Monthly Archives: October 2009

Cold weather warm dog

 

     Still no sun.  The second Nor’easter is working its way through here.  Today we had gray skies, rain, and wind chilled air.  I’m not a fan of cold weather, never have been.  I’m looking forward to the forecasted sixty plus degree weather and sun later this coming week.

     Even with the heat on this old house has a certain chill and dampness about it when the weather is foul.  In between cups of coffee, I drink herb teas to help chase away the cold.  It’s been cool enough that Dear Hubby dug out his flannel shirts and several of his fleece tops. 

     I can’t wear those things because when I’m not chilly my inner child is playing with matches.  She’s a disagreeable soul who never heats things up when I need her the most.  No, she waits until I’m already warm to kindle her fires.  How unkind. 

     At one point tonight, I woke poor Gavin up to have him sit with me in my chair so I could share his warmth.  He didn’t mind too much because he does enjoy cuddling.  It was his idea to flop on his back beside me with his head on my shoulder.

Their there here hear…yes, another post on writing

 

     DON’T DEPEND ON YOUR SPELLCHECKER.  Do you write there (look over there) when you mean their (It belongs to those people)?  Here (It is here) for hear (my ears hear)?  Your (the possessive form of you) for you’re (you are)?  Do you make these mistakes so often that your critiquing group cringes when they have to read something you give them?  Are they so tired of marking the mistakes that they’ve adopted special shorthand notations to correct them?  Don’t whine to them that your spellchecker didn’t catch the words because it won’t.  You have spelled the words correctly but you have used the wrong words.

     MAKE A LIST.  If you know you repeatedly make the same mistakes make a list of the words you most often misuse.  Keep it in front of you when you write.

     I have a friend who made these spelling blunders to the point of driving me up a wall.  Then I suggested she keep a list of her most frequent and glaring errors in front of her while she is writing so she can double check them.  I am pleased to say that her writing has improved.

A Nor’easter blows through

 

     Nor’easter shmoreaster it’s friggin cold, windy, wet, and plain old miserable.  Wouldn’t you know I’d have to go out in all this muck to shop?  I hate shopping.  I hate it even more when it’s nasty outside. 

     There’s nothing like wrestling a forty pound bag of dog food out of a cart and slinging it into the back of the van with rain pounding down around you.  That is except schlepping bags from a fully loaded shopping cart of groceries into said vehicle on the same trip.  At which time there was the bonus of large snowflakes added to the downpour.  (Lee if you’re reading this, you can stop laughing now it didn’t stick to the ground.)

     Oh, joy, the first snow of the season, blecch!  Mother Nature isn’t finished with us yet, she’s ordered another Nor’easter to come through here right behind this one.  Gee, thanks Ma.

     The dogs and Dear Hubby were all snug in the house.  I was not.  I was carrying things into the house.  Rain soaked, windblown, and cold I dragged the last bag in.  DH told me he was going upstairs to take a nap.  And people wonder why I write murder mysteries…

Where’s Waldo Owl?

 

There's Waldo!

There's Waldo!

    

Back in my post ’43 Days to Halloween,’ I wrote about the rubber owl I’d bought.  I named him Waldo.  Waldo has become a fixture in the house and an unending source of amusement.  Dear Hubby and I keep moving him.  I don’t think Waldo will be consigned to a box in the attic after Halloween.  We’re having too much fun.

     It’s amazing how many places we’ve found to put him.  We’ve become quite creative.  It took DH a while to find him when I stuck him in the glass fronted (stereo rack system) cabinet.  (We keep our DVD player in there now.)  For the many days, that Waldo stared out at DH from there, DH didn’t find him.  G did—yes, she’s also enjoying the game.  It took DH a week to locate Waldo. 

     Now I have to move him again—I’m thinking that inside the fridge might be fun.  I haven’t put Waldo in there yet.  Of course, that’s only if DH doesn’t move Waldo first.

Read the guidelines

 

     On a whim, I went online and located four magazines, then printed out their writers’ guidelines.  I found  most of the guidelines close to what I do out of habit.  Whew!  However, I wouldn’t dream of submitting anything to a publication without reading the guidelines first.  I made that mistake early on and learned from it.  No two are identical. 

     One publication states that they would prefer that the stories not be over 12,000 words.  The next one says 2,500 up to 25,000 words.  The third asks for 750 to 4,000 words and please do not break the rules.  If you do, we will return your submission unread.  The fourth wants no more than 6,000 but not less than 2,000 words.

     Two of the four will accept all submissions.  The other two request that you query them first.  GAH!  I haven’t written a query letter in so long, do I remember how?  Play it safe stick with the two who don’t require them.  That’s the ticket.

     Each publication has different rules on manuscript preparation.  Their pay scale varies as well. 

     If you want to submit a story to a magazine, take the time to read their guidelines and an issue or two.

Misery loves company

 

     Today Dear Hubby is off to the oral surgeon.  I get to go along because I’m his designated driver.  This is going to be fun—NOT.  For one thing, as I stated in an earlier post, dentists are a phobia with him and oral surgeons are worse.  I can sympathize with him since I’ve had four impacted wisdom teeth removed and two others.  However, neither dentist nor oral surgeons bother me.

     I do dread the next week or so since men are such babies when they are feeling miserable.  When I had my wisdom teeth out, I spent two whole days being miserable and then cooked meals, cleaned the house, did dishes, and went back to work.  The last time DH had teeth removed he was down and out for at least a week.

     All I can say is thank heavens these are the last of his teeth.  I’d be willing to take bets that he’ll be feeling a darned sight better once they are gone than he has in a long while too.

Is that character TSTL?

 

     She’s too stupid to live.  Have you ever read a book or watched a movie or TV program and thought that?  I have.  Heaven help me, I hope I never hear that about my characters. 

     There are horror and mystery flicks where you can’t help but scream at the screen things like, “Don’t go in there!  Don’t open that door, stupid!  Are you nuts?  Don’t separate—stay together.  You don’t have a gun, you aren’t combat trained, so why the hell are you sneaking around looking in places you shouldn’t be?  How dumb can you get?”

     Sound familiar?  Okay, you might not do it, but I do that all the time.  Not surprising that Dear Hubby gets exasperated with me at times.  It’s also no wonder that I don’t go out to the movies often.

     If I’m reading a good mystery and the smart, sassy, strong, female character suddenly pulls a TSTL move, I want to throw the book at the wall.  Now you know why I have a couple of non-writing readers go over my books.  They are the ones who tell me if my character does something in the TSTL range.  My critiquing partners will too but sometimes they miss a TSTL moment because they are looking at other glaring mistakes.

I haven’t a clue

 

     Wait, I know.  It was Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the candlestick.  No, that’s not it. 

     When I sat down to my computer tonight, I had no clue what I was going to write about, but then I usually don’t.  I set a goal to write an average of two hundred words a day on this blog when I started it.  Some nights I write more, some less, but it does average out in the end.  Why did I set this goal?  I had to prove to myself that I could do it. 

     This blog is a journey, a discovery of who I am.  It is where I let off steam, play, and sometimes drive myself ‘round the bend.  Yes, I admit it.  It is a short drive—hardly a revolution of the wheels. 

     What I’ve found is that I can succeed at what I put my mind to.  Good news for me because I want my books finished, published, and enjoyed by all.  This is my mind set.

     In addition to writing this blog, I work on my books.  The writing of them isn’t easy because life often interferes but I will write them.

You woke me for this?

 

     All day long, the dogs wanted to go out, come in, go out, come in…well, you get the idea.  If it weren’t for the fact that I never let the dogs out without one of us with them I’d put in a damned doggie door.  As usual, around seven tonight, they both conked out. 

     The rest of evening, they snored their heads off.  That is until it began to rain around eleven and Gavin decided he needed to go again.  I do think he regretted the whole idea when I opened the door and he saw it was pouring outside.  He backed up and headed towards the kitchen door.

     “No, no, no you wanted to go out so now you will go.”  I gently booted him out.  He sighed, dashed outside, squatted (yes, he still squats half the time) and then he dashed back in to his crate and waited for a cookie.  Within minutes, he was sound asleep again.

     Since I took one out, I figured the other should go too.  I opened the door on Patty’s crate.  She did not open her eyes, lift her head, or twitch an ear, or anything else.  She was zonked.  I wasn’t going to give up I shook her.  She lifted her head and gave me the look.  The ‘what the hell do you want?’ look.

     “Come on.  Time to go out.”

     She sloooowly climbed to her feet, stretched the back end, and then stretched the front end.  Patty doesn’t hurry unless she wants to.

     I walked her to the back door, opened it, and she gave me a look that would wither any normal person in their tracks.  I never said I was normal.

     “Out.  Go pee.”

     If she were taller, had hands, and could talk I think I would’ve been grabbed by the shirt collar as she said, “You woke me for this?”

     I have a sneaking feeling that she’ll appear on my bed early in the morning to bounce around and wake me, ‘just for ‘cause.’

More Halloween 2009

 

     A Spirit Halloween store is only two doors down from Borders, and irresistible.  Again today, I wandered into the world of Halloween props, costumes, and fun after meeting with my critiquing group at Borders.  The clerks in SH now recognize and greet me by name—yes, I’ve been in there a few times since they opened. 

     It’s not because I spend large amounts of money in the store (because I don’t) that I made an impression with the clerks, it’s because I joke around with them.  How can I not?  They are an enjoyable group of people.  Today we talked about how to decorate a haunted house, what props I have, what ones would work best, and how they’ve decorated their own homes over the years.

     Most of us are in the same coffin, a lowly zombie’s budget with a regal vampire’s taste.  It’s a good thing we are imaginative and inventive and have a few good props among the cheap ones.  The least expensive but most labor intensive are the carved pumpkins. 

     However, with my tiny porch I’m running out of room for them.  And did I mention the pumpkins were labor intensive?  To carve them the way G and I do it takes hours and several glasses of wine…

Let the Halloween preparations begin…

 

     “Only you would have a bag full of bloodshot eyeballs and a bubbling, misting cauldron on your kitchen table,” G said as she sat down with her coffee and moved the bag out of her way.

     “It’s only twenty three days until Halloween.  Here, check out this bag of spider rings Elena sent me.”  I handed her said bag to see.

     “Cool.  What are you going to do with them?”

     “Use them for any kids with allergies instead of giving them candy.”

     “I want one for my youngest grandson.  He’ll love it.”

     “You got it.  I’ll set a couple aside for him.  Now, we need to start figuring out the porch decorations.”

     G picked up a pen and began to write on the tablet in front of her.  “Haunted house, right?”

     “Yep.  I need to dig out those old sheets we used to cover the tables we had the props on last year.  We can hang them from the porch ceiling and drape down over the windows.”  I scratched my head.  “Maybe that’ll work.  I’ll see what the Halloween store has to offer on Thursday since I’ll be up near there.”

     “How many pumpkins will we need?” 

     “Um, the question is, how many will we be able to carve?  My hands about fell off last year.”

     “How about we do just one a piece for a change?”  G put two pumpkins on the list.

     “Works for me.  I have a whole bottle of fog juice for the fog machine so we won’t need to get any this year.” 

     “Did you find your Halloween CD?  Remember, last year you had to tear the house apart last minute to find it.”

     “It’s on my desk.”

Fall is here

 

     Fall has arrived.  The leaves are rapidly changing colors and dropping to the ground.  I need to get the netting up over the pond soon or I’ll have another huge mess to clean up next spring.  I went through it this year and I don’t want to do it again.  We do have to raise the netting a bit, so we don’t have the frogs snagging themselves. 

     I have some PVC pipe to use to construct a framework that I can drape the net over and clip it leaving a 3 to 4 inch space between the bottom of the netting and the ground.  That should keep most of the leaves out of the pond and give the frogs free access for as long as they need it.

     I took Gavin outside today the air was brisk, the wind moderate, and he was full of himself.  The fact is, he was full of himself he didn’t smell, see, notice, or find the dead frog.  He walked right past it.  No, it wasn’t Goliath.  It was a rather large bullfrog but not as big as the worm moocher, Goliath.

     However, at the time I didn’t know it wasn’t Goliath because these frogs are seldom active until dusk.  Later, I went out to check the pond and quite happily discovered Goliath sitting on the bench rock waiting for me to serve up some worms.