Floor Progress

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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 ...

Just for fun ...

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

Copyright © Kamila Zeman Miller, 2011

WorldCon Reno: Renovation Memories

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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?

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

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

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 ...

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

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

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!!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.