A Holiday Tale

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

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

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

And like that, she was gone.

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

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

Food as Bonding

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

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

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

Plus we get to eat our creations.  Yum.

Stuff

 Just a quickie before work ...

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

Sure was pretty to wake up to, though.

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

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

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

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

Three more days until Yule!  Weee!

Attack of the Poop

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

"Poop!"

"Meow?"

"Poop!"

"Mrrow!"

"Poop!"

"Mmruw?"

"Poop!"

"Mow?"

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

Just sayin'.

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

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

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

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

Brian is so sweet and patient.

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

Yay Beach Trip

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

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

I miss sailing too.  

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

Yay Beach Trip

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

The Muddle in the Middle

I didn't make either of my Nano goals this year, but I had a great time, and I've reached the muddle in the middle of a new novel with all new characters.  It's a lot of fun.

The muddle in the middle reminds me a lot of the middle game in chess.  Surviving the middle game is a huge hurdle when you're learning to play chess.  Thriving in the middle game separates the accidental winners and losers from chess masters, who exploit the chaos as much as possible.

I think writing through the muddle in the middle is really similar.  At some point surviving it (rather than taking weird plot turns or losing characterization/plot in a weak and complicated mangle of words) becomes thriving becomes mastering that muddle and turning it to your advantage.  I don't feel like I'm really thriving there yet, but this time around I feel like I can see more clearly than I ever have before.  It still feels complicated, but my characters and the plot haven't gotten lost.

Nothing to do but plunge onward and see what happens next!

Eeeee!

I don't know if I'm going to make my Nano goal this year!  Eeeee!

No days off, house guest arriving tomorrow at 1pm ...

It's not looking good.  Wish me luck!

Latest farm pics

The goats are all fattened up and ready for a long winter.  They put on more wool and more fat than other years.  I think they know something we don't ...

We had just a couple of inches of snow, much of which got melted by rain.  Today I got to enjoy one of my favorite sorts of days:  patches of sunlight and clouds, no wind, golden light on snow, blue sky shining through icicles, and occasional bouts of snow coming from silver and white puffballs floating overhead.

The chickens spent most of their day sunning themselves by the house.  When a particularly dark cloud went overhead, the roosters all crowed, and then crowed again when the sun came back.  They worked great as an alarm so I knew when it was time to head out and take a little walk around the garden.

They got frozen grapes for a treat.  I hadn't meant to freeze them--I just missed a few bunches, and since half the bright yellow leaves have now fallen off the grapes (the leaves are falling off the beech tree like rain now that we've had some serious cold) I discovered them.

Not pictured:  Brian and Finn chasing each other around the yard in the snow.  Beautiful white fluffy dogs enjoying the perfect day.

Yay Day

I've had to modify my writing goal this month to be more in keeping with the traditional Nanowrimo word count rather than my 100,000 word goal--and I think I'll be lucky to make it.  I should have been well over 25,000 words by now, and I'm not quite there yet.  Hopefully a couple of days of dedicated writing will fix that.

In legal news, which I haven't been able to talk about, a lawsuit has settled out of court.  It's a huge weight off of my shoulders.  I don't think it was particularly fair, but I'll settle for no-longer-stressful (and we're fine--this didn't affect anything except my moral sensibilities.)

So the two days I'd asked off so that I could be dragged kicking and screaming to court are now available for writing and preparing for our house guest.  

The kids are doing really well, we're doing well (we're going to survive to the end of the year, yay!) and life is pretty good.  I'll definitely be counting a lot of blessings on Yule.

First Snow

It's a beautiful evening with big, fat, sloppy snowflakes falling outside.  It's a hot chocolate with a giant marshmallow nuked on top kind of night, a writing night, a reading night.  It's a night for sitting in the living room with the lights turned out, watching the deck light reflect off of frosted leaves and buried deck spars.  

Happy first snow, everyone!

Orycon 32

Orycon 32-- had a wonderful time. The Endeavor Award party was packed into a pretty small room, but we managed to all squeeze in. I met some wonderful people, including a mask artist. We got into a great conversation about masks, which led to some new ideas for Masks .... I had to go to the dealer's room and not buy beautiful, wearable art that I can't afford.

Sharyn November, btw, is funny. Great interview by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Sharyn talked about her history in poetry, as a member of rock bands, and how she developed her line of books. The way she works with her authors--on a very personal and yet profession level, sharing a love of the art and the story on the page while working hard to reach the reader--really heartened me. I hope the publishing world is full of people like her. And yet, of course, they can't be. I'm sure there are tons of excellent editors, but clearly, Sharyn November is one of a kind.

Best of all, I had great talks about writing with Mary Rosenblum and Sara Mueller that may push my writing to the next level, after a long plateau.  Wish me luck!

Writing, dipped in chocolate

November is such a mess, it's a wonder I'm getting any writing done at all. But I keep on keeping on, and I think the reason has changed just a wee bit. Normally I write because I love writing. Now, writing is actually helping with my mental health.

My DH is being awesome on that front too. He's helping me focus on the right stuff instead of worrying in endless, useless circles. We're still making progress on the porch, and my office, and the house is starting to look spiffy. It's all good, though I have so much pressure from so many fronts--legal, work, social/volunteer, etc.--I'm starting to get stress symptoms. Bad dreams. Cranky tummy. Weird aches and pains.

Some of the stress will go away with Thanksgiving. The time pressure--too much to do, too little time--is not going to let up until December at the very earliest, and probably not until the bitter, cold end of December. So I have to identify and assess down time--what truly qualifies as down time, and what is the highest quality down time. For example, watching good movies really relaxes me, but that feeling doesn't last as long as when I garden.

Writing is turning out to be really high quality down time with long-reaching positive benefits. When I was writing full time, writing was work time. Really fun work time, but I had to organize stretching, snack breaks, running errands, doing housework, etc. around my BICFOK (Butt in Chair Fingers on Keyboard.) And I had to organize computer time around computer time--differentiating offline actual words on page vs. research, networking, communication, marketing, all that good stuff.

Now writing is a retreat. After a long stretch of writing, I have the energy to tackle other stuff. It's actually a subtle difference, because I always enter and then emerge from other worlds when I'm doing the novel thang. That stays the same. I guess it's one of those absence makes the heart grow fonder things. I don't take writing time for granted, therefore it feels more like a treat to be able to write. And I'm happy after I have my treat. It's as if writing suddenly got dipped in chocolate. It may also have possibly been dipped in nuts, but so far my flow still feels okay. I just hope it reads okay.

I'm looking forward to lots more treats tomorrow. I have a rare day off. Wee!

A Long Life

The boy is sad, so I brought home comfort food:  fried chicken.  I know, we're not doing it right because in order to be complete it should come with warm buns, corn, mashed potatoes and gravy.  But basically we're a bunch of carnivores around here, so we have the chicken and the rest is just extraneous.

A conversation between a mother and her teenage son at the register at work today:

The boy said,  "I know exactly what I want for my 101st birthday."

Mother: "If I'm alive, I'll get it for you."

He looked startled at the thought she might not be around.

"It's not out of the question," I offered.

The mother smiled at that.  "I suppose not."

"I plan to live to be over three hundred," the boy said.

"People don't live that long," she said.

I had to wonder, though.  Medicine is advancing at a rapid pace, though to us old people and to people with serious or terminal illnesses, it's not moving fast enough.  This kid is only in his mid-teens.

What will we discover in ten years?  Twenty?

What will our life expectancies be in a hundred years?

Dream on, boys.  The world is always changing.

November

It's Nanowrimo time again.  The whole month of November I'll be working on not one, but two novels.  Normally Nanowrimo is NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, but I'm stupid so I'll be working on two, with a goal of 100,000 words by the end of the month.

Is there any reason to suppose I can pull this off?  Not really.  I've done high word count months before, but I've also fallen on my face, and this year I've got a full time job.

Perfect time to up the stakes, says I.

What happens if I lose?  I hang my head in writerly shame.  And if I win?  I get a nice little certificate.  I've got a few of them laying around, and I'm rather proud of them.

The one thing I won't promise to do is to work equally on both books.  Whichever is working for me better on a given day, that's the one I'll be writing on.  Will I be able to keep them isolated in my head?  Will the voices stay true to each other?  Will Lonni ever be able to live in the rapture of true love?  I have no idea.  I think I'll be okay, though.  I've done multiple projects before.  And if it starts to not work, I'll just work on one book.

Hopefully that'll be my 'main squeeze'--the book I've got listed as my novel on my Nanowrimo profile.

If you too would like to try to write 50,000 words in a month (a pretty short novel) you're very welcome to join me.  I'm kzmiller.  Let's buddy up and do this.  Why?  Well I know why I do it.  'Cause I'm a writer.

You're probably crazy to want to.  Me--it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do.  

No, really.

It's what I do.

Leaves

I've been working on Masks again.  I have this giddy feeling that comes from visiting favorite places combined with new explorations.

It's a good thing that there is giddiness because I've received a ton of rejections this past week.  Editors must be reacting to the change of seasons and are clearing out all the leaves from their yards.

Speaking of which, most of our trees have all their leaves and only a few have started to turn.  That means I have to wait before I fertilize.  This is, however, oddly, a great time to do a bit of shaping and pruning if you have plants you need to reduce.  They'll go to sleep remembering that they're a smaller plant, and won't go as crazy in spring trying to regain the size you want to bring them down to.  Once the leaves turn and fall, though, the tree is essentially dormant and won't remember a thing except that it used to be X number of feet tall and wide and oh noes!  Must grow all the missing bits back!

Plants are kewl and weird.  Writing is kewl and weird.  Rejections ... best thing for me to do is to sweep them into a pile and send out the manuscripts again.

Crime and Punishment

Locally a woman who shot her husband four times is trying to use a defense that she was essentially in a disassociated state when she learned that he was having an affair.  Additionally, she wants to plead that she has a disorder that basically makes her react in an exaggerated fashion in order to gain attention.

I'm really uncomfortable with this and similar defenses.  What if someone is a sociopath--other people basically aren't real and the only thrill this person feels is when they hurt or kill others or break the rules by stealing millions, etc.  Maybe they're considered insane.  Does that excuse them from their crimes?  What if they don't know what they're doing?  Does that mean that they should go free?  What then does such a person have to do in order to be removed from society so that they don't commit more crimes?  

This all just makes me think about our justice system.  I don't think any system is perfect.  I think there are issues no matter what you do.  I am concerned about the fact that in our society, violent predators thrive (or seem to.)  Is it because violent predators have always thrived, is my perception skewed, or is it because in our relatively safe society, we've intellectualized crime and justice so much that we haven't kept up with dealing with the reality of it?  In the process of being fair, have we forgotten the ideal of protecting people from crime?

I have no answers, only more and more questions.

Changes

I've been crazy busy at work, and the rains they are a-comin'.

Woke to the sound of rain this morning.  Been a long time since that's happened.  Our torn-apart porch is just a painted skeleton in pieces, waiting for a carpenter/paleontologist to put it together somehow with parts missing and all.  Poor old Dakota is having trouble getting back in the house after we let her out.  Her hips twinge when she tries to duck under the framework and it's a scrabble to make it up the slanted cement steps that collapsed into rat tunnels ages ago.  Those steps are actually pretty neat-o, but I bet the insurance company wouldn't like it if we just used them and gave up on the whole porch project thingy.  So something has to happen.

I vote for magical things happening in the middle of the night and we wake up to it all done perfectly with red and white intermingled roses growing all over a trellis on it.

The chickens are doing really well.  The Wyandottes will go on sale soon, hopefully to go to good homes though I wouldn't be offended if someone just wanted a really nice (though work-intensive) holiday dinner.  They're neat birds, but we've got two roosters too many and they're starting to stress each other out.

So, not much going on, and yet lots going on.  It's been a full week, and I'm looking for a day off so that I can make some headway on the home front.  And writing?  All I can say is, thank goodness for one hour lunches.

Students Learn, Birds fly, and Writers Write

I helped (just a wee bit) with the girl's senior project.  She had to (with the help of her mentor) learn how to collect, catalogue, and preserve a plant collection.  I hadn't done anything like this since 2002-2003.  I'd forgotten how much fun it was.  

I remember many days just like today, soaked from the knees down under the not-really-adequate shelter of a red and white golf umbrella (the same one I used today, in fact) while my horticulture instructor led us through various gardens and rattled off common and latin names. I used a waterproof notebook and wrote in pencil.  I collected bags and bags of plants, which I then had to sort, re-identify, and press within a few hours or they'd be too wilted to be useful.  Sometimes the specimens kept okay overnight in the refrigerator.  I still have books and books of pressed plants.  Some are in better condition than others.  Anyway, although the girl is a bit overwhelmed, she seems to be learning, and having fun too.

This morning I let the chickens out into pouring rain.  They make different noises during different conditions that sometimes imply language to me.  "Cluck cluck, what weather we're having today!  A little rain is just fine, but this is going a bit far, don't you think?"

I gave them a handful of black oil sunflower seeds, their favorite, to help stave off the morning damp (soaking) and chill.  It definitely feels like autumn, with warm, beautiful days and the gentle storms.  Much as I love summer, autumn is special too, and I'm happy with my orange pumpkins and ripening corn.  The chickens don't seem to mind either.  They've been raiding the tomatoes.  So much for a chance at getting some ripe ones here at the end ... but it's just so much fun watching them disassemble fruit and raid the compost pile for bugs that I wouldn't dream of keeping them away.

Not that I could.  They can really fly now.  Trim their wings?  I could, but if I didn't want creatures flying around here, I wouldn't have gotten birds in the first place.  Besides, we still have rats, and this way my chicks-all-grown-up will be a little safer.

I hope everyone local is enjoying a cozy, rainy day.  I'll be programming, and writing.  Tomorrow it's back to the day job, so I'm hoping to really make this day count.

News of the blue&white, black&white, and green&white

The boy painted (nearly) the entire house!!

In other news, a story of mine got held-onto (again, still, or something like that) for final selection for a magazine.  It makes me happy.  I should know in a couple of months if the story will be in or out.

In the garden:

Autumn has arrived on the hill, announced not so much by leaf-fall, colors, or even the scent in the wind but by powdery mildew.  To fight this dastardly disease, you can spray, prune, or both.  (I recommend both, but prune at minimum.)  Removing diseased leaves not only helps slow the spread of the disease, but allows more airflow into the plant.  Powdery mildew likes moist, warm conditions to grow.  Pruning takes away some of the moisture.  Most people notice it on their squashes first, but keep an eye on those grapes.  Now is a fine time to reduce your grape canopy--before problems set in--to help protect your ripening grapes from all kinds of fungal problems.