Life in the Big Cedars

Dog & Cat

2012-01-29T15:14:00.000-06:00

DOG UPDATE:
Last Wednesday night, I traveled to the Springfield Dog Training Club east of Springfield for my first ever obedience training class. The class is for Belle. I mind just fine. Most of the time. The rules that make sense anyway.

It was a raining night. It was dark. It was foggy. The club is out in the middle of nowhere and I drove by it the first time but finally made it. The first night is just for the humans. Belle goes with me next week. The class didn’t even start until 7 pm and I HATE being out on a weeknight. When I first walked in the previous class was still in session. Those dogs were BEHAVED.

As the first class wound down, the staff circled chairs around for our class. We all sat down ready to share our dog woes with the not so faint smell of urine in the air. You know, sort of what I’d expect and AA meeting to be like. I could already imagine Belle and I getting kicked out for our mutual insubordination because everything struck me as funny. I was one dog away from being a Saturday Night Live skit.

I’ve placed a lot of hope in this class when what I probably should have invested in is more massages for myself. And maybe hypnosis. Or some sort of voodoo to ensure more patience. From the first night, the one thing I learned that seems to be the pivotal key to success is this; hotdogs. Dogs LOVE hotdogs and will apparently do ANYTHING for more hotdogs. Woe to you when you run OUT of hotdogs.

I cut up an entire package the very next day after class and have been trying to implement my new mind bending dog training techniques on Belle. I also bought a doggie seatbelt so I can keep her from pinging around the interior of my car to and from class.

I’m ready. Bring it on next week’s class. I am prepared to dominate.

I’ll just have to try to keep the snarky thoughts and comments to myself. THAT will be the most difficult part. Unless I run out of hotdogs.

CAT UPDATE
Last week also brought the spaying of our new wildcat, Violet. I’ve been feeding her in the mornings so she’s used to the schedule now. She waits impatiently outside the patio door for us to wake and greet her in the mornings. She’s really sweet and friendly. Monday I thought I might just crate her up and take her to the vet, but I decided to call first to make sure that would be okay. I didn’t know how it would go or WHEN I might be able to catch her and get that feat accomplished.

The vet said no problem, bring her when I could and they would get the job done … for $53. The next morning she was outside the door as usual. I ran up and got the cat carrier and stuffed her inside without incident. She wasn’t too happy once she realized she’d been duped by my affection, but she wasn’t insane either. We came to an agreement. She mewed and I consoled all the way to the vet.

I dropped her off and checked on her later that day. She was still groggy so I decided it was probably better if she spent the night at the vet than if I tried to keep her in the garage all night. I picked her up early the next morning and took her home.

My biggest fear was that the second I let her out of the crate she’d run for the woods never to be seen again. I have the same worry every time I hive bees. Because really, what’s to keep them from just saying screw it and flying away? Uh, nothing.

Before I opened the cat carrier, I filled her bowl with food, another with water and dumped some tuna over the top of it. I wafted the open tuna container in front of the carrier. She was interested. I opened the door and she came out purring and rubbing against me ready for lovin’s. I was forgiven. I’m pretty sure the tuna helped.

That night, Grandpa, Grace and Bryon all reported that she was indeed fine and still hanging around. Grandpa fed her some more tuna and and everyone in the family scratched her ears for her. At one point, Bryon got a glimpse of something out on the back deck and looked out to find a beautiful, fluffy white opossum eating out of the cat bowl and Violet rubbing her body against it like a Brillo padded cat scratch post. What the heck?

Guess it’s a good thing I went ahead and gave her a rabies shot as well.

Where Is My Spanish Jet Pack?

2012-01-28T06:00:00.000-06:00

If you are of a certain age, say born in the late 60’s, then you, like me, might have been promised two things by your elementary teachers: the Spanish language was going to take over the world, and it wouldn’t be much longer before we would all be traveling by jet pack.
The Spanish language has indeed infiltrated my local Walmart grocery isle and several of my favorite products are now multilingual. Unfortunately, the labels do not reflect the three words I remember from my high school Spanish classes twenty five years ago: burrito, dinero, baño.
I figured those three words would buy me a burrito and then direct me to a bathroom. I was golden. Spanish has not taken over the world. At least not my world here in the Midwest. If I had remained in journalism and had the opportunity to travel the nation and world, sure I might have finally picked up a little more Spanish. As it is, my three words have sufficed. Niangua is not very diverse. There is not much need for a second language after all.
I think a second language is definitely a use it or lose it skill. I haven’t put any of those Spanish lessons to use in more than twenty five years. Sort of like algebra. Those teachers lied about that as well. I have not ever, knowingly used algebra. Good thing too since basic math pretty much already stretches my brain to its outer limits.
As for jet packs, well that’s another disappointment.
Bryon and I have had a running joke about the jet packs for years because he too was promised a jet pack. We are both still on the waiting list. Every time we are somewhere and desperately want to be somewhere else, we despair on our lack of a jet pack. If ONLY we had a jet pack, we would be there by now! Damn the government for not providing our jet packs.

I think this should be one of our President’s highest priorities. Newt Gingrich has already promised that by the end of his second term, if we choose HIM as President, he’ll establish a permanent American base on the moon. Newt is basically going to steal the moon. Like Gru in Despicable Me. Well, Newt, if you expect to accomplish that, let me suggest you start disseminating the jet packs a.s.a.p. Now THAT would be exciting. And it would make getting to that moon basecamp a lot easier.
I’m probably not going to vote for Newt, but I do vote for jet packs.
I’ll be anxiously awaiting mine in my soon to be semi-weekly mail delivery.

Vampires VS Tsunamis

2012-01-27T06:00:00.000-06:00

Vampires vs Tsunamis. Probably not two things you would ever put together. Unless of course you are inside my head.

Last weekend, Bryon and I watched Hereafter the Matt Damon movie. We are way behind on watching movies. While watching the movie, I was really distracted because the entire time I couldn't get over how much Matt Damon looks like my brother Mike. If Matt had a little more gray hair or Mike used some Grecian formula, they could be doubles. Or maybe it's just me.

But I digress... SPOILER ALERT if you have not seen the movie Hereafter and have any hope of watching it... Don't read the next paragraph.

The opening scene was of a tsunami crashing into town and sweeping people and cars and everything away. It was horrifying. One of the main characters was caught up in the crazy powerful flood and swept through, over, under and into all sorts of obstacles until she was finally knocked in the back of the head and died. I have no idea how they made that opening scene. My heart was racing, and I could barely stand to watch it. It was way, way too scary.

On the the polar opposite of that are vampire movies. I really dig vampire movies. Actually I like pretty much any kind of monster movie: vampires, werewolves, zombies, chupacabra ... you get the idea. No matter how much blood and gore are in those movies, it just doesn't faze me. In fact, the bloodier the better because hey, they are monsters, right? Blood will be spilled.

What I can't watch are slasher movies and watching that opening scene made me realize exactly where that fine line is. Real life horror is way scarier than anything made up. Now, what are the chances I will ever be in a tsunami? About the same as being bitten by a vampire I suspect. But there are lots of even more horrible things in this world to fear and worry about than movie monsters.

When we do want to watch a movie upstairs, we have to wait until Grace has gone to bed and is ASLEEP because she gets scared if we go upstairs and leave her alone downstairs. Even though the doors are locked and there is no way anything is going to happen to her while we are one floor away. Still, she worries.

The other night Bryon was out in the barn working on his boat and it was my night to put Grace to bed. She wanted to know what I was going to do because I turned off the TV. I told her I was going to take a shower and read. She wanted to know where I was going to read. I had to promise her I wasn't going to go upstairs and leave her alone downstairs. I asked her why it mattered as long as I was in the house. She said bad guys could break in and steal her or there could be a fire, and she couldn't get out.

We showed her months ago how to get out her window in case of a fire. It stuck in her head. I assured her no bad guys were going to break in, and even if they did we'd have way more guns than they had. She fell asleep, but I stayed downstairs and read on the couch.

It would be nice if we were never really truly afraid of anything but that's just human nature I suppose. That and maybe a few too many monster movies. I still can't look out a window at night without expecting a vampire to be floating outside of it à la Salem's Lot, but I'd take that over a tsunami any day.

I was going to put a photo from the last tsunami on the top of the post today ... but it was way too scary.

Editorial Errors

2012-01-26T06:00:00.001-06:00

Okay, first off I want to apologize. I've been happily blogging along for some time now. Regardless of how many times I read, reread, proofread my posts, the second I read it AFTER it's posted, I start finding errors.

It's embarrassing. I know how to spell. If I didn't this wonderful little program into which I create these works of literary art would bedazzle said words with a little squiggly line under my sketchy bits so I can be alerted and reconsider whether or not I really wanted to thhype that word. Or TYPE that word. See, I just totally ignored that squiggly and look what happened. A typo.

Word 2010 also alerts me to grammatical errors. Sometimes though, those errors are not really errors. I meant to do that. For effect. Other times, Word and this blog editor just totally bail on me and leave me hanging. As a result, you get a poor usage of the word THERE when I should have said THEIR. Seriously people, I know the difference. I utilized buckets of red ink during my three long dog years of teaching English to high school kids and correcting that very error.

My problem is not ignorance of grammar and spelling or even typing. My problem is my complete disregard for detail and a totally blind eye to my glaring imperfections. Maybe it's God's way of keeping me going. Maybe I'm just lazy. Maybe the type on this tiny netbook screen is growing smaller and smaller by the second and is almost down to 5 point type now and my 43 year old eyes are giving up. See there, that was totally a run on sentence, but it had a good effect yes? You got the point. Too many details to take in and no desire to correct that mistake.

You should see the other guy. You should see what I DO correct. I read these posts in the editor pane before I post them. Then I send it to preview mode and read it again. I find lots of errors and correct them that way. Finally, I schedule it to post. It posts a day or two later and then I get the email in my inbox saying Life In The Big Cedars has a new post! Yippee! Way to go! Yay me!

Then I read it and find all these embarrassing errors and have no way to correct them on my 3 1/2 inch iPhone screen while I'm driving down the highway in BFE. So I have to wait until I have free WiFi somewhere, crank up the blog and fix them. But the damage is done. You've already read it! You already think, "Damn, why am I reading this hack? She doesn't even know the difference in there and their.'" Rest assured I do know the difference.

I just really, really need a living breathing editor.

I apologize to any of you that I have corrected or judged in the past.

Editors feel free to apply.

The rest of you feel free to offer corrections in the comments section below. We can make it a game. Think of it as our own little personal version of Where's Waldo.

Long In The Tooth

2012-01-25T06:00:00.001-06:00

Bryon found one of Belle’s puppy teeth last week. Grace wanted to keep it. She asked if the Tooth Fairy would come and leave Belle money. I considered it but then told her the Tooth Fairy was way too busy with human children to worry with dogs too.

The Tooth Fairy did not visit that night, but Grace gave the tooth a place of prominence.

I have to say I am not sad to see those sharp little needle teeth gone. Belle was six months old on MLK day. I start the obedience training tonight. Belle goes next week.

I guess they have to train their human first.

I hope I’m a quick learner.

Farm Update

2012-01-24T06:00:00.000-06:00

It's been a while since I've done a farm update. Here's what's going on in the Big Cedars outdoors.
The chickens have been on strike the past couple of months. The Buckeyes molted and looked very pathetic around November. Now they have the nicest silky feathers again AND they are all laying. The new ones just started this week. Their eggs are tiny right now, but it's nice to have fresh eggs again.

They even grew back feathers where the last two roosters wore them off with their amorous advances. The hens don't miss those two guys at all. The latest rooster has been getting busy but the red Buckeye's don't want anything to do with him. They know the score. I'm sure they've been accosted but I've only seen him on the yellow Buffs so far. He may not last long enough around the farm to win the Buckeye babes over.

I do like how he keeps an eye out for the hens. If he can just keep his hormones from raging so much and realize we do NOT want to hump his girls or infringe on his territory ... he might make it. I'm not holding my breath though.

The strawberry bed is just full of weeds and a few strawberry plants. At this point it's going to be difficult to weed without pulling up plants too. It sort of got away from us last summer. Hopefully, we'll be able to sort it out and get some berries this summer.

This is Gary's garden spot below. The weeds took it over as as well. The tiller will solve most of that problem when it gets closer to spring.

We did manage to get our main garden beds cleaned out, and I keep spreading rabbit droppings on them from time to time. This year, I hope to really concentrate on TOMATOES, potatoes and lettuces.
I've all but given up on the heirloom varieties. I like the IDEA of heirlooms but they just don't produce for us. We've tried three years now. I've had to buy tomatoes from my Grandma or the farmer's market to get enough to can. Maybe this will be our Year of the Tomato.

Walking out to the greenhouse the other day I came across this mess. It looked like bloody entrails for a minute. As I got closer and studied it a little more I finally figured out what it was.

Swiss chard from the garden. Whew!

The handicap bunnies got separate rooms again because the white/gray one was chewing the heck out of the little black one. The black one is the three legged one. He sort of just waddles around the hutch. The other one isn't much better and would have likely been better off if it's flipper foot had been removed as well. They are pretty pathetic really. They are cute though and friendly.

We still have our stray cat, and I may take her to the vet this week to have her spayed if I can get her into the cat crate. I figure she'll bail as soon as I get her home, and we'll never see her again. Hopefully not. She's pretty sweet but her claws sure are sharp. Ask Grace about that. She keeps trying to pick her up.

Basically right now we are just waiting for spring to start gardening again. The greenhouse is full of animal feed right now. I haven't decided if I'm going to try to start plants from seeds or just buy them. I'm feeling pretty lazy at this particular moment and thinking buying them sounds pretty darn good.

We had talked about raising pigs again but our freezer is packed to the rim. We have enough friends that would buy them to butcher if we want to do it, and we finally have a couple of leads on where we can get some piglets. More to come on that front.

Farm on.

The Drawer From Hell

2012-01-23T06:00:00.000-06:00

You probably have one too. This is my drawer from hell.

This is where I stuff all the papers I think I should keep but don't know what to do with. Random receipts included. Receipts for things that cost a lot or come accompanied with a warranty or manual get a little better treatment. They get stapled to said warranty or manual and filed in a box.

This drawer is not a good system, because NOW the drawer is FULL. Now I have to do something with all this crap. You can imagine how fun it is to sort through all of that junk.

I do not look forward to this occasion.

Usually, I get the shredder and the drawer and plop down in front of the television and spend a couple of hours sorting through things. I'm tempted to just shove it all into a bigger box and stuff it in the closet. But like everything else in life, if you do that it will eventually catch up with you, and you'll have to deal with it anyway. There are no free rides. Everything has a price.

Most of the time when I have something I don't want to do, it only makes it worse to put it off. More time to worry or fuss about it. More time to stew on it. If only I'd just do it, then it would be over. Ripped off fast like a Bandaid on a hairy arm. I especially find this is true with work. When I have a call I don't want to make or a face-to-face meeting I don't want to follow through on, it's almost always better to just do it and and be done with it. Rarely is it as bad as I thought it would be. And boy does it feel good when it's behind me.

In general, I don't like to let things pile up ... like the drawer.

Or like Grace's desk ... or her bathroom sink. These two places drive me absolutely nuts.

A person can only stand so much clutter in their lives. I guess Grace is still going to have to learn that lesson.

I sure hope it's soon.

Step By Step

2012-01-22T06:00:00.000-06:00

I have become a slug. This was not a surprise to me. I know how much time I spend in front of the computer and/or tv (sometimes at the same time). Don't forget my other favorite pastime ... reading. I also drive a lot for work which means lots of time spent sitting around. Generally, I like sitting around being a bum. None of these activities however inspire movement of any kind. Well, maybe when I raise and lower my coffee cup and click my fingers along the keyboard. Still, not many calories being burned there.

The two things I decided to focus on for January were writing and walking. My friend Liz recommended a great digital pedometer which I promptly ordered from Amazon. I really had no idea how much I walked on an average day. It took me a few days after receiving it to decide to try to get it set up. I hate trying to figure out my stride and fiddle with the settings. I finally sat down one day when the house was empty and quiet and figured the damn thing out. It was actually pretty easy. I got it all set up and headed outside to take the dog for a walk. That was a good day. I took Belle on three loops around our trail; one in the morning, one at lunch and one before dark. She was happy, and I was too.

Belle and I did that three days the first week I had the pedometer. Each trip around our trail is 3/4 of a mile and takes about 15 minutes. Since that first week, I pretty much backslid into business as usual. I even forgot to wear it one day. I did walk on the treadmill a couple of nights but then life got busy as it is prone to do, and my ambition waned. When it was warmer outside, I made Grace take Belle for a quick 10 minute walk in the mornings before school. Now that it's cold, I don't have the patience or the desire to arm wrestle her into doing it. I don't even want to take the dog for a walk on those mornings so she's stuck in the kennel until Grandpa picks up Grace after school and takes her for a walk.

Today, I MADE myself walk her around the trail twice. It was hard. It's cold. I didn't want to do it. I did feel great when I got back inside and warmed up around the pellet stove. Belle is noticibly calmer when she gets to expend some of her energy as well. I know in my HEAD that it's a win/win. My heart and the rest of me take more convincing.

I just checked the trip meter on the pedometer. It's been eleven days since I started using it, and I have 48,676 steps on it. There is a great Walking Site that explains about the whole step thing and how many you should strive for. Basically, 10,000 steps equals about five miles. Two thousand plus steps equals a mile. So in eleven days and despite my lackluster ambition, I have walked about twenty four miles (if I did my math correctly). You should check that though. Seriously.

For the optimal health benefit, I should have been somewhere closer to 110,000 steps. I was less than half. I have got to move it! Uggg. Why can't it just be easy? But you know it never is. I know it never is. Exercise always feels uphill both ways.

I think back to ten years ago, when I was a walking/hiking machine! I was in the best shape of my life then. Now ... not so much. On a birighter note, I have managed to lose five pounds in the little effort I have exerted so far. Well, that and not eating two chocolate chip cookies four times a week at Subway. It really is the little things that add up.

Now, I just need to keep adding up those steps.

Give Pees A Chance

2012-01-21T06:00:00.000-06:00

Advice per Grace. Age 7.

reCreating Yourself

2012-01-20T06:00:00.000-06:00

Some days are diamonds. Some days are rocks.

Sometimes I feel like I am really in a funk, like that Mary Englebreit quote "Life is just so Daily."

Other days as I'm cruising up and down the interstate and back roads for my job, just the right song plays at just the right moment and it's almost like I'm the star of my own HBO series. Last night going in to meet with girlfriends for our monthly "Used To Be a Book Club, Now We Just Meet, Eat and Talk" gathering was one of those latter moments. It was even complete with a totally rockin' soundtrack and a Serengeti sunset which I drove into as it faded to black.

I'd like to have a lot more of those days.

I was looking for an inspirational computer wallpaper (i.e. totally killing time on the internet when I should have been working) and came across the quote above. I used to say that to myself a lot, not quite so eloquently perhaps since I'm no George Bernard Shaw. My version was more "Every few years you have to reinvent yourself". Still, the sentiment is the same I think.

I have not remained the same person for all of my 43ish years. Just ask my husband. I think the basic elements are always the same, but there are so many things to do and experience and try why would anyone want to stay the same forever. Okay, maybe my hair has been mostly the same for the past 15 years or so, but that was another post ... (follow to Bad Hair Day post here).

Bryon says he used to have a wife that hunted with him. Yes, yes he did. Now I'd rather sleep in, be warm and toasty and then drive to Freda's for coffee and breakfast. There are lots of things I used to do that I don't have any desire to do anymore. There are lots of other things I'd still like to try. That's how life is, full of possibilities.

Then there are things that you rediscover and find out that they still turn you on, after all these years. Like writing. Sorry honey, the hunting thing is still looking doubtful BUT, you never know.

I think one of the things that turned me on about writing back in the day when I was full of lots of free time and few responsibilities was the endless possibility of it. That and the fact I got to see my name in print pretty regularly. That didn't hurt anything at all. It was affirming. It was also a great release. I can't tell you how many hours of bad poetry was composed in my teenage self's room on an electric typewriter. Mercifully, none of it survived.

Sporadically through the years I've come back to writing in one form or another. In junior high it was bad poetry, high school brought a monthly column in the local paper, college was all about the term papers so I'm not sure that really counted. When I started teaching, I didn't have time to write for anything other than sheer survival and that was only lesson plans.

I walked away from writing for several years. More than once I've espoused that I have a degree I hope to never use again: a B.S. in English Education and a minor in Journalism. Then Bryon and I ALMOST moved to Montana and when we didn't, I decided I was going to experience all this state (and Arkansas) had to offer if I was going to be stuck here. I started hiking. A lot. I went by myself because no one wanted to go. Then, eventually other friends got interested.

I started writing trail reviews for the Outdoor section of the Newsleader each month. I rode the entire Katy Trail with the DNR from Clinton to St. Louis on my mountain bike and wrote a full page article on that experience as well. I had a real editor and everything. They paid me money to do it so that made it all all the more legit. Of course that same editor once used the word heretofore in one of my articles. I still don't know how to use that word. It was embarrassing.

Then I fell away from writing again. My relationship with writing has been hot and cold for sure, but like a bad boyfriend, you just can't ever really get away from him. He has some good qualities, you could change him if you just try harder.

I hope this time around my writing does change and I can find a way to keep it in my life. It is addicting. I've wasted my time on much less noble or productive pursuits. I hope it finally lives up to my expectations and I can mold it into what I've always known it could be. Maybe it's time to actually recreate myself into something old and make it new again. A retread. Maybe this time when I grow up, I really will be a writer.

Like the age old question asked by lollipop licking Owls everywhere ... how many words does it take to earn the title of Writer?

A one, a two ...

If Self-Doubt Were a Superhero, What Color Would His Cape Be?

2012-01-19T06:00:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I felt a little bit like a superhero with a secret identity. I was flush with the success of completing a monumental project. A project born from the primordial goo of my imagination, spewed forth like a fish-man-beasty thing crawling from the depths. Okay, that might be a little melodramatic. Still, it felt like a big deal. All day.

Alternately, I was overcome with self-doubt. I shamelessly posted it on Facebook, because, dammit, I can't help myself. I can't keep a secret. Don't tell me any. I sure can't keep something as huge as a novel quiet. People congratulated me all day. It was wonderful. Like a second birthday.

But in my mind I was having this conversation:

Superhero Me: Way to go! You did it! You rock!

Self-Doubt the Evil Nemesis: Yeah, but you probably just wasted your time.

Superhero Me: No Way! It's the journey that matters. Completing the task! Doing what you said and set out to accomplish.

Self-Doubt the Evil Nemesis: Uh, yeah, still a waste of time and probably at least one tree was also wasted with that stack of paper.

Superhero Me: No, it's just as good as some of the other paranormal romances I've read.

Self-Doubt the Evil Nemesis: Really, you think so? Soooo deluded. No one is going to waste time reading that drivel. It's not even a real genre. Paranormal Romance, what the hell is that? Who cares?

Superhero Me: Middle aged women, lots of them. We like that stuff.

Self-Doubt the Evil Nemesis: Does it really make any difference in the world if it exists?

Superhero Me: It made ME happy. So yeah, it does.

Self-Doubt the Evil Nemesis: Self indulgent and weak

Superhero Me: Shut Up, Self-Doubt or I'm gonna rip that cape off and shove it up down your pie hole.

Last night I was determined to start the next novel fresh and new. When I started trying to massage my tiny little germ of an idea, my last unfinished project kept niggling at the back of my mind, "What about me? Finish me."

The last project was also the first real project I had ever started. I retrieved it from the bowels of my hard drive, dusted it off and reformated it to make it look prettier than it likely deserved. I printed that puppy out. Printing it out all nice and double spaced with a title, header and page numbers made it seem a little more official, more substantial and worthy somehow.

I bound it together with a colorful binder clip and headed to bed to reread it. I had already completed 115 pages before I wrote myself into a corner from which I couldn't figure out how to escape. As I read through it last night and then more today, I can't help thinking, it's not that bad. Sure the plot is ridiculously complicated and has no continuity but that can be fixed, right?

Apparently there are plotters and pantsers. Plotters tediously plan their storyline and spend hours writing the map of their story before their characters ever even come to life. Pantsers just jump in and write, anxiously waiting to see where the story takes them. For all my planning in my real life, I think I'm a pantser as a writer.

I don't like to be bothered with the tedious details.

On the one hand that's exciting because, I spent a lot of the work reacting to the crazy things that kept happening. Like in real life but totally not. On the other hand, at one point I got my heroine into such a mess, I'm now going to have to delete her back to something less grand. A God, I would not make. Lisa Almighty won't likely be in my future.

So I've decided to work on actually PLOTTING this unfinished work and molding it into something much better than it is right now. See, I AM teachable. In the meantime, I keep trying to kick Self-Doubt to the curb but he's a real bastard sometimes. Mostly he creeps in the minute someone tells me they want to read it. What? Why would you want to read it??? It's a NOVEL for God's sake. Oh, yeah. Right.

I feel like I need to make lots of disclaimers and caveats before I let anyone read it. Only a handful of people have read any of it and that was only the first twenty pages. As long as it's safely buried on my hard drive, and my desktop and my USB drive and my Skydrive and Google Docs ... ( paranoid much?) it's safe and a gloriously unjudged jewel. As soon as it get's read .... well ... I'll be judged too.

My own doing I know. I hear the strings whining as you play your tiny finger violin for me.

Be careful what you wish for ... you just might get it.

Dreaming of a Drift Boat

2012-01-18T06:00:00.000-06:00

This is Bryon’s latest project. It’s going to be a drift boat. Fishermen use them a lot out west. Bryon hopes to take it down the Eleven Point as well as out west. He found this kit on Craigslist. The kits sell for $3,500 new. He got this one for $700. The guy had bought two of them and completed one boat. The previous owner messed up the epoxy on the outside of this boat when he started it. The epoxy has to cure at just the right temperature and he did it out in the sun and it got too hot too quickly.

Bryon and two of his fishing buddies went in on shares and are all working on the boat together. They sanded it back down to bare wood and started over. That’s Matt in the pic above and those are the sides of the boat they are working on. The boat looks awesome so far. I couldn’t really envision what it was going to look like so he showed me these pics online.

It’s a pretty big project but they hope to make it river worthy by spring. He’s already dreaming of fishing trips to come.

They are taking boat name suggestions. So far all the potential names they came up with are dirty ones. They could use the help if you have a trout related name idea that doesn’t involve trousers or body parts.

Novel Success!

2012-01-17T06:00:00.000-06:00

Five months of writing to the date.

86,456 words.

335 pages.

Having a finished novel sitting on my desk ...

PRICELESS

I finished my paranormal romance novel Reap 'Em & Weep tonight. You'll read this tomorrow sometime. It feels like a real accomplishment. I sort of like just carrying it around.

I have no idea if it will ever see the light of day but I always wondered if I could do it. Stick it out until the end. See it through. Turns out I can. That feels pretty damn good.

The only thing better than having a project is having a completed project.

My plan now is to let it sit and percolate for a couple of weeks per Stephen King's advice in his book On Writing. The idea is that when you go back to it and read it to do so in one or two sittings so you don't lose focus on it. Also, after letting it sit for a while and going on to new things, it will be like reading someone else's writing. You'll have more perspective on it.

I think that idea is swell.

Bryon is begging me to read it. Now that it's done, I'm chicken to share it. It's not ready. I know there are some plot inconsistencies I need to iron out. Other things I need to flesh out. Still more I need to take out. I think it will be like a scab that you can't stop picking. At some point, I'm going to have to share it. And I will, I promise. I can't keep a secret, let alone something this big.

Just not now. Just not yet. I need to pick at it a bit more first.

Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to do it. Thanks to Bryon and Grace who endured Ramen noodles and Beanie Weanies more nights than were probably healthy.

Tomorrow I plan to start another one. A rolling stone gathers no moss. This isn't a sequel yet, although I have at least two more in mind for a Reap 'Em series. God knows how I like a series.

I'll let you know a little about the next one when I get rolling, for now I can tell you it's going to be based on the Worst Case Scenario books. Did you know they have a paranormal one? They do my friend, they really do.

Medley’s Best Apps in the Universe

2012-01-16T12:55:00.001-06:00

I might have an unnatural love for my iPhone. But if loving it is wrong, I don’t wanna be right. This thing is just awesome. It’s my office, my entertainment, my portable reference desk and my library. Oh yeah, it’s also a phone.'

The first smart phone I had was supplied by my work and it was a Palm Treo. I loved that gadget too … until the next thing came out. Then I loved my Blackberry for several years. Finally along came my iPhone. I can’t imagine loving another more than this phone, but alas it will probably one day happen. My electronic midlife crisis will inevitably lead me to a newer, younger, faster love. But until then, I’m enjoying all my iPhone 4S has to offer.

There are hundred’s of thousands of apps in the App Store and it’s hard to sift through all of them or even know what to look for. Honestly, every once in a while I’ll pick up one of those $10 app review magazines at Barnes & Noble and flip through it while sitting in their incredibly uncomfortable café chairs just to see what’s cookin’. I am certainly not going to BUY one of those magazines because it will be outdated by the time I make it through the door. Besides that, I’ll probably only actually use one or two of those apps. Still it’s a good way to see what you might be interested and it may lead you to other good apps in your search.

Here are a few I have found especially useful to me. Most of these were 99 cents or $1.99. I know lots of people only use the free apps but all of these were worth paying for to me.

TuneIn Radio:

I use this almost every day. When I’m on the road, I lose my regular radio station for KSMU around Lebanon. With this app, I can stream it right into my super awesome car and it comes in crystal clear. Plus if I miss Morning Addition for some reason, I can tune in to Talkeetna Alaska or Seattle, WA or somewhere else on the West Coast and catch the first two hours. It’s fun listing to the morning news of places I’ve been or might like to be. There is also a record feature and if you step away from the car, it picks right back up where you left off. It does use data to stream, but I’ve listened as much as I’ve wanted to and not hit my AT&T quota yet. At home, it uses WiFi, so that cost me nothing. You can set presets or favorites of the stations you like to listen to the most. I especially like one called Coffee And The Muse for when I’m writing upstairs. There are just so many options!

iBookshelf:

I tested out several free versions of bookshelves for my phone and this was my favorite. I can use the phone’s camera to scan in the barcode of books in my library at home and it finds them and adds them to my bookshelf on my phone. What that means is when I’m out and about at used bookstores, I have my entire booklist at the ready so I don’t buy books twice! I can also look to see which one’s I’m missing from a series. There have been a few books it couldn’t find but that’s no problem, you can search by author or just snap a photo with your phone and enter it in. I have all of my paranormal library collection entered into it. I still have to work on the upstairs library, but I plan to get them all entered in soon. I have a stack of six books I had bought twice before I got this app. It will pay for itself pretty quickly and it’s super easy to use and flip through to review your collection. You can also export the list to an Excel file for your computer!

Words With Friends:

I know you’ve heard of this one and probably have it. It is a fun and addictive Scrabble game you play with … well, you’re friends. It’s totally worth paying the $1.99 to get rid of the ads by the way.Super easy to use and you can send messages while you play if you want to congratulate or rant about a word played.

Angry Birds:

A super fun killer of time and ambition. I played four hours of it once at a family gathering. I sort of burned out after that but it’s fun while you are waiting for a doctor’s appointment or for your oil to get changed. They have new seasonal versions from time to time that make it fresh and new.

Amazon:

I have Amazon Prime ($79 for free shipping for a year and lots of other things like free streaming of movies and tv which we can’t use out here in the Big Cedars due to our incompetent internet speed). The nice thing about it is you can make Wish Lists of things you are maybe considering purchasing and if you check back from time to time the prices change and you can pick stuff up super cheap. I was looking for Season Four and Five of Supernatural and they were $44.00 each at Walmart. I put them on the list, checked back for a few weeks and got them both for $14.99 each. The day after Thanksgiving I got True Blood Season 2 for $9.99 and they are all shipped right to my house! Very handy!

Reader Apps: Nook, Kobo,Kindle

All three of these apps are good. I have a slight preference to the Nook app since I also have a color Nook tablet but the other two apps are just as good for buying, downloading and reading books on your iPhone.I don’t use the iBook app. I just never tried it.

Camera+

I really like this camera app because it has easy uploading directly to Facebook, lots of easy editing features and border options.

MovieNight

This is great for searching for movies at your local theaters and finding times and reviews. Very, very handy when I’m downtown and wondering what’s on.

MyPathFinder

This is the Silver Dollar City app and has show times AND the SDC MAP on it! Much easier than carrying around their big paper map and you are looking at your phone every ten seconds anyway right?

WhiteNoise

I like this for tuning out everyone at lunchtime so I can read or write. You can listen to the ocean, train tracks, birds, lots of cool stuff instead of the incredibly distracting conversation of the obnoxious persons beside you.

Facebook:

I might be a little addicted to Facebook. Okay, a lot addicted. But it sure is fun sharing your every random thought and catching up with friends. Actually, there are a few people I Iike better on Facebook than in real life. That’s probably wrong, but true. The Facebook app is constantly changing but it’s easy to use and share what’s going on in your life.

I have lots and lots of other apps on my phone taking up space that just need to be deleted because these are the best. Of course you never know until you try them, and I do love the thrill of the app hunt.

Catting Around

2012-01-15T08:30:00.000-06:00

This cat has been hanging around the place lately. We think she probably came from our neighbor's house since they have a pretty regular supply of farm cats. Bryon actually caught her in the steel trap we set during the summer to catch the raccoons. Her foot was pretty sore, but he released her and we didn't think we'd probably ever see her again.

We never did catch any raccoons.

Then a couple of weeks ago, she decided to make friends. I knew a cat had been eating the leftovers out of the compost pile because one had scrammed out of there more than once. She about scared me to death in the dark when I walked out to dump stuff.

She got trapped in the barn for a couple of days. I guess she'd gone in there while the door was up and we didn't know it. No harm down though. Hopefully she ate a bunch of mice while she was in there.

Belle has been playing with her and Grace has taken a special liking to her. She named her Violet. So, we've been feeding her and she purrs and rubs up against us and begs for more.

I guess if she hangs around another week or so, I'll load her up and take her to the vet and get her fixed. We don't need eight million cats around here and I know that's what is bond to happen. I just worry that as soon as I get her fixed she'll get chowed on by a coyote or crawl up under our car. One wild cat did that not too long ago and we found it dead on the driveway.

I guess I've wasted fifty bucks on dumber things though.

Pansy was supposed to be an outside barn cat. That was the ploy I used to get her anyway. Then she was sick as soon as I brought her home from the pound and she's never been outside in her entire eight years. She is the best cat in the universe too.

Now if she'd just learn to get along with Belle instead of hissing and spitting at her all the time, life in the Medley house would be a little quieter.

I'm not holding my breath.

Dead Cock Walking

2012-01-14T08:12:00.000-06:00

This guy’s days may be numbered. He’s five months old. Apparently that is the rooster threshold for friendliness because today he rushed me – twice. Now past experience with two roosters has proven that this is the beginning of the end.

The last two roosters got to flogging everyone who came to the house. Grace was a special favorite for them to chase around. They hardly ever flogged me, so I probably let them go longer than I should have. We ate them both eventually.

This guy made the mistake of coming for me first this time. I really thought we could raise a non-aggressive rooster. Eternal optimist that I am. Buffs seem to be pretty docile birds … at least the hens are. He finally started crowing good the past week or so. I guess he’s feeling pretty cocky right now.

What he doesn’t know is that I hold all the power. He lives and dies at my will.

They don’t say “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you” for no good reason. He’ll do well to learn that quickly.

It bums me out because if we eat him, when the zombie apocalypse comes, we won’t have anymore little baby chickens to raise.

Now that’s just sad.

Ant Farming

2012-01-13T08:00:00.000-06:00

I guess we can add ants to the list of domestic animals on our farm now. This was another of Grace’s Christmas gifts. It has been sitting in the closet since Christmas as we awaited the arrival of ants from Uncle Milton.

Bryon wanted to get this gift for Grace because he always wanted to have an ant farm. Actually, he did have an ant farm, but his mom would never let him get the ants for it. She didn’t want them escaping into the house. Not to be deterred, he caught some wild ants and filled it up. As soon as she saw them, she made him dump it back out.

Grace’s ants arrived Tuesday in our mailbox. Bryon and Grace got their new home ready that night and deposited them into it. The flyer says they’ll live a few months. They are harvester ants. You use a tool to make the three starter holes then the ants are supposed to start tunneling and doing their anty thing. So far these ants have been pretty lazy.

We saw one or two squirm down one of the tunnels then back its bus right back out. I’m also pretty sure three or four of them are already dead. Mostly they’ve just been hanging out on the top and eating their way to the bottom. The green medium is both food and fun.

I am sympathetic to Bryon’s mom on this front. It seems wrong to BUY ants and bring them into the house when the last two years we had to pay to have them exterminated. If these fancy harvester ants don’t make it. By spring we’ll have a whole new crop of hardy Missouri bathroom ants we can scoop up to take their place.

Oh how I wish I could play the Pink Panther theme on this post. You’ll just have to imagine it for yourself. You know how it goes … dead ant, dead ant … dead ant, dead ant, dead ant.

Living Crystal

2012-01-12T08:00:00.000-06:00

This is one of Grace’s Christmas gifts. It was a crystal growing experiment. I have no idea how this worked but from a bunch of pink water and a starter rock of some sort, this cool pink crystal grew. I may very well be magic.

She and Bryon started it New Year’s Day.

As experiments go, this beats Sea Monkeys in my book.

Trail Swag

2012-01-11T08:22:00.000-06:00

Bryon has a food plot planted with turnips back behind a nice patch of cedar trees on our land. Our trail meanders through our woods then dumps out into the turnip patch. There are deer tracks everywhere out there and lots of little purple turnip shoulders crowned with bright green tops are peeking up through the dirt.

I guess they are irresistible to deer. And apparently dogs as well.

Belle pulls one up by it’s green top almost every day when we walk by the patch. She carried one all the way home today and ate it up.

I don’t mind her eating turnips. It was the dried cow patty she carried home and wanted to bring into the house and the deer foreleg where I drew the line.

I don’t even want her kisses anymore. I know where that mouth has been.

Liar, Liar Pants On Fire.

2012-01-10T17:20:00.001-06:00

Last night I got home late. After Grandpa left, Grace was watching television in the living room. Bryon wasn’t home yet. I smelled something in the house. I realized it was Grace’s perfume. I (or Santa who can remember now) brought it to her for Christmas last year and the first time she wore it in the car on the way to church, my head tightened up and I’m pretty sure my brain shriveled a bit.

I picked out the berry scent (yes I sniffed it in the store) because usually food scents are okay for me. Go figure right? But that scent was NOT okay. I told her she’d have to take it to Nana’s and wear it at her house when she visited. She put it in her Nana backpack and that was that. We had an agreement. A deal was struck.

Last night I smelled it as soon as I walked in the house.

I asked her if she had sprayed her perfume.

“Nu uh” she said and kept right on watching Sponge Bob.

“Well, I smell something,” I said searching the house for the source.

Finally, I caught a glimpse of the bottle on the edge of her bathtub. Her bathroom reeked of it. I brought out the bottle and asked her again.

Yep she had sprayed it. And yep, she had lied.

I told her she was grounded from her DS for three day.s Then I lit a nice cookie scented candle to dampen the wretched smell that was already causing my brain to seize up.

Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.

I really hate it when she lies to me. I know it’s inevitable. Heck I did it too. Often. My mom says she always knew when I was lying because I blinked too much when I talked to her. I don’t think Grace has a tell like that. I guess I need to pay more attention. I did tell her I would always find out if she lied to me.

Of course, my mom didn’t know every time I lied to her.

We had a few parties in high school she never found out about until years later when I finally told her. I can’t believe the neighbors didn’t tell on me but the didn’t.

We don’t have any neighbors.

We are screwed.

Car Works

2012-01-09T20:46:00.001-06:00

This is how I started out my very busy day. Sitting at the Ford Dealership waiting to see why my engine light was on and whether or not I was going to make it to Rolla for my appointment.
I spent two hours at Don Vance (without an appointment) to find out it’s some canister purge valve that apparently keeps gas fumes out of your car. Seemed sort of important.
Once they determined the culprit. They turned off the light, ordered the parts and sent me on my way. Bryon said to just crack the window. He must be confused as to which one of us in the family has the big spanky life insurance policy.
I made it to my appointment but just barely.
This car has been the most awesome and the most frustrating automobile I have ever owned. I feel especially responsible for it since it’s my baby. I picked it out.l I got to buy it and it’s in my name. It try to keep it clean and take care of it. Sort of like our kid and pets around the house.
Like Grace says, if you love animals you have to take them to the vet when they are sick.
If you love your car, you take it too the shop.
They are all expensive to maintain and even the car talks back.

Hire Jeff Houghton

2012-01-08T21:56:00.003-06:00

My friend Jeff needs a job. He's awesome. He's funny. He's an innovative employee. Seriously, if you have an opening or know someone who does, send this to them and give him a call. You won't be sorry.

If not, you should just check out his blog. He's been posting everyday for nearly a year. Today was post 317. The Mystery Year Blog

Here is his blog page/resume

HireJeffHoughton.wordpress.com

Help Support a Starving Artist

2012-01-08T21:25:00.000-06:00

One of my new friends in ORA has self-published two short stories and a longer ebook on Smashwords. If you haven't checked out Smashwords it's a very cool site and a great way to fill up that eReader you got for Christmas with some great stuff at a very reasonable price. Smashwords is sort of the Fair Trade of Writers. Lots of writers self-publish on the site and they make about half of whatever you are paying from what I understand.

So help support some folks who have put a lot of heart, soul and late nights into their work and maybe you'll discover a great writer along the way.

Here are the links to Allison Merritt's works. Enjoy!

Clear As Mud - short story (6 pages)

One Day in D.C. - longer short story (20 pages)

Return - short story (8-10 pages?)

She also let me beta read her cool new steam punk novel called The Treasure Hunter's Lady and it is AWESOME! She'll have it available in February so stay tuned.

The Perfect Brownie

2012-01-08T20:59:00.000-06:00

I am the self-proclaimed Brownie Queen. I am expecting to receive my tiara any day now. If you don't believe me, I can give you some references. I make really wonderfully decadent brownies. No they are not from scratch. They are from Betty. Betty Crocker. You probably already know her. She provides the basics in a box marked Original Supreme. I add the bling.

The bling is half a bag of Hershey's chocolate chips.

Bake as directed for EXACTLY 35 minutes.

Let them sit.

Devour with milk in a frozen glass.

Repeat.

Day 8. It's not too late.

2012-01-08T20:48:00.000-06:00

Gosh, I keep toying with the idea of posting every day for a year. Other people I know have done it. I want to do it. I just don't know if I can. I mean SURE I CAN. I just don't know if it would be worthwhile or anyone would actually want to read it. All that glitters is not gold. Just ask S.E. Hinton.

I already have four post for January and this one would make five. I could catch up. Give it a go. Make the effort. If I get behind, maybe I could back date it. Sure I could. I might have to take up a collection for my blog book next year if I actually make it 365 days. Long term commitments are difficult.

I might forget. I might be paralyzed with self-doubt. Nah, probably not. You might see lots of pictures of a cute but slightly demonic dog.

You might get random rambling posts like this one.

Or you might get gold.

I'd bet on the rambling thing if you are a betting person.

The first week of January

2012-01-08T16:38:00.001-06:00

The Man & The Beast

It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon here in the Big Cedars. I should be out walking today. I walked a total of twelve miles last week and most of that was on the weekend. That is so not happening this week. I felt sort of crappy today and just couldn’t motivate myself to get out and do it.

I baked brownies instead.

No that isn’t what I should have done, but it’s what I did.

This first week of January I also managed to add 12,945 words to my novel. Have I told you what it’s called? I can’t remember. It’s called Reap ‘Em & Weep. I added a lot to it yesterday in the Write In at The Creamery in Springfield. There were 38 writers in attendance writing in all sorts of genres. I added 3,800 words of that total yesterday alone.

The Write In

Now, that’s not all gold, but it’s at least something and it’s much easier to delete than to add so I’m getting close to wrapping up my novel. I should finish it this week. (fingers crossed). Then the editing begins. At this point I’ve read it so many times, I can’t see the forest for the trees. I’ll probably read through it in its entirety one more time after it’s finished and then I’ll solicit some beta readers to help edit and give me advice before going any further.

It’s funny how many people are secret novelists or at least harbor the desire to be. I had no idea. The more people I talk to, the more I meet who have a husband or wife or friend who want to or are trying to write a novel. It’s pretty cool.

Everyone has a story in them. The hard part is getting it out.
I’ve learned a lot already and I’ll learn even more before I’m finished.

I bought this little netbook so I could slip it into my purse and take with me for lunch time writing. It’s pretty swell.

I can’t wait to start the next novel.

Writing the Reaper

2012-01-04T23:25:00.000-06:00

The only cool picture of a girly reaper I could find on the internet.

I'm writing in JANO (local write a novel in a month challenge). I've added 7,282 words to my novel in the past four days! I should break 70,000 words tomorrow night. Then only 10,000 more to go!

Not getting much blogging in obviously. I'm a good multi-tasker but that's stretching it.

More to come.

Niangua Groove

2012-01-02T13:17:00.000-06:00

We're back, back in the Niangua Groove. It's not quite the same as Ace Freley's New York Grove, but it's what we do out here in the Big Cedars.

The car is cleaned out and ready for work, breakfast muffins are made and frozen, ready to heat up for two weeks worth of traveling morning meals. The clothes are washed and I'm ready to go back to work. Well, mostly.

Getting up in the morning at 6 or 6:30 am in the dark is the hardest part I think. I sure do like sleeping in late, but I've had a good long run and I think I'm actually ready to face a new year. Bryon goes back to work tomorrow and Grace goes back to school. One thing about life is if you don't like change, you are not going to fare very well because things change constantly.

Garrett sights in his rifle for youth hunting next weekend. He hit it right on four our of six times.

Shooting clay pigeons.

We had a really fun New Year's Eve with three families of friends coming over. One family spent the night. We shot guns down Bryon's shooting range, then rode out to the field to shoot clay pigeons (I'm pretty sure I was the winner, but I do have a honking bruise on my shoulder for a trophy). We rode four wheelers, played Just Dance II on the Wii and ate and drank.

Watching the Green Lantern in 3D.

Hanging out.

Cats playing poker.

Why we don't do these things more often, I have no idea but we sure had a good time. So good in fact that I forgot to close the gate to the chicken coop and sometime in the night, two of my new Buff Orpington hens got killed. It was a bummer. The chickens have been VERY reluctant to go to roost in the hen house the past two nights and I've had to carry three of them back in there.

I actually thought I'd lost another one yesterday sometime because I only had six in the hen house (two of which I had to take there) and I knew I'd seen seven earlier in the day. Thankfully Bryon found her in the garage this morning. She had hidden herself very well.

So now that leaves me with six hens and a rooster. None of them are laying yet. The old ones molted and quit laying a couple of months ago and the new ones (only two now) should start in February or March. I have had the light on out in the coop and the heat lamp is on for them tonight since it's so cold so that might spark the old ones back up. I've been buying organic eggs from the store but they sure aren't the same.

I hope they resolve to lay more eggs in the new year.

January Resolutions

2012-01-01T14:31:00.002-06:00

I had a long list of resolutions that I was considering for this year. I've decided to simplify them and just concentrate on one or two each month. This month's area of focus will be WALKING and WRITING. I signed up for JANOWRIMO which is the local version of NANOWRIMO. Basically to write a novel in a month or 50,000 words.

Most people start from scratch and write, write, write without editing until they hit the 50,000 word goal to 'win'. Some work on 'works in progress'. I'm going the WIP route as well as the blogging route to shoot for my word count. My real goal is 18, 591 on my novel because THAT will put me exactly where I need to be.

I'm going to need to write at least SOME on it every day this month to achieve that. No easy task! Time is the enemy of ambition. At least it is for me.

I am excited to meet some new people next Saturday at the Write In at the Springfield Creamery which will give me eight uninterupted hours of writing and smoozing with other writers. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

I've put a word counter at the top of my blog to try to keep track of the writing (all forms) I accomplish this month.

Here we go!

Clean Slate

2011-12-30T14:57:00.000-06:00

Well it's all over and done with ... Christmas, 2011... out with the old and in with the new. I've been taking the week between Christmas and New Years off since Grace was born. This year, I thought I might not burn that many vacation days but once again decided to do it.

On the one hand, it's great being home and getting all of the Christmas stuff that I enjoyed so much BEFORE Christmas down and put away. The minute the gifts are opened and everyone goes home, I'm over it. I want things clean and organized.

I stayed up late the past several nights getting things put away and doing the little and big tasks that had been getting put off while I was working. I revamped the Girl Cave and moved ALL of Grace's stuff to her playroom. She's already been in there more 'working'.

Moved the day/trundle bed to the playroom.


Girl Cave Redo

I moved the futon to my Girl Cave and bought a book case. I'm going to buy a better and much larger one to put on the wall behind the closet door.

Futon and a book case!

Optimistic exercise equipment

With the futon out of the way, the exercise equipment beacons. I even dusted it off. Maybe this will be the year? Lord knows we need it.

The dog sleeps alone.

And the dog got relocated. Bryon has had to get up with her every few hours to let her outside since we got her. She doesn't NEED to go outside that much, she just WANTS to go outside. She goes out there an lays in the grass in the middle of the night. Uh, No. Now she sleeps outside in her dogloo. If it gets super cold she can sleep in her crate. She likes the crate so it's not really the hardship it sounds like. AND we can all sleep better now. It makes me want to beat her a little less.

I have LOTS of goals for 2012. I've written them all down. The problem, as always, is in the IMPLEMENTATION of those goals. I'm all ideas. I just need more minion to do my bidding so I can follow through. I didn't make any resolutions last year. My number one resolution for 2012 is to finish this novel. I'm at 61,409 words as of last night. I need 18,591 more to reach 80,000 and then I can pursue publication. I'm not even going to try to follow that path until I have a completed project to present.

If I can't get it published, I'll self-publish it on Amazon and then you can read my pulp fiction masterpiece. Or not. No pressure. It's all good. Paranormal romance is not for everyone. I understand that. Try to make me read a historical romance or a 'classic' and we'll have a problem. Boring. Add zombies or vampires to that and I'm all in.

Maybe I'll share some of my other resolutions as we go.

Life is Good in the Big Cedars.

Gift Giving - Consumption Umption, What's Your Function?

2011-12-22T17:53:00.001-06:00

We might have gone a little overboard this year with Grace's gifts. We had a few ideas of things she wanted and a few more of things we wanted to get for her from us and from Santa. We got them all.

A few years ago we finally talked everyone, friends and family, into not exchanging gifts anymore. It was all just sort of insane trying to come up with stuff for everyone who, like us, bought what they really wanted for themselves. It was a tremendous relief. Now we only have to buy for Grace.

Grace really doesn't get get a lot of STUFF or gifts through the year. Her birthday is in October and we've had some pretty large and elaborate birthday parties that yield lots of kids which in turn yield lots of presents. This year she only wanted a small sleepover and to eat out somewhere fancy with her family. Jackpot! She still got some gifts but not the deluge she usually gets. She was just as happy.

Now the prudent person would have carried that logic through to Christmas and pursued a similar plan. We are not prudent people. We went a little nuts.

She has outgrown ALL her jeans!

A few science experiments, Wii, DS and Justin Beber

Stocking stuffers and no that's not booze ;)

She asked for books about jungles.

We also got her a REAL digital camera. She's had a couple of kids digital cameras and they are just worthless really. The pics are so bad they aren't even worth downloading. I know she'll have fun with a real one. It's shockproof, waterproof and a couple of other 'proofs' so hopefully it will last a while.

And finally I got her this Rock and Gem book that she's checked out of the library a ton of times. Now she'll have one of her own.

We did all of our shopping in one day while Grandpa Medley watched Grace. It was pretty fun AND we got to eat at Olive Garden so double score. I wanted to order everything from Amazon. Bryon wanted to go shopping. He won but I got to eat bread sticks and pasta so I was a happy loser.

Bryon is a great gift giver. I am a crappy gift giver.

Bryon once gave me a trip to Estes Park, CO to learn to snowshoe and cross country ski. I stayed in a condo with a jacuzzi with my Mom. It was wonderful.

I once gave Bryon a $3.00 pair of binoculars from Osco. Turns out the optics on a $3.00 pair of binoculars are not all that good. They might as well have come from a gumball machine.

Grace is just lucky she's got her Daddy shopping for her.

Shelved

2011-12-20T16:48:00.000-06:00

Wow, I thought I had read a lot more books than this during 2011. It SEEMED like I was reading a lot. I guess I spent much more time working on my novel than I thought. I only read 25 books this year. Last year I read 64. Grave Secret is on that list above twice. I only read it once. I'm just too Photoshop impaired to delete it.

I'm pretty sure I read a few more than this but just didn't remember to put them on Shelfari. No idea what those might have been. If they come to me in an epiphany, I'll update. I wouldn't hold your breath if I was you ;)

There were some good reads in that list. The Stand was a great reread as was One for the Money. I don't usually do that. Reread that is, but I thoroughly enjoyed both ... again.

I have The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo on my nightstand lined up to be next. Then I'm thinking maybe The Hunger Games. That's the great thing about loving to read ... there's always more!

Winter Is For The Birds

2011-12-17T10:28:00.000-06:00

I finally made this little project that I saw ... somewhere. I thought maybe I'd seen it on Pinterest which I recently started perusing but when I looked at my boards I didn't see it there. Pinterest is a cool site if you've never been there. It, like Facebook, is a great sucker of time but I LOVE looking at magazines and it's a little like that ... without the ads.

I thought this would be a fun project for Grace but she lasted through two of them and I did the rest. I had two jars of organic peanut butter that I can't stand so at least it's getting put to good use. I've tried to like organic and natural peanut butter. I really have but I hate how the oil separates and then it's impossible to stir up or spread. These were a mess to make with that peanut butter. With Jiff of some other smooth brand, it would have been a lot easier. Still, they are pretty darn cool.

Toilet paper rolls, peanut butter and birdseed.

Smear on the peanut butter.

Roll it in the birdseed.


And suddenly you've got cool bird treats.

You just slip them over tree limbs and the birds will find them. Of course squirrels will too and since we live in the woods the last on the tree limb about eight minutes. At least something is getting to enjoy them.

Blogging in 2012

2011-12-13T08:00:00.000-06:00

A blog is like a garden that you need to tend. If you don't water it, if you let the weeds grow up, if you just plant the seeds and then forget about it: nothing will grow there. Or if something does manage to grow, it won't be what you expected.

Here is my blog book for 2011. I ordered it a little early because there was a sale, so it goes from Jan. 1- Nov. 30, 2011. Next year's book will start Dec. 1. It goes against my sense of organization and completion but totally agrees with my sense of a good deal being had. I felt like I blogged a lot in 2011.

I have been blogging since June of 2007. The first year I had only 49 posts. In 2008 I had 113 posts, 2009 115 posts and in 2010 I had 79 posts. 2010 was a long eventful but ultimately unbloggable year with all that was going on with Bryon's job. This year has been awesome. If I hadn't blogged so much in October though, I wouldn't have had very many posts. For 2011 I'm at 87 posts so far. I'll get a few more in before the time ticks down.

This year I'm going to really concentrate on my blog. I know a few of you guys out there read it every time I post. I think that's cool. It's very personally satisfying to see those page views increase. Since the month of October when I blogged every day, my monthly page views have gone from 200-300 in a month to 800 in the past 30 days.

That is AWESOME!

I'm not saying I'm some robed sage to be followed. I'll just be continuing on as usual, telling you stories about life in the Big Cedars, my family, preserving some of the stories about Bryon and my childhoods, our courtship, and our marriage for Grace and writing about the various and sundry other things that strike my fancy.

Things like writing. I'm still working on my novel. I started it in August so I don't feel like it's too stale yet or has been worked on a ridiculously long time and should be shoved into a drawer and forgotten. I'm still interested in it and still excited about it. I just need many, many more hours in the day to be able to work on it. I can't really accomplish much in fits and starts. I am looking forward to another Write-In day January 7 at the Creamery with the writing group (Ozark Romance Authors - ORA).

Maybe I can squeeze in a few more hours/days/minutes before then. At this point at least I don't have to reread the entire thing before I feel like I can sit down to work on it again. Those characters are like cousins I don't see very much but still remember what they've done during holiday dinners past. I at least know their story now.

Blogging is not as difficult as writing a novel but it still takes time in between cooking dinner, washing clothes, tending to kids, husband, animals, plants, sleep, reading ... you know how it is. You are doing the same things. I'm not promising a post a day because that will suck the joy out of it if it becomes a chore. I am promising I'll make an effort to post MORE.

I've been collecting a list of topics in my notes app on my new iPhone. Siri has been helping me ... when she isn't on crack that is and spewing forth nonsense.

Here's what I have (in no particular order) coming up in the next few posts to pique your interest...

A Walk In The Woods
Gift Giving
Coolest Apps in the Universe
Needless: How to be not so needy
Serial Killer: Why series books and shows turn me on
Product Loyalty
What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
Picky Eater
Amusement Parks & Memories of Vacations Past
Getting Religion
Old Timey Ways
Resolutions for 2012 - 12 Months of Projects
Oldies But Goodies

I'll keep working on more as they come to me.

For now, thanks for reading. You're swell.

And if you haven't subscribed by email, you should do it. Just fill in your email address at the top of the blog and you'll get my posts emailed to you. They also update on my Facebook page. Friend me and you'll never miss an episode. I can't promise there won't be any reruns though. I am my Mother's daughter. I have to search my own blog sometimes to make sure I'm not repeating myself :)

Life is Good in Big Cedars.

A Walk in the Woods

2011-12-09T12:38:00.000-06:00

Grace got lost in the woods a couple of weekends ago. Ever since we got Belle, we have been making an extra effort to walk her at least twice a day. We walk her in the morning for 10 or 15 minutes before putting her into the outside kennel and going to work and school and then again as soon as we get home. She gets a few more walks usually on the weekends.

We've been sending Grace out to do some of those walks. When Bryon was off last year, he made some awesome trails through out woods. We especially like to take her there. Grace has been on those trails now many, many times but never alone. A couple of weekends ago on a Sunday afternoon we told her to take Belle out for a walk. Grace said she was going to go on the long trail. We said fine. She had just led her Nana on that same trail the day before. It's not too complicated. The trail isn't marked but it's pretty obvious. So off they went.

The entire trail takes about 15 minutes to walk at a pokey pace. Twenty five minutes later Grace and Belle still weren't back. I hollered and hollered and got no answer. Now, I wouldn't have put it past Grace NOT to answer but I sent Bryon out on the four wheeler to track them down.

I heard the four wheeler racing through the woods and then doubling back. I knew he hadn't found them. Then I saw her coming down the driveway with the dog in tow.

Me: "Grace, you were gone a long time!"
Grace: "I know! I was lost! I thought I was going to have to spend the night outside!"

She was getting teary as she started to tell me the story of her adventure. Bryon pulled up just a few minutes after she got back. Apparently Belle had gotten away from her and she had chased her and then supposedly got lost. She then proceeded to cross two fences and walk to our neighbors house (a little classmate) and knock on their door for help. They weren't home. She said she turned around and saw our mailbox and walked down the ditch to it and then down the driveway back home.

She said she hollered and hollered for us. Well, we were in the house and she was a quarter mile away in the woods. We didn't hear her.

Now, there were a few holes in her story. First of all, if she could see the neighbor's house to walk to it ... then she could have seen our field and mailbox. Secondly, if she hadn't crossed any fences she would never have left our property. Third, after Bryon reviewed the trail cams, he saw her heading RIGHT ON THE TRAIL to our field just like we always go.

The only ones that really know what happened during that twenty five minutes is Grace ... and Belle but she was pretty undone about it all. I made her hot chocolate with marshmellows. I tried not to make too big a deal about it because she can be a real drama queen and would have really been upset if I had. She did learn some lessons that will hopefully stay with her.

1. Never cross fences.
2. Never walk by the road.
3 If you get lost, stay put. Someone will come and find you.
4. If the dog escapes, let her go. She'll come back or we'll find her later.
5. You are ALWAYS on camera, even in the woods.

That night when I said sweet dreams she said she'd probably have nightmares about being lost in the woods. I asked her why? She knew it had a happy ending, so she shouldn't worry about it anymore.

What happens in the woods, stays in the woods.

Next time she's just going to have to stay on the road more traveled.

Small Town Parade - The Whole Enchilada

2011-12-08T20:27:00.001-06:00

So I finally got the whole parade uploaded. It's actually only 10 minutes long and it has a LOT of wind and me laughing about people thowing candy at me in the audio. Sorry about that. I took it on my iPhone. This is the last leg of the parade. The other little video was as it left the school.

I especially like the guy at the end trying to sell his wood.

Ah, life in a small town.

Merry Christmas From The Medley Family

2011-12-05T21:37:00.001-06:00

Baton Twirling Pinnacle

2011-12-04T23:01:00.001-06:00

Saturday was the Niangua Christmas Parade. We had never actually gone to the Niangua Christmas Parade but the cheer leading coach and her mother at school sent home letters a few weeks ago to see who wanted to be baton twillers in the parade.

I asked Grace if she wanted to do it and she said she did. I called the coach and signed her up putting the wheels in motion. The coach wanted them to all dress the same (or at least as similar as they could): red skirt, white tights, white sweatshirt so while I was out and about I made a few stops to track down a red skirt that would be appropriate for twirling. I was surprisingly difficult.

You would think there would be a plethora of red skirts for little girls around Christmas time. Not so. In fact, I couldn't find one anywhere. I resorted to Amazon and found one. Just before I hit the confirm button, I asked Grace one more time (stupid I know) if she was sure she wanted to do it. She said no. I asked why. She said because it was just going to be older kids and she was too nervous to do it. Whatever.

I don't know where she gets this 'too nervous' thing. I have NEVER said that. I've FELT it at times, sure but I NEVER said it to her about anything. It's amazing how other people and shows and who knows WHAT help them form their little minds and opinions. I have no idea where she got that from.

I tried to talk her into doing it. She got upset and teared up and said no. No other first graders were doing it so she didn't want to either. Bryon told her she could be a leader and do it and if she didn't she would be missing out on a lot of potential fun. She still said no. I told her if she wasn't going to do it I needed to tell the coach before the week of practice started. Still no. I emailed the coach and told her she was out and why.

The coach emailed back and said four other first graders had in fact signed up to do it and the first grade had the most kids on the team. We worked on her some more. She finally said yes. I hit 'Place Order' and told her teacher she was staying after school all last week to practice.

The first night she came home elated. She had a blast and showed us all her new moves.

Practice continued all last week and then the big day arrived. I had finally found another red skirt at Walmart in the little toddlers section that was a five. Grace wears a seven but it looked stretchy and like it might work if we had to use it. I kept the receipt just in case.

Good thing too because Saturday morning all I wanted to do was sleep in. We didn't have to be at the school until 10:30 so woo hoo! Sleep in it was. Or not. Grace was up at 7:30 and in my room crying and complaining of a stomach ache and then that she was NOT going to wear the skirt I had ordered because it was see through and people would see her bottom. Well, yeah, it was see through. It was more of a tutu but she had white pant/tights she could wear under it instead of just tights and it would have been fine. Nope, it was too poofy she said.

Well this went on forever until I finally just got up, stalked out the car and brought in the other skirt that might or might not fit. Thank God it did. She dried up her tears, I gave her a Tums and we got ready to go.

She was nervous and excited. Bryon missed it because he had to work but you can see her in the video above. Noticetoo the tumbleweed blowing across the street in front of the police car. Pretty funny and pretty typical of small town Niangua. It is pretty much a ghost town. Also you'll notice the four hourses at the FRONT of the parade. Who puts horses at the FRONT of a parade without poop bags on them? Niangua does. The band followed pretty closely behind and then the twillers. You can imagine what happened. Grace was just happy it wasn't HER baton that landed in a steaming pile of poo.

By the way, three other girls had the EXACT same little skirt on (number two not the poofy one). Disaster averted.

Grace did a great job and took it very seriously. You can see how high she's marching. She complained about her butt hurting a few hours later and the next day too. No pain, no gain my friend.

If you would like to see the entire ten minute parade I'm trying to upload it to YouTube. I'll post it if I get it accomplished.

Just another day in big city.

Life is good.

Barbered Barbies

2011-12-04T22:06:00.001-06:00

Well it was bound to happen. It's a rite of passage I suppose. In fact, have you ever been to a flea market and NOT seen it? Of course I'm talking about Barbies with eternal haircuts. Nope, Barbie hair does not grow back my friend. It's like every bald man you've ever met regardless of how much Rogaine they rub over their chrome dome ... when it's gone, it's gone.

Grace came to me this afternoon and asked me to promise not to tell her Daddy something that was probably going to make me mad. I told her I was not promising but she needed to tell me anyway. Here's how the conversation went.

Grace: I cut my Barbies' hair.
Me: Why would you do that?
Grace: I was bored.
Me: How many Barbies did you cut?
Grace: I don't know.
Me: Go where are they?
Grace: In my playroom.
Me: Go get them.

She did. She came down with her rolly backpack full of shorn Barbies. There were ten of them. And a pile of Barbie hair. She suggested we take it to the woods to dispose of it. She really didn't want her Daddy to know.

The only ones who survived the shearing were the pseudo Barbies and the ones in her bath tub.

Honestly it was hard to be too mad about it. They actually turned out pretty cute. All except Rapunzel, she's screwed. She looks like she just got back from Jamaica and she let those ladies braid her hair. She's got some seriously messed up dreadlocks going on.

I told Grace she was not getting anymore Barbie dolls since she obviously couldn't take care of them appropriately.

I threw the hair in the trash can and I did tell her Daddy. It was too funny not too. He wasn't mad, just flummoxed as to WHY she would do it. Well me too really. I don't think I ever cut my Barbies' hair.

Maybe she'll be a hairstylist instead of a vet.

You just never know.

Simply the Best

2011-12-01T19:22:00.001-06:00

Man I have always wanted to be the best at something. I'm mediocre at a lot of things. I'm the BEST at nothing. I'm not whining about it, I'm just stating facts.

My problem is that I want it to come easily. I guess that makes me a little lazy in that respect. For example, it would be awesome to be a great singer. I can't carry a tune at all. In fact, when I was in the fifth grade we had a Christmas musical at our elementary school. We were all in it. We had to sing. As a group. Did I mention I can't sing?

Well at one point the teachers told us that if we didn't want to sing for some reason, we could sit out and not participate. I didn't want to sing. Neither did a couple of other kids. We sat at the cafeteria tables while the other losers sang their little hearts out.

The next day my teacher, Mr. Franklin took me aside at recess with his partner in crime (another female teacher who I can't remember the name of now) and asked me if I was having trouble at home. Uh, no. They asked if my parents told me I couldn't sing in the program. Uh, no again. They kept grilling and interogating me trying to get to the root of the matter. The root of the matter was that I can't sing, they said I didn't have to, so I didn't. Simple huh?

Well it turns out those other two kids were Jehovah's Witnesses and for some reason they couldn't sing in the program for 'religious reasons'. I was a Baptist. I suddenly had to sing.

They did tell me I could lip sync if I wanted to. After they explained what lip syncing was, I was on board. Keep in mind this was well before we all learned what lip syncing was after the Milli Vanilli fiasco.

So I never became a great singer.

I also wanted to play an instrument. I tried the trumpet which I wrote about in agonizing detail here. I am so not a trumpet player. I am also not a guitar player also detailed in the above post.

I tried several sports; softball, volleyball, basketball. I was again, very very below average at best. Now, some of that I think comes from inate talent. Some of it comes from early opportunities at success that help form a driving passion for a sport. Success breeds success. When you START OUT mediocre and never advance past that point, all you have left to fuel your fire is passion. If you don't have the passion for it, you are NOT, no matter how talented you are or how much potential you have, going to be the best.

In my early thirties I decided adventure racing was for me. I LOVED watching the inspirational stories of the Ironman and then Mark Burnett came along with Survivor. I could do that!

Well it turns out that I'm a much better organizer of adventure races and endurance activities than a participant in them. I'm a weak link. I would be the one being helicoptered out of the event with an IV in my arm that you see on CNN from time to time. One of my goals in life at this point is NOT to be that person.

I tried duathalons, 10ks, 5 ks, a relay marathon (I only ran the last glory mile) and finally I actually did an adventure race with my friends Monty, Laura and Tom. My goal was to NOT be last. We weren't last. But we were damn close. I did not get helicoptered out. I did get a dibilitating migraine headache and spent several hours throwing up afterwards. The Survivor dream died there. I would never make it.

I helped organize the Ozarks Greenways Adventure Races for the first four years planning and implementing torturous courses for those made of much stronger physical stuff than I was. I did get Ozark Greenways Member of the Year sometime around 2001. That was pretty cool ;)

Working on that adventure race was very satisfying and terrifying all at once. After four years of stressing out that something I did in the planning of one of those events might get someone hurt or lost, I finally quit. It was a good run but I was worn out.

After that I decided, maybe I would never BE the best at anything. At this point in my life I think that's okay. Good thing because it's getting a little late in life to start something new and still reach BEST status I think. That doesn't mean it's too late to try new things though.

Grace has spent this last week at Baton Practice at school so she can be in the Niangua Parade on Saturday. She said she wanted to do it, then chickened out and didn't. We talked her back into it. She's loved it this week. We told her if she didn't try things she'd miss out on a lot of cool opportunities to have fun and learn to be good at things.

Tomorrow night she's starting basketball practice with several other first graders. Two of the first grader's dads are coaching it. They are going to try to start playing competitively. I hope she likes it because if she does then by the time she gets into junior high she could be really really good at it. But she's got to have a passion for it. Starting young will help, but if your heart isn't in it, your body won't be either.

By the end of soccer this season she was done with it. I don't know if she'll find her passion and become the BEST at something or if she'll even care. I just don't want her to pass up any opportunity to try.

Like the great band Def Leppard says...

It's better to burn out, than fade away.

Hell's Belles or It's not you. It's me.

2011-11-23T20:54:00.000-06:00

So I would have LOVED to show you a cute little picture of Belle being all kind and sweet. But this is more how she is. A blur. She does have her kind and sweet moments but pretty much from the time her sleepiness wears off after a nap (which is around a minute and a half) until we turn off the lights at night and lock her in the laundry room ... she's non-stop.

I took her to the vet for her final round of puppy shots and her rabies shot yesterday after Grace got out of school. I had taken her in my car each time until yesterday. I STARTED in the care but quickly realized the futility of that by the time we reached the mailbox and turned around for the truck. She rode in the back. With the deer blood. Nice.

She weighed 20 lbs at the vet. Well, we THINK she weighed 20 lbs. She would barely sit still long enough for the scale to register. It took two vet techs to give her her shots. She's a handful.

We have really been making an effort to take her on several walks a day which with the time change has grown more and more difficult. We are off today so she's been on two walks already. I still had to give her a time out in the laundry room just now for my own sanity. NOW she's napping. I have about ten minutes of peace and quiet before all hell breaks loose and it all starts again.

My problem is once again summed up in a Seinfeld episode ... I have no hand. You can watch the clip here Upper Hand and you'll understand immediately. Actually, I've NEVER had any hand. After dozens of junior high and high school kids during my three long dog years of teaching HS English, now somewhere around the fifth pet, a husband and a kid of my own you would THINK that somewhere along the way I would have acquired the necessary skills or at least come across some voodoo hypnosis tricks to ensure some minute amount of hand. Nope. No hand. Handless.

Grace and Belle both mind Bryon without question or fussing. I might as well be invisible. In fact, sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm not. One day years ago after an especially trying seventh grade, seventh hour English class I told the class in frustration, "What am I invisible? No, that can't be the case, I can hear myself talking. I can see myself. Yet, no one in this room is listening to me." I was literally saved by the bell.

The counselor's office was right next door to my classroom and the principal's office was across the hall. I walked into the counselor's office where several of my soldiers in arms were already gathered for our daily bitch and moan session after school. I walked in and one of them said, "Has anyone seen Mrs. Medley? She must be invisible."

Har de har har.

Still that was the perfect example of my complete inability to bend people of animals to my will. I could never be a politician ... or a coach ... or a lot of things.

If there was a conference I could go to so I could achieve hand on a regular basis, I would happily pay up.

I am signing up to take Belle to obedience class in Rogersville starting January 25. I figure it can't hurt.

I just hope we both survive until then.

Write In - Write On

2011-11-23T14:56:00.001-06:00

This is what a Write-In Looks like. I was set up beside the girl in the red sweatshirt against the wall. I've mentioned several times that November is NaNoWriMO which I did not participate in. These folks did. There was actually about a dozen people that came to the Brown Egg last Saturday to participate in a twelve hour write-in. The Brown Egg is a new place one block from MSU and it just opened last month. I hope it lasts. It was super cool. I was BY FAR the oldest one there ... by a decade ... or two.

There was a very cute young man making and selling his zombie art while we worked. Who can resist zombie art? Not this girl. He's working on the piece I bought in this picture. I just wish I could remember his name. Timothy something. I can't read his writing where he signed my piece.

Here is the piece I bought. I'm going to hang it in my office over my writing desk. Seems appropriate.

We spent half the day at the Brown Egg and then the second half a few blocks away further downtown at Boca Mocha . It was fun. I was just working on my revision and trying to get the word count up which is easier than you would imagine now that I can tell you what the other characters are up to.

I spent ten hours working on my novel and revised half the book and added seven thousand words for a current word count of 57, 627 words. I only need 22, 733 more to go. I have a couple of big fight scenes and the ending to finish so I'm feeling pretty confident.

I just need about eight more days like last Saturday to get it done.

Oh Deer

2011-11-23T13:06:00.001-06:00

Bryon killed a nice buck last Sunday morning. He's hunted pretty hard this season but still not nearly as much as he wanted to. He killed a doe with his bow before gun season and then got another doe during gun season. He let a lot of bucks walk because he was just trophy hunting. Oh, we're still eating this guy but Bryon still doesn't have a wall hanger like his buddies.

This one isn't getting full mounted either. The guys at the packing plant were disgusted that he wasn't mounting it. He measured it about a 130 and 3/8s Boone - Crockett buck. He's holding out for a 140+ to full head mount. Still this one was the biggest he's ever shot. He said this was the 30th anniversary hunting with the .270 and he has shot a deer with his 300 WinMag every time he's taken it out; nine times out and killed deer with it nine times. That's pretty good shooting. And a good gun.

So we have two deer getting processed into brats, deer sausage and snack sticks and a nice antler rack getting ready to go up in his bar soon.

Life is good on the big cedars and the neighbors farm.

Thirty Thankful Things

2011-11-13T15:47:00.000-06:00

Last week at church, Pastor Gary asked us to come up with something to be thankful for every day in November. Seemed like a pretty easy task, yet I'm only just now getting around to really thinking about it. So here is my list of large and small things I'm thankful for. These are not necessarily in order of importance but more in the random order of my confused and often cluttered mind. One more I just thought of when I found the above photo on Google images ... Words With Friends and all the folks who play with me :)

1. Organization
2. Extended Family
3. Health
4. A wonderful home
5. Nice pets
6. Bryon
7. Grace
8. A school for Grace that is five minutes from my house
9. A great job that gives me lots of freedom
10. A really great job for Bryon
11. 30 acres of mostly peace and quiet in the woods
12. Farm animals that entertain us and feed us
13. The outdoors
14. The indoors
15. A toasty warm pellet stove on cold nights
16. Awesome technology like the iPhone, the Nook Color, my laptop and the iPad I hope to have one day
17. The internet
18. Books. Lots and lots of books
19. Fans of my blog
20. Food
21. Our garden
22. The grid
23. Awesome friends
24. Free time even though it seems scarce
25. Enough money to do most of the things we want to do
26. Small town life
27. Chocolate
28. People with a sense of humor
29.Vacation days
30. Sleeping in late

I think I can. I think I can.

2011-11-11T22:43:00.001-06:00

I'm a little more jazzed about the rewrite now. This has been a crazy busy week with the university blood drive in Rolla occupying four days and driving 1,000 miles this week back and forth for work. Somehow, I have managed to start the rewrite.

I've only made it through the first twenty two pages of 179 in Word after I formatted it to fit Harlequin submissions standards but the good news is I've already added 2,000 words. At this rate, reaching 80,000+ is looking much more hopeful.

I feel like I have the bones of the story down pretty well and now, with the benefit of 3rd person point of view, I can flesh it out much better. See... LEMONS=LEMONADE.

I've had no offers for the use of a lake house or a patron saint willing to pay for an extended hotel stay. You could still be a hero here... just sayin' :)

Bryon, bless his heart, Googled around one night and discovered The Writer's Colony in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I knew about it already but I thought it was pretty sweet that he was trying to find me a place to go to work on my story. He's a good man. I think I'll keep him another twenty one years and a half years.

The Writer's Colony seems like a pretty neat deal. They ask for donations ($45 a night) and you can stay for a week and up to three months. They feed you and they have WiFi and it sounds like a really creative atmosphere to really concentrate on your writing. You have to fill out a pretty extensive application complete with references to be considered for residency. I guess they don't just want vacationers looking for cheap hotel digs.

Unfortunately, the Writer's Colony is only open until mid December and then opens back up in March. There's just too much going on with the holidays to try to do it before mid December so I guess I'll just keep pressing on in dribs and drabs.

I really want this finished and ready for some serious editing by January. That is my goal.

It's good to have a goal.

Write & Wrong

2011-11-08T14:52:00.001-06:00

So this month is National Novel Writing Month in which I am not participating. Saturday was the Ozarks Romance Writers' meeting and several of those members were participating, so I had some writing envy. I decided I needed to love the one I'm with and work on my own already in progress novel.

I have waffled between rewriting it from third person or sticking with the first person point of view. Why I didn't just do that from the beginning I can not explain. Honestly, I didn't think it would really matter what point of view I used. I've read plenty of paranormal romances from both viewpoints.

Harelequin is probably the most new writer friendly publisher. Probably because they publish so many romances each much. Lots of awesome writers have cut their teeth in serial romance. In fact, so writer and submission friendly is Harlequin that they are having a free online conference all this week specifically on the how to's of writing romance. You can check it out at So You Think You Can Write if you are interested.

Last night I was trying to check out all of the events and podcasts from the first day and the main editor that accepts submissions for Harlequin Nocturne (the paranormal romance editor) had a podcast. She seemed great and gave good advice but also dropped a couple of bombshells. First, the word count for Harlequin Nocturne just got raised from 70,000 to 80-85,000. Yeah, I have 51,858 now. I've got some work to do.

Secondly, at the very end of the podcast she just happened to mention that submissions needed to be in third person point of view. Nowhere on the submission guidelines did it say that. Maybe it was supposed to assumed. Maybe I just didn't know what I didn't know what I didn't know. Now I know.

So my dilemma has been resolved for me. I have to rewrite it.

I guess the hardest part is committing to a course of action. Once there's a solid and clear plan, it's usually easier to proceed, right? It's good to have a plan.

So after all that waffling and hoping to take the easy way out, now I know, as with most of the things in life, there is no easy way out.

Bryon's pretty sure I'm windy enough to make it all work out. He's probably right. I just need someone to offer up their lake home to me for a long weekend so I can work on it without distraction. Either that or I'm going to have to check myself into a hotel.

Either way ... I got this.

Undone

2011-11-06T22:34:00.001-06:00

This my pile of unread magazines.

It seems that no matter how much stuff actually gets done ... there is always more to do. It's like digging a hole in the sand with a plastic spoon. It just keeps filling back in. Somehow the stuff I really want to do is always last. Bryon has the same problem. I suspect it's universal.

Bryon and Grace both helped with a much needed house cleaning marathon today. Things look pretty great right now. It won't take long before it starts to go downhill and needs to be done all over again.

This was my pile of magazines on the end table in the living room. Bryon has a similar pile of unread hunting magazines in the bedroom. He's been reading lots of novels lately: Harlen Koben, Robin Cook, Dean Koontz, Michael Connelly and Michael Palmer mostly.

The problem of course is time. We have lots of shows we like to watch too. I used to read magazines during the commercials before the days of DVR. Now I don't even have to watch the commercials thankfully, but the magazines sure do pile up fast.

We haven't renewed most of our magazine subscriptions but we had a lot more than I realized and we are still receiving issues of most of them. I also love, love, love getting magazines in the mail. Or actually just mail in general. I do, however, think the magazine companies are supremely sneaky the way they constantly send you renewal notices like it's your last issue. I know I've renewed way, way early before because of those notices. Who has the time or inclination to keep a spreadsheet on them all?

I only recently realized you can check out back issues of magazines from the library. That's brilliant! How have I gone this long not realizing that? Of course they don't have all of the magazines I like. Honestly, I rarely use much out of any of them. I just like looking at them. And collecting them. And hoarding them.

I'm all for multitasking but your brain can only read one thing at a time no matter how talented you are.

I resisted checking out this website for a long time called Pinterest . It's sort of like an online magazine without the articles. Just the best stuff you might clip out. It's chock full of cool ideas in all sorts of categories. Beware though, it's a huge time suck once you go over to the dark side. They even make you request an "invitation" to join like it's a big special club or something and you might or might not be accepted.

Of course the last thing I need is something else to fragment my time even further. Most days I feel like Dug, the Talking Dog on Up! dashing off track at the first sign of a squirrel. Watch it here if you haven't seen it.

I might need an entire "stay home and read magazines" day to catch up.

I suppose there could be much, much worse problems to have, but sometimes all that clutter just adds up and instead of doing something about it, I'd just as soon throw it out and be done with it. There's definitely something to be said for a clean slate.

Oh look, a squirrel!

Bad Hair Day

2011-11-05T18:09:00.001-05:00

Today was not a good hair day.

I've a had a few of them this week. Every so often I think, "Dang, why does my hair look like crap?" Then I remember it's likely because I haven't had my hair cut in six months. Yeah, that usually does it.

I used to worry about my hair a lot. A whole lot. Obsessively. My mom will tell you that in high school I would sometimes wash and refix my hair twice a day when necessary. It was often necessary. It's not easy maintain the amount of lift you see achieved in the picture above. It takes a lot of hairspray my friend.

I've had hair self esteem issues for as long as I can remember. It's only been the last fifteen years of so that I've stopped fussing with it so much. Bryon would probably tell you I still fuss with with it but clearly it's not the priority it once was.

I'm not sure how a kid with hair as cute as the above pic could end up looking like this...

But I blame it on the old lady hair dresser my mom used to take me to. Her and Dorothy Hamill.

Dorothy Hamill had cute short hair ... mine was just ... unfortunate.

Seriously. I don't know which was worse ... the hair or the glasses.

So I decided to grow my hair out long. No more Dorothy Hamill hair for me. Never to be short again. Ever. And yes, that was a Glamor Shot above. God help me.

Senior Picture above.

Clearly, growing my hair out .. also meant growing it upward. Notice Bryon had hair then too. Nice acid wash jeans there too for us both.

So this was my passport photo a few months ago. Notice the complete lack of hair elevation and much smaller glasses.

Fifteen years from now Grace will look at that pic and say, "God Mom, what was going on with your hair?"

All I can tell you is I'm going to die an old lady with long hair because as God as my witness it will never be short again.

The Write Stuff

2011-11-01T21:59:00.000-05:00

This is my novel manuscript so far. Today at lunch I sat down to start to rewrite it from the third person perspective. I didn't even make it through the first two pages and decided that was just nuts. I like it like it is. I like my character's first person voice. I'm not rewriting it.

Tonight I started editing it instead. Like riding a bicycle, marking with a red pen came right back to my inner English teacher self. It's been a month since I really worked on it so now it's like reading someone ELSE's writing, which is pretty cool.

That was one of Stephen King's suggestions in On Writing. Let it sit, then read through as much as you can of your work in one sitting and with that distance from it, it will be like reading someone else's work. He is totally right. Well of course he is, he's Stephen King, duh.

It's easier to be critical of someone else's work and let the red ink flow. Sort of like grading one giant paper. But a lot more fun. With no pesky teenagers to interfere.

At the last ORA (Ozarks Romance Authors) meeting a published author showed us her editor's change requests letters for two of her novels. One had only about twenty changes. The other had over a hundred and twenty. I decided to try that with my own novel so I'm making notes with page numbers and notations in a spiral notebook as I go so I can go back and fix/add in the big stuff when I get through the whole manuscript.

Then when I have it as good as I can get it, I'll let a couple of people read it. Probably my two paranormal romance loving friends Dawn and Carla. After that, if I have the 75,000 words I need, I'll pitch it to Harlequin. I know, I know Harlequin sounds cheesy but if you haven't read a Harlequin romance lately, you don't know what you are missing.

Mine won't have a secret baby, or a Sheik so no worries there.

They have a line called Nocturne specifically for paranormal romance and they have some very noteworthy and respected authors. Seriously, you should check it out. It's not your mother's serial romance anymore.

I still think I can make it into a series if I can get away with doing the next book from one of the OTHER character's perspective, first person or third, I still haven't decided. That may be a big writing no no but I've made this bed and now I'm going to lie in it.

Speaking of bed ... time for some zzzzzzzzzzzzs.

Halloween Bonus Post - Day 31

2011-10-31T21:01:00.000-05:00

This was Halloween 1972 for Mike and I. I'm pretty sure he was a clown. I think I was an old lady ... with a lot of junk in the trunk. You can't get more homemade costumes than these. I'm sure we got scads of candy. We never went door to door because for one we lived in the country. There is no door to door in the country. Secondly, someone might put a razor blade in your apple. Of course what self respecting trick or treater would EAT an apple when there's an entire pumpkin full of candy to eat. None that's who. No Halloween apple ever passed these lips.

My folks took us around to the same family rotation that we did for Christmas. All the grandparents. In 1972 we would have had both sets of grandparents living, and four sets of great grand parents still alive. Lowers, Hoods, Rices, Cacy's. That's a lot of candy my friend.

Tonight Bryon had to work late so I took Grace to the Marshfield Square after school, then to Trunk or Treat at two local churches, the Orchelin parking lot and finally Gary's apartment complex. It was quite a haul. I told her she could eat all she wanted tonight then to pick out one small zip lock full to keep and we would disseminate the rest between our workplaces and where ever else we could find to dump it.

If she kept it all, we would have candy until next Halloween and I'd have about the same amount of junk in my trunk as that 1972 costume. Not cool.

So now it's upstairs to watch some grownup Halloween television then off to bed.

Bring it on Thanksgiving.

The Completion of a Task, Scary! - Day 31 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-31T14:34:00.000-05:00

Wow, I can't believe I made it 31 days in a row of blogging. Sure, a couple of days were lame, but hey, it's done and the pressure is off. Of course, just last night I was thinking, hmmmm, what else could I do for a month as another little challenge (or big challenge).

Of course I thought writing, but I'm going to try to do that anyway. Then I thought exercising. That would probably have a real and visible payoff. I'm not sure if I could manage both. In the same month.

I read a book called Sleeping Naked is Green by Vanessa Farquharson last year. She found a new way to be green and save the planet each day for 356 days. It was a cumulative challenge. The green tasks added up quickly and nearly drove her nuts ... plus she blogged about them each day at Greenasathistle . Then she turned them into a book. She's obviously insane. That's way too many balls to juggle.

I feel like all of my tasks are already in a giant Bingo tumbler and being spewed forth at the speed of a World Series pitch. I'm not sure if setting a new challenge would be beneficial or self punishment. Maybe both.

I guess I'm going to have to decide before tomorrow if I'm going to start a new challenge.

Decisions, decisions...

Check - Day 30 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-30T21:30:00.000-05:00

We got a lot accomplished today in a short time.

See, just making that list yesterday was enough to inspire us to mark some of those things off.

~~Pull up the rest of the garden plants~~ and burn them
Prune back the dead mums and compost them
~~Clean up the yard~~
Order a load of top soil
Clean out the flower bed
~~Fill the bird feeders~~
~~Clean out the humming bird feeders~~
~~Finish staining the house~~
~~Clean up all of the staining stuff~~
Clean out the garage
Take the weird non-recyclables to the dump

Plus Bryon bought a crazy new tripod tree stand and he picked it up and got it set out at his food plot. I also took the bunny divider back out so they could have the whole cage. All I can say is those handicapped bunnies had sure better turn out to be boys like the vet said.

We put the new freezer in the garage and now that it's out of the mud room there is so much more space. It's awesome. Luxuriously clean and roomy now. I love having an empty space.

My friend Leslie is so organized she had an entire drawer in her kitchen empty the last time I was there. That's what I want. More empty spaces.

Sometimes that's easier said than done, but it's something to aspire to.

This site might be a good way to spend 31 days ... 31 Days to an Organized Home .

Noted - Day 29 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-29T21:07:00.001-05:00

This is what the dash of my car looks like most of the time. If it's not on a sticky note, it doesn't happen. I pretty much have to capture the thought so I can transfer it to my calendar or to do list or it just flies away.

Of course I have no idea how fast I'm going or how much gas I have, but I know what I need to do.

I have a lot of lists. Work lists, home lists, grocery lists, long term things to do lists. Once it's on a note, I don't have to worry about it until I'm ready to act on it. My phone is full of lists too ... about 50 of them. Sometimes I combine my lists to neaten things up. It also makes it very satisfying to mark things off.

I need to have a winter list already but I'm behind. I should start it now. It needs to include:

Pull up the rest of the garden plants and burn them
Prune back the dead mums and compost them
Clean up the yard
Order a load of top soil
Clean out the flower bed
Fill the bird feeders
Clean out the humming bird feeders
Finish staining the house
Clean up all of the staining stuff
Clean out the garage
Take the weird non-recyclables to the dump

See how easy it is to get a list going.

Soon it will be time to start making a spring list too.

Then there are book lists. I have several of those. My paranormal library list, books to read list, Dawn's books to search for list, books I've read list, books for Bryon to read list. It really never ends. There's a list for every topic.

If you like making lists, capturing and organizing information as much as I do, then you might dig Evernote . You can get it on your iPhone and your computer and it syncs up. It's awesome.

Of course none of THESE things in these pictures are in Evernote. I need lots of different ways to collect and organize. One size definitely does not fit all.

I'll bet Art Fry had lots of things floating around in his head too because he's credited with inventing the Post-it_note . Boy am I glad. Otherwise, my life would be a big mess.

Storytelling - Day 28 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-28T21:51:00.001-05:00

I am not a good oral storyteller. I am a much better written storyteller. Relating a story to someone orally is a lot more difficult than writing it down for me. Bryon is a much better oral storyteller. He can take the slightest event and turn it into a twenty minute detailed narrative. He's especially good at relaying hunting stories.

He would have been an extremely valuable member of society back in the days before writing when oral tradition was the only way histories, laws, folk tales and literature were relayed. Think The Illiad or The Odyssey but much shorter . He's such a Homer.

He can spin a yarn or tell a story in a way that's both engrossing and interesting. Of course, sometimes he uses his power for evil and not good and tricks me with elaborate fairy tales and when I finally ask, "Really??? You're kidding!"

He says, "Yeah, I'm kidding."Aaaarrrrrgggg!

He used to get me all the time that way.

I'm still not immune to his ruses but I do still like to hear his stories. He fishes me in every time. And trust me, in the past 25 years, he's had a LOT of stories.

I'm a much better written storyteller. I have to see the words appear before me and then rearrange them like puzzle pieces until they are just right. When I TELL a story, I don't have that luxury and under pressure, the story loses it's cohesion and impact. Sometimes I hear myself talking when I'm trying to tell a story and think, what the hell am I even saying? This story makes no sense.

It makes perfect sense in my brain. Somehow it between my brain and my mouth it loses it's potency.

The great thing about writing is that until the very last minute you can edit it, rearrange it and dress it up in different clothes until it's just right. Then, if you still aren't happy with it, there's always the rewrite.

I haven't worked on my novel much this past few weeks because I know that is what the next step is: the rewrite. I have ideas for at least two more books so I can make it a trilogy. Trilogies are very hot right now. But I can't do that in the first person, which is the point of view I've used for the first 50,000 words.

The good news is that when I do finally sit down to rewrite, it should blow up as I am able to expand the vision of the characters and flesh them out more making it pretty easy to reach my 75,000 word target. The bad news is that it's going to take some extensive time and uninterrupted concentration to do it.

I had really considered trying to participate in NaNoWriMo in November where you write a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days but I think I will be better served to concentrate on working on the one I already have in progress than starting another one. So I'm punting NaNoWriMo and hope to work on the rewrite instead.

Maybe if I can spend the next 30 days working on the rewrite, I'll have a brand spanking baby New Year book by 2012.

Write on.

You like me. You really like me. - Day 27 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-27T23:04:00.000-05:00

Today, my blog hit a big milestone. Today, I exceeded 7,000 all time page hits since I started on June 7, 2007. The exact total as of this minute is 7,016 page views. I think that is pretty awesome. This post is number 438 and in the past 30 days I've had 600 page views. I guess more blogging equals more readers.

Thank you for reading my ramblings.

I can't really ever tell specifically who is reading unless someone comments or likes it on Facebook. I just know there have been page views. So if you DO read it, I'd like to know. I know that's a little needy but hey, it's nice to know once in a while YOU are out there. It's easy to comment. Just click where it says "comments" below and you can post your comment. Even if it's just an "I read you" that would be cool. You can post as "anonymous" of tell me who you are. I'd like to know.

Or if you are reading this on Facebook and just want to "Like" it that's cool too. You don't have to do it every post (unless you want to) but if you are EVER going to comment, please do it for this post. Then I won't bug you about it again. Promise.

Sometimes it's like my blog is a Voyager Golden Record, sent out into cyberspace to say HELLO in every earthly language just in case there is intelligent life out there. One interesting stat that Blogger provides is AUDIENCE. It doesn't give any specific information but tells what country the page views come from. Here is where my readers have been reading from since 2007.

Can you believe that? Twenty nine people in Iran have read my blog? That sure makes the world seem smaller to me. I haven't been anywhere to have my passport stamped, but my words, pages and my family has ... through this blog.

Another cool statistic is how many page views each post gets. And no, it doesn't count MY page views so I can't stack the ballot box and vote for myself. Here are the most viewed posts of all time. If you want to read any of them just use the search box at the top right of the blog and put in the title, it should pop right up.

Who knew that post about Grace saving money for her slug bug would have so many hits!

My mom is staying tonight and the next few days. Of course she reads the blog a lot. She asked if I was going to keep blogging every day after my 31 days are up. She gets up every morning and reads it like some people read the New York Times. My blog is cheaper though.

I told her I don't know. Blogging every day is hard work. Bryon would say I never run out of things to say, but seriously it takes an effort to come up with something blog worthy every day. When I was dating I used to wonder what in the world married people talked about. After a while you would think there just wouldn't be anything else to say. But of course there is. Maybe that's true with blogging too. Every day is a winding road that leads to somewhere right?

I guess I'll just work on documenting the journey.

Shiner - Day 26 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-26T22:28:00.000-05:00

Not sure if this is her Zoolander pose or what but notice the little red blip on beside her nose. Bryon, his dad and Grace were shooting guns when I got home yesterday. Bryon bought Grace a gun when she was still in my belly. She's finally big enough to shoot it.

It has interchangeable barrels and can be a .22, a 243 and a 20 gauge. He's wanting to take her deer hunting next weekend and she's up for it too. I'm just going to have to buy a lot more snacks for her to take before then.

He bought a special new sight for her gun, sighted it all in and then lined her up on the gun bench to shoot it. She aimed and pulled the trigger before he could remind her to get it snugged up against her shoulder and it kicked back and bonked her in the cheek.

Welcome to the world of recoil my friend.

She didn't want to shoot anymore after that. He's hoping she won't be gun shy now and plans to get her back on the horse that smacked her soon. We put an ice pack on it and thankfully it didn't turn into a black eye.

Once in high school, I went shooting down at the river with Bryon. He had several guns. I liked shooting them. Mostly I liked impressing Bryon. He gave me one giant gun that weighed about 30 pounds and told me to pull both triggers when I shot it. Yeah, it was a double barrel shotgun, which I didn't figure out until I pulled both triggers. It knocked me back into the tree. I only shot that one once.

I still like shooting and I think Grace will too.

Next time I'll bet she remembers to snug it up
.

Creeping Up On Halloween - Day 25 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-25T21:59:00.000-05:00

Bryon and Grace carved a jack o' lantern tonight. Grace drew on the face and Bryon carved it out. I did have two eyeballs but one got poked out. Just made it even better I think. They are good pumpkin carvers.

I think it turned out pretty good. I love the teeth.

I also had to make a creepy concoction for the church fellowship Halloween dinner tomorrow night so I found this idea for Tapeworm Sandwiches . They look like this

They were super easy to make. Here's my tray full ready to go...

Gotta love hotdogs and ketchup. Mmmmmmmmmmm.

Honey - Day 24 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-24T20:27:00.001-05:00

Short post today.

I wanted to show you the honey I got this year from my bees. I did absolutely nothing for them this year. They were completely and utterly unmedicated and unmolested. I did feed them some sugar water when I remembered to in the spring but that was it.

I plan to hoard this honey because I don't know when I'll get more. I eeked two more little jars after I let it strain for a few more days. I ended up with 240 ounces of honey. Almost two gallons from one super. I bought a 46 oz jar of honey at the feed store in the spring for $10. If I'm doing my math right that would be 22 cents an ounce so that means I have $52.80 worth of honey here on my counter. I paid $90 for the bees last year.

I'm pretty sure I'm losing money on this adventure.

But it sure is sweet.

Grace Turns Seven - Day 23 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-23T22:19:00.000-05:00

Today was Grace's seventh birthday. We didn't have a big party this year, her request, but she did have two friends over Friday night for a sleepover. Bryon had to work all weekend so next weekend we are going to go eat out somewhere fancy, also her request.

Bryon redecorated her room for her last month as his birthday present to her and I bought her some books, some new house slippers and a jewelry organizer for her ever growing collection. She and I went to church this morning. We would have skipped. Would have LOVED to sleep in but with Belle, it is no longer an option. We were up, so we went.

After church we went to Freda's Uptown Cafe, our favorite place to eat in Marshfield for breakfast and lunch and the waitresses sang to her and brought her a gigantic bowl of ice cream with chocolate syrup and strawberries on it.

We came home and hung out for a while then headed back to town for our church's Fall Festival. Grace dressed up like a country singing diva complete with her pink cowgirl boots.

It's good to be seven.

Lab Tails & Landmines - Day 22 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-22T21:24:00.000-05:00

The front lawn is no longer safe to tread upon. It's full of puppy landmines. Gosh, it was so clean. Okay, maybe not. It was also full of chicken landmines. There is a lot of poop on a farm. Grace fell down while she was playing with Grace and came up with a hand covered in dog poop. She was understandably disgusted.

Briar and Daisy used to go to the edges of the woods to do their business. Briar especially liked to poop on tall things, like grass, stumps etc. Sort of like a coyote marking his range. Hopefully Belle will get with that program soon. Either that or we need a weekly drenching rain storm to clean up the lawn.

She's doing pretty well so far. She's had a few accidents but goes to the door to be let out pretty regularly too so she's catching on. Her schedule is eat, play, sleep, wake, bathroom, repeat. Also, there's no more sleeping in on the weekends. She's up at 6 am every morning. You can ignore her but it's to your peril. Bodily functions will be spilled.

It's like having a new baby that you can leave in the kennel when you want to go somewhere so it's both better and worse. Good thing she's ridiculously cute.

She's still about seven pounds. Grace was six pounds when she was born. We gave her a bath in the kitchen sink. The dog that is. We gave Grace her first bath in the bathroom sink. It won't be long before her baths have to be in the garden tub and her tail is smacking the magazines off the end tables. Labs have incredibly strong tails.

Briar and Daisy were both indoor/outdoor dogs. Almost completely outdoor by the time we moved out here to the farm. When we lived in the A frame house north of Springfield, they were mostly indoor dogs. Our king sized waterbed was in the basement bedroom and there was just about a two foot walking space on each side of the bed.

When we moved out, we realized there was a tail height indention on each side of the bed all the way down the wall from their exuberant tail wagging. Labs are also very happy dogs.

So far there's no shedding but I know that day is coming. The downstairs vacuum died today while I was cleaning. I may have to invest in a super sonic vacuum in advance of the impending storm of dog hair.

Again, good thing she's cute. And has that sweet puppy breath ... when she's not eating chicken poop.

Trouble With A Capital T - Day 21 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-21T21:47:00.000-05:00

It's slumber party night so I gotta write fast before something gets set on fire, or the dog poops on the floor or some other catastrophe. So far, though, so good. The girls arrived on the bus and have been going strong. Bryon should be home any moment to join in the fun.

Don't they look like Charlie's Angels? More like Richard's Devils I'd say.

They finally got their mess cleaned up enough to sleep in her room. Jammies on and teeth about to be brushed.

Here's hoping they all make it through the night.

Where's the Beef? - Day 20 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-20T21:46:00.000-05:00

We're buying quarter of a beef from our neighbor. We don't eat much beef anymore but when we so it's steaks or burger. The burger I've been buying is grass fed and is from Rockin H because I can't stand to smell the stuff from Wal-Mart or the grocery store cooking. Mostly whatever meal I would put burger in, I put sausage or deer burger that we had seasoned as breakfast sausage in instead.

We've been wanting to raise our own beef. It's the only meat we aren't raising yet, but it's going to require a massive expenditure and a whole lot of work for fencing. Only one side of our property is fenced and it's a shared fence. So when our neighbor had a beef to butcher, we jumped on it.

Of course now we need another freezer because ours is full of chicken, deer, pork and other veggies and fruits. It's always something. One expenditure leads to another. We just keep having to tell ourselves it's cheaper than fencing though and better for us than CAFO beef. We know this calf has been grazing next door and not in a feedlot in Kansas.

So where's the beef now? The beef is hanging at the locker plant now so it won't be much longer and the beef will be in our new freezer.

Sleepover Party Prep - Day 19 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-19T20:19:00.000-05:00

Tonight Grace and I made strawberry cupcakes with chocolate icing in advance of her sleepover party this Friday night. Grace's birthday is Sunday and she'll turn seven. She decided, all on her own, that she didn't want a big blowout birthday party like we have done for her every year so far. She said it's fun but too hard to play with the kids.

She just wants to eat out and I suggested a small sleepover to which she readily agreed. Friday night two of her girlfriends from class are riding the bus to our house and spending the night. This will be Grace's fourth sleepover at our house. She has gotten to go to a sleepover at another friend's house once.

We have already planned to make biscuit pizzas with pepperonis, Canadian bacon, pineapple and hotdogs. My Mom used to make these for us a long time ago and I still like them. I bought them the little individual boxes of cereal for Saturday morning and Grace has already established an agreement that they can eat all the cupcakes they want while they are here.

She's set the ground rules and planned their events.

Bryon has to work all weekend so he won't be home until nearly 8 pm and will be up and out early Saturday morning but I'm sure he'll get his share of abuse from three little first grade girls. I'm digging my ear plugs out now ... the screaming will be intense.

The last sleepover she had two of the girls ended up sleeping in the floor on our bedroom and two in Grace's room. No telling where the three of them will end up. I don't think either one of them have sleptover before. So far we are 100% for girlfriends making it through the night. We'll see if we can keep our streak going. Luckily, one girl lives just next door and the other in Niangua five minutes away.

Hopefully we won't have to make that call.

Wish me luck ... and patience.

The Heat Is On - Day 18 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-18T20:46:00.001-05:00

I got to come home to a toasty fire burning in the pellet stove this evening. After a long day out in the cold and damp it was very nice. Bryon was off today and went to town to get two tons of pellets. This is the first fire of the year.

Our pellet stove really keeps the downstairs toasty and comfortable and watching the flames is an added bonus. Winter used to be my favorite season until THE ice storm that knocked out power our for 12 days. That was a game changer for me. The first couple of days it was an adventure. After that, I just got pissy.

Now I guess fall is my favorite time of the year if I had to pick. Of course ask my by spring and I'll have a different answer. Mostly I'm just a fair weather Goldilocks. Not too hot and not too cold. I like it just right.

I can't wait until all the leaves are gone and you can see through the woods again. I like that. We've really been walking the trails Bryon made through our woods a lot in an effort to get Belle some exercise. We're all benefiting from that. Bryon took Belle around on his errands with him all day and she got to play outside a lot too so now she's curled up in her crate in the laundry room taking a nap.

I took the door off the crate and she's been using it a lot more the past few nights. She's had a few accidents in the house but not nearly as bad as Ruger did and she's already started going to the door when she needs out. She's a smart dog.

Bryon wanted to go hunting tonight and I wasn't going to be home in time to stay with Grace so he took her with him. He took her one night last week and she called in some turkeys all by herself. He was pretty proud of her. They couldn't get a shot because the turkeys came in on the left and he couldn't get turned around Grace to shoot. She did great that night.

He took her another night and she wimped out pretty quickly. Tonight she lasted until the food ran out. He took two granola bars, two boxes of Yogos, an apple, a whole sack of sunflower seeds and a bottle of water. As soon as the snacks were gone, she wanted to come home. She does that at every "event" we or the grandparents take her to. It doesn't matter how cool the event is; the circus, the rodeo, a ball game ... she's all about the snackage.

She came home the other night with lots of hunting souvenirs including turkey feathers, rocks,and walnuts. Bryon is much more patient with her than I am. He makes fun games for her to play and weaves grass bracelets and jewelry for her. They get to enjoy some time in the woods and I get some peace and quiet in the house. It's a win win situation and eventually they'll bring home some dinner too.

Team Sports - Day 17 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-17T21:00:00.001-05:00

I am not competitive. Except with Bryon. I really like to beat him. Unfortunately, it rarely happens. If you remember, I am a former English teacher. Do not proofread my posts and correct them and I'll try to resist doing the same to yours. I don't like that.

As a former English teacher you would think I would be really, really good at Words with Friends and Scrabble. I know a lot of impressive words and I'm a pretty good speller. Before Grace was born, Bryon and I played somewhere around 200 games of Scrabble. I won three. I'm pretty sure he let me win at least two of those.

The problem isn't that I'm a poor wordsmith it's that I'm not competitive. Or strategic. I'm impatient. I'll look at the board for a few minutes, rearrange letters and then finally just plop something down. Bryon refuses to play a word for less than a double digit score. He utilizes the double and triple scoring tiles to the utmost advantage. He's a player. I'm a plopper.

He doesn't just beat me. He crushes me. I told him he's lucky I'm a good loser because most people couldn't tolerate that level of defeat.

I've just never been very competitive. Even when I was younger, my brother always wanted to play games and I didn't. Stratego was his game of choice. I hated Stratego. I just didn't have the imagination or the patience for it and he crushed me at it when we did play. Now he plays hours and hours of World of Warcraft online. Another game that requires lots of imagination.

Even in physical sports I'm not competitive. Sure it's fun to win, but if not ... well even the losers get ice cream most of the time. I tried playing junior high volleyball but when a few girls played every positition I just didn't see the point of practicing and killing myself and never touching the ball. Same in basketball. It was a lot of running up and down the court but very little actually playing on my part. I didn't have to. A couple of girls pretty much played the entire game. I was just filling out the team.

I did like playing softball. I volunteered to be the catcher because I figured that was my best chance of seeing some action during the entire game. Besides that, no one else wanted to do it. They were all afraid of Mickie's pitch. The game was slow pitch. Mickie was not slow. She threw a screaming softball.

Since high school, I played a little coed softball with Bryon on a couple of teams and we played sand volleyball but other than that, I just don't dig it. I don't even really like sports on tv. Thankfully Bryon isn't a big sports guy either. He does love him some Huskers football and we usually Husker up around her on fall Saturday game days but I usually only last about ten minutes watching the games. I can't stand the suspense. In a good book, I've often flipped to the last few pages to make sure the good guys win and all ends well before continuing on. In televised football, unless it's recorded, you can't do that. So I tune in for a few minutes when Bryon whoops and hollers and get the highlights from him when it's over.

Grace has been playing soccer for the past six seasons (two a year) and this season is probably her last. She didn't really even want to play this time but I signed her up. We are going to get her into basketball this winter at the First Baptist Church's Upward Basketball program. I think she'll be good at it and if she likes it she can play basketball at Niangua. Niangua doesn't have soccer and there's no way we are driving her all over the place to play a game she doesn't even really want to play.

Her coach at school said she's very athletic and competitive and might be the most athletic kid in the lower grades. I see her competitive side when she plays games at home with us or her Nana. She doesn't like to lose. She gets that from her Daddy. She hasn't been all that aggressive at soccer but if she finds a sport she really likes, I think she's definitely got the potential.

Of course if she becomes a professional women's basketball player or something someday, I'll never be able to go to her games because I won't be able to stand the suspense.

I'll have to wait for the highlight reel.

New Doggie Digs - Day 16 of 31 Days of Bloggging

2011-10-16T22:02:00.001-05:00

We got the kennel moved this weekend and went to Wal-Mart after church to buy some more paver bricks so we could puppy proof it. It's just outside of the garage on the way to the chicken coop so it will be a lot easier to put her up and get her out with the garage light shining out there. The hose will reach it now too so all the better.

She also got a brand spanking new Petmate Dogloo. It's pretty cool. Grace decided to give Belle the tour.

We told Grace she should spend the night in it and make sure it was nice and comfy. She declined. It will be nice to put Belle out there during the day while we are gone though.

The rest of the afternoon was spent staining. Woo hoo (that was a sarcastic woo hoo if you were confused). Bryon is off three days this week because he has to work the weekend so he should get it finished up for the year. It's looking awesome though...

He does windows too but I don't think he'll be wanting to hire out anytime soon.

No Rest for the Weary - Day 15 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-15T21:48:00.001-05:00

We are still staining the house and when we finally do quit for the year ... it will only be a little more than half down. Bryon has been spending every one of his days off staining and we spent all afternoon staining as well. Tomorrow afternoon ... yep, more staining. We are really tired of being intimate with our siding.

We did manage to get the kennel moved today up closer to the house. Tomorrow, before, after or during staining, we have to finish putting the blocks down on the ground to prevent tunneling to China. Labs are furious diggers. The giant doggie condo Bryon built years ago finally disintegrated when we tried to dislodge it from the ground.

We had a great big cedar dog house for years that was just sitting around and sold it on Craigslist a couple of years ago. Now we wish we had it back. Tomorrow after church we'll most likely be buying another doghouse. I don't like keeping things around just in case because they just pile up too quickly. Once I'm done with something, I want it gone. But then, inevitably I end up having to buy some things back again. You can't keep it all or you end up with the island of misfit stuff.

That's how those hoarders start you know and I'm pretty sure it's genetic. I've had two hoarders in my family who shall remain nameless ... you know who you are. I don't want the same fate.

One good thing is that we pretty much wore the pup out today. We took her to soccer where she was well loved and she got to hangout with us all outside all day. Twice we misplaced her for a few moments, but she had only gone to the back door step because she wanted back inside.

It will be good to have the kennel all ready and pup proofed so she can stay outside during the day while we are gone. There will be plenty of squirrels and rabbits to keep her entertained. I'm pretty sure Pansy just sits and hisses and growls at her all day in the house.

I'm not sure if those two will ever make friends.

Dream a Scary Dream of Me - Day 14 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-14T20:49:00.000-05:00

The good news of last night was that the puppy, Belle, slept through the night accident and whining free in the laundry room. The bad news is that Grace woke me up at 2 am with a bad dream. She was scared and wanted to sleep with me. She settled for a quick book being read to her instead.

I asked her what her dream was about and she said it was about a bad man that if you said his name he would come and torture you. Okaaaaay. First of all I was impressed that she knew the word "torture" but a little horrified too. I don't know how she knew that word. I can't think of anytime we have ever used it. I also wonder how she came up with that scenario.

I know there has been a movie trailer on lately showing two little girls in the bathroom summoning Bloody Mary in the mirror. As far as I know she has not seen that trailer, but I hate how they show stuff like that on regular television as early as 7 pm sometimes.

As an adult, I dig horror but there's a fine line anymore as to what I will and won't watch. In high school, I watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween (most of them), Friday the 13th, Freddy Krueger (particularly scary with knife hands AND bad dreams) and most all of the regular horror fare. Children of the Corn and Pet Cemetery were really terrifying. It was fun to be scared by those movies.

Now, not so much.

Now I dig the monsters much more than the evil vengeful killers of teenagers having sex in cars in the dark. I like more run of the mill supernatural monsters; vampires, werewolves etc. I've never watched any of the Saw movies or the like and I don't even like to watch the trailers because of course they pick the most awful and gratuitous scenes to entice people.

Bryon and I watched the new show American Horror Story last week. The first episode was shocking. I was compelled and repulsed all at the same time. Bryon said he wasn't going to watch any more of it. I watched again this week and it was a little less shocking but it still crosses back and forth over the line in my mind of what I can and can not tolerate in horror. The jury is still out for next week's episode.

Bryon and I have seen every episode of the CW series Supernatural and it is pretty much the perfect scary show for me. It's scary, has lots of weird monsters but still has a campy quality to it that lightens things up. True Blood is the same way for me.

I used to read a lot of horror. I collected lots and lots of books always searching for the next scarier thing. Then one day I found Brian Lumley and Clive Barker and decided that was the line I wasn't willing to cross. It was too much. I was done with horror. I sold all of my horror library and took a long, long break from it.

This summer I got back into it a little by reading Salem's Lot. Salem's Lot reminded me of why I close the blinds at night and don't look outside ... a vampire might be floating outside of it asking to be let in. I also bought H.P. Lovecraft The Complete Fiction so I could read The Call of Cthulhu.

The bad thing about watching or reading scary stuff is that once it's in your brain, it tends to latch on and make itself at home there. Just waiting for an opportunity to replay itself. You can't suck it back out once it's stuck like a tick in your psyche. Two movies I wish I could suck back out of my brain are 8MM and Sin City. But no, they are stuck there and occasionally replay some of the most disturbing scenes.

As far as I know Grace hasn't seen anything really scary other than Harry Potter. I suspect the kids at school must be telling her stories. That's where all of the urban legends and ghost stories start anyway right ... school and elementary sleepovers?

It's fun to be a little scared.

Just not at night. In bed. Alone.

Oh, the Place's You'll Go! - Day 13 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-13T22:35:00.000-05:00

I got my passport in 2002 because I wanted to be on Survivor. As one of the requirements of being selected you had to have a passport in hand. I even sent in a lame audition tape that I made myself. And no I don't have a copy of it to post .... thank God. I was not selected. I never even heard back from them. I'm pretty sure it was because I wasn't weird enough. Or hot enough. Or manipulating enough. I'm good with that.

What I am not good with is the fact that I had that dang passport for ten years and never got one stamp in it. I understand that now most countries don't even actually stamp them unless you request it. Oh, I would be requesting it.

So for ten years it sat in a drawer ... waiting ... to expire.

I renewed it a couple of months ago. $110. I don't have any trips planned but I like the hopefulness of knowing that if I wanted to, I could be on a plane to somewhere wild and amazing at the drop of a hat. Just in case Survivor pulls my long lost audition tape out of a pile of studio rubble somewhere and someone says, "My God, how did we overlook this. We have to have her on our next show!" I'm ready.

Of course now I would have to politely decline. I'm over Survivor.

But I do like Italian food if anyone is going that way.

Attack of the Mums - Day 12 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-12T22:02:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I'm cheating a little today with some puppy cuteness. Hey use it if you got it I say. One thing about a puppy is every day is a new adventure. Today Belle discovered ice cubes and bouncy flowers.

For Belle, everything is coming up mums right now.

Appetite for Destruction - Day 11 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-11T23:00:00.000-05:00

Today was Belle's first day home alone. I puppy proofed the laundry room for her and left her with food, water, paper on the tile, six dog toys and a pissy cat overseeing the situation like a big sister left in charge. We have a lot of wood in our house. Wood trim, wood wall in that room, wood door and wood vanity. That's a whole lot of puppy temptation.

Day one was a complete success. She peed on the newspaper and didn't destroy anything. I'm pretty sure we got lucky, still I'm hopeful that one of the other pups in her litter got all the Marley genes. We saw one in particular, a boy, who had a whole lot of that potential just oozing from his pores. Fifteen years ago we would have totally chosen him. Mercifully, now we know to leave him to someone else.

We chose the laziest runt of the litter this time and it's already paying off. Last evening we all three took Belle for her first big walk through our woods along the trail Bryon made last year. We were trying to wear her down so she'd sleep better. It really wasn't all that long a walk; maybe 3/4 of a mile or so but her belly drug the ground in most places and it was pretty much a continual obstacle course for a 7 week old puppy.

She did pretty well but took a lot of breaks. Anytime Bryon or Grace stopped to pick up an acorn to pelt at one another, she took a little break. She's big on breaks.

The first night we were up with her every 90 to 120 minutes. She whined. We came and took her outside. She did her business. Repeat.

Last night I took her food and water away at 8:30 when Grace went to bed and she did a lot better. Bryon and I both got up with her 3 times each. A couple of times she faked us out and didn't do any business but still she did okay and with minimal whining. Tonight, it's raining so I'm a little skeptical about her going out to do any business in the rain.

The moon has been so full and bright the past few nights it's been sort of cool to be out there for a little bit. Last night I heard something scurrying around over by the chicken coop as Belle was finishing up and coming back up onto the porch. She got back to me just in time for two little skunks to skitter across the front lawn in a little skunk parade about 30 feet from us. I was glad Belle was oblivious. If she'd given chase, we might all have been having tomato juice baths last night.

Things have already been much, much different with this little dog than with Ruger. Poor Ruger just didn't have a chance with our family. We were not a good fit. My heart turned hard against him pretty quickly. Mostly because he was an idiot and a furry pinball. HE was a Marley in a Brittany Spaniel suit.

We broke out the books on labradors we have collected over the years and Bryon's ready to start training her. She's much smarter already and reminded us immediately what it was like when we first got Briar and Daisy all those years ago. I think we got Briar in 1993 right before I quit teaching. He used to sleep in our kingsize waterbed between us with his head on one of our pillows as he breathed hot dog breath on us all night. He also snored. And farted. We found it endearing.

I don't plan to have dog hair in my bed anymore. I have cat hair. Pansy sleeps on us most nights. She makes the rounds. I don't forsee her sleeping with Belle anytime soon. She has been establishing the rules. I worked from home on Monday and Belle slept under the table while I worked. Pansy sat on top of it and growled and hissed all day.

She was making a point. Unfortunately Belle is still oblivious to that point. I have a feeling she'll find out soon enough.

I know we'll have our share of chewing and destruction. This is probably the calm before the storm but for now we are just enjoying the newest member of our family. Well, most of us are. Sorry Pansy. We all know you are really the boss.

Dental Dilemna - Day 10 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-10T20:49:00.000-05:00

Grace has bad teeth. Sometime during the development of her teeth two dentists now have told us that she must have had a high fever which damaged the enamel of her teeth. She's already had six fillings and a couple of weeks ago we noticed one of her back molars looked like it had cavities again.

Saturday she was eating a piece of sausage and it got caught in another back molar and she couldn't get it out. I tried dental floss and brushing and I couldn't get it out either. As I was trying to dislodge it, I realized there was a hole in her tooth. Great.

She had an appointment today after school and the dentist put a stainless steel crown over one back molar and a temporary filling in the other. We have take her back in a couple of weeks for a more permanent filling. Her front permanent teeth are also discolored. Bryon and I were not happy with the demeanor or the explanations the dentist was offering us.

We've taken her to two dentists now. One was too rough and this other guy is a jerk. I think the next step is going to be to take her to Springfield to a pediatric dentist and try to develop a game plan for the long term for her dental care.

It's very frustrating. She didn't mind the stainless steel crown because one of her girlfriends at school has four of them. One day she won't be so happy about that.

Bieber Fever - Day 9 of 31 Days of Bloggin

2011-10-09T21:38:00.000-05:00

Grace has a slight case of Bieber fever. How she even knows who he is is beyond me but she does. Everytime she sees him on something she's all, "Ohhhhh Justin Bieeeeber". It drives her daddy crazy. Of course that's what we girls do right? She got the Birthday Express catalog and they had a whole Justin Bieber party kit. She wanted it even though we aren't doing a big party this year. Her request by the way.

Luckily for her she got invited to a girlfriend's Justin Bieber birthday party just yesterday so she got her Bieber fix after all. She picked out a Justin Bieber book at the book fair at school for her friend Mattie. It was a hit.

I remember reading tons of issues of Tiger Beat and Teen Beat Magazine when I was young. I don't remember how I got those magazines. I doubt I had my own money. My mom must have bought them for me. I just can't remember but I loved pouring over them and all the teen celebrities. So here is Tiger beat today. Note who made the cover.

Later as I got older it was Seventeen and Circus magazines that I coveted. I must have read a hundred issues of those magazine through my teen years. I'd cut out pictures and words and make collages to hang on my walls. I had my share of long haired rockers on my walls too. I had a huge poster of David Lee Roth behind my door. I couldn't find the exact one I had online but it was almost life sized and hung behind my door. It was similar to this... I'm sure my parents were thrilled. Mostly I remember he was unclothed except for some devilishly tight red leather pants ;)

My issues of Teen Beat and Circus were similar to these...

I also had lots of half naked men bedazzling the inside of my high school locker at school. My Aunt was the Home Ec teacher and would sneak down there to check out the eye candy from time to time. My locker was very popular.

So now we have an almost seven year old and here we go. Wikipedia said those teen magazines were targeted to 10-16 year olds. The only thing saving me from having to buy them for her yet is that she can only read about 75 words right now and it's just not the same if your mom has to read it to you.

I think her daddy is hoping her wall posters continue to display puppies instead of half naked rock stars for a long time.

Meet Belle - Day 8 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-08T22:27:00.000-05:00

Meet Belle. Our new chocolate lab baby girl. She was a surprise today. We had no intention of getting a new dog this weekend but our friends the Hugglers were at Wally World and saw these guys in the parking lot for sale.

We were planning on getting a yellow female but this little one was the runt of the litter and oh so cute. We've had a yellow lab (Daisy) and a black lab (Briar) but never a chocolate so Bryon and Grace out voted me and we came home with the chocolate. It wasn't much of a hardship.

Right now she's asleep on top of Bryon while he watches Huskers football on the couch.

I'm sure it will be a long, long, long night of whining which will start very soon. And then there's the getting up to take her out every couple of hours.

She's a couple of days shy of eight weeks old and will probably end up being about the size Daisy was.

Life around the Medley house is about to get shook up again. I'm just praying she's lazy. Very, very lazy :)

Book Reruns - Day 7 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-08T00:19:00.000-05:00

I was talking to a friend the other day about books and reading and she told me how much she likes to read some books over and over again. I can't do that. For me the thrill is gone after the first read through. As much as I'd like to relive the little charge I get out of a really great scene or entire book, it's just never the same again.

While I don't have a very good memory for trivia or details and couldn't tell you character names or much at all about any book I read more than a few weeks ago except that I enjoyed it ... or didn't, as soon as I start reading it again, it all comes back to me.

Song lyrics are the same way. I couldn't recite the lyrics to any song just off the top of my head but as soon as it starts to play, the words come back to me. I'm pretty sure this is not a unique ability. I just think that recall is the same thing that happens with books for me.

I've only reread a handful of books through the years and while I did enjoy them the second time around, it wasn't as exciting. Reading a new book is such an adventure. You just never know what's around the next corner. Or in the closet. Or under the bed.

This summer I reread The Stand by Stephen King. I've also read Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury maybe four times. I've read To Kill A Mockingbird twice and Sue Hubble's A Country Year as well. Other than those, I can't think of any others I have reread. There are probably a few.

Of course book sellers like to try to trick us with new covers every so often. I've been duped more than once into buying the same book twice. They just make them so darn appealing and I totally judge books by their covers so I'm a complete sucker.

I'll bet if I just opened it up and started reading though, it would all come back to me.

My friend Deanne likes to read Dick Francis books over and over. She finds them comforting like literary mashed potatoes.

What books have your read over and over?

Read on.

Gym Time - Day 6 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-06T22:31:00.000-05:00

I made it to the gym late this afternoon. It's only the second time in two weeks. It's not that impressive; twice in two weeks. It's barely better than nothing at all but it's a start. I'm a great starter.

Last week I went in and pinged around on the equipment and managed to waste an hour and have some sore muscles the next few days so I suppose it was something. But it felt pretty aimless overall. Today I asked for a consultation and a body analysis, glutton for punishment that I am. A very, nice and perkily fit girl named Taylor measured me and my fat and determined that 109 pounds of me is essential parts... 66 pounds of me is fat.

I had 37% body fat. Now that is impressive.

She helped me develop a six week plan for strength training and optimistically suggested I do 30 minutes of cardio 3-5 days a week. Uh huh. I would love to do that but I don't see how it's going to happen. I'm going to try. I'm more likely to make the three than the five.

I used to be in a shape other than round and would like to be again ... like tomorrow. The absolute simplest exercise she suggested took absolutely no equipment and was excruciatingly difficult. The plank. Seems simple; stretch out and hold it for thirty seconds. Repeat. Taylor suggested three times. I did three times. I wasn't feeling like a hero so three was all I did.

It was a lot harder than it looks.

Or maybe I'm just in a lot worse shape than I'd like to think.

Either way ... plank I did along with ball wall squats, leg abductions, dumbell front raises, dumbell curls, tricep pushdowns, 15 minutes on the bike and 15 minutes on the treadmill carefully keeping my heart rate at 145. Exercising is very complicated. But, I like a plan and now I have one. All I have to do now is implement it.

Aye, there's the rub.

Meet the Authors - Day 5 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-05T20:13:00.002-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I went to St. Louis with two girlfriends to see two of my favorite authors; Charlaine Harris and Laurell K. Hamilton . Of course they both write vampire novels so they are right up my alley. Hamilton lives in St. Louis and her Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series is set in St. Louis mostly as well. Harris lives in Arkansas and her Sookie Stackhouse series was the basis for the HBO series True Blood. The first season of the show was pretty true to the first book and even used a lot of the dialogue. After that, the show pretty much went off the rails, in a good way I think, and now they are basically two separate but equally wonderful entities. Hamilton and True Blood are not for the faint of heart. Luckily, my heart is strong.

Both ladies participated in this author's evening at Christ Church Cathedral in St. Louis which is down by the Arch. It was an awesome church and it was packed. It is an Episcopal church and the Dean of the church welcomed everyone and gave us some history of the cathedral. He was so kind and enthusiastic it made you want to go to church there some Sunday just to please him.

The event was a fundraiser for the St. Louis Public Library. Tickets were only $28 and you got to choose a signed book from one of the two authors. I chose Charlaine's The Sookie Stackhouse Companion.

We got second row seats which were awesome. Both authors stood on a little stage up front and instead of a program they just answered fan questions for an hour and a half. I sat next to a very nice lady named Beth Sorensen who just published her second mystery book. She was there for a Mystery Writer's conference.

I got in line to ask a question but someone in front of me asked it before I made my way to the microphone. It was a fun night. I was a little nervous because usually when I go to a concert of someone I really like, I'm disappointed in them in person and then I don't listen to them anymore. Thankfully that was not the case with this event. They were both great. I wasn't disappointed at all.

In fact, it just made me want to go to more events like that.

There's a Book Lover's Convention in Chicago in April and I am really thinking about going instead of driving Route 66. They have lots of authors I like there and writing conferences as well. I'll probably wait until the last minute to decide so we'll see.

I'm on the hunt for the next opportunity.

Something About Nothing - Day 4 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-04T21:10:00.000-05:00

The Nothing Pitch - Seinfeld on You Tube ... Click Here To Watch

See, I told you this would happen. It's only day four and I have nothing to blog about. Every day is just not blog worthy. Today, I went to work, made a few stops, had lunch with my favorite contact person, came home and warmed up leftovers for Grace so we could rush off to her makeup soccer game in Marshfield. Then when I got home, again, I had to make a spaghetti casserole thing so I could take it the church dinner tomorrow night. I was supposed to make brownies too but then I spied the package cookies we had bought for the Sunday felllowship we skipped so, I'm taking those instead.

See, not blog worthy. Instead of a quality post you are getting a lame stream of consciousness spew. I've been sitting here tonight trying to come up with something. I've got nothing. I asked Bryon for an idea. Bryon suggested I write about how great he is. Not too surprising really. He is pretty great but if I write too much about that his head will swell up and explode. I don't want to clean up the mess so what else you got for me?

He also suggested writing about nothing, like on Seinfeld. I told him that would be a very, very short post. Of course then I had to go to YouTube and find The Nothing Pitch and watch it. I have seen every single episode of Seinfeld so many times. A solution to pretty much all of life's problems can be found in a Seinfeld episode. They should make a book The Zen of Seinfeld. They probably already have. I should Google that...

See how it is... you start to write something about nothing and the next thing you know you're pinging all over the internet like a cosmic ADD maniac.

Sometimes I think just writing, anything, helps break loose more ideas. Creativity spawns creativity. I did no writing on my book today. I feel like I need a good long stretch of time to clean up my plot flaws and proofread before I can go on. I don't see how that is going to happen right now.

I have been reading Stephen King's book On Writing and it's been very inspirational. I need all these little tricks and pushes of affirmation to keep myself motivated. Especially on days like this. When it seems like there is nothing to write about.

Okay, I'm going to stop complaining now. I'm starting to sound like Harry Potter complaining about homework in book five.

I'll try harder for tomorrow. Really, I will.

A Gift of Math - Post 3 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-03T21:36:00.000-05:00

Last Friday Bryon picked Grace up from school and went for her annual IEP meeting for her speech therapy. We've had her in speech therapy since she first started to speak and she's done great. They are working on her L's, ch and th sounds mostly now and it looks as though this will probably be the last year she'll have to do it.

I remember going to speech therapy myself when I was small. I went to one of the little trailers between the brick buildings and practiced my s sounds. I guess that runs in the family.

The meeting on Friday was with the school counselor, speech teacher, principal and Grace's teacher. They told Bryon they think she might be gifted in math and suggested we send her to Drury's Summer Quest program this summer for a gifted day camp. I looked it up and it's $200 for a week in June. We'll probably send her. She's pretty excited about the possiblity.

One thing I know for sure is that she did not get any math genes from me. If there are words and numbers in a problem ... I'll pick C every time. And if it's not multiple choice, then it will just be blank because that is exactly the one and only answer that comes up in my brain. A blank. My dad is a banker. My mom worked in a bank. My brother is very good with math. I am not.

I clearly remember my dad sitting me down at the kitchen table one day when I was sixteen and trying to show me how to balance my checkbook. I just couldn't do it. I always told him I was balancing it and went through the motions but it was never right. I finally just started keeping a cushion in it of at least $100 so I would never bounce a check. I haven't balanced my checkbook in 27 years. And yeah, I had to use the computer calculator to figure that out.

If I am asked to do math on the spot, in my head ... forget about it. There is this little black window shade in my mind with a pull dangling down the middle of it that slowly closes to block any possible math answers from getting through to see the light of day. It's a blackout shade. It's a total eclipse of the math.

So if Grace has a chance at working some math wonders, more power to her. I think she's also going to be a good reader and writer. She'll be unstoppable.

She'll just have to ask someone else how to balance her checkbook.

Hay, House & Honey - Post 2 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-02T20:49:00.001-05:00

This is a hay bale from our field out front of our house. We haven't done anything to improve the pasture since we bought this place ten years ago except brushhog it. The field is full of orchard grass, fescue and brome grass. It's really not all that great, but a guy stopped by a few weeks ago and asked if he could bale it and have the hay. We were just going to brushhog it down anyway so Bryon told him he could.

I'm sure he's just going to sell it somewhere, but it was cool to know that he got fourteen big round bales off of our that field. That would be enough to feed a couple of calves all winter probably. If we ever get any fencing put in at least we can have some decent grass and hay for them. Everyone tells us if we lime the field in the spring the grass will get a lot better. Maybe this will be the spring we do it.

We've been pretty consumed with our house lately. Specifically the log siding. Log siding is very cool. It looks pretty and rustic and natural. It is also a tremendous pain in the ass. Every three years we have to clean the entire house and re-stain it ... by hand. We stained every log before we sided it to begin with. Then three years later we rented a boom lift and Bryon washed the entire house and I stained behind him. It took us three whole days from dawn until dusk. It was not easy. Then we sat back and didn't think about it much more.

We weren't eager to repeat the process. This year though, it's starting to look really bad with lots of black junk on it. Bryon started cleaning it like he had before and this time things didn't go so smoothly. It had been six years since we last did it. We waited too long and it was too far gone to take the easy three day route. So now, instead of just cleaning it and then staining, it had to be completely sanded down to bare wood. I've spend five hours sanding two ends of our house, our friend Aaron has spent nine hours working on it with us and Bryon has probably spent forty hours on it already. We still aren't finished with just the two ends. We aren't even going to do the front or back until spring. It's a daunting task.

Bryon was hopeful we could just pay to have it done. We got a bid. The bid was $4,500. There was just no way to justify spending that much on it. Not yet anyway. We are seriously wondering now why we didn't just brick it like everyone suggested. Oh yeah, because we hate brick that's why. Unfortunately we are also starting to hate logs.

On a brighter note, I robbed my bees last weekend and I have about a gallon and a half of honey drip, drip, dripping into a bucket in the kitchen in my homemade extractor. I think I'll try to put it into jars tomorrow night. Hopefully that will last a while. There's nothing better than homemade honey from your own little bee slaves.

Life is good in the Big Cedars even if it is a lot of work sometimes.

A Leap of Faith - Post 1 of 31 Days of Blogging

2011-10-01T19:59:00.000-05:00

Today was the second ORA (Ozarks Romance Authors) meeting I have gone to. It was fun. Last night I surpassed the 50,000 word milestone and decided I'd take my first ten pages to the ORA critique group. I printed out 10 copies stuffed them in to my folder and went back to work on my story.

As I read through those first ten pages again, I realized that nearly every paragraph started with "My" or "I". Apparently that's an inherent hazard of writing in first person. I had not done any revisions or rewriting yet, I just wanted to plow through and get the story out and onto paper so I could see that word count rise and validate all the time I was spending on it. I'm still 20,000 words short of a publishable length but it's two thirds finished and I don't have the ending written so I'm not worried yet.

I reworked those first ten pages and cleaned up the obvious and glaring mistakes and reprinted them, exchanged them for the first set and took my folder downstairs.

I still wasn't sure I was actually going to let anyone read it yet. I wasn't quite ready for the dream to be crushed.

This morning I got up and headed to ORA. One of the members, Beth Carter just had an adorable children's book published and since she had a book signing across town the critique group was only three members today. I was still waffling as to whether or not to offer it up for sacrifice. I did.

You have to read your work aloud while the others read along and make notes and marks as you go, then at the end each person takes a turn critiquing your work ... aloud ... in front of God and everyone. I was a little scared. I read fast like I was trying to rip a Bandaid off a hairy arm so it would hurt less.

They did not eviscerate me or my first ten pages so hope still springs eternal. They gave me some good suggestions and wanted to know what happened next. That's a good sign since none of them really dig paranormal romance.

Before I left, I gave a copy to two other members to read and critique and I know they are both pretty tough and thorough from hearing them at the last meeting but at least the debut wasn't met with utter disgust so I suppose that's something.

The dream is still alive.

A Daily Blog Post for October

2011-09-30T21:10:00.000-05:00

My friend Jeff has been posting every day now for 220 days. That is a lot of blogging my friend. He's on an awesome new adventure in his life right now so if feels like he probably has a lot more to blog about than I do. You know how it is here in suburbia: get up, get ready, go to work, come home, fix dinner, watch tv, get ready for bed, sleep, repeat. Some days seem like such a drag.

Other days seem so full it's just too tiresome to try to put into words.

I've been toying with the idea of moving my blog from Blogger to WordPress.I haven't made the switch yet and still don't know if I will but it seems like everyone is doing it. You know, like jumping off of bridges and stuff.

WordPress sends me lots of emails and today I actually read one of them. It was about a challenge to blog a post a day every day in October in preparation for National Novel Writing Month which is in November. NaNoWriMo is just what it sounds like. You start on November 1 and write until Nov. 30. You don't have to worry about quality so much as quantity and just writing, writing, writing until you get to 50,000 words. There are rules, you have to start from scratch. No works in progress or dusted off bottom drawer tomes that have been hidden away.

I have written 49,060 words so far on my current novel attempt since early August. So that has taken me a month and a half. It's still not publishing length (even if it were publish worthy) but for NaNoWriMo 50,000 words is good enough.

I haven't decided if I'll try to do NaNoWriMo or not yet. I have a spark of an idea so it's a possibility. What I really need is a cosmic stop watch so I can just stop time on a nice sunny Saturday and write and write and write and the laundry doesn't pile up, the dishes don't pile up and the daily stuff of life doesn't pile up while I'm doing it. Oh, and the minutes don't tick by so fast making me feel like I'm chasing a running train the entire time.

I'll be posting both places here on my regular Blogger blog and on my WordPress blog . They have all of the same posts, they just look different.

Wish me luck and if you have any posting prompt ideas, send them my way. I could use the help. Every day in the Big Cedars is just not all that blog worthy. I could use a little help from my friends.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

2011-09-16T21:07:00.000-05:00

It's been a busy couple of weeks around the Big Cedars and beyond. I spent four days this month in Rolla recruiting college kids to the biggest drive of the year on campus at S&T and we collected 738 units of blood. I've also been using every possible extra minute to try to write. Obviously not blog posts, however. It's been crazy.

Lots of stuff has been going on around the old homestead lately. Here's the break down on the updates:

Birds:

The broilers have a date with destiny tomorrow afternoon. I can't say that I'm sad to see them go. Raising them has been less than enjoyable to me this time. I think it's because I've been pulled in so many other directions. Still, I won't be complaining when I am feeding my face with their tasty bits.

Unfortunately this batch has been less than free range. They haven't even been outdoor range. They've been inside the barn range. At three weeks old, I moved them outside so I could drag them around the yard and they could eat bugs and grass and such. The next morning (a Saturday) I looked out the window and saw a pile of feathers on the outside of the chicken tractor. That is never a good sign.

I got my shoes on and shuffled outside. Yep, dead bird. Something (most likely a raccoon) had reached through the chicken wire, caught one and somehow managed to eat the thing all but one foot, a leg and a thigh that was still attached and totally naked. You could have stuck it on a styrofoam platter, covered it in plastic wrap and sold it at Walmart. Other than one little pile of maybe twenty feathers on the outside of the coop, there was nothing left of it. No gut pile. No leftover bits. Nothing.

I reached in the coop and pulled out what was left and then I noticed one of the other chickens was just sitting in the middle of the coop while the others all tried to rush me at the door. I picked it up and it was missing a leg.

Back into the house I went for a fillet knife. I caught the one legged chicken, pulled it from the coop and carried it to the edge of the woods and butchered it. I froze the edible parts so now I am down from ten broilers to eight and three quarters.

My Buff Orpingtons are doing okay still because I've had them in a cage inside the chicken coop but now they have outgrown it and I'm trying to decide whether to put them into the chicken tractor in the barn for a few more weeks or see how they fare with the Buckeyes. I'm worried the Buckeyes will pick on them too much, or not let them roost in the chicken house or something but it looks like it's time to give it a shot because Bryon's tired of leaving his truck outside in the weather.

Chickens are complicated sometimes.

We have been trying to trap the raccoons but they are too smart. We set the live trap several times but the dang things just turn it upside down and shake out the bait no matter what we do to secure it. Bryon borrowed two leg traps from our neighbor and he's trapped three possums and a cat so far but no raccoons. We even used the leftover chicken parts which I figured would be irresistible but they didn't fall for it.

I do realize we live in the middle of the woods but I would appreciate a Gentleman's Agreement: they don't kill my chickens and I don't kill them.

So far that hasn't really worked out all that well.

Rabbits:

Last weekend we found homes for all but the handicapped bunnies. A lady Bryon works with wanted one for her three year old daughter to play with. I was a little dubious because my hands and belly were full of bunny scratches from handling them but she said she'd had bunnies as a little girl and she knew there would be scratches. Okay then, here's your bunny.

I put an ad on Craigslist and we had one call and Bryon met two college girls at the house who wanted a bunny for their dorm floor pet at MU. That bunny should get a lot of love.

A Facebook friend and sorta neighbor took another one for her kids. Very happy about that placement.

The last bunny and Cocoa (mama) and Bean (daddy) all three got taken to the swap meet in Marshfield last Saturday morning. I had no idea if we would get rid of them and/or how long it might take. Bryon was skeptical but went along. We loaded up bunnies, the bunny ring, camp chairs and headed in.

It cost $5 to sell things at the swap meet. We were actually going to give the bunnies away for free. As we pulled into the saddle club where the swap meet was it seemed as though every vendor had bunnies for sale. I figured it was a doomed venture.

We got the bunnies out and put Cocoa and the baby in the ring and left Bean in the dog crate because you only have to tell me three times what happens when boy bunnies and girl bunnies get together. Cocoa found a home pretty quickly and another lady stopped by and asked what sex the baby was. Uhhh, no idea lady. She picked it up, flipped it over and pulled it's little legs apart. She declared it a boy and showed me it's little boy parts. Okay then, boy. She didn't want a boy.

Then a very nice human boy happened along and said he would take Bean and the baby boy both. He seemed very nice and I didn't want to ask a lot of questions because we did not have room for more than two bunnies so he came back with a carrier and the bunnies were his. He fished in his wallet for money. I reminded him they were free. He gave me $5 anyway which meant we broke basically even on the whole adventure minus a bag of rabbit feed or so and the $20 visit to the vet.

So now we have the two little handicap bunnies which sure better end up being boys like the vet declared them. I wanted to name them Limpy and Gimpy but when Grace asked me what that meant and I explained it she didn't see the humor in it. So she named them Dave and Finny. I have no idea why and she had no explanation either. So Dave and Finny seem happy enough out in the rabbit hutch. I suppose the black one we could have named Tripod.

Hummers:

The humming birds have been insane the past week or so. There have been probably 30-40 birds at my feeders. They are stocking up for their long trip south. I'll leave the feeders out as long as there are birds or at least until the first hard freeze and then clean them up and put them away until next spring.

Garden:

We've been working on cleaning out the jungle that was our garden. I cleaned out several of the beds over the past few weeks and Bryon and Grace worked on it some more this afternoon. There is still plenty more work to be done. I'm pretty sure we'll never be able to plan another squash in that garden again because we had a veritable plague of squash bugs this year. Seriously, they were very, very, very bad. The chickens won't even eat them. We've begged them to.

Grace's Room:

Grace has been wanting her room repainted pink and purple. She also mentioned that she thought her wall decorations were sort of babyish. Bryon told her he would paint her room for her birthday and she could get some new stuff for her room decor. So a couple of weekends ago while she was at her Nana's he spent his whole day off in Springfield going from store to store (including the mall) and picking out paint and decor. I'm pretty sure he could have his own home remodeling show now.

He spent all weekend working on it and just finished painting her book shelf and getting it into her room last weekend. She was pretty impressed with it all.

Writing:

I thought I would get a lot of writing done while I was in Rolla since I was going to be alone in a hotel room for three nights in a row. By the end of each day though I was so tired I just crawled in bed at 9 pm each night and that was that. It's been hard to catch up and get back into the groove but I have managed to crank out a few more pages and as of two nights ago I've finally passed page 150 and 43,000 words.

I'm writing it from a first person point of view (think the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris or the Stephanie Plumb books by Janet Evanovich). Here's the problem with the first person point of view. Your character only knows what she knows and sees and hears and feels herself, sort of like your real life. So I have to write her from that point of view. You don't know what people are thinking unless they tell you and sometimes they lie my friend. It's been very limiting. From reading so much Harris and Evanovich and Laurell K. Hamilton I thought that writing from that point of view would be easier but 150 pages into it I'm sort of starting to rethink that.

There may be a major revision coming up because the action of my story is about to come to an end and I don't think I can embellish another 150 pages unless they just have lots and lots of sex. Hmmm, that might put me into a different genre. We'll see. Live and learn I suppose.

I'm still just as excited about it and if I only had more time to work on it I would be much happier. I did get to go to St. Louis this past Wednesday evening with two girlfriends to hear Charlaine Harris and Laurell K. Hamilton speak about their books and writing at Christ Church Cathedral. The whole event was awesome and very inspiring.

I'm also looking forward to the Oct. 1 meeting of the Ozarks Romance Authors (ORA). It's fun to be immersed in a new creative hobby or in this case a recycled one.

Reading:

You may have noticed (or not) that my book shelf on this page hasn't been changing much. That's because there just isn't time to read and write. I've made a few exceptions but I've been trying to read books, magazines and blogs about writing or other related articles to help keep me inspired. Also, I worry I'll start sounding like whomever I'm reading in my own writing if I get too deep into it. I had to read JR Ward's Envy and Janet Evanovich's Smokin' Seventeen.

I hate it when I catch up with a series and have to wait with the masses for the next hardback to be released but that's where I am with several of the series I read. There could be far worse problems to have.

Life is pretty good on the farm. If we could just make the squash bugs poison and figure out a way to make the raccoons eat them, it would be perfect.

A Novel Effort

2011-09-03T21:06:00.000-05:00

Last summer I got hit with a hankering to write a novel. I have read more than a hundred paranormal romance novels in the past two years and each time I have thought, “I can do this!” So I finally decided to put my money where my mouth was and give it a try.

As a former English teacher and a graduate of a very respectable state university with a BS in English Education, I figured, why not? This does not, however, mean that I have perfect grammar or always use the correct word. It means I have some good ideas and I need an editor … and spell check.

I first tried to write a novel several years ago when I had what I thought was a great premise after my Bryon and I helped clean out his grandmother’s incredibly disgusting and packed apartment and moved her into a care facility. We found a lot of crazy and interesting items and papers during our efforts which led to all sorts of questions and potentially mind blowing secrets.

When I got home, I started the novel. I made it about 24 pages and lost steam. I was approximately 276 pages short of a novel. I binder clipped the pages together along with my internet “research” and stuck it all into a folder, likely never to be seen or worked on again. It was dead to me.

Writing a novel is something I think lots of people secretly aspire to achieve. Being a published author would be even better. I think people assume every published author has basically hit the J.K. Rowlings lottery jackpot or can at least quit their day job.

I have been researching this assumption and it turns out it’s not exactly the case. Sure some authors hit the trifecta of published book, best seller, movie deal but most don’t. Some self-publish their literary children and others quietly stuff them into a drawer or the back of their closet under some mothballed sweaters.
It’s not easy but it is exciting to consider the possibilities.

It all starts with page one and ends 300 some pages later. Even if it’s a stinker, at least it’s an accomplishment that has a tangible result; a huge pile of paper with words you typed from your very own brain. No one else can do THAT for you.

Then if you actually finish the damn thing and want to try to publish it, there are a whole new host of obstacles to overcome. Of course, if you never finish, you’ll never have to worry about any of that.

As of today I’m on page 135 and 37,667 words of my third novel attempt. That's fifteen pages from half way. I think this one might actually go the distance. It’s exhausting and exciting all at the same time. It’s also pretty all consuming. I’ve been working on it since August 5th of this month and writing in long hand at lunch time while I snarf down my Subway Buffalo Chicken sandwich in one of the five counties I cover for work and then slinking off to my upstairs office until midnight most nights typing up and amending my copy from the day.

When I finally make it to bed, I can’t fall asleep because things keep happening to my story in my head and those characters just won’t shut up. My brain keeps writing the next scene and finally I have to turn the light back on and write down some notes or it will be lost forever. That’s a good problem to have. I’m not complaining about that.

Today I spent at the Library Station in Springfield for six hours at the Ozarks Romance Author's monthly club meeting. I didn't know what to expect. I went alone with a notebook and a pen and good intentions. It was very inspiring. There were about a dozen ladies and one gentleman there and we all go to critique two pieces of member's works in progress. By the time the speaker arrived around lunch time, the group had swelled to nearly forty authors. Not a one of them was writing paranormal romance. I was encouraged by that.

I thought the two who offered up their work for critique early in the day were very brave. Sometimes I think it's probably mostly forest for the trees stuff. We spend so much time looking at our own work on the screen and printed out copies that we don't see the obvious stuff anymore. Other times I think maybe it's just that we have the whole story (or most of it) in our heads and it doesn't always make it to the written word in it's full context.

I didn't bring any of my story for critique yet. It's still at that embarrassing "work in progress" stage where you don't really know if you want to rip off the swimsuit cover in public yet and reveal your full middle aged, bikini clad glory.

I did get a lot of good information, met some cool people and learned tons today. I can't wait for next month.

Page 135, here I come.

Special Needs Bunnies

2011-08-28T15:56:00.000-05:00

The bunny saga continues.

Yesterday morning was spent at the vet's office with Grace and two of our six bunnies.

A few weeks ago I finally let Grace get the bunnies out and play with them and noticed that two of them had a funky flipper foot that was all sprung out sideways. At first I thought maybe they had gotten injured since they are constantly swimming through the water bowl and into Dad's side of the cage. Then I thought maybe they had gotten their foot caught somehow and broken it.

It just seemed too much of a coincedence that both bunnies had the same foot with the exact same problem.

Grace has been ate up about veterinarians lately and I've checked out every book about them from three libraries and brought them home for her to read and pour over the photos.

When I pointed out the problem to her she went nuts wanting to take them to the vet right then. I told her I wasn't going to take them to the vet. She was persistent.

I went inside and Googled bunny leg problems and came up with this link which diagnosed what I thought was the problem ... splay leg. Apparently it's congenital and can be exacerbated by being raised on a slick surface. I did not know this. They did have a wooden box they were in for the first several weeks of their life until they finally began to venture out in to the wire bottomed cage.

The first batch of oops bunnies did not have this affliction and were raised the exact same way.

The link suggested a brace that might help which consisted of sports tape, two cotton pads and a cork.

I had two of the three things so I went back out to report to Grace on the possible solution. She was set to go to her Nana's the next day for a long weekend and wanted to bail out immediately so she could doctor the bunnies. I told her we'd wait for her and do it Sunday night when she got back because I still had to buy some sports tape.

She decided that would work so a plan was hatched.

I got some tender tape (non adhesive) from Walgreens and Sunday night we all three attempted to brace the back legs of the bunnies.

I was not an easy task.

We finally accomplished it and they were none to happy with our efforts to "correct" their problem.

I checked them several times over the next couple of days and I was pretty sure our plan was not going to accomplish anything other than handicapping them even further so I took off our contraption.

I told Bryon we would just have to keep those two bunnies and sell or giveaway Cocoa and Bean since I was pretty sure no one else was going to want our two little messed up bunnies no matter how cute they were. Bryon thought that was fine until they got together accidentally at some point and produced an entire litter of messed up bunnies.

He just always has to foil my plan with logic.

Still, that was the plan I was going to go with. There are two swap meets each month through October; one in Marshfield and one in Fordland. It costs $5 to sell something and I thought I would try to sell them for $5 each or give them away if I had to. Bryon has a lady at work that wants one of them for her three year old so at least one is spoken for. One of the non goofy ones.

The yesterday morning I went out to take care of them and noticed the white one's legs were red and looked like all the fur was gone off them. The tape we had used was not adhesive and hadn't pulled off any hair so I was trying to puzzle together what was up with them. I picked up the little brown one to check out too and was disgusted to discover it's flipper leg was missing. As in gone. As in chewed off and gone.

I couldn't quite get my brain around the missing leg. It was all healed over and the knuckle of the bone was dry and it didn't seem to be in pain but it's LEG WAS GONE.

I went in to tell Grace (Bryon was out all day). Grace went nuts and ran out in her jammies to see it. She was excited and upset all a the same time. She begged and begged and cried and begged for me to take it to the vet. I was just debating over the value of taking it to the vet but she finally played the "If you love animals and care for them then you have to take them to the vet when they are hurt and suffering" card. I caved.

We loaded up both of the goofed up bunnies in the cat carrier and they rode on Grace's lap to the vet.

Do you know how busy the vet is on a Saturday without an appointment? Very.

The receptionist said that only one of the three vets there that day was the "bunny guy" and asked if we wanted to just drop them of or wait. I contemplated the drop off option because then I could have gone to Freda's for breakfast at least but let me tell you I would have never heard the end of it if Grace had missed the examination.

We waited. For about an hour. Dogs came in, dogs went out. Sometimes in multiples of three at a time from the same family. We saw a lot of dogs.

Finally we were up. Dr. Messick was great with Grace. I told him she was really interested in vets and he filled her in on the whole scoop and told her when she's in junior high if she is still interested she could come and shadow at the clinic. He also told her that the small animal vets field is primarily composed of women so that was a cool thing. And there is only one school of veterinary medicine in the state and it is in Columbia at MU. It takes eight years to become a vet. She had better get good grades ... and a scholarship.

Dr. Messick checked out both bunnies and said it was totally a congenital defect and there was really nothing that could be done to correct the problem. Most likely one of the parents had chewed off the leg and was working on the other rabbit's legs as well. It was pretty gruesome to think about. Bless his heart he only charged us $20. Grace had offered to pay for the vet from her own money. I didn't make her.

He is pretty sure they are both boys. I have heard this before. I just hope he is more correct than the 17 year old girl at the swap meet who sold us Cocoa and Bean.

Grace has deemed them both "her" bunnies and we have them separate in a big dog crate outside by the rabbit hutch for now. I don't know what's going to happen to them but for now they are doing okay. They are cute. It's a good thing.

Another good thing about a three legged rabbit is that it doesn't hop away as quickly and Grace has been playing with that poor little rabbit like crazy. The other one doesn't know how lucky it is to still have both legs which makes it slightly less attractive to her.

Now I think they are mostly just in danger of being loved to death. That's got to be a better fate than having your legs chewed off.

Dreams Deferred and Dreamt Again

2011-08-13T15:46:00.001-05:00

My friend Jeff has left his job, his home and his wife (only by proximity) to pursue his dream of acting in L.A. He has been living with a friend's parents in a spare bedroom in Los Angeles for 172 days now. He's a funny guy. Seriously, he does comedy improv and writes and is a genuinely entertaining human being. He blogs every day and many of his posts have been hilarious accounts of the day to day minutia of trying to become a big star. Or in his case, just be gainfully employed in a profession that is notoriously difficult to break into let alone be successful at.

These are obstacles that would perhaps drive a lesser spirit to drink. Of course, he can't afford that; he has no job. His wife is still here and employed and keeping the home fires burning while he spends (a year maybe?) making this attempt to follow his dreams.

His wife supports him.

His wife is a saint.

While many of his posts are funny, others are heart breaking and seemingly soul crushing in the slowness that things seem to be developing. Here he had become a big fish in a small pond, there he's a guppy in the sea and just hoping to get caught in a gill net of stardom and pulled to the surface. He's a hero basically.

He doesn't have a cape or tights (dear God I hope not anyway) but would be willing to don one if the occasion should arise. He is putting his money where his mouth is and his words into action and every day taking steps in a positive direction towards an end goal. A passion. A dream.

Wouldn't we all be better served by life to take just an iota of the chance he's taking to pursue a dream? Remember when you were small or in junior high and you really thought you could pursue anything as a career if you wanted to? Maybe some people didn't feel that way.I'm guessing for most of us our spirits and dreams didn't get crushed or pushed aside or covered up until we started working jobs. Jobs that eventually turned into careers, that no matter how interesting or fulfilling, locked us into the golden handcuffs of needing, buying and acquiring more and which in turn forced us to work more and more and push those dreams farther and farther away.

Sometimes we might have even given up on those dreams as the folly of childhood. Or sometimes, maybe something can provide us with the tiniest spark and reignite that lost or deferred dream and now, as adults, who can control our action, time and other resources to a much higher degree and we can pursue them in a way that will serve us better than they ever would have then.

I don't remember at what point I became interested in reading and writing but it was probably around sixth grade that my interest started to be more than passing. At some point I remember my parents bought me an electric typewriter and that was about the coolest piece of equipment I had ever owned. I typed many, many sad junior high girl poems on that typewriter.

I typed lots of other things on it too. Eventually I typed articles for the local newspaper about my family and funny aspects of my life. They got published. I got a column. I also really liked to read. I read all sorts of books from our school library and whenever a subject interested me I checked out everything they had and poured over the pages. I ordered catalogs and consumer information government brochures on all sorts of subjects. The only bad thing about this passion is that I have a horrible memory. I wish I could retain much more of what I read. Instead I have become a hoarder of information and paper and books for reference which of course in my complete lack of a logical filing system are rarely ever referenced again.

Thank God for the internet, DSL and the grid because now if I want to know something or look something up I have long ago forgotten, it's at my fingertips and in that giant filing cabinet in the sky somewhere... or maybe the Cloud.

I came across an awesome note taking site called Evernote thanks to Rachel's blog I read regularly called Small Notebook . You can even take pics of pages of books, magazines, anything with your iPhone and file them into different notebooks within the site and then reference them on your phone or computer (it syncs up).

So all of this to say, that last summer I got the writing bug again after reading maybe a hundred paranormal romances and decided to try my hand at it. Every time I read one of those books, I think "I could have done that". Last July I started a vampire paranormal romance that went along pretty well for a first real attempt for about 113 pages and then stalled. I got sort of stuck and it seemed too difficult to try to fit writing into my list of things to do.

Now some of my problem could be because of the whole "starter" vs. "sustainer" handicap I seem to have but I think I can stick it out and see it through if I know there is an attainable end goal and a tangible product of success to be had.

Last week I got an idea for a different paranormal romance and started working on it in a notebook. A real paper notebook. It's much, much more portable and doesn't have to be plugged in. This new novel attempt is not vampires which is probably good because by the time I get that vampire book written the craze will have passed and I'll have to wait another decade for them to be hot again. These new characters just haven't shut up yet and I see lots of potential for not just one book but a series of them. I've been stealing time and staying up late to work on it this week and I already have 45 pages. Three hundred pages or around 80,000 words is a typical paperback novel size.

I think it's probably every English degree holder's eventual and perhaps latent dream to write a novel. Is this paranormal romance going to be the Great American Novel? Not likely. But it will sure make some monster romance lovers happy. And me happy.

Even if it never get's finished or dies on the vine, it has been nice to revisit a dream deferred and to feel the excitement I remember feeling from all those hours locked in my room in my childhood home tapping away on the keyboard of that old electric typewriter. The toys and tools are much cooler now and hopefully my writing is much better. No more depressing poetry anyway.

My pursuit of a dream is much less dramatic and not nearly as dangerous or courageous as Jeff's. The worst thing that's probably going to happen while following my dream is that my family will have to eat more Ramen noodles because I want to write instead of cook supper. I'm no super hero.

Stay tuned for the next chapter.

Kidney Stone Surprise

2011-08-13T14:43:00.000-05:00

Medical calamity whining to follow, so if you don't like hearing about other peoples health problems, skip this post. You've been warned.

I spent two hours last Sunday morning in the St. John's Lebanon ER with a surprise kidney stone. Fear not, there won't be any photos of it.

I woke up about ten to seven am with excruciating pain in my right side. Sometimes I have a little pain in my back in the morning. I'm 43. It happens. I tried rolling over. Still pain. I got up and went to the bathroom. Still pain. By the time I'd made it around the house, I was nauseous. The next trip was to puke up my non-existent stomach contents as a result of the pain. Good times.

Bryon heard my problems and subsequent moanings and came in to investigate. I told him I wanted to go to Urgent Care so we got the early morning wheels into motion. He called Grandpa and we debated (well he debated I just mostly nodded) between Springfield and Lebanon. Since I was thinking this could be a week long deal and immediately planning for the worse case scenario, I voted for Lebanon so he could visit my bedside while he was at work.

I was suffering. It was way worse than labor had been because at least that came and went and you knew there would be a break no matter how brief and an end in sight. My braincells weren't firing well enough after only fifteen minutes of that pain to see any end to it and there was no relief.

It wasn't a sharp pain, or an ache it was just constant PAIN. I managed to get some clothes on, changed shirts twice because I couldn't stand anything touching my throat, like a collar. I brushed my teeth, grabbed a trash can to puke in and we were on our way to Marshfield (the opposite direction of the hospital by the way) to drop off Grace at Grandpa's.

Grace really, really wanted to go along because she's totally digging doctor and veterinarian stuff right now, but I wasn't in any mood for an intern. Bryon and I dropped her off on the street and she crossed the apartment grounds to Grandpa and we were off.

By this time Bryon was pretty sure it was probably a kidney stone. I was thinking exploded appendix because it felt like a definite explosion of some sort. He may have offered up other possiblities but honestly I was just in my own little bubble of PAIN. I kept puking and occasionally opening my eyes to see what mile marker we were on because they were not passing quickly enough to suit me.

Bryon later told me he was driving 85 mph. At one point I did notice some sirens and a patrolman on the other side of the highway but apparently he was after some other lawbreaker. Good thing because I think I would have just puked on his shoes.

We FINALLY got to the ER and they got me in and started an IV. They couldn't get my vein in either arm (big surprise there, I'm always like the last kid getting picked for dodge ball when I donate blood because I'm a hard stick and no one wants to do it). I think I told them all of this, but it probably mostly came out as "UG". Bryon did tell them I was a hard stick too. They finally got it into my hand and I know I asked repeated times for drugs. Pain drugs. Good ones.

I finally got them. The dear nurse that was administering to me was the nicest sweetest man, which of course I didn't totally appreciate until after it was all over, and he was working fast. My pain was just faster. He asked me what my pain was 1-10, 10 of course being the highest. Ten I said, definitely 10.

The meds knocked the pain back down to maybe a five but I was still sweating and squirming all over the hospital bed. Then we got to go down the hall for a CT and I had to stretch out on my belly and hold my breath while they radiated me.

By the time we got back to the ER suite I was ready for more drugs and asked for them. Ask and ye shall receive my friend. My concierge, I mean ER nurse, pumped me right up with a nice vintage of something ...dol. And it was good. No more pain. I also no longer had any vertical hold on my vision, but at that point what was a little dizziness and lack of vision? I just closed my eyes and dozed off for a few minutes blissfully pain free.

Bryon came back and told me I indeed had a kidney stone. Then the ER Doc came in and told me the same thing. It was three millimeters and had already passed from my kidney through the tiny little tube and was just about in my bladder. Apparently that tiny little tube was not built for solids and is usually flat until you get some liquid worked up and processed and ready to complete it's journey to the great beyond. So when something solid, like say a giant jagged boulder goes through it, it feels like you are passing glass.

ER Doc said anything less than six millimeters would pass no problem. Uh huh, I wasn't planning on ever testing that theory. Since Sunday, I've heard from lots of kidney stone survivors who of course all had their own horror stories. Much like childbirth only a unisex, equal opportunity affair. Many have even told me it's worse for men. Seems only fair since we have to give birth and can still get a kidney stone.

The entire episode only lasted about three hours for me. I'm pretty sure that was mostly because Grandpa took Grace to church with him and the first thing she did when she walked through the door was to seek out Pastor Gary and ask him to pray for me. He did. The whole church did. I guess it sure worked ;)

I was a little loopy as we left and got a pain med prescription filled that I didn't end up needing and by the time we got home I was good as new. They wanted me to try to "catch" my stone. I won't go into the detail of how one does that, but you can imagine if you are so inclined.

I was unsuccessful in that endeavor. I think I must have passed it when I went one last time before I left the hospital. So now I'll never know what kind of stone it was or what offending food or beverage might have caused it. They suggested drinking lots of water with fresh lemons squeezed into it. I drink lots of tea usually. When I was pregnant with Grace, more than seven years ago now, I stopped drinking soda and switched to tea. I don't know if the tea caused it or something else, but I've drank nothing but a little coffee each day and lemon water every day since. It was a good motivator. I don't want another one. Ever.

I Googled today finally to see what I could do to prevent it and this is what Mayo said...

You may reduce your risk of kidney stones if you:

Drink water throughout the day. Drink more water throughout the day. For people with a history of kidney stones, doctors usually recommend passing about 2.6 quarts (2.5 liters) of urine a day. Your doctor may ask that you measure your urine output to ensure that you're drinking enough water. People who live in hot, dry climates and those who exercise frequently may need to drink even more water to produce enough urine.
Eat fewer oxalate-rich foods. If you tend to form calcium oxalate stones, your doctor may recommend restricting foods rich in oxalates. These include rhubarb, beets, okra, spinach, Swiss chard, sweet potatoes, tea, chocolate and soy products.
Choose a diet low in salt and animal protein. Reduce the amount of salt you eat and choose nonanimal protein sources, such as nuts and legumes. This may help reduce your chance of developing kidney stones.
Continue eating calcium-rich foods, but use caution with calcium supplements. The calcium in the food you eat doesn't have an effect on your risk of kidney stones. Continue eating calcium-rich foods unless your doctor advises otherwise. Ask your doctor before taking calcium supplements, though, as these have been linked to an increased risk of kidney stones. You may reduce the risk by taking supplements with meals.

Now out of all of that ... the only thing I eat a lot of are tea, chocolate and meat. So I guess my stone might have been a chocolate meat smoothie.

So that is the tale of my surprise kidney stone. Here's to hoping there will not be a sequel.