fully feathered in no time.

Getting that undercoat out turned out to be especially gratifying in Brian's case.  Both dogs had dirty undercoats, but Brian's hair is a different consistency than Finn's more labrador retriever-like fur.  The dirty undercoat pulled free of his guard hairs and an almost pristine white summer undercoat.  It was almost as good as giving him a bath.  Combing with a nice bath, he'll be in excellent shape to endure the heat we'll most likely experience in August.  These dogs do really well in very cold temperatures, but tend to suffer in anything over 75 degrees F.  The last two years I've taken Brian to get shaved, and this year I planned to shave him myself (after buying a spacer--the one I like to use on him broke) but now I wonder if it might not be unnecessary.  I think just keeping him groomed, and taking him to the river on 90+ degree days, will be sufficient.

The girl sat down and (very gently) furminated Wizard, our big, fat, very happy and formerly feral tiger tabby shorthair cat.  He loved it.  As an experiment I ran a nice cat brush over him.  We didn't get much.  We ran the furminator over it and pulled lots of undercoat and dander along with it.  They have small ones for cats, but I think that we'll use the one for our dogs on the cats as needed, being careful not to push because the teeth on the one we have are sized for long-haired dogs.

Furminators are expensive, but I think they're worth it.  Now that I have one, I don't see any reason to visit a groomer, which will pay back the worth of the comb by next summer, and that's for an ultra-minimalist grooming schedule (once a year.)  

One minor note about the instructions.  They suggest bathing your animal first and letting it fully dry before using the comb.  In our case, I think it makes more sense to use the comb as a kind of dry bath.  And then, when we get around to a big, wet, soapy bath, we won't have to try to clean old, wooly undercoat hair that shouldn't be there in the first place.  And that undercoat really hinders getting the soap down to the skin and makes rinsing that soap out much more difficult.  

Half of Brian's pile.  The rest is outside.  Bear in mind we brushed him last week to get the worst of it off.

Also, because they're pricy, I suggest that folks living within a budget to shop around and maybe investigate getting a used one if possible.  If you do get a used one, be sure to clean it thoroughly and disinfect it in case the animal it was used on had a transmittable disease.  I don't usually recommend a particular vendor, but in this case, Amazon has one of the best prices for new ones available.

I'm happy with the tool.  The dogs enjoyed the attention, and are tons cleaner, lighter, and cooler.  Wins all around.

Update:  Carey is still not home.  We made some calls and put up ads on Craigslist.  We also left some fliers around town.  Keep your fingers crossed for us.  Thanks for your well-wishes.

Shelob's Lair

grdn spydrz r gud, no go in ur hous 

We had a big work day yesterday, the kind that takes a disaster area like a combo room (aka a dumping ground for everything you don't know what to do with) and turns that space into somewhere people might actually want to spend time.

The thing about rooms like that is that they collect a lot of spiders.  Spiders like small, undisturbed nooks and crannies and little spider-sized tunnels that take the non-web-using kinds of spiders from their wee resting/hiding spots to their hunting grounds.  

It's not easy being an arachnophobe in the country in the first place.  Put me in a cramped room with spiders everywhere, and the results are pretty predictable.  

Part of my phobia is the squishing part.  I can't handle squishing spiders--it's worse in some ways than having one creeping around on me.  As I've grown older, though, I've learned to get around that.  Vacuuming works.  I can handle vacuuming a spider.  Unless it's too big, or a variety I find particularly heebie jeebie-ish.  Then I have to call for help.

So here's a big thank you to the girl and my mom for the huge amount of help with cleaning yesterday, but most especially to the boy not only for doing a lot of the hard/heavy stuff, but for saving us all from the spidery minions of Shelob.

Big *ss Clutter

Clearing out big *ss clutter takes strength, flexibility, willpower, and kittehs

I've been doing de-cluttering/clearing-type housework, and I've also started sorting through my Estrogenfest stuff between bouts of writing. If you're on Facebook and you've friended me, you can go take a look at a small sample of pics I took. I didn't post any pics of people I knew that showed faces, which really limited things.

My non-writing goal for the week--sell the no go, er, I mean the Nova. It's not running, so I'm pretty much pricing places that will salvage it. If you're a huge fan of Chevy cars and the idea of a 1987 Chevy Nova being sold for parts breaks your heart, speak up now! We simply don't have the money to keep four cars running, especially when three of them have problems. (The Bruiser and the blue Nissan both need tuneups at bare minimum right now--they're probably running rough for other reasons that I'm dreading to learn about. The Nova has been sitting so long that it'll need its gas tank devarnished in addition to whatever made it stop running on our hill way back when.)

Also, if anyone wants a big piece of walk-behind farm equipment (it has a PTO and more attachments than I can shake a stick at,) let's talk. I'll be cleaning it up and getting into selling condition as one of my summer projects unless someone is willing to pick it up as-is.

I'll also be looking into recycling a couple of non-working lawnmowers. If you love fixing up lawnmowers, speak up! They'll be gone as soon as I can arrange it.

And so goes the ongoing decluttering/reorganization that seems to be an ongoing part of living out in the country. I think we must have a stuff magnet somewhere in our barn or garage or something. I keep finding things that I have a dim or no memory of acquiring. Yikes. It'll be awesome when it's all gone.

Sanding my office

Ever sanded something meant to become a beautiful, permanent piece of woodwork?  That's how I feel working on cleaning up my office.  Oh.  My.  Gawd.  I have to put serious thought into every little bit I accomplish.  Since I can't just shuffle things from one place to another (I'm not clearing, I'm organizing and cleaning) I have to pick up a thing, decide whether to throw it away, or clean it and find it a permanent home, or put it in my garage sale box.  I'm putting a priority on creating space so that I can put away stuff I want to keep.  Bookshelf space.  Drawer space.  

Right now I need garbage space, so I'm going to run the garbage out.

At least I discovered a couple of boxes I got for cheap at IKEA.  O and I put them together, and he got to keep one and I kept one.  Space created--where the wrapped boxes were, and inside the box.  Now I have to figure out what would be best to put in the box (something that will fill or almost fill it without making that something hard to access, or something that will fill or almost fill it that I seldom use) and then find a space for the box itself.  If I'm really clever, the things I put in the box will, by their removal, create a space for the box or create space to move other things into that will create, by their moving/organization, a box-sized space.

Will it never end?!

Wishing for On the Rocks Laundry

Three and a half hours.  That's how long it took me to do the laundry I brought to the laundromat.  I think I did somewhere between 12-15 home-sized loads (I have a really big washer dryer set too) in that time, which is lightning fast.  I had six of the largest washers going at one point.  Thankfully the dryers were really huge and I was able to dry things fast enough that I didn't have time to sit down and read (which translates to wasted time which translates to even more time spent at the laundromat.)  I had about ten minutes of free time and then one after another the dryers would run out of time, I'd pull out anything that was dry, restart them, and start folding.  I usually didn't get done with folding what I had before I had to fish out the dry stuff and restart another dryer.  Intense, but worth it.  The laundromat's owner was a peach of a man and kept my sense of humor going through it all, even when my back was whining about how heavy laundry is.  (Boo hoo, do you want to sleep in clean sheets and blankets or not?!)

I may go in next week and do what's left over plus anything that accumulates in the meantime so that I stay ahead of the game instead of falling behind while my dryer is non-functional.

The only disappointing part is that I was sure I'd have time to sit and write on something.  Next time I'll know just to put my driver's license in my pocket, about $25 cash in the other pocket, and forget all the writing stuff and reading material that was supposed to keep me distracted.  Oh, and an iPod shuffle, of course.  

It did make me a bit nostalgic over my old college days and the Suds N' Suds.  Beer and laundry.  I think it's a perfect combination.  Margaritas and laundry, even better.  Salt and Suds?  Blend N' Tumble?  Or, heh, On the Rocks Laundry, for those of you who remember that much laundry was done (and still is done) by beating it on rocks.

BTW, ma'am, in case you read this:  Put your entire effing load in one dryer next time, please!  You can dry more than one towel in one dryer, one pair of jeans in another, and three t-shirts in yet another.  I can't believe you had the nerve to hold the last one in the bank for your husband's soccer uniform (one tank, one pair of shorts.)  I can tell you're used to people not arguing with you.  Well, I was no different.  I used a dryer on the other bank.  Why was I smiling?  Because I know you're a poopy poopy poopyhead and having to live with yourself is its own worst punishment, not to mention you plugged in a whole lot of quarters for no reason.  You were there for two hours, too, with less than a tenth of my laundry, because you couldn't tell when the clothes felt dry.  Poopyhead.  Poopy poopyhead.  I'm way more mature than you.  So ha!

The End of a Shopping Era

Yesterday I had the oddball experience of shopping for everything (within reason) that we might want in the short term (this summer) from the store.  Aqua socks.  Bug spray.  Socks and underwear.  Shorts, capris and shirts.  Non-perishable(ish) food items.  First aid stuff.  Storage bins for putting away winter clothes (at last! and I'm still wearing long sleeves because it's cloudy and distinctly not warm this morning.)  Summer toys.  Hair scrunchies and pins.  Soap of various kinds (including two Kiss My Face shower gels and three of my favorite Palmolive dish soaps.)  Two carts got packed into four storage bins of loot.  We then turned in our employee and spouse discount cards.  From now on we're just regular ol' customers, but at least we're armed with the secret knowledge of cost and can find the best deals on stuff.  Even without the discount, most of the stuff at my old store is still the best deal around, Walmart included.

When I got home, surprise!  Incredibly gorgeous roses, a full dozen of a variety called Papaya, and a teeny tiny miniature rose with quarter-sized flowers for the rock garden.  A chocolate cake declared:  Happy Quitting Day!

I love my family.

This morning I'm filled with enthusiasm and relief.  We have a full day of getting medical, dental and financial stuff done and I can just do it without thinking about how I won't have writing time and the house is a wreck and I won't get anything accomplished before it's time for me to return to work again.  That's been the killer:  on my days off I try to catch up on critical household stuff I've fallen behind on, and never get even half done before I go back to work.  I often had three days in a row which got me just within sight of my goals with maybe a few hours to spare for writing and art before I returned to work.  If I had one day off, zero writing and art would happen because I had to devote all my time to laundry, dishes, and if I was lucky, some weeding or some such outside.

The mile-high sea of grass that's been mocking me is now shivering in fear.  Yes, your days are numbered, as are the days of the endless weeds and the patches of surviving blackberries in the developed areas.  

There's lots to keep me busy, not just for the summer, but for a lifetime.  I'm glad to get back to it.  Retail was a fun ride, as always, but it's time to get back to my real work.  

Birds, Plants, Catching Up and Poop

Today I began the process of catching up.  Hopefully I'll complete that process by the end of this weekend.

Why, Kami, what in the world would you have to catch up on?

Glad you asked.

(Dangit!  I know better than that!)  Please, go on.

Writing/Marketing

Laundry

Tiling

Gardening stuff

Vacuuming/dusting

Barn modifications (always a hoot)

Paperwork/filing

Notice, dishes are not on the list.  I'm all caught up.  Yay!

I had to put up two more bird feeders to handle the overflow, and I'm glad I did because we had a beautiful visitor today.  We've seen him before (last year, and for some reason I didn't mention him in this blog,) just one visit but it was memorable.  I hope he sticks around this time and maybe brings his black-headed grosbeak friends.  Why they call them black-headed grosbeaks is beyond me, btw.  I mean c'mon, what's the first color that strikes you when you see this bird?  Is it his black head?  I think not.  How about flaming orange grosbeak?  Or maybe safety first grosbeak.  

If you read the cool facts portion of the link, you'll see that the female of this species is particularly sneaky.  I prefer a relationship based on honesty, but hey, if the guy grosbeak won't sit on the eggs, I guess a girl grobeak's gotta do what a girl grosbeak's gotta do.  

In the sad news category, my poopyhead camera which had healed itself has unhealed and once again won't focus on anything except when I resign myself to point and shoot.  This means no flower closeups and no bird zooms until either A. I can teach myself how to focus the camera by eye (not easy with the digital interface) B. the camera heals itself again C. I can figure out why the camera focus mechanism keeps going out and fix it myself D. get the camera repaired ($ouchie$) E. replace the camera ($$$ouchie$$$) or F. some extremely clever option that will come to me any day in which no time, money or cursing will be expended in the operation of this camera ever again.  I'm particularly annoyed that it decided to stop working because I've had so many great opportunities to snap some stunning pics of our many birdie visitors and the hundreds of flowers that are in bloom in the garden.  Poop, I say, poop.

Great News

I got a real booster of an email this morning:

Sorry for the impersonal email, but it's much quicker to bcc everyone than to send a bunch of individual emails.

I just wanted you to know that your story is still under serious consideration for an upcoming issue of Flash Fiction Online. I don't want to make anyone too optimistic -- we'll only be able to accept about 25% of the people who are receiving this email -- but I wanted to make sure you knew that we hadn't forgotten about you or lost your story in the mail.

Regards,
Jake Freivald
Editor
Flash Fiction Online

I know I don't have a one in four chance of getting published.  This isn't gambling, after all.  It'll measure up to the other stories, or it won't.  

There's an additional artistic factor.  Many editors end up with conscious or unconscious themes to the stories they choose for a particular issue, even if it's 'I want all these stories to be completely different from each other.'  Every year that I coordinated the writer's workshop for OryCon, I had only one year where I had trouble grouping a story with another (I put the writers into pairs.)  For whatever reason I had one Mech Warrior story and no other robot story or military SF or franchise story, but I did have a pro author with experience in writing for Mech Warrior (what are the odds? heh) and so I made a quirky group with that pro and another pro that had deep experience in short stories.  The other submitting author had a short fantasy that was about the same writing level as the other submitting author in the group.    

The point is that fiction writers and their stories tend to come together in a serendipitous fashion, and serendipity may not be on my side this time.  Still, I'm happy and honored to have made it this far.  Publication with Flash Fiction Online would be a real feather in my cap.  By the way, if you don't read them, do.  I never have enough time to read, which makes Flash Fiction Online particularly wonderful.  

Mr. Freivald didn't have to send out the update, and I hope he didn't get a bunch of emails back (except quick thank yous, although even those might be considered clutter) pestering or abusing him.  You'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't, at what people send to editors given the slightest excuse, which they take as some form of provocation.   Anyway, it was very nice of him to take the time.  The email certainly made my day.  Now, on to writing, and tiling, and cleaning, and all that.  I'm sure my work will be particularly flashy today.  

Cleaning

There's something exhilarating, a definite sense of freedom, when I clean house.  The daily drudge work (with the exception of vacuuming--I've always liked vacuuming) I could do without, or at least have less laundry and dishes.  But I actually enjoy getting places cleared out, making things shine.  Today I cleaned out the woodstove.  The glass is all sparkly and the ashes are swept out.  I also swept the stairs (they're carpet but I find sweeping is faster and actually does a better job than vacuuming most of the time) and cleared out part of my office in preparation for tiling.  

Yep, I'm getting back to tiling my office.  

If I could get this same sense of cleaning out and freedom and exhilaration when I edit a story, that would be so fabulous.  Unfortunately I end up pinched between Charybdis (that sinking feeling that I'm making things worse, not better) and The Scylla (getting frustrated with the many layers involved in editing and the fact that it's both a big scope (plot) and small scope (line editing) problem that requires many passes.)  I get exhausted by the immensity of the task.  

Typing at normal pace I can write a first draft in three months.  I can write a Nano in a month, also.  But regardless of how quickly I write that first draft, it takes years to edit it.  That's normal.  A book should take years to put together.  A very skilled writer can write a passable book in six months or less.  Yes, I include romance writers in this category.  There's no doubt in my mind that they're skilled, talented and prolific writers, all traits I admire, and I won't hear a thing said against them.  However, if you gave a romance writer 2-3 years to write a book, you'd end up with a real masterwork.  Someone like me who isn't as skilled at editing would have garbage at the end of six months.  After 2-3 years, I have something passable, or maybe even pretty good.  The time frame, though, really wears me down.  It's not so much the hours.  I love to write, and I even like to edit at times.  It's the number of times going through the manuscript.  

Sometimes I get lucky and I don't have major plot issues on a first draft.  Yay me, because that saves a great deal of headache in the long run.  Unfortunately, more often than not there are plot and structure issues, character issues, and other major stuff that has to be addressed.  By the time that's sorted out, the line editing is a mess, flow is an issue and often there are stylistic issues as I struggle to find character voices, the feel of the setting and other things.  The trick is to make as few passes as possible so that the writing still has freshness and fire.  Each time a writer goes through the document they improve things, but they also polish off some of the good stuff.  It's like a grain of rice.  You start out with this rough, richly-colored grain that's typically too coarse to enjoy (at least in quantity.)  If you polish off some of that coating you get something more palatable, but you also lose nutrients and that wonderful color.  Flavor is also lost.  Polish too much and you end up with short grain white rice--incredibly bland but fully digestible, and also constipating.  Heh.

Like everything else it's a balancing act.  As I improve my editing skills I'm sure it won't be such a chore, but for now, editing is the endless laundry and dishes of the writing world.

They're Here!

I finally snagged some pics of the grosbeaks.  Today was probably the most bird-diverse day we've ever had.  The grosbeaks mingled with juncos, varied thrushes, house finches, chickadees, robins, stellar jays, scrub jays and our lone nuthatch.  All at once.  Unfortunately it was raining when they all came so I could only sneak out once during a dry spell when the grosbeaks had chased the juncos out of the feeder.  By looking at our feeder it appears that we have only a slightly heavy sunflower seed mix, but looks are deceiving with this mix from Costco.  It includes quite a few shelled sunflower seeds.  It also has peanut pieces, but I don't know if the grosbeaks like those.  They're really picky about what they want as far as feeder food.  If you don't have enough sunflower seeds, they'll move on.  Our flock today was about ten individuals, mostly male but a few females.  I've seen as many as a dozen and maybe this year we'll see even more.  They tend to return to the same feeders on their migratory paths so there's an opportunity to get more and more each year as the chicks accompany their parents.

Also new today, hyacinths.  I'm sure they've been around for quite some time in the valley, but seeing them in full bloom here for the first time gave me one of those yay moments.  The low-growing tulips are stretching their necks, and all the early daffodils are open now.  The daylilies are tall enough that the fish don't look silly.  Roses are sending out their first leaves.  The tree peonies are opening their first flush of purple leaves and the regular peonies have buds peeking out.  Primroses are going crazy.  Hostas have their noses poking out.  Pansies have got their faces painted on.  The daphnes are getting ready to pop open while the lenten roses have been open for a good month and are wondering what everyone else is waiting for.  The place is starting to look up.  Maybe someday I'll have a garden that looks good year-round, but for now I have to wait until spring for my show and I'm so glad the opening act has started.

We had just enough sunshine that I managed to dash out and get our Christmas tree from this year planted, and I yanked more baby blackberries and put out slug food.  I know every year I lose quite a bit to slugs and most of the time I shrug it off, but this year I was very disappointed to see that slugs had destroyed several of those kewl tulips.  I don't know what's more heartbreaking--seeing a bud eaten down to just a little color showing or having the stem chewed through and the blossom laying in the mud.  The stub, I guess.  At least I can bring the blossom in.  Die slugs die!  I need to encourage more snakes, although this time of year the snakes are still napping most of the time and won't be eating much in slugs.  

The equinox is the day after tomorrow.  I don't know if I'll be doing anything special except welcoming the day.  I have to work, drat-0.  Maybe I'll celebrate by coming home to a clean house.  That means lots of work tomorrow.  Cleaning out the house is a semi-tradition here at the household on the equinox, not exactly a party, but really rewarding.  The mini-cleans I've done over the past weeks will help set the stage for a great spring cleaning, I hope.  Yay clean house, yay birds, yay spring!  Even when it rains, when the flowers are blooming it's a beautiful day.

Happy Shamrock Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!  Actually, I wish it was simply Ireland's Day, but that would be a bit silly--there's no Germany Day (though Octoberfest sort of applies) or Japan Day (although some folks like joining in the Obon Festival) -- okay, I give up.  Anyway, I'm not very fond of St. Patrick.  It's partially a pagan thing, although there are saints, like St. Valentine, for whom I have a certain fondness.  I'm very fond of Ireland, though, and I'm happy to wear the green.  Hopefully I'll be able to vacation there sometime.  

You know, that sounds kinda goofy.  I'm fond of Irish accents, Irish music both old and new, Irish art, and the Irish myths and legends.  Things get a little fuzzy with what's technically Irish and what's Gaelic of a mixed flavor and what's Norse and all but anyway ... I haven't been to Ireland, so I can't logically say I'm fond of the place and the people.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to find out if I do.  I'm plenty fond of my half Irish husband (from both sides of the family, oddly enough.)  If there's more like him over there, grrrroooowwwwl!

I'm going through another cleaning fit.  Maybe it's because the equinox is sneaking up on us, or the fact that it's raining and I'm in the mood to garden.  What to do with all that energy?  Clear clutter and vacuum seems to be the answer.  I have a desk that I'd planned to take to the dump, but it's been raining every day that both the dump has been open and I haven't been stuck doing something else.  I'd give away the poor thing but I don't think anyone would come all the way out here to take it away.  It's pretty beat up.  At one point it started to fall apart and we rather crudely screwed it back together.  It's solid again but certainly not attractive.

The workouts continue.  I plan to go this afternoon/eveningish, prior to dinner because I don't like to workout with a full belly.  If anything, I prefer to be a little hungry.  Which brings me all the way back around to St. Patrick's Day.  It's time to put the corned beef on to boil.  Got cabbage, got potatoes.  It's a much less expensive dinner to put together than, for example, Yule dinner or Thanksgiving or what have you, and much, much easier to cook.  

Be careful out there.  There's going to be a lot of drinking.  And Happy Not Orange Day!

More Snow? Bring It On!

I haven't built a snowman in what seems like forever.  Today we went overboard and built a snow ogre that I had trouble reaching to create the nose and a spot for the eyes to rest (Rory pinned them in, and he also provided the creative genius and physical skills for the teeth, mustache, eyebrows, branchy hair and the green beard.)  Andrea and I used truck ramps to roll the snowball for the midsection onto the lower section.  Rory lifted the head up.  Orion provided creative options and some help with the shoulders but mostly he worked on his sentinels for the driveway.   He also made the little snowman on a spit for the snow ogre.  If we only had a tractor, we could build a really gigantic dragon--or I guess I could just use good ol' fashioned elbow grease.  That'd be a lot of grease, though.  Might even be bad for me.  Cholesterol being an issue and all.  Or is elbow grease cholesterol free or maybe the good kind of cholesterol?  Anyway, since we were doing the traditional snow stuff anyway we had a couple of snowball fights (I've noticed that concepts like teams and sides are more fluid in snowball fights than other games) and the kids went sledding.  The neighbor kids came over and had fun and then we all had hot chocolate (the adults had adulterated hot drinks.)  The weather couldn't have been better for all this.  I even abandoned my coat at one point.

While rifling around my gardening stuff looking for seeds (it's time to organize and also to get the slow-germinating seeds into their starter pots) I discovered three bags of overlooked tulips, poor things.  They were still alive, so I planted them.  Going from occasional light and warm air to dark and wet and frigid must have been quite a shock.  I hope they make it.  There might be more bags, as that area is still a mess.  I'll try to get that all organized tomorrow.  Then again, all is a very strong term.  Most might be a more appropriate word, or perhaps even some would be about as much as I can expect.  It's a mess that's been around a long time, so it's entrenched.  I wouldn't be surprised to find mice nesting in there, and I've already seen some impressive spiders who've made a very fine home amid the debris.  Yeah, it's that bad.  

As much as I love summer and gardening, I have to say that I'd be thrilled to have more days like today.  This one will last in memory a long time.  I hope everyone else had a great day too. 

Privilege

I think a lot of these questions reveal that the devil is in the details, but it sounded like fun.

Based on an exercise developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, PLEASE acknowledge their copyright. BOLD WHICH APPLY TO YOU:

Father went to college  

Father finished college  Earned a degree in a foreign country that only partly 'counted.'

Mother went to college

Mother finished college  Earned a degree in a foreign country that only partly 'counted.'

Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor

Were the same or higher socio-economic class than your high school teachers  For most, but not all of my life.

Had more than 50 books in your childhood home  Later on.  Not for a long time.

Had more than 500 books in your childhood home (Detail--my parents left their native country with me and a suitcase.  The country they landed in didn't have any books in their native language.  Hence, we had what they'd packed in children's books, what relatives sent to us, and a few books in English.)

Were read children's books by a parent  Here's a question that puzzles me.  Yes, it's a privilege to have good parents, but from the culture it has little to do with socio-economic standing.  It was expected, whether you were raised by dirt-poor farmers or someone very wealthy.  Then came the schism, where the 'noble' or old families had nannies do that, though that was still considered bad parenting and a sign of being spoiled (the parents, not the kids.)  The whole image of under-privileged children living in squalor hadn't permeated Czech home life.  No matter how bad things got, you kept the house clean and the children washed.  If the kids had no shoes, you made them some.  Penniless households had art on the walls and flowers on the table.  I'm sure this is more utopian than reality in some ways, but I have to say that when I visited the home country it was clean, and the only things that were gray and grim and squalid were what the Soviets had built.  Even there, inside the cinderblock apartments, people might have few possessions but they were kept in a loving fashion.  Maybe being Czech should be listed as a privilege?

Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18

Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 (gymnastics, swimming, sports, music--usually through community recreational programs, school or at home)

The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively  With the caveat that almost no one was Czech in media, but as I'm white and during school became English speaking, this one ends up bolded.

Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18

Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs

Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs

Went to a private high school

Went to summer camp

Had a private tutor before you turned 18  (My parents tutored me.  I knew how to read and write to a certain extent before I ever went into kindergarten, though not in English.)

Family vacations involved staying at hotels (big time campers.  Sometimes we'd rent a house with my great aunt and great uncle or with friends of the family, split costs.)

Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18 (eldest child, no nearby relatives except great aunt and great uncle)

Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them

There was original art in your house when you were a child.  My parents painted the vast majority of art in our home.

You and your family lived in a single family house

Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home

You had your own room as a child (for a short time my sister and I shared a room in my great aunt's townhouse.)

You had a phone in your room before you turned 18

Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course

Had your own TV in your room in High School

Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College

Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16  To get to the U.S. we flew.  I'm not sure how that was paid for.

Went on a cruise with your family

Went on more than one cruise with your family

Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up  Of course!  My father was an artist as well as an engineer.  Even when we could afford very little we budgeted for this.  Another devil in the details, much like being read to by a parent.  It points at privilege of good parenting, which at least in the Eastern European culture I was raised in knows no class.  Didn't matter if your house had a dirt floor and you ate little more than potatoes.  You went to the museum at least once.

You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family  Never the amount, but sometimes the grinding of teeth could be heard from a good distance.  Does that count?

Maybe growing up in privilege blinds me to some of the stuff this is pointing at, and I'm sure I have a skewed perspective on my childhood.  It definitely measures a society more American than I am, despite the fact that I am an American--raised and educated in America in a primarily English-speaking household.

We started with nothing.  My father worked for a Chinese newspaper when we moved in with my great aunt and great uncle in their townhouse in Pacifica (Bay Area)--he spoke neither English nor Chinese.  We grew from that to owning our own home, my father making a handsome living as an engineer, but even then he saved up to buy things, including things that would only take maybe a half day of work of his wages.  What privilege is being measured?  Being born into a good, hard-working family which can be found even among the generationally poor, or being born into a financially independent circumstance?  It's apples and oranges in my mind.  You can be born to both and neither, either, or.

For the record, I have a much nicer house than most of my relatives, and my husband earns almost as much as my father did when he worked in San Jose (adjusted dollars.)  I think my kids are less privileged familially than I was, because I'm not as attentive to them and the house as my mother was.  Does that mean that despite my upbringing and family ideals, I fit in with whatever this quiz is trying to measure somehow?  If we made more money, had more savings, would I read more to my kids, take them to more lessons, have more books in the house (although the idea of more books in this house is rather frightening and yet intriguing)?  If I'd completed college would it be more likely that we would have planned to support the kids through college?  I'd like to see what this exercise shows and teaches us.  I do very much like that it makes me think about these things. 

Cleanup

Since I never have enough to do around here, I decided to help Andrea out by steam cleaning her carpet before her dad installed her brand new bed from IKEA (thanks to the generosity of grandma--yay grandma!) If only I'd known. Well, even if I'd known there would be mold growing on the actual furniture, the result would have been the same. It would have to go. But I wasn't prepared to toss out not just her bed, which we suspected was the source of unkempt smell (it wasn't, surprisingly) but her dresser as well. So off I go to the store, where I bought three each of three sizes of white rubbermaid drawers and a clear bin with a blue lid for her storage needs. I thought she'd be put off by the results when she came home, but she was delighted. Thank goodness, because I don't know how these things got moldy in the first place and plastic is not conducive to mold growth. It might have been a problem with the manufacturing, actually, since her bookshelves and computer desk were fine, but I'll never be sure.

It wasn't fun to spend the money but it was fun to get the storage stuff from Elvis, an old man that used to be a woman, a woman who used to be a man, Lucille Ball, a housewife in pjs and curlers, and other riff raff at the store.

Nano is starting in just over an hour. I was going to write today, but cleaning up around here took all the spunk out of me. I don't think I even have any spit or vinegar left. It isn't just bone-weariness. All that dust and mold cleanup done over the last two days left me snuffly and with a sore throat. The boy is snuffly too. Andrea, however, is blissfully asleep in her new bed, and I'm sure she's very happy that she doesn't have to sleep on the futon upstairs like she did last night. I'd love to be asleep too. Maybe I can arrange for that.