I'm Mean

Retail employees see a lot, and some of it, frankly, we don't want to.  Makes us mean.

Take yesterday.  Two girls came in looking to do a little foraging.  These are awful girls, pre or early teens--hard to tell.  I can't help but imagine what terrible parents they must have, but that may not be necessarily so.  I've seen some nasty kids come out of great families, and some great kids come out of the worst situations you can imagine.

Anyway, I was checking and they got into my line.  Yay.  So I was already in a bad mood when they started picking on the customer I was helping ahead of them.  This disabled lady lives a full, independent life and she is tough as tough can be, but sweet and my kids like her a great deal.  I suspect that she knew that the girls were being mean, but accepted what they said at face value when the taller one said, "I like your eyes.  I think they're pretty."  The lady smiled from behind her coke-bottle glasses, her two lazy eyes wandering independently of each other, and said, "Thank you.  I'm just a brown-eyed girl.  You like brown eyes?"
The girl snickered so subtly that I almost missed it.
The lady noticed the shorter girl had zebra-striped fingernails.  "How did you do that?  The lines--they're so clearly defined."
"Oh, we were real careful," the taller girl said, and this time the smaller one couldn't help but smirk.  The nails, of course, were just a paste-on pattern.
I wondered if they thought I didn't say anything because I thought they were amusing, or because they thought I was stupid and didn't realize what they were doing, or because I'm just another mindless drone with no personality too meek to stand up for others.
Actually, I didn't say anything because I didn't want to pick on someone less than half my age and half my size.
Of course now I'm writing this blog post.  So much for that ... I'm not a very nice person.
After they bought their candy they started making the rounds.  Sadly, we didn't catch them, but they stole all the tampons out of the tampon machine in the bathroom.  (So that's why we never have any!  Mystery solved.)  Then they hovered near the birth control/intimates area.  My boss watched them, and overheard something about needing a pregnancy test.  He was too close for them to make the grab.  I guess the condoms they stole last time didn't work.
My cattiness emerged from its long sleep.  I'm not proud of it.  It's just there.  The girls went out the door, back in, out again, back in, circling, trying to get that pregnancy test but didn't manage it.  As far as I know, all they got were the tampons, unpaid-for of course, and the candy, which they forked out a couple of bucks (probably begged for--we've thrown them out for begging for money from customers before) and some coins, and probably used the bag to get more candy for free on one of their many rounds.

The second-to-last time the shorter girl was almost in tears.  "I'm sorry!" she cried to the other girl, who waited outside with a nasty expression on her face.  And I laughed.  Because they were so mean, they couldn't even be nice to each other.  I didn't even feel bad about it.

I know.  I'm terrible.

The last time they came in I laughed at them again, knowing that by this time every employee in the store was watching them and they wouldn't get squat.  I can be mean too, just like them.  It's human.  I think the difference is, I try to spend as little time being mean as I can.  These girls, who want (and often get) everything that adults have with none of the responsibility, who delight in mocking others, and who take advantage of others whenever possible, who steal and lie and cheat and leech off of others and yet are never satisfied, who feel cheated themselves and probably wonder why they can't have what everyone else seems to have, who most likely know that others look down on them and try to believe that it's everyone else's problem ...
Will be unemployable.  Even if they get a job, they won't keep it because they'll get caught stealing.
Will (maybe even soon) end up pregnant and living off of government money, assuming their health lasts long enough to take them into adulthood (age of majority adulthood--I don't know if stunted creatures like them are able to grow up.  That's a terrible thing to realize when you're looking at such very young girls.)
Will likely spend time in jail, wasting precious moments in their lives they will never get back living among criminals who will be mean to them and who will teach them how to become even nastier and less likely to live any kind of life above what the weakest of animals can scrabble together.
Will never know real friendship.  I thought that maybe at least they had each other, until I saw the vicious look in the taller girl's eyes after she turned on the shorter one.  (For spilling the pop they shared, it turns out.)
Will not understand the joy of real accomplishment or know the true value in striving or creating or being part of a community that doesn't despise them.

I hear the song "Mean" by Taylor Swift running through my head.  ... and a liar, and pathetic, and alone in life and mean ....

And I feel badly for them.  The person they picked on is so much better off than they are.  She is an independent, beautiful and kind woman, liked and appreciated by so many in our little town.  Those girls will never get anything from me, but that lady will always have my undivided attention and help whenever she asks for it.  She spared the unworthy a smile and a moment of her time.  They, the poor foolish children that they are, felt superior to her.  They probably always will.  I doubt that they noticed that I was laughing at them because they were too caught up in trying to score emotional/social points on each other.  I know that they didn't realize I wasn't cheering the lady on, and that I planned on writing about them, revealing their petty natures and stunted souls to the world.

I'm just not as nice a person as that disabled lady.

I'm mean.

Books I'm Reading Right Now + bonus griping

I had a really frustrating day at work last week, and one of the most frustrating parts of it is that I can't write about it here, even without naming names and pointing fingers.  Gone are the days when people could vent their spleens without getting sued or losing their jobs or whatever.

Or were they ever here?  I'm in the midst of reading Toward the Brink by Claude Manceron where people got jailed for writing less confrontational and critical stuff.  I guess it's for my own good.  Though it's highly unlikely my boss would ever read it and correctly deduce it's me writing about my job, and though it probably wouldn't cost me my job, it would only make work more uncomfortable.

Speaking of Toward the Brink, I'm having one of those mixed experiences that drive me crazy.  On the one hand, the author puts you right there in the middle of things and makes it feel like everyone is a fully-realized person, which of course they were at the time.  So it's very humanizing.  On the other hand, I'm in the middle of the series and I often feel lost.  I don't think that's the fault of where I started, though.  I think it's the writing style.  The writing often presents as the author sharing a lot of inside jokes and anecdotal material with readers who ought to know everyone involved.  It is, after all, the French Revolution.  And who hasn't heard of the Marquis de Sade? (for example.)

And sure I've heard of him.  But when the author starts bandying around first names I've never heard and whips out a bunch of nicknames of various people associated with him, I turn into the most ignorant person in the world.

So although I'm loving the information and the sense of place and culture and people, I just bought a copy of 1776 by David McCullough which I know is going to be a much more reader-friendly book, and I'm tempted to set the intelligent and fascinating Manceron for the equally intelligent, accessible and engrossing McCullough.

That probably makes me a bad person.  I'll keep on a keepin' on with Toward the Brink.  But if 1776 ends up on my nightstand and I accidentally start reading it after my bath when I settle in to bed tonight, I won't be the least bit surprised.

PS--I got 1776 for $10 at a used book fair.  I was all pleased with myself until I saw the fully illustrated version (with maps!) for $25 at another booth.  I was good and stuck to my budget, but there was much pouting, lip-quivering and whining.  My poor friend R and the girl bore up to it well.  They're so good to me.

Blood, Sweat and Seeds

When I got home I had two M&Ms cookies with a cone of whipped cream on top, and then I went to work.  You'd think after a full day at the day job I'd want to put my feet up, or maybe at least cook some dinner and watch a movie or something.

That would be far too sensible.

We had rain in the local forecast, and I remembered I had all these old seeds I hadn't gotten around to planting.  Bags and bags of them.  And I thought, I'll just scatter them around and the rain will soak them in and what comes up, comes up.

But of course it's never that simple.

First I planted some ancient marigold seeds out in the veggie garden, and then I checked out the area I had planned for my mass old seed dumping ground.  It's about sixty feet long and ten to twenty feet wide, depending on the section.  The kids had, as instructed, dug out the majority of the blackberry roots, so I figured I'd just toss the seeds on the bare ground and go inside and have dinner.  I grabbed a rake (big mistake) and went to break the crust on the soil.

Hard as a rock.  Seriously.  I felt so betrayed!  Normally the soil under blackberries is quite soft.  They form their own sort of (evil) duff that keeps the soil moist and suppresses weeds.  And a few of the areas were like that, but way too much of it felt like baked clay so hard that I understood why even the grass hadn't started to take root there (yet.)  First I debated attacking the areas with a hoe.  Couldn't find one.  Then I considered  a shovel.  Mind you, this is after work, and I knew it would get dark soon, and breaking up rock hard dirt with a shovel is no light, quick task.

The impending darkness settled it for me.  I would get the big rototiller.

One sweaty, sore, throat-sore-from-suppressed-cussing half-hour later I had the whole section tilled.  I scattered the seeds, keeping particular kinds more or less together, raked the now (mostly) soft dirt to roughly cover at least some of the seeds in case they needed to be covered to sprout, and went home.  I had just enough time to gather eggs from the coup and close the chickens in for the night before the dark swooped in.  I had to turn on lights when I came in so that I could find my way around the house.

So now I'm thinking (I'm crazy that way) that I'd just put a whole lot of work into seeding an area that may or may not have viable seeds scattered on it.  So sometime this week I'm going to do yet another ridiculous thing.  I'm going to get a bunch of fresh seeds of something tall, bomb-proof and pretty, like cosmos or baby's breath or bachelor buttons (or maybe all of the above), and mix it with a big bag of potting soil and scatter that around the area as well.

That should fix it up real nice.

And then I'll be done.

Except for putting in the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and other stuff.

Oh, and I have a few more discounted bulbs to put in.

But then I'll be done.

Really.

Mostly done, anyway.

Remember when you were a kid?

I'm at the coast working on book covers.  On the way, my DH and I were talking about hot lava.  Who didn't play games where if you touched the ground while going across the monkey bars or jumping from rock to rock or leaping from the swings (and many other things, probably some of which have been banned from playgrounds because they've been deemed unsafe and schools don't want to get sued because little Kami broke her arm) you fell into molten lava?  There was molten lava friggin' everywhere on the playground.  Talk about unsafe!  Sometimes we had hot lava in the living room and you had to leap from the sofa to the easy chair and then launch yourself into the hallway to make it to bed alive.

It was a great talk, and a fantastic warm-up for putting together my latest book cover project.  I giggled the whole time I worked on it.

It's good to be a kid sometimes.  Maybe even most times.  And then, once I cleared the molten lava hazards and finished playing with crayons, I got back to being an adult and had prime rib and wine for dinner followed by a cheesecake truffle for dessert.  Yum!

A Married Couple at Work

Soon now, our house sitters will move in (note to self, have to clean the kitchen!) and we'll be off for the much-anticipated work weekend.

My DH and I work really well together.  At least, it works really well for me.  We succeed at the dueling keyboards model of going out to dinner, which we don't call going out to dinner unless that's the actual focus.  Most of the time it's going out to Wifi at a place that has food because our chosen work time conflicts with mealtime.  We also succeed at the dueling keyboards model of hanging out around the house, and often bounce ideas off of each other when we take breaks for food, to stretch, or to deal with animal stuff.

We had a great time working at home together, during that all-too-short time period when we were able to do that.  I think we both worried that we'd see too much of each other and get sick of each other, but that didn't happen.  Maybe spending hours and hours not talking to each other with only mouse clicks and keyboard keys getting tapped in rapid succession helps shield us from over exposure.  But I don't think I'd ever get tired of hanging around my DH.  He's the kind of sunshine that won't give me a sunburn.

So we're both working hard to get to the point where we can both work full time at home, and so that I can travel with him on some of his trips overseas.  Not all of them.  Someone needs to hold down the fort, and we do have dogs.  I don't think the cats and chickens would miss us very much.  They love anyone who feeds them.  But Chase, and our red-eared hounds Brian and Finn, tend not to eat when we're away. I'm not exaggerating.  I have family members and former house-sitters who can attest to this.  As a result, I'm nervous about being away for more than a few days.

But I would like to visit with some of the people and see some of the places he's connected with.  Really wonderful people, living in legendary or beautiful or exotic or all-of-the-above places.  It's funny how life works out.  The introvert travels and meets tons of people while the extrovert stays home.

It's funny, too, that both my DH and I have been athletes most of our lives, but we both work at a physically demanding job that requires hours and hours of sitting employing small muscles instead of the great big muscle groups.  I like it.  And I look forward to focusing on that work.  You can bet, though, that we'll be walking on beaches and maybe even running or sparring with bokken.  We'll make the time, somehow.  It's going to be a jam-packed working vacation and play is integral to our working life together.  Without the physical stuff, my mental stuff languishes.  And my DH is a genius physical sort of guy.  He inspires me to belly dance, and keep in shape, and keep some sort of semblance of physical prowess good enough to defend myself if I need to.

He doesn't just inspire my physical self.  (Rrrow!)  He inspires me in all aspects of life, so I guess what I'm really anticipating during our time together is a kind of holistic inspiration. That sounded way fuzzier than I meant--but it's true in a very real sense.  That inspiration will go into the skull machine, and out the words and art and maybe even music will come.

We may not talk to each other, but the communication is there.  We're going to get a lot of stuff done as a result, way more than we'd get done individually.  I tell my kids and it always proves to be true, at least in our family.  Two people working together can get way more than twice the work done than two people working independently.  Weird, but it works for us.

Hopefully, by this weekend, you'll see a lot of new stuff up on the Wyrd Goat website as a result of our working retreat.  I'll keep you posted.

Morning Wake Up

I had one of those moments yesterday morning, where you wake up and realize you'd forgotten something very important and now there was no way to make up for it.

I cleared out the fridge of leftovers that I knew no one would eat.  Lamb pot roast I'd forgotten to freeze went to the dogs.  They of course gorged themselves and then promptly got sleepy-eyed, though no one went so far as to actually nap.  Eggshells, coffee grounds and banana peels for the roses.  They love that.  Easy enough to tuck it under the mulch.  And then I took some leftover rice, quinoa and a few cooked veggies out to the chickens, and realized that I hadn't shut them in.

I called to no avail.  I saw no sign of them.  I walked around the lower pasture with a sinking feeling, looking for the telltale bits of wings and legs and feathers everywhere.  No sign.  But no sign of them around either pasture, either.

I dumped the leftovers--if the goats got into it it wouldn't hurt them--and slogged back to the house.  I had to get ready for work.  I told the boy that if he found the bodies to please bury them.  I felt about 4 inches high and fifty feet wide, creeping along like some vile fungus into the car.

And that's when I saw them.  They were bright-eyed and looking to me for their morning snackies.

You can bet I shut them in last night.

I didn't have time to raise chicks this year.  If I lost my dear biddies, that would be it for eggs, for stroking their smooth feathers while they spread their wings and tucked their legs waiting for the attention, no more carrying them tucked in one arm like a baby, and no more giggling with the girl as she gets one to perch on her arm with the declaration that this was redneck falconry in action.

But they're still here.  It's a very good thing.

The Pace, She Quickens

The end is in sight.

I've been working on the new Masks cover for what seems like forever.  Now I only have a few details left, maybe a half day's work (which will take me two days) and I can get started on the cover for Confidante.  With any luck, I'll put up Confidante and reissue Masks with the new cover by the end of the month.  They might even go up during my super-secret working retreat this week.

Work on the third book is stewing, perhaps even boiling over.  I want to write on it sooo badly, but I think the build-up before putting more words on the page is good for me.  I've already decided to change a bunch of stuff in the beginning, so it's fantastic that I haven't made my way halfway through the book before I discovered I had better ideas for where and when and how to start.

In other writing news, work progresses on the origin story for the Gelantyne mask at a more sober pace.  There's something lurking in there that I haven't found yet.  I want to introduce another character that's only been mentioned once so far but will probably be a huge element in this story, and I'm not sure how.

The maker of the Gelantyne mask is a middle-aged woman who took over her father's theater mask business.  She came from a broken family and hasn't opened herself to the possibilities that love brings to pull herself away from work long enough to give love a chance.  Then one day, two strange men show up on her doorstep. Not that unusual a circumstance for someone whose father's fame and reputation had spread as far as it has, but these men want something more than a theater mask.  It seems innocent at first, of course, just another mask, but something about them, especially the one whose voice and hands draw her to stand ever closer, suggests terrible danger.  To fill this contract, she may risk more than a broken heart.

Passion and Boredom

I have too many writing and cover projects and not enough time!  This is a good thing.

I've been thinking about boredom and passion lately.  We have some customers at my day job that show up several times a day because they're bored and the most interesting thing to do is to come over and shop.  I'm not knocking this--but I wonder what it means to be bored, and what various passions mean to quality of life when measured against a lifetime.  

I haven't been bored since I was a child.  I used to be bored all the time.  Restless.  It seemed like there was nothing to do.  I ended up reading and that cured it.  Suddenly I didn't have enough time to read.  I'd gripe about having to go up and eat dinner with the rest of the family when I wanted to at least finish the chapter.  Does that mean that obsession or passion or addiction is the end to boredom?  If so, is alcoholism any less valid a 'cure' for boredom than painting or writing or touring the world?  

I've known people who drank because they were bored.  I wouldn't want to spend my time that way, but if they have nothing better to do, should I judge them (assuming that they aren't harming anything except their own livers)?  What about people so bored with life that they want to move on?  It may not seem possible to most people, but I know it happens.  

I don't think many of our ancestors were bored.  Perhaps some, some of the time, but survival--eating, holding on to shelter, watching out for predators and enemy humans--kept things from becoming dull.  Not to mention village/clan politics kept things lively.  If you didn't get along with your neighbors or family, moving out meant big risk, so you had to deal and dealing can be tough.  With increased safety and leisure time, boredom has more opportunity to take root.  And what does it signify?  Luxury?  Lack of imagination?  Lack of coping mechanisms in brains designed to survive in what used to be a very harsh environment?  

I don't know.  Stuff to think about, when I have time, assuming I find the time between projects.  Sometimes it feels like I'm losing ground when I finally get to sleep.  Not enough hours in the day.  And that, too, is a product of our modern age, though perhaps the builders of our ancient and mighty monuments, be they pyramids or cathedrals, felt that same press of time as their projects sometimes required the work of generations ....

Spring bliss

Why I love spring in the Pac NW:

Storms, especially lightning storms.  They're rare here and seldom have ground strikes, so I consider them lovely rather than something that's terribly hazardous like they might be in other parts of the world.  

Those sudden, blustery winds and downpours followed by sun and rainbows.  If they're fast and hard enough, sometimes I can smell the ocean in the westerlies.

The contrast of dark-bellied clouds and bright blue sky.

Glorious heat to bask in one day, sweet coolness the next.

Flowers everywhere!

The first flights of bees at my tiny heather blossoms and pussywillow blooms.

Daylight stretching and opening up so fast it seems unreal.  We'll be gaining over an hour of daylight in a single month.

New leaves.  Bright greens, yellows, pinks, reds, purples, sometimes draped like lace, sometimes sharp and clean, always beautiful.

And I love spring fever.  Even the goats kick up their heels and dance in the field.

I love spring.

Sore

I had a big weekend, thanks in part to the boy and the girl.  Much gardening was accomplished by all, and man am I sore.  No one got sunburned, though.

Beans are in, broccoli is in, beets are in, radishes and turnips are in, we have borage planted at the ends of rows to attract bees, and we harvested some rhubarb in the process of cutting off flower heads.  I heard from someone that they have rhubarb that never flowers.  Must be nice.  Mine seem to always want to, but I foil their sexy plans as much as possible.

Also, big excitement (I know, I'm such a plant nerd) in the asparagus patch.  I've finally had my first good-sized spear come up.  Will I cut it?  Heck no!  I probably could, but these darned asparag--uh, asparagi?  Asparaguses?  Asparagus plants have been struggling for years, and I want them to get so big and strong that they become pests.

Looks like it'll be a good year for peaches, cherries, apples, pears, Asian pears, and marionberries (yum!)

I'm really looking forward to seeing what the garden will do this year.

Still to plant:  The darned tomatoes, eggplant and peppers I've been potting up, zucchini, cucumbers, sunflowers, plus some ornamentals and herbs I've started from seed.  It should be a big and fun garden this year, assuming our weather cooperates.  My soil is at about 60F.  Really, really good.  It's just a bit too cool for squashes and cukes, cooler than I like for tomatoes, and way too cold for peppers.  I'll try the eggplant about the same time as the tomatoes.  The peppers will have to wait.

So, I'm curious.  Am I pretty much the only person who goes out to the garden with a meat thermometer?

An Observation by Captain Obvious

More simple food:

When I'm not being lazy, I take lunch to work.  I was lazy for a long time, and I put on a lot of weight.  I didn't make the connection simply because my body's default is to gain weight regardless of what's going on.  Weekend off?  Weight gain.  Working seven days in a row?  Weight gain.  Visiting relatives, taking the animals to the vet for boosters, reading about food ... yep.  Weight gain.  I even gain weight when I start a new workout regimen.  For real.  (There's actually an explanation for that--I put on muscle much faster than I lose fat.  I have my father's super-athlete genes, and it's a good thing.  Once the muscle is on, assuming that I keep on working out, I burn fat faster at that point.)

Anyway, I just assumed I was gaining weight because I changed shampoos or something.  But it turns out it was the soup I had at lunch every day.  I tried to pick the lower calorie ones, and I always bought the smallest bowl.

Well, ladies and gents, I started bringing homemade soup to work and voila!  Weight loss.  I doubt that my soups have fewer calories than the store ones.  But they don't have a ton of salt, or added sugar, or any preservatives except what is found in the one tiny bouillon cube I put in.

Most people would probably find my soup gross, but here's the recipe anyway.  It's tasty enough (to me) that I can eat it every day.

A couple handfuls of frozen normandy mix veggies (less if you buy the veggie mixes with smaller chunks--I use the Kirkland brand which has big pieces.)

2-ish cups of water -- please don't measure.  Have some pride!  Eyeball what's going to fit in your soup bowl with all the veggies figured in and go with that.  The veggies don't have to be covered.

2-3 medium or large frozen ravioli--I like spinach and cheese.  Use more if they're small.

Dill to taste

Garlic to taste

Salt to taste (watch out! the bouillon cube has lots.  I use a small pinch)

1 bouillon cube (I favor chicken)

Put in the water, cube, veggies and seasonings and let it heat up a bit.  A few minutes later (mine usually hasn't started to boil yet) add the frozen ravioli.  

I top it with cottage cheese.  Seriously.  That's the part that my family and coworkers think is gross, but it is awesome.  The effect is similar to tortilla soup where they put in cheese and sour cream.  Same flavor family.

Regardless of what you eat, I think if it's more or less fresh and more or less homemade, you'll be better off.  You have to know that when they make soups and stuff in a factory setting, they watch the quality but they'll throw in stuff that's 'good enough' that you might, given your own choice, toss out.  Cooking my own food gives me lots more control over what I eat.  It makes my inner control freak very happy, happy enough that one of these days I really ought to try making big batches of chicken broth for the freezer so I don't have to rely on the bouillon cube thingy.  It's tasty, but I have to not think about what quality of chicken (and what parts) they used to make it.  Ick!

Silly Farm Stuff

Cute mental picture of the day, if you like chickens.

Beatrice, the buff orpington, and Sophie, the silver lace wyandotte, excited about strawberries.

I had about five strawberries leftover whose skins were starting to get dark and they were becoming unappetizing.  Not to the chickens, though!  They spear them and then run around with the strawberries stuck to their beaks before shaking them off.

Beatrice wasn't as thrilled as Sophie, for whatever reason.  She kept checking out different strawberries, as if hoping that the promise of all that red wonderfulness would pan out to something bigger.  She kept reacting to eating a bite with an expression I swear said, "Really?  That's it?"

I've been getting only one egg a day.  Comparing eggs, it looks like the biddies are alternating.  They both seem healthy.  I think it's the on-again, off-again weather.  After a couple of days in the 70s and 80s, we're back to the 60s and rain.

My tomatoes were terribly disappointed.  Their leaves looked very disapproving when I checked on them this morning.  Maybe even judgmental, as if the rain were my fault.  If they could have pointed at me, I'm sure they would have.

Exercise--It's not just for Brains

I'm thick in the middle (gawd, I hope I'm at least halfway done!) of the new Masks cover.  I like it a lot better already.  The tablet I got for cover-making is working very, very well.  It makes the process tons easier.  And, unlike what they say about old bitc-er, dogs, I am learning some new tricks.

As kewl as all this artmaking is, it's exhausting.  Like writing, art is a serious strain on the ol' muscles, tendons, bones, ligaments, brain--everything.  Unlike most other physically demanding thingies, though, the way to take a break is not to put your feet up and have a cookie.  (Darnit, now I want a cookie!)  The best thing is to go for a walk, or a jog, or hiking, or swimming, or really pretty much anything that involves the big muscle groups for a change.

So, after being bad some more and typing here, I'm going to practice what I preach and take a little walkie in my garden.  Heck, I might even put on my good walking shoes and take the dogs for a walk.

Hmm.  Three dogs, one person ....

Maybe I'll just take me for a walk.

Evening Update:  I think I'm close to finishing the Masks cover.  I could use about three more days off to finish all the covers I'm backlogged on, but then if I got them all in a row, my backside would be really, really flat.  Even with frequent walkies.

Sophie's in a Snit

Sophie, our little silver-laced wyandotte hen, was being especially poopyheaded today.  As the animals are my sole responsibility for much of this month, I decided to scrub all the water containers during the last moments of daylight and fill them with fresh water.  You'd think my biddies would appreciate this.  Sophie, not so much.  As soon as she saw me with their self-filling waterer, she started giving me 'tude, mainly in the form of stretching her neck and snaking her head side-to-side.  Then, when I turned my back to open the gate, bang!  Both feet and a bill, right into the back of my calf.  "Hey!" I yelled at her.  Bang! again.  I managed to get out and clean out the water container.  On the way back, I noticed she was waiting for me, so I set the waterer down.  As I came in the gate I scooped her up.  As usual, she submitted (cutely, btw) by crouching down and spreading her wings a little.  I petted her for a bit before I went out, picked up the waterer and carried them both back in.
Beatrice was happy with the fresh water, and sampled a bit.  Sophie started giving me 'tude again!  So I menaced her with my shoe.  She didn't peck it, but maybe I'll have her trained like we trained our old rooster.  He hated shoes and boots so much, he attacked them rather than our tender legs.
Silly Sophie.  I think she's laying kinda sporadically, too.  Tomorrow I'll set out some crushed oyster shells, and maybe I'll get them some sunflower seeds.  They might be getting deficient in something.  And if that doesn't fix her temperament, I'll know she's definitely deficient in one major area:  Manners.

A good day's work, plus dessert

Just finished editing (as finished as any writer is with editing, anyway--I'm sure something else will occur to me in the morning) Confidante, the sequel to Masks.  It always feels good to come to the end of a book, but then I want to start right away on the next one.  It doesn't matter if it's a first draft, an edit, a revision, whatever.  Same feeling.

We've had gorgeous weather, which makes me feel more tired after dark.  What's with that?  It's not yet 10pm local time and I'm ready for my hot bath and then a nice long snooze.

For those of you not allergic to strawberries:

I got a big pack of strawberries on sale the other day.  My favorite way of having them is to slice them up, put a little sugar on them (like, 1/2 a tsp), and then wait a couple of minutes for them to release some nice, red, sweet liquidy syrupy stuff that I'm sure there's a technical term for that I don't know.  That's the time to put either cream or ice cream on them.  Yum!  I had a bowl for dessert today.  Delicious.  And the best part?  Normally to feel sated I like to have two big scoops of ice cream.  With the strawberries, which aren't nearly as bad for me as ice cream, it took less than a quarter cup of ice cream and I was happy.  Healthier, yummier than just plain ice cream, and fewer calories.  Can't beat it; guess I'll have to eat it.

Every Possible Combination

I haven't done a mean post about customers lately. See? I can be good! Except I had one the other day that I just can't resist being mean about.

She came in and let me know she was from out of state, which apparently in her language is code for don't hassle me with my return. (Now now, don't have too much fun guessing what her home state is. Be nice!) Whatevs, it's not like returns bother me unless they're clearly user-damaged and/or a form of free rental. Anyway, she puts a headlamp, like the kind you'd wear in a cave, and a very sticky hummingbird feeder--the easy fill kind--on the counter. "This doesn't work and this leaks," she told me. "I just want another headlamp, but the hummingbird feeder is my mom's and she decided she just wants her money back."

"What's wrong with the headlamp?" I ask, truly and purely innocent.

"It doesn't work."

"Maybe the batteries are dead. Here, let me test them." I start to open it up.

"Actually, I think they put in the wrong ones. Both of them are positive, and it needs one positive and one negative battery."

Luckily she didn't notice my eyes popping out of my head. I put them back in discretely. "Maybe we can try flipping one of them over," I suggest very, very gently, trying not to fall over and roll around on the ground laughing. And I feel bad for wanting to laugh, because seriously, lots and lots and lots of perfectly fine and smart people do just fine without knowing the first thing about batteries and how they work. But ... still. I would have laughed if I wasn't trying to figure out a way to help her without embarrassing her.

"Oh no," she said. "I tried that. I tried every possible combination and it still doesn't work."

"Okay," I said. "I'll tell you what. I'll test the batteries to see if one or both of them are dead, and you can go get another headlamp. Okay?"

"Okay. I'll want to test it first to see if it works."

"I don't blame you. We can do that."

So she leaves and true to my word, I test the batteries. And they are whack the top green, fully charged. I put one of them + side up, and the other I flip over. They're the flat kind with the rough bellies, so the stamp showing what pole is what is only stamped on one side. I close her up, click, and voila! There is light.

It's like magic. Seriously.

I knew then that the hummingbird feeder was perfectly and utterly fine. I bet that when they put it together after they filled it, one of three things happened. They put the gasket and the washer/bar thingie (see? I don't know what it's called but I'm not stupid!) in the wrong order, they misthreaded it when they put it together, or they either forgot to set the bar to 'feed' or put it together in such a way that the feed/fill bar were in the wrong place and couldn't be adjusted.

Was I going to say crap to her? Heck no! That would be truly stupid.

"Hey," I said when she came back. "I fixed it!"

"How'd you do that?" she asked, amazed.

"I flipped one of the batteries over. Do you want to see?"

"No, thanks."

"Did you want the new one instead?"

"No," she said, hopefully pleased that I was giving her power of choice and treating her like the good customer she was, "if it works I want it." She took the headlamp and clicked it on and off several times to satisfy herself.

We did the return on the hummingbird feeder, and she went on her merry way. And that's when I realized that she had said something kinda dumb.

She'd tried every possible combination, she'd said.

Sorry, dear. You should know better.

But again, to her credit, I have this terrible fear of electronic things blowing up if I put them together wrong. She may have been afraid of shorting it out or something if she put one of the batteries in upside-down. I don't blame her.

Still.

Hee.

Weather Whiner

Here I am, suffering at our local McMenamins, eating fish and chips and trying out a new drinkie. (Bourbon Furnace--recommended as a nice alternative to a hot buttered rum or hot toddy if you like hot, sweet drinks with a little zip, which I do.) I've made quite a bit of progress on Confidante and I'm excited about re-releasing Masks with a new cover at the same time Confidante comes out. My DH is reading weird and funny facebook quotes to me. Life is good.

Life is also, apparently, cold. They (and we know they're all liars!) said that there would be some clearing today with an occasional shower. Well. My tomatoes and I are quite disappointed. They're all inside where it's relatively snuggly and warm, though I was shivering most of the day even with an extra pair of socks on, but the lack of light is going to make them all spindly and unhappy.

I know, I know. This is the Pacific NW. The weather doesn't really start to turn nice until June. Also also, we've had some very nice days, for which I should be grateful. I am. But really, isn't it kinda hard when you get a nice atta boy at work and then get yelled at for the rest of the week?

At least the rain doesn't stress me out, and I don't get depressed. But I do get whiny (obviously) and I'm tired of whining.

I'll still do a wee bit more, though.

I wanted to go fishing todaaaaaaay! Wah!

Jay Lake

Just a quick note before I run out of battery power. Jay Lake had an article written about him in the Sunday Oregonian. There's an e-version on oregonlive. This is a great and very personal story about a smart guy and excellent writer. I hope this brings more exposure to his books. They're very strange and often dark, even horrific, but well worth your time if you don't mind fiction that makes you feel a little grimy afterward. But not grimy in a bad way. In that good way, like when I watch Brazil, or read 1984.

I hope the news re: Jay's liver is very, very good. He'll be updating his blog, which is entertaining, challenging at times, beautiful at others, and always readable. You can link to Lakeshore from my sidebar.

Cover Art--I love my tablet!

I love my Bamboo Create. It has hugely improved my ability to manipulate GIMP. And yes, btw, I didn't have to do anything special for the tablet to talk to GIMP. Essentially, the tablet and little pen thingy (I'm so technically advanced!) work just like my mouse and my pad on my laptop and all that. In fact, I can switch between them quickly and smoothly, using whichever gets me where I'm going the quickest and/or the best.

I'm never sure how effective my covers are, but this was definitely the most technically difficult project I've done. The Masks cover (which I plan to redo pretty soon) involved a lot of repetitive, detailed activity, especially with the filigree on the dark half of the mask. This cover had many, many more layers and employed some skills and tools that I simply didn't have when I did the Masks cover.

Anyway, here it is. This, btw, will be an awesome, awesome anthology. It's not available yet. I'm sure it'll be all over Facebook and stuff when it goes live.

Free the Bird!

I have an excuse for not posting in a long time. No, really. And it's not that I've been working non-stop at my day job, although sometimes it feels just like that. I haven't even been sucked into garden-world, though I did rototill a bit during the good weather, opening up some more ground for the planting that will be coming soon (I hope!)

My Bamboo tablet came in, and I'm learning how to play with it. In the name of learning how to work with the stylus, I played a few rounds of Free the Bird. Man, is it addictive. And cute! OMG it's so cute. And in a couple of minutes I'm going to be searching around online to see if there are additional levels available, because apparently ten is not enough for me.

I'm so bad.

Anyway, I haven't tried the tablet with GIMP yet, but I'll be doing that very soon. Really. Just as soon as I find out about Free the Bird.

Because sometimes, ten levels of cute simply isn't enough.

Update: Wah. No additional levels seem to be available. Heart broken. Tears falling. Back to work, I guess. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiigggggggghhhhhhh

From One Life, Many

Yesterday we had clouds but not much in the rain department, so after a morning of writing I went out and gardened a bit.

The rose I'd planted by Lucky's (our epileptic kitty who passed away not terribly long ago) sat askew. Suspicious, I tugged gently and, sure enough, it came right out. The roots had all been gnawed off.

I'm not sure what critter does this, not for sure. Top of my list is the vole. The cute little mouse-like critters are well-known for destroying what would be a relatively large plant compared to the vole itself (they can take out small trees!) in a relatively short amount of time. Their habit of finding something particularly tasty and hanging out eating on it until it's gone, whether it's a tulip bulb (sigh) or a rose, makes them far more destructive than other critters that may take a bite or two and move on.

Anyway, I had a moment of sadness, followed by irritation, and then I had to do something.

I was on my way to the store, so while I was out I snooped around for another rose. Nothing seemed adequate. I did find some lillies, Midnight Mystery and White Pixels, so I got those to plant to one side. And I went home with a plan.

I have rooting powder sitting around the house--gardeners are weird like that--so I put in some cuttings where the rose used to be, and I'm trying to start the rest of the cuttings from the rose inside the house. I also tried--in vain, I suspect--some rooting compound on the stump and set it in seedling mix. At the moment it looks very convincingly alive, if dormant. It seems to be a nicely-pruned rose waiting to be planted out later in the year. I used a clear plastic container on it so that I'll know the moment roots begin to form without having to disturb the rose itself. The normal-sized cuttings are all in peat pots, and if they take I'll put them out when the roots start to poke out of the pot.

If this works, it may become a strangely wonderful thing. The rose killed over my beloved kitty's grave might become many roses, a whole row that may live on well beyond my own lifespan.

The Beginnings of Things

I've been thinking about openings to books and stories lately. One of my favorite recently-discovered openings actually comes from the Miyazaki's adaptation of Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea universe, Tales from Earthsea.

Two main elements make it work for me. First, the spectacle. Two dragons fighting--what could be more awesome? The second was the mystery aspect. The men on the boat watching the dragons are clearly stunned not only by the appearance of these creatures after a long absence, but the fact that they're fighting. The mystery deepens when a good king is killed by his son, who has recently been acting strangely, and the queen's seeming disinterest when servants fear that the prince has gone missing.

The killer--now we go into the prince's pov, and he doesn't know why he's killed his father.

Simply awesome. It makes me want to read the Earthsea Trilogy. I'm a bit ashamed to admit that I've never read it. My daughter owns it. I may have to sneak away with her books when she's not looking ....

Also on my late-to-read list: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Hunger Games. I've actually started The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and I have to say that the opening is much more quiet than I expected, considering all the hoopla. I don't mind quiet openings at all. It's just interesting, not so much to compare and contrast different openings to try to figure out how they work, but to observe that openings might not necessarily be all about functioning as a sort of marketing tool for a book, but that openings must serve the story. They have to be part of it, and stay in character, so to speak. If the reader is interested in that character (and it may be a setting rather than a human character or it may be something even more abstract--I don't mean character in the literal sense) they'll watch to see what happens next.

Anyway, the movie continued to entertain me after the wonderful opening. I suspect that the books will entertain me too. I'd love to be reading them now, but I'm already juggling two books and four would be a bit much.

Seeds and Armor

Two seed trays, three bags of seedling mix, and a bunch of seeds rubberbanded together. I guess that normal people have potting benches out back or do this in their garage. I'm not normal.

I open the seedling mix bag and discover that it's essentially peat moss with a little vermiculite mixed in. Oh well, I'll know better next year. I got myself a soup spoon for a scoop, but that's for later. First, you gotta dump as much dirt into the middle of the tray as you can and then start spreading it out toward the edges. My favorite part is when I lift the tray three times and smack it (gently!) on the dining table to 'pack' the soil down. After I fiddle around with topping off the low cells, I fill the water-catcher tray with about a half inch of lukewarm water and let the cells soak it up. Ideally the cells will be nice and moist with almost no water left in the bottom.

Ah, nice, dark earth (well, peat moss and vermiculite mix--no dirt here) ready for seeds. Some seeds go one to a cell, some of them two. With the more spendy seeds I put in just one and hope for the best. With the less expensive ones I double or sometimes triple up, with the plan of snipping off all but the nicest one in each cell.

Poor things.

And then I put on the tray's 'greenhouse' cover.

I don't like the things, actually. They promote mold, which then has to be combatted with anti-fungals. But I had this worse problem than mold last year ....

And sure enough, after a trip into town, my daughter rats him out.

"Wizard stepped on your seed trays. Sorry, I couldn't stop him."

I lift the greenhouse lid. Victory! With the soil level slightly below the tops of the trays, and the smaller cell size I selected, plus the tough plastic of the clear lid ....

No kitteh footprints here. Yay!

I felt a little bad for starting my tomato and pepper seeds so late, but you know what? It snowed all day, non-stop. I might still be late-ish, but considering the weather, hedging my bets for a later plant-out might not be such a bad thing. I just hope that my indigo rose tomatoes have enough time and heat to ripen. They look soooo kewl!

Diseases and Taxes

My son just picked up his first tax form and booklet ever. I barely remember the 1040EZ, except that it was, well, easy. Hence the name, I guess.

We use a tax service. It just seems too complicated for us, even using software, not to mention the software isn't exactly cheap either. Also also, we can go in any time during the year (for free! We like free) to have them run a wee little estimate so that we know where we're at as far as owing or not owing. When you're running your own business, this isn't just a great idea. Our preparer told us that, as far as small businesses are concerned, we do really well. Too many don't pay enough taxes during their quarterly periods. They end up owing, and put themselves on a payment plan, meanwhile still paying their regular quarterly taxes for that same year. If they can't make ends meet they become tempted to pay a little less on their quarterly taxes then they ought to, and end up with another year of payments after coming up short for that year ... and they never catch up.

A friend of mine has whooping cough. It's going around in our area, and may be spreading around the U.S. in general. Be careful out there. Check with your doctor or local pharmacist and see if it's a good idea to have a vaccination. They don't last forever, so if you had one as a wee babe, it's probably no good anymore. It's especially critical for folks who are elderly, kids in school, and people with infants in the household less than 2 months (who are too young to be vaccinated, and are also the most likely to die if they catch it.)

The world is wonderful and beautiful and all that, but it's also full of icky diseases. Sometimes it's easy to brush off the idea of vaccinations. Medicine seems like it's pretty powerful. But even the bugaboos that we've supposedly 'conquered,' like chickenpox and pertussis (whooping cough) can still kill, and pretty nastily too.

Be careful!

Tom Riddle Update

We had a little more snow today at the house. I hope that whatever it does overnight, it doesn't keep me from work (again.) It's been quite an odd year for snow. We've had it as late as April Fool's Day before, but nothing that stuck for long, never mind kept people at home from work and forced the snow plow guy to come out.

The cats do not approve.

It's very, very pretty, though.

Speaking of cats, our feral/barn cat, He Who Shall Not Be Named aka Tom Riddle (and he is a tom--an unaltered male--with unknown origins that we refused to name in order to keep up the illusion that he's not actually our cat which makes his entire name fun-ly appropriate) had something weird up with his eye. It looked really bad weird, so bad I thought he might have lost it. He'd been missing for three days, which wasn't really unusual, but when he turned up with yellow smeared over his face, one working eye and ribs poking out I thought he might be in real danger of losing his life. We had a plan in place to capture him and take him to the vet, but whatever had been going on with his eye appeared to clear up on its own. He's still very thin, though. We'll keep a close watch on him. The plan is to catch him sometime this summer and have him fixed, so I don't want to move the timeline up (he might not do well in cold weather after surgery, and I don't think we can keep him locked up in the bathroom without the whole house ending up smelling like a meth lab) and I certainly don't like the idea of catching him *twice* for medical procedures.

So, we'll wait. Wish him luck.

Weather Blahs

Rain is predicted for the next long stretch. That's a normal forecast for this time of year, and most locals react to the news of spring rain with a meh, including me.

Except ....

We had such nice weather this year! So now a lot of people going by my counter are complaining. About rain in the Pac NW? Guess what? Me too.

I guess it's true what they say about contrast. You can't appreciate the sun without a little rain. Only, around here, a little rain is a lot of rain. Constant, icy cold, miserable, wind-blown, unrelenting, soaking rain. Did I mention it's cold? It actually feels colder than the snow did. No joke.

And the beautiful flowers at the store? Splotched and droopy, heavy with rain, the blossoms look like someone spritzed them with bleach and then squished them a little bit before spreading them back out. Not attractive. They're fine, of course. But our spring color is drooping, and it feels like winter will never end.

The ducks and slugs disagree. Best. Weather. Ever.

End of a 244 Year Era!

I heard on the radio this morning that Encyclopedia Britannica has published its last print issue this year, and then, no more. We'll still have it online, of course ...

I bet this last year's edition will become a collector's edition, and that they'll sell buckets of them.

It's a 244 year tradition. I look at that number and think, couldn't they have held out for 250? But with sales reported as being around 8000 last year, I don't think they could afford it.

There we have it, folks. A sign of the end of print books? I don't think so, but print magazines, journals, and yes, dictionaries and encyclopedias, may become casualties of this brave new age.

OMG, I really, really need to save my pennies and buy a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary quick, before they stop printing them! I have a beautiful abridged one that I adore. It's huge, with tiny print and thin pages and it has oodles and oodles of wonderful words in it and sometimes I read it for entertainment.

Just like people used to take a random volume off the shelf and read the Encyclopedia Britannica in their living room for entertainment. Alas! But it will continue, only with an ebook and the person's preferred hot beverage set below the screen level to avoid accidents.

Late Snow Day

Our fluffy gray cat, Carey, came in the door trailing snow from her legs, belly and tail. It's deeper than that, but apparently kittehs don't sink as deep into the snow as I do. My knees and the cuffs of my sweater are soaked--the spots that are exposed above the boots and below the hems and cuffs on my leather coat--from trying to clear out the car and driveway to go to work. Ha. I was so optimistic then. The pic above was taken shortly after I cleared the car off good enough so that it was driveable. Now I'm an hour late to work and it's still snowing buckets out there. It's supposed to melt by 2pm today. Maybe ....

In the meantime, I guess I'll have a second breakfast. I had my first at about 6:30 this morning. I'd expected snow, so I got up early so that I could clear the way to the road and get to work on time.

That didn't work out as planned. I didn't expect it to continue snowing, or for the snowplow's efforts to be in vain. The road has to have plenty of black pavement showing for me to safely make it down the hill. Our free tires that we get from the dealership aren't all-weather tires, and they go bald preposterously fast. The pickup and the two other sedans we own are not running. Not a one. My favorite sedan needs a new starter. It goes ziiiiing! when I try to start the car. The pickup needs a new fuel pump. It'll start if I put plenty of starter fluid in the carburetor, but it'll die again right away. We changed the fuel filter to one of those new-fangled clear thingies and you can see there's no fuel getting to the filter at all. And the no-go, I mean Nova, has been down for a long time waiting for me to accumulate enough money to fix it up. I forget what expensive part it needs to have, but it's almost $600 just for the part.

In short, I'm stuck. But it's beautiful out.

The goats and chickens disagree. I fed the goats, who are staying in the barn for today to the point where they wouldn't even poke their noses out the door when I walked up with their grain. They waited for me inside the barn. The chickens sat on the stoop when I opened the door. Beatrice tipped her head sideways, took a long look at the snow, decided naaaah, and went back into the coop.

So there you have it. A snow day on March 13. Kinda nifty, but couldn't it have happened on my day off?

To peep or not to peep

It's almost chick time.

I both love and hate raising chicks. They're a lot of trouble, but they're also a lot of fun, and sooo cute! Too bad that they poop and peep all day and most of the night.

After the various massacres, we have two very good hens left. We guard them very carefully. I could stand to have a rooster again, I think. I still have hopes that one of the hens will turn out to be broody.

For commercial considerations, hens have had broodiness bred out of them. When a hen sits to hatch her eggs, she stops laying, and she's sort of a nuisance because she'll resist any attempt to collect those eggs she's sitting on. So I completely understand why farmers bred it out ... and yet it's a problem for those of us with little bitty farms who would rather have the hens raise the chicks than to do it ourselves. Commercial places that bother with raising chicks do it with an incubator that automagically turns the eggs and keeps them at the right temperature. When the chicks are born they're transferred to carefully temperature-controlled rooms with automatic feeders and waterers and stuff. Me, I've got a heat lamp, a 20 gallon aquarium, and my office (which is tiled--easier to clean up than the rest of the house.) It's a mess.

I'm seriously considering skipping it this year. And yet ... I'd love to have green and blue eggs again, and maybe a rooster. Who knows? Someone in this batch might be broody ... hopefully not somewhere in the field where she and the eggs will get snatched by a raccoon ....

Bark Dust on the Race Track

Working around a farm: does it make you crazy, or are you crazy to begin with? Based on yesterday, I'd have to vote for number two, because I can't blame any animals (well, okay, one small dog) for my behavior yesterday.

Chase runs up and down along the fence, chasing cars every day. Hence her name. Her previous owner used to let her chase cars w/o the protection of a fenced yard to keep her from running under the tires or potentially getting hit by another car coming along as she retreats, dodges, whatever. It's amazing she survived.

But I digress.

Her happy-making activities have created what I refer to as the racetrack. It's a strip of mud about sixty feet long and 2-5 feet wide with rises at each end that swoop up against the fence. She made those swoops. Seriously. If it were shorter and fatter it would look like a skateboarder tube. That's how many times she's run along this track. She's done this enough that dirt she carries on her paws and dirt she scoots when she takes off from the corner has built up about a foot on each side.

That's a lot of running.

In wet weather she turns into a total mudball. Our other dogs remain pristine and dry by watching the rainy weather from the doghouse or the front porch, a total area that's larger than my living room and quite comfy if their behavior is any indication. Meanwhile the little idio--Chase--is out in the rain running up and down this track, getting soaked and filthy. Which results, eventually, in a bath. She gets more baths than any other animal.

I thought, in order to help her out a bit, it might be nice to cover this track in bark chunks. (Actually, all my life we've called it bark dust. Why dust? I don't know! I don't make up the local slang.) The truck broke down on the way back home (of course) and it had to be towed to our house and very inconveniently placed because the tow truck had bald tires and couldn't make it straight out past the barn.

It was an interesting night.

Anyway, we had two short days of sun, and because of the tow truck drama I wasn't able to unload the bark dust on the first day. No problem! I'll just unload it after work on the second day, because I know it'll rain the following day and we all hate working in the rain, plus Chase would turn into a mudball again before we got it out.

So my very patient daughter and I jumped out of the car as soon as we got home and grabbed the shovels and the wheelbarrow. I quickly change into my should-have-been-work-jeans-but-became-waiting-for-the-tow-truck-pants and we start hauling bark dust to the racetrack. It's already getting dark but I'm sure I can see just fine. For the first two loads. Then it gets kind of iffy. I memorize where all the branches are so that I don't poke my eye out on a tree. My daughter is raking in the dark. I ask her to spread it as evenly as she can up onto the swoops and she protests with a "I can't see a d-ed thing!" and I respond with "well, feel around with your hands and do your best."

That's when I realized I'm crazy. I mean, that's when I realized again that I'm crazy. And it's not Chase's fault.

But we got it done! The stars were beautiful.

Animal and Weather Update

Wizard is doing well. The minor injury he sustained under his right front leg is healing nicely, thanks to a long line of stitches. He even spent some time outside today. He loved it. Sunny, warm, mild winds ... everyone enjoyed today, even those of us who had to work indoors at a day job.

I think a lot depends on whatever your local normal climate is, but around here when there's sun, people smile, liven-up, get stuff done, and there's a crazy amount of spring-fever energy in just about everybody. The usual for the Pacific NW is a week or three of excellent weather in February, preceded and followed by storm after storm with only rare sightings of blue sky between the clouds. This year has been anything but that--and the really weird part is that we had so much precipitation in our local mountain range that our snowpack is a little above normal. More sun and more snowpack?

I'll take it, thanks.

The thing that's got me a little befuddled is the worming thing. Goats ought to be wormed in spring time. Along with the flush of nice green grass come icky, nasty worms that can kill if they overload the goat's system too quickly. Usually I hold off on worming until April or May, depending on the average temperatures. This year ... yeah. I think I'll have to worm them on Sunday, and probably again in about a month. Two wormings this spring instead of one. That means an extra miniature rodeo. Since we'll be capturing and saving them from doom against their wills anyway, I might as well trim their hooves at the same time. They really love that.

I hope it doesn't rain on Sunday or I'll be muddy from head to foot. (Actually, muddy and covered in other, less savory stuff.) Yee ha?

Mucking Out the Barn

It always sounds so easy.

"Hey, kids, wanna make some money? Go muck out the goat barn. I'm going to go do some gardening."

At least they've done this often enough that they gear up first. Paint-spattered work clothes. Shovels. Our duct-taped together wheelbarrow with washers and screws holding the barrel onto the handle because the original bolts broke through a long time ago. They forget the rake and/or decide that they don't need it.

I go to the garden to put some new bareroot roses into pots. (I find they do better that way than if I put them straight into the ground.) About fifteen minutes later I hear loud arguing, and then the wheelbarrow bumps along past me to the designated new mound of poo where I'll grow this year's pumpkins.

"Need help?" I ask.

"Yes!"

I take it that they need my help.

I finish potting up the roses, grab a rake which the child insists we don't need, and head out. I'd planned, of course, to just organize things into piles and make sure that they start someplace more sensible than the middle.

Next thing I know I've got them alternating (whoever takes the wheelbarrow out doesn't help fill it) and I'm working continuously, loosening the muck, helping shovel it in, more loosening and raking while the wheelbarrow person takes the poo to our pile and the soon-to-be-wheelbarrow person rests.

After the first clean corner gets straw laid down the goats come to help distribute it by grabbing a mouthful and dancing out the door, as if any of us have the energy to chase them.

We quote lines from Support Your Local Sheriff and get the blamed job done. It's getting dark. I have just enough time to plant a couple of hellebores that have been waiting for months in their little pots, and I jam in some pussywillows near the road. Darkness falls with a splat.

My 'gardening' day is done.

Smashwords Promotion

To celebrate Read an E-Book Month, many Smashwords authors (including me) are offering special deals on their books. To get 75% off of House of Goats or Masks, enter the code REW75 (as far as I know this is case sensitive) before checkout! The coupon is only valid from March 4 (midnight tonight!) until 11:59pm on March 10th, 2012. I encourage you to visit Smashwords to see other great deals. I hear that there will be quite a few books offered for free!

Masks and Website Updates

Masks is finally up on Smashwords and Amazon. On Smashwords you can get the first 20% free. Warning: if Brokeback Mountain made you feel uncomfortable, the romantic elements in Masks is not going to be any more fun in a setting with flintlock pistols, tall ships and manor houses.

I also updated my website and put up a website (finally!) for Wyrd Goat Press. I'm hoping to have the sequel for House of Goats, House of Chickens, written and put up by mid-summer. Steve Perry wrote a wonderful review for House of Goats (thanks Steve!) on Amazon, and blogged about it too.

I think this post holds the record for most links in a single paragraph, at least for my blog.

Now it's time to take Wizard home from the vet. He had to have a few stitches. Apparently he had a close encounter with a barbed wire fence. He failed to mention this (he didn't even limp!) so who knows how long he hobbled around with that one inch opening in his flesh before my daughter noticed. But he should make a full recovery. I'm sure we'll hear him yowling (he hates to be confined) the second we walk in the door. That'll be sweet music to my ears. I worry about our silly kittehs ....

ElizabethandMark

There used to be a wonderful couple living in Portland within easy driving distance of us. Back then our kids were small, and our German shepherd, Nikita, was still a young lady. I remember the first time I visited their home. So full of character, and so full of art. Like the couple. Elizabeth and I talked about wallpaper. My DH and I mingled with a whole lot of people a lot smarter than us. Fantastic food, warmth, smiles all around. And we had a great time, as we did whenever we got a chance to hang out with them.

I think part of the reason we got along with them so well is because they were a strong couple. Mark and Elizabeth. My DH and me. A lot of people talk about my DH and me the same way so many people talk about Mark and Elizabeth, with the names run together. MarkandElizabeth. ElizabethandMark. They held hands. They stood shoulder to shoulder. When they weren't in the same room, they still seemed to draw from each other. Their wedding was a kick. I cheered.

As the years passed we got fewer and fewer chances to get together, but every time we met we sort of picked up where we left off. A few minutes of catch-up and we were the paired friends that got along for every reason and no reason at all. I admired them so much.

Mark passed away the other day and I felt a shatter-shock as if a world made of a perfect diamond had cracked.

And now it's Elizabeth. Elizabeth and the memory. He's right there but we can't touch him. From here I can see them together, but when I see Elizabeth again he won't be there. How does a person recover when they lose half their body? The answer is, they don't, but they just do ....

She's strong and loved and wonderful and beautiful and there was an Elizabeth before a Mark. Now there will be an Elizabeth after Mark. The diamond cracked and reflects light--blinding rainbows, soft glows. I have so many wishes for her. So many wishes. Blessings upon blessings for Elizabeth.

More Whining about Outlines

I stink.

I've been sick (nasty sick) for the past 24 hours or so. The sort of sick where having oatmeal for dinner was a big accomplishment. I'm pretty sure that it was food poisoning, but that's a trickier thing to diagnose than most people realize.

I'm feeling much better now, after having slept all day. I may even take a shower. The idea of going back to bed makes me tired (heh) but if I don't, my sleep schedule will be even more messed up than it already is.

All that aside, I had a fantastic time at Radcon. I was able to hitch a ride with the amazing and talented Sara Mueller. We spent the entire time talking while my poor daughter listened to the music loop over and over because we weren't paying attention to the CDs enough to notice when they'd gone back to the beginning. And then, after a good lunch at the Atomic Pub, we got to be on a panel together.

To Outline or not to Outline: We had a huge number of panelists, and still the non-outliners outnumbered the outliners five to one. Seriously? Being a non-outliner, I wasn't surprised ... which is directly opposite to my point. My point being that it's harder for me to find those little surprises when I outline. Good outliners find their twists and shockers in the outline. Bearing in mind that I don't know a large enough group of writers to call my observations in any way definitive, scientific, etc. and also bearing in mind that my stints with outlining have been brief ....

Outliners who struggle often run into the following situations:

The story moves from scene to scene in a very linear, logical fashion such that the reader will see the ending coming a mile away. This isn't a huge problem if the story is incredibly entertaining, and the characters are fun to watch. A good sign that the story is working even if everything is fairly predictable is that the author is having a ball writing it. If you're having fun, chances are the reader will have fun too.

The writer skips around the book as s/he writes, planning to fill in later. After all, it's all planned out, right? Why not write the scenes that you're excited about writing and get to the others when you have a really good idea on how to approach them? I've noticed two pitfalls here. The people I know who write this way have a much more difficult time finishing the project. They never get around to writing those harder scenes. Also, there's often a flow issue. When scenes are written in order, they often lead into each other naturally, even when there's a pov switch. Our brilliant subconscious has a great sense of word and tone choice that can subtly connect one section to another. This is less of an issue if there are radical jumps in the storyline. Interestingly, I've heard many writers who write multiple points of view or who employ time travel or make a story of characters who are in different parts of the world and never meet often write the whole story of each character/setting/time and then carefully break these up and fit them together like a puzzle. Very kewl!

Outliners also sometimes spend so much time outlining that it gets in the way of their actual writing. Why not put off putting words on the page when it's so easy to delay in favor of tweaking the complicated and scary middle game portion of the book?

I tried using the Snowflake Method. Developed by writer and engineer Randy Ingermanson, I found it to be an incredibly helpful tool. If I were to outline, this is the method I'd use. Having said that, if I went much past step five or six, the project began to languish. I lost a lot of the sense of excitement of discovery, and I became reluctant to write the project. It felt like it had already been written, if that makes sense. When I write, I'm telling myself a fun story. I like it when things pop out at me from nowhere, and I love it when I realize what's really going on (which sometimes forces me to go back to the beginning and change and add a few things.) Snowflaking necessarily took away that feeling in process. The surprises all happened in the outlining stage, and it became less interesting to actually write the dang thing.

Having said all that, there are many fine outliners out there writing great books. Also, different books require different approaches, and different styles of outlining. If I were writing a murder mystery, I wouldn't dream of going in without some sort of over-arching plan. I'd have to know whodoneit at minimum, and preferably have an idea of what sort of clues might be available. Maybe I don't write them in part because it would take so much effort and planning on my part. Writers who can write these books may be able to write them without an outline because their brilliant minds are geared for it. But I will say that of the mystery writers I know, at least back in the early days, they wrote with a plan. With experience, a plan may become less necessary--or their ability to outline effectively becomes so honed that it just becomes part of their genius.

It's worth it to try to outline once or twice if you've never attempted it. It can be a fantastic tool, and there's no way to know if it'll enhance your writing or not until you give it a go. It didn't work for me, but it might work great for you. Also, don't be afraid to bubble diagram or use any other creative development tools out there. They exist because they work. When I get stuck, I sometimes doodle around with bubble diagrams, but usually I do better with a hot bath or taking a walk.

I may write about the rest of the panels later on. You know me. Sometimes I get to it, and sometimes the chickens get out of their yard and I have to tell y'all about chasing them around the garden for an hour. Until next time ....

Is it just me or is it awfully quiet around here?

I've been quiet lately, mainly because my DH and I are working daily on putting the house back together. Yesterday I finished all but one door transition, and I filed away a bunch of paperwork.

Two writers generate a lot of paperwork.

And then I have the writing projects, and book covers, etc.

Enough excuses.

Speaking of quiet, our house is very quiet. The new laminate floors have made it less quiet--sound travels easily across that slick surface--but there's not a lot out here to make noise. We don't have a lot of cars go by, for example, and there's not enough traffic for anyone to honk at anyone else unless they're being particularly dicky. Our animals make sounds, but usually not all day. The chickens sometimes get into spats, or they'll make noises after they've laid an egg. The goats only bother to make noise if they see us and suspect that we'll bring over some food. We don't keep the tv on. Not that it's actually a tv tv--we don't get any reception out here and I don't want to buy a big antenna, so we just plug in a dvd (no commercials, yay!) when we want to watch something. We might watch 2-3 hours a day. Sometimes I have the radio on for half an hour, but that's not even a daily thing. Once a week, at best.

It's so quiet that when my DH grinds coffee, it sounds really loud. When I'm in bed and he needs to grind some, he muffles it with a dish rag. We can hear our refrigerator cycle on and off. The fan on my computer is the loudest sound in the entire downstairs unless a badly tuned truck races by or one of our dogs walks over for a drink of water near my window.

When we first moved here, I loved the quiet, but it took some to get accustomed to it. I still wake up at the sound of slight noises sometimes. I wouldn't want to go back to more white noise, though. I like being able to hear the jays across the street at my neighbor's vacant property chatter to each other on the way to our bird feeder. I like being able to close my eyes and hear the faint sounds of my family doing breakfast stuff. I like that I can hear our postal carrier pull over and drop off mail. Sometimes I even hear the click of the mailbox shutting.

I wonder what our ancestors experienced, with few or no walls, no modern insulated windows, nothing, really, to soften the silence. Was it beautiful, or empty ... maybe both ....

Gardening with Friends

It's seed ordering time!

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

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

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

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

My Dream Farm

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

Today, in the rain and snow:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After

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

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

Not Quite a Cliche'

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

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

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

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

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

All but finished, and begun again

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

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

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

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

Housework as Art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oops

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

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

House of Goats

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

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

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

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

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

Don't Lose Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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