Liar, Liar Pants On Fire.

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

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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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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!