Writspiration

Saturday was a good day for writing inspiration. I got to spend the day at The Library Station for the monthly ORA (Ozarks Romance Authors) meeting. Bryon stayed home and worked on his boat with Matt and, Grace entertained herself.

The great thing about ORA is it really helps keep me pumped for writing. Of course you couldn't tell that from the blog posts because I skipped a day. I did take my first thirty re-edited pages of my novel back and the group critiqued it. Two of the group had read the first draft when it was in first person and liked it better the old way. The rest of them didn't know any better. They all said they wanted to read more so that's a good sign I suppose.

It's staying in third person. I'm just not a first person fiction kind of girl. First person is so incredibly limiting. I like being able to read the minds of my characters.

I made it through all of my first paper and ink edits. Now I have to go back and fix them all in Word. I swear, editing is more difficult than the writing. I say I made it through all of my edits, but Saturday one of the authors in the club took a bit of time to give me some advice and pointed out how many times I was using the passive tense. It was like opening the Pandora's Box of passive voice and she only read two pages.

Here's the difference in passive and active voice straight from the one true source, Wikipedia: Caesar was stabbed by Brutus = passive voice. Brutus stabbed Caesar = active voice.

So now I have to go back and clean all of that up as well. It's going to be huge pain, but I'm doing it because I know she's right. She's published more than seventy novels. I even had one on my bookshelf that I haven't read yet. I took it, and she signed it for me. I want her to adopt me and be my mentor but it turns out prolific authors only get that way by ... well, ... writing. Not babysitting new would-be writers. I get that.

I got a lot of good advice Saturday, and I registered for four writing classes that are coming up on Monday nights the last two weeks of March and the first two weeks of April. I used to say I'm as smart as I plan to be, but I think I'm ready to learn something new. Since I decided not to try to go to the RT Book Lovers Convention in Chicago, this will be the next best thing.

Peace Food

Some people see Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich. Yesterday, I found peace in a tomato.

Post Whine & Blogging Notes

I have wanted to quit posting daily about three times this week, and I've only made it two months. This makes the 64th post because I had a couple of bonus posts thrown in there for kicks when I was feeling flush. This week has been a struggle. I've been grumpy and nothing has seemed all that post worthy.

I don't like to be a quitter, but man, it's getting more difficult.

The only thing that's kept me going is that I am excited that more and more people have been finding my blog. I'm also a little disappointed because my bounce rate has been high. Until two weeks ago, I didn't even know what bounce rate was.

Bounce rate means something got someone to the blog, like a specific search term, and when they got here, they realized it was not what they expected. They bounced or left immediately and didn't stick around to check things out.

I think my catchy titles are the culprit. Also, I steal a lot of the images from Google Images, and I think that sometimes leads them here. I know it leads me to their pages so I suspect I am bouncing of other people's blogs the same way.

Just last week I discovered Google Analytics which is totally cool and awesome and depressing all at the same time. It's free. You register your blog and they analyze your blog traffic six ways to Sunday. I am not naturally analytic but I sure do like to see where, how and what people are doing when they come to my blog. Don't worry, there's no specific information. I can't tell who you are.

I've learned a lot about blogs and blog traffic this past week. More than you'll probably ever want to know. My post last week, The Helpful Gene, is really getting lots of page views. My all time most viewed though is still A Penny Saved... I think folks find it and think it's a way to get through these hard economic times. Not so much really, it's actually about my first car and Grace's efforts to save for one of her own.

One thing I would like to start doing is taking more of my own pics for the posts. I think that might cut down on the random bouncing. Honestly, I don't know if I'll make it an entire year. I'm getting squishy. Right now, another entire month seems pretty impossible.

Feel free to offer up topics if you are so inclined, because frankly, I could use the help.

These would be your rock days my friend.

Spring? Here's A Sign.

The girls were busy this past weekend. I'm optimistic that this means they have made it through the winter again. I hope this also means they are ready to get to making me some more honey for this year.

I haven't opened up the hive to inspect things yet, but this was a goodly bunch of bees hanging out on the front porch, so that's usually a good sign. Either they are ready to go or these girls are robbing my hive.

We'll see in a few weeks when I break into it and check them out. I don't like to break their waxy weather proofing until it has warmed up for good and true outside.

My honey from last year has already sugared up but that's okay. I think it was just too cool in the bottom of the pantry for it. I just warmed up a jar, stirred it and we are enjoying the first jar of last year's harvest.

Good things come from small packages.

Mad About March

Dear Television Executives:

I have some March madness, but it's not what you would likely expect.

I could care less about basketball. What I do care about are my weekly shows. You know, the ones I'm addicted to. The ones that YOU hooked me on. The ones that now produce less and less episodes each year, take a month long break over Christmas and then the entire month of March off for BASKETBALL.

Seriously, who doesn't have a DVR now? Practically everyone. Okay, maybe not my friends Leslie and Ron or the Amish, but otherwise, EVERYONE. And if not a DVR then they probably still have a VHS recorder. The point is, bring my shows back. We can watch both if we are so inclined. Your viewing audience will not be diminished.

Probably it's just that you don't want us fast forwarding through your precious commercials. Well guess what, I do that each week anyway and instead of instilling loyalty in me, you are only instilling anger. Deep. Seated. Anger. Trust me, you won't like me when I'm angry.

You have perfected the season finale cliffhanger. This year you sprang the mid-season finale cliffhanger on me. What the heck? Seriously? How long did you sit around the mahogany board room table brainstorming up that idea? I have enough stress in my life. I do not need multiple or mid-season cliffhangers. I need consecutive, well written weekly episodes. I would like twenty six of them. A full six months.

I also do not care for the filler episodes. Just develop the characters and their relationships, expand the plot and lay out the story each week. Do not flash forward, back or sideways. If you do flash forward, back or sideways, do not do more than one of them in the same episode. It makes my brain hurt. I also do not care for it when you drop my characters into some bizarre time warp and suddenly they are all 1940's gangsters or some other ridiculous indulgence.

I know you have more money than God. Use it wisely. Create cooler effects. Shoot your entire show in HD or 3D or some other mind blowing D. Just don't travel there. It's too confusing. 

Once you have actually produced and aired twenty six fabulous episodes, then you can break out the new stuff on me. I'll see if you measure up. I'll decide if you are 'Record Series' worthy. My DVR space and free time are limited. You had better bring it.

Since you already have basketball on the brain, think of your work as the playoffs of television. Each series is a team. Each episode is a game. The season finale is the playoff.

Right now, you are playing disabled and you are way, way behind. You had better use this time of rehabilitation to the utmost, my friend. Otherwise, when you do come back, you might find you have lost some of your fan base. If you give us a chance to realize we might actually be able to find more productive things to do than watch hours of television, we might fall out of love with you.

That would be very, very sad for you.

Next year, I hope you reconsider.

Yours truly,

A fan.

Belle Eats Bubbles

Here is your video entertainment for the day. Grace busted out the bubbles last night and Belle joined in. That's some good clean entertainment right there. Bryon and Gary were playing trackball off screen and the chickens were in the peanut gallery.

First shorts and flip flops of spring.

Allergic To The Outdoors

Awe Spring, or in this case, Mid Winter; sixty degree days, toasty bright sunshine, perky robins plucky worms from the soggy soil. It's a good time of the year. My favorite actually, right up until every living green thing starts blooming and exploding into the atmosphere and reducing those iconic messengers of spring into harbingers of allergic doom.

That happened last Wednesday for me.

I scavenged through my bathroom cabinet with blood shot eyes and a drippy nose desperately searching for my allergy medications. And yes it takes more than one.

I never had allergies when I was growing up. I spent many a summer day on, near or driving a hay truck, drinking sodas and hanging with the guys. I skipped blithely through FIELDS of fescue to shoot frogs at the the pond or throw rocks and climb trees. No problem.

Then I went off to college in Columbia and everything went haywire. I'm not sure if the trigger was just a change of location, or the stress of school or if it was inevitable, but that first year at Mizzou I developed hay fever and had an allergic reaction to penicillin my first semester. Sometimes a change does not do you good.

My eyes became coated with sandpaper and my nose was drippy or stuffed or both when I wasn't sneezing. It was miserable. That was twenty five years ago. At this point, I have suffered from allergies longer than I had not.

Each year I pray that this will turn around in my favor. We eat lots of local (as in from our own backyard) honey to hedge against allergies, and I hope against hope that my allergies will disappear as mysteriously as they developed. This will not be that year.

Most years I take my Claritin or Zyrtec and Flonase from March 1 to October 31. This year I got to start two weeks early. Yay. (insert dripping sarcasm here)

Unfortunately for Grace, she seems to have inherited some of my same allergies. Bryon isn't allergic to anything. Not even poison ivy unless he just purposely bathes in the stuff. Even then it's not like my sensitivity to it. I have to go to Urgent Care for a shot and steroids for even thinking about it. I'm starting to itch just writing about it.

While non-allergic people look outside and see ample sunshine and possibility, I look out there and see pollen. While the evening weather pollen count is easily ignored by the non-allergics, the rest of us cringe. Woe to those who's over-the-counter remedies fail. And they will. The only real remedy is to stay indoors with the air conditioning on and to change your filters twice as often as recommended. 

This is how we develop into writers and gamers and nerds.

It all starts with allergies.

We Bought A Pool

No it's not as exciting as buying a zoo, but there should be less poop to scoop.

Bryon and Grace have been campaigning for a pool for the past three years. I just didn't see the value in it really. A pool is expensive. It's a lot of work. It takes up a lot of real estate in the yard. I have fair skin. I'm fat. You get the picture.

Still, they campaigned on. Nana chimed in too. Nana has promised to visit and stay much more in the summer time if we have a pool. Uh huh, we'll see.

Finally, I caved in and got on board the pool train. There were two deciding factors that tipped the scale for me. For one, we got back enough on our tax refund to pay for most of it. Secondly, eight out of the ten times Bryon tried to take Grace to the Marshfield city pool last summer, they were closed. That pool administration is a mess. If there aren't a minimum number of swimmer at the pool (I'm thinking that number is ten), they close down.

If it clouds up and even looks rainy, they close down. If it's a Saturday of a full moon, they close down. Several times, we even thought to call ahead and make sure the pool was in fact open, drove there geared up and dressed up to swim only to find they had just closed down due to some random event. It was infuriating.

That's why we decided to buy a pool of our own.

We have friends with pools but they live too far away to play on a regular basis. One of the goals we hope to achieve with our little farmy oasis here in the Big Cedars is to make our home a landing spot for Grace and her friends as the years go by. If she is here, we know what's going on.

A pool will be a kid magnet.

Of course with that come the stresses of WATCHING all of those kids and keeping them from drowning. I'm just going to have to invest in a lot of noodles and life vests.

The actual pool has yet to arrive but will soon and then the installation will commence. We are not looking forward to the installation. I might have mentioned my problem with following directions. Luckily, Bryon is very good at following directions. There is a lot of prep ground work (literally) that has to happen before the first steel panel goes up and months before the first splash is made, but this summer will be spent enjoying our staycation in the Big Cedars.

More good news: only two big cedars will have to be sacrificed for the pool.


Life is good.

Focus Grasshopper

So here's the problem on this unbelievably nice Sunday afternoon at the end of February, there are about 16 things I would like and need to do, but I can't seem to focus on any of them. I have a rare three or four hour block of time free to use in these endeavors, yet I can't seem to get my heart into any of them even though I want them all accomplished.

First off in an effort at full disclosure, Grace is at Nana's this weekend and will be back in mere hours. Bryon and I slept in late, skipped church and went to Freda's for breakfast. This killed half the day. I'm more than okay with that part but now I am plagued with "the weekend is nearly over, here are all the things I still want to do, but am not going to get done" blues.

If time is the enemy of ambition; focus is the enemy of success.

Before you suggest I Google ADD medications, I'm fairly confident that is not the problem. The problem is I am always looking and planning ahead to the next thing. Once I'm in the "get shit done" mode, more and more things appear that need to be added to that list.

For example, as I was walking to my writing cave upstairs to work at banging out this inspired post,  I realized the upstairs carpets really needed vacuuming.  Then as I walked by the bar, I noticed several things sitting on the cabinet that needed put away. The game table needed cleaned off. The couch blankets needed folded. I forgot to spot spray the soda stain in my writing cave where Grace dribbled pop. My desk is untidy. The upstairs windows really need cleaned. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Living in the moment is not something I am usually capable of achieving. You'll get no Zen here. For that, check out Leo over at Zen Habits. What I am capable of, when the wheels finally start turning, is knocking out some epic tasks.

Here is the random list of wants and needs swimming around in the list in my head:

1. Clean the rabbit cage
2. Scoop the dog poop our of the yard. 
3. Wash the clothes
4. Fold the clothes
5. Clean Grace's room before she gets back home
6. Work on my novel edits
7. Work on writing all this week's posts ahead of time and scheduling them
8. Cruise the internet for blog post ideas
9. Clean all of the floors
10. Clean out the chicken house
11. Do a yard sweep for bones, trash and various other dog flotsam and jetsam
12. Sweep the chicken poop off the porch
13. Clean all the misc. accumulated household stuff of the kitchen bar
14. Catch up on reading my magazines
15. Read something, period
16. Catch up on Facebook

You can probably figure out which are the wants and which are the needs. Ironically, I notice many of them have a common theme of either cleaning or poop or the cleaning of poop. That's a little disturbing.

Several more of them require alone time and quiet to accomplish. Those are the ones I am trying to focus on now before the Grace maelstrom arrives back home. After that, all bets are off.

We've tried to get Grace on chore schedule of her own in an effort to both instill a work ethic and knock a few things off that revolving list. We also bribe her with the promise of cold hard cash. Unfortunately, as I figured, that lasted about one week. The second week I hounded and nagged her until she finished one thing on the list (hanging up and putting away all of her clothes). Of course, she didn't get paid that week. She didn't care. She still has no feel for the value of work or a strong enough desire to work toward a long term goal to achieve it. And I don't have the patience to enforce it.

Sure I know I should be trying harder to instill that but seriously, it's just easier to do it myself than wait and struggle and cajole her. I'm pretty sure that's a universal parenting dilemma. Right? Right?

So what have I accomplished in this first hour of free time? I have managed to complete one seventh of one task on my list and add six more to the list.

If I were getting paid for these chores or in this case, for just being me, this would be job security.

As it is, I'm continually plotting for a way to retire TODAY but at the same income level so I can work on my revolving to do list. Whoever came up with the five day work week and two days off plan was an idiot. Probably a business owner. When I'm Queen, it will be the other way around.

The saying goes, "Shit Happens". Trust me, it doesn't just happen. You have to make it happen.

Next.

Top 10 Things I've Learned From Dog Obedience Training

Week five of dog training. Two weeks left.

Honestly, it has been a pain. The weekly commitment is excruciating, especially since I hate doing things during the week nights. I know, I know I'm getting old. I'd just like to come home and relax (cue hysterical laughter here because that rarely actually happens either).

I have learned and clarified a few things these past few weeks about myself and my dog.

Here ya go:

10. Even if you pay for it, you can not force people or animals to respect your authority. I still have no idea how to command that. 




9. My dog will do virtually any trick for a hot dog. I would do virtually any trick for Thin Mints.

8. It is rarely a good idea to wear a fanny pack around your waist. At obedience school, it's the only way to both protect your hot dog ammunition and ensure your dog's rapt attention.

7. A doggie seat belt is only somewhat effective. It does indeed keep your pet out of the front seat, but not from pinging around the back seat.

6. My dog, like my kid has her own opinions and a strong will. Possibly stronger than mine.

5. Dog training instructors take things very seriously. Most of the classes I've felt like I landed in the middle of a Saturday Night Live skit. I may be the only one who sees the humor, but I have entertained myself. 

4.  I can only remember the names of the bad dogs and not the good ones. I have no idea who the owners are.

3. Two of the tricks Belle has learned are to spin around and to roll over. I see no practical application for either trick, but I was inordinately proud that she could do them.

2. The three main training goals I wanted to accomplish (no jumping, come when I call and no more chewing on me) continue to elude us. Luckily, we also have a shock collar. That will be plan B.

1. Even though she may never be Best In Show or win an agility competition, Belle is still a part of our family now, til death do us part and at six months we all love her despite her occasional naughtiness.